An American in Ireland

There is a certain quiet that blankets Dublin in the wintertime. People seem friendlier and less argumentative. Maybe everyone is too busy rubbing their cold hands together for warmth or walking a bit faster to get out of the chill as quickly as possible – no time for quarrelling, just a swift “hiya” and a gracious wave.

The streets are hushed as well. Icy roads warrant a slower, perhaps more gentler slog to school and work. Drivers wave two, maybe even three cars to go ahead in the queue down the one-lane streets and appreciation is shown with a little flash of emergency lights – a sort of lit-up wink for their kindness.

It could be that people want to slow down so they can take a look at the Christmas decorations in the villages around Dublin. Each seems to have its own big pine tree, decorated with long strands of golden lights and a few rustic ornaments. Some have a nativity set or a Santa Claus while others roll out the enormous candy canes and sleighs packed with gift boxes. The morning frost makes everything glisten as if it had been designed that way. And in the evenings the twinkling lights emit a soft glow, giving the impression of warmth on a cold, dark night.

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Back in May I left my humble little apartment in Drogheda and moved into Mountaineering Man’s humble little apartment in The Coombe. And then a couple of months ago we moved into a bigger apartment, a place that we can truly call our own.

We spent several weeks looking around at various Dublin neighborhoods, which I will admit was quite frustrating for me as I was still unfamiliar with many areas of the city. MM patiently drove me around Blackrock, Sandymount, Ballsbridge – all desirable areas on the south side – and then to a few of his favourite north side areas including Clontarf, where he once lived while still in college.

And then one day MM slipped in another neighborhood on our Daft.ie search list: Raheny. “Where is that??” I inquired, admittedly a bit annoyed. He explained that it was just north of Clontarf, on the DART line and close to the sea. Sounded nice enough, but I was exhausted from trying to educate myself on the 6-8 areas we’d already chosen and wasn’t keen to add another to my to-do list.

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What does Irish food look like?

That was the question on everyone’s mind at the 2nd annual (hopefully!) foodie photo workshop hosted by Bord Bia last week in Dublin. After viewing the Google images results from an “Irish food” search, we were appalled at what the rest of the world is seeing of our beloved fare.

Unfortunately the websites coming up tops on the image searches are old and therefore enjoy a high ranking; photos of gray, unappetizing Irish stews and painfully plain-looking roasts take up the first page. But the food bloggers in Ireland know better: Irish food is now about artisan producers and organic meats and beautiful fruit and vegetables. It’s about handcrafted cheeses and luscious cakes and biscuits. This is what the world needs exposure to when it comes to Irish food.

We gathered to get some pointers on how we can make our food photos look even better so that we – as the food bloggers of Ireland – can pull together and get the word out. The always enthusiastic and tireless Donal Skehan went over how to use props, interesting backgrounds and perfect lighting to make our food look as appealing as possible; the wonderfully talented food stylist Sharon Hearne Smith (who worked on one of my favourite cookery shows, Barefoot Contessa) showed us how to position and work with our dishes to bring out the best colours and angles. Food photographer extraordinaire Jocosta Clarke reviewed camera settings and photo setups that will guarantee a professional-looking result.

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Dear Eircom,

I just wanted to write you a note to say “thanks” for the joy that is dealing with your customer service reps – a delight that I had the pleasure of experiencing for a whole two hours this morning. Of course by “delight” I actually mean an excruciating, dying-a-slow-death type pain that’s about as pleasurable as sliding down a razor blade into a pool of salty lemon juice.

I rang because I need phone service and broadband, which I assumed would be a simple enough request considering you are a phone and Internet company. But as they say, assume just makes an ass of u and me and never has this little nugget of wisdom been more true! I first spoke with a woman named Esther, who went over the offers with me. She said I could get broadband and a landline that covered my needs for €41.99 per month for the first six months and then €46.70 per month afterward. She also mentioned there would be a €29.99 connection fee for broadband, which I thought was rather excessive and that it would take at least 10 business days to connect both the phone and broadband lines and that they’d have to send someone out.

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  It only took 15 months but I think my body has finally adjusted to the climate here in Ireland. It recently occurred to me that I haven’t had a cold or flu or major aches and pains for a while now; considering I was sick about once every month for the first year of living here, I’m overjoyed!

Irish people say the damp air here is what makes you sick. Whatever it is, my body went into rejection mode the moment I landed. My lungs were used to the comforting warm and dry air of Los Angeles, which was only very occasionally punctuated by a rain shower or cooler temperatures. So when my organs were introduced to the cold, wet breezes of the north east seaboard of this island, they were determined to show their misery by inflicting pain in the form of one bizarre illness or another.

First there was the monthly cold with the coughing and slightly-above-normal body temperature. Then came the crazy, head-rattling sneezing and runny nose/eyes from hay fever (thanks, rapeseed plants!). By December of last year, I had contracted some viral infection that left me with painful, swollen glands in my neck and a low-grade fever and headache that lasted over 30 days. So exhausted and weepy was I during our New Year’s holiday in Athlone that Mountaineering Man had to ring a local doctor for an emergency appointment. The doctor told me the same thing my own doc told me, which was that my body was fighting some viral infection and I would just have to wait until it passed. He happily pocked 50 quid for his 5 minutes and I left knowing I’d chosen the wrong career field.

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When I woke up last Friday morning, I nearly forgot where I was. The sun was blazing, the sky was an endless stretch of clear blue and Dubliners, who typically sport an ensemble of a raincoat and boots, were wearing T-shirts and shorts. For a second I thought I was back in Los Angeles!

The summery sun couldn’t have come at a better time as it was the kick-off for Bloom in the Park 2011, an annual festival of flowers, plants and food sponsored by Bord Bia. Mountaineering Man and I made our way up to Phoenix Park for a look-see and we got an eyeful: tents full of colourful, gorgeous floral arrangements, gardens packed with an array of beautiful produce and a food village fit for, well, a foodie!

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It’s no big secret: I love to cook. And lately I’ve found my passion for cooking again, thanks in part to having someone else to cook for (co-habitating with Mountaineering Man). I’ve been having a great time making our weeknight meals and have been inspired by a variety of factors like our weekly veg/fruit bags delivered by Home Organics and the local butchers and fishmongers in my new neighborhood.

As I whipped up another weeknight dinner the other day, I started lamenting over the fact that my visa here in Ireland only allows me to work as a freelance journalist because I would absolutely love to cook somewhere. Don’t get me wrong; I love journalism and I’ll always be a writer no matter what. While I don’t necessarily want to be a restaurant chef (plus I have no formal training) in an ideal world I could see myself cooking at a small breakfast/lunchy cafe type place, one that specialises in fresh and locally-sourced ingredients.

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Secret Supper Clubs have been all the rage in Los Angeles for the last few years, so when I heard about one being done in Dublin I jumped at the chance to enjoy a multi-course meal cooked and served in the comfort of a private home with complete strangers.

But unlike the one Supper Club experience I’d had in LA (which was a fun experience but food-wise was lackluster), this wasn’t about secret passwords and going to great lengths to secure a precious invite. The Loaves & Fishes Supper Club, organized and hosted by foodie and baker Lilly Higgins and her sisters, is all about delicious, homemade food created by people who truly love to cook for others.

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When I visited friends in this area October of last year, the idea of actually living here was barely a twinkle in my eye. I’d wanted for some time to move abroad, and as a travel journalist doing a fair amount of globetrotting I was always considering the various places I visited as a potential place to land.

About half-way through my 10-day visit, it dawned on me that maybe Ireland could be the place. After all I have a good number of friends here (when I was in college in San Francisco I lived with a gang of Irish and we kept in touch all these years), it is an English-speaking country and it’s in Europe. It was a beautiful, sunny autumn day and I was sitting with my friend Sinead on the lovely patio of her cosy Irish country house when the idea first sprang to life. Maybe I could move here, continue my freelance writing, and get a little apartment in town…my brain buzzed with the excitement of possibilities.

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I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Though the Irish tend to wax ad nauseum about the weather, they don’t let it get them down. They don’t avoid going outside when it’s freezing cold or when it’s raining because if they did, they’d never leave the house. Irish people just put on a bigger coat, whip out the umbrella and get on with their lives.

Strangely enough, I’ve noticed as the temperature goes down people seem to get more chipper around here. In Dublin last weekend it was probably about 4 degrees Celsius (that’s 39 degrees Fahrenheit for all my American friends) and I witnessed the most cheerful exchange between a visibly shivering elderly man and a store clerk. The clerk asked, “How’s it going?” and while the old man could’ve gotten away with a smarmy remark he answered, “Ah, not a bother at all! Not a bother!” complete with a huge grin and a boisterous cackle. I think I was in the middle of whining about how cold I was when I caught that little burst of positivity. Then I passed the guy whose sole job is to stand in the driveway of the car park and wave cars in and out. For hours, he stands out there in the freezing cold, sporting his high-vis jacket and a genuine smile.

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