An American in Ireland

Though I would never refer to myself as a health nut, both Mountaineering Man and I generally prefer clean foods – ones that are not from a tin can or that have a list of hard-to-pronounce ingredients that are likely produced in a lab somewhere.

Instead of sliced, pre-packaged sandwich meat, we bake free range, organic chicken breasts for sambos. Rather than buying bottles of salad dressing, I make my own. We buy our bread from bakers we know don’t use additives to speed up the rising or baking process. We frequently make veggie tacos using real corn tortillas and fresh guacamole over the more traditional, meat-based version.

So I was thrilled to discover Nobó, a new Irish line of dairy-free, all-natural frozen treats. It’s basically ice cream, without the cream and additives (many ice cream companies add gums to keep their frozen treats easy to scoop and not rock-solid).

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About 15 months ago, I got an invitation for a night out in Dublin. It was from Aoife of the ICanHasCook blog, and she wanted to have me up in the city for a “night of culture and fun.” At the time I was living in Drogheda and I was busy discovering all things small town (well, small for me considering a few months before, I’d moved from Los Angeles) and was frequently writing on this blog about how much I missed the culinary and cultural offerings of a city.

I took the train up and had my first proper night out in Dublin. We hit about a half-dozen places with Aoife “Veg” and Catherine “The Runcible Spoon” and I ended up crashing in ICanHasCook & Nialler9’s guest room at 4 am. Looking back on that night now, it’s hard to believe how confused and overwhelmed I felt in Dublin – I had no idea where I was and no idea how to get to Point A from Point B in anything but a taxi. Though back then it was all a blur, I now know we went to Bernard Shaw for a pre-dinner drink, Rotana for dinner, the Workman’s for another drink, the No Name bar for more libations, a warehouse to see a graffiti-off between a English and Irish artists and a loft somewhere to see Alarmist and then to PantiBar for a nightcap.

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