Wed 13 Apr 2011

A Kitchen Hero

Posted by Clare under irish food bloggers, Irish Food Celebrities, Irish media
[2] Comments

donal treats Funnily enough, strange but common side effects of fame can and often include a sudden loss of memory (like forgetting who your real friends are), a severe case of elitist behaviour and the onset of frequent temper tantrums. I’m from Los Angeles and believe me, this “disease” is practically an epidemic out there!

donal sofie

So it’s refreshing (and rare!) to see people who manage to find success and yet remain humble and kind, and Ireland’s own Donal Skehan is one such person. I first met him at the inaugural gathering of food bloggers in Ireland last year, and though he was one of the hosts and the author of a very popular blog and a new cookbook, he was incredibly down-to-earth and friendly. Well last week Donal released his second cookbook, Kitchen Hero (this time by a major publisher in the UK) and his new cooking show debuts on television in a few weeks – reasons enough to justify a marked change in attitude, if you go by LA standards.

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Sun 10 Apr 2011

Kitchen Therapy

Posted by Clare under Drogheda Ireland, Expats in Ireland, Healthy Food, Mexican food Ireland
[11] Comments

mexi salsa

While some people find cooking to be the most stressful chore in the world, I find it relaxing and therapeutic. It’s something that sets me at ease and reenergizes my spirit, at the risk of sounding melodramatic! To me, there are few things in life more enjoyable than dabbling in the kitchen with some piano music in the background (Dustin O’Halloran is a new favorite, thanks to my friend Aoife for the recommendation!) with a glass of wine in one hand and a spatula in the other.

Life has been quite hectic for Mountaineering Man and me lately; it seems every weekend is booked with long-standing plans or some sort of obligation so it was a much-welcome relief when we found ourselves with no plans last Sunday. We went to Chapters Bookstore for a bit of browsing and then stopped into a cafe for coffee. For dinner we thought we’d hit one of the Mexican places in town, but found all four of them to be closed! So we did one better and hit the supermarket where we gathered some avocados, tortillas, tomatoes and a few other bits and headed home to cook.

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Tue 5 Apr 2011

Through Gritted Teeth

Posted by Clare under Expats in Ireland, living in Ireland, Rants
[19] Comments

IMG00188-20100911-1303 For the most part, I really enjoy living in Ireland and I think I make that relatively clear in this blog. But there are days – and today is one of those days – where I really hate certain things about living here. Yes, I used the “h” word.

Since I try to be honest about my experience here I feel I should share the reasons why. This morning Mountaineering Man and I awoke to find a window had been smashed in his apartment building; apparently some jerkface kids in the neighborhood think it’s funny to throw rocks at windows until they shatter into a million pieces all over the sidewalk below. The window wasn’t MM’s, but rather one that looks out from the inside stairwell. There are several apartment blocks in his area that have numerous smashed communal windows, likely by the same culprits.

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Fri 1 Apr 2011

Going Back to My LA Roots

Posted by Clare under Drogheda Ireland, Expats in Ireland, Healthy Food, Irish media
[9] Comments

la roots

Twinkling lights of downtown Los Angeles

I’ve been a bit MIA for a while, and for that I apologize. Things have been crazy busy around here lately, and though I’m not ready to reveal everything just yet I can say that big changes are afoot!

One of the changes that I can talk about is the launch of my new website, The Hollywood Craic. It’s basically an entertainment news and gossip blog that brings the best of Hollywood news to the Emerald Isle. I decided to branch back into entertainment journalism simply because it’s been very difficult selling food and travel-related stories here in Ireland, so I needed to expand my repertoire.

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Mon 21 Mar 2011

Miss Manners

Posted by Clare under Baking, Drogheda Ireland, Expats in Ireland, Irish small town
[7] Comments

manners There’ve been a lot of stories coming out recently about the behavior of the Japanese in light of the terrible tragedies they’ve endured over the last several days. Though they’ve been tested well beyond the limits of any reasonable human being, their impeccable manners and stoic strength still remains. Even the freezing cold weather and threat of radiation exposure and dwindling food and water supplies – any one of which would warrant a psychotic break – they are polite, courteous and selfless. This is simply their nature.

It’s made me think a lot about the nature of the Irish…who are they, really? For the first several months I lived here I took note of the superficial things like the funny accents and quirky slang and the national obsession with chocolate. But as I spend more time here I’m starting to get a feel for the sociological and psychological traits of Irish people. Of course I’m no expert; I simply know what I’ve observed.

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Wed 9 Mar 2011

Foodie Friends

Posted by Clare under Baking, Drogheda Ireland, irish food bloggers
[11] Comments

bread3

As I mentioned in my previous post, a lot has happened since I moved to Ireland one year ago. And through my adjustment to this country and its culture, there have been a number of people who’ve helped along the way. One of the most noteworthy is a lovely group of foodies who now have a name (Irish Foodies) and an official website: The Irish Foodblogger Association.

It was in May of last year that we gathered together for the first time, though back then we were all coming as individual food bloggers and not as a group. Bord Bia and Donal Skehan organized the first-ever meeting of food bloggers in Ireland, and though I had emailed with a few in the months leading up to the meet I had never actually come face-to-face with anyone but the Daily Spud (both being big sushi fans, we’d met up earlier for a Yamamori dinner). The first new face I would see was Kristin of dinnerdujour, who offered me a lift after she heard I lived nearby. Together we trekked up the M1 to Dublin to meet up with our foodie peers.

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Fri 4 Mar 2011

One Year Later…

Posted by Clare under Collon Ireland, Drogheda Ireland, Expats in Ireland, Soul searching
[26] Comments

Clare view

The other day I came across a notebook that I brought from Los Angeles but hadn’t looked at in ages. It was a journal of notes that started in 2008 and ended before I moved to Ireland, which was on March 4, 2010. The last few pages are my frantic “to do” lists for my move, which included such chores as burn 10 CDs a day every day to iTunes, go to packing supply store, and don’t forget your PASSPORT!!!

What’s more interesting was a list of goals I’d set for myself back in 2008. They ranged from things I wanted to accomplish that day, like transcribe Tahiti interviews (for a story I was writing for a food/travel magazine) to tasks I wanted to finish within a month like clean up patio and buy plants for it. But further down the list were some life goals:

· I want to write a novel

· I want to be in a committed relationship with a great guy

· I want to buy a condo/house in Pasadena

· I want to travel more or live abroad

· I want to earn $100,000 per year

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Tue 1 Mar 2011

The Grumpiest Pizza Chef in Ireland

Posted by Clare under Drogheda Ireland, Expats in Ireland, Italian Restaurants Drogheda
[9] Comments

lapizza2 

There is a man in Drogheda whose reputation became known to me the day after I moved to Ireland. I was sitting in the immigration office of the local garda station waiting for my Irish ID card and chatting with Dennis, the head officer there. As soon as he heard I was a food and travel journalist, he insisted I try La Pizzeria, an Italian restaurant that had been in Drogheda for over 20 years and was still going strong. But his recommendation came with a caveat: “Don’t be late and don’t do anything to make Jian Carlo mad.”

lapizza3

Over the next few months I got more referrals to La Pizzeria from taxi drivers, shopkeepers and my new Irish friends. And every single one of them included their own version of Dennis’ warning. From what I could gather, this Jian Carlo guy was basically Drogheda’s version of Seinfeld’s “Soup Nazi” character, who infamously dismissed fickle or slow-moving customers with a thunderous “NEXT!” before demanding they leave the premises. But customers always came back because they couldn’t live without his delectable soupy creations. To be honest, it didn’t exactly make me want to run over to La Pizzeria, despite the fact that basically everyone in town raved about the food there.

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Wed 23 Feb 2011

And The Best Extra Award Goes To…

Posted by Clare under Irish media, Irish small town, living in Ireland, Moving to Ireland
[8] Comments

glory daze Back in my early college days, my friend Cat and I were recruited to be extras in a movie while having coffee at a neighborhood café in Santa Cruz, California. We were told to be at the beach boardwalk at 5 a.m. the next day and to wear casual attire. We’d be paid $50 for a full day’s work and be fed breakfast and lunch, which we could eat with the cast. To us starving college students, it sounded like a fun way to spend the day.

Being on set with all the cameras and lights and rigs was a thrill and when the actors came out we giggled with excitement. The biggest star of the film was ‘80s child actress Alyssa Milano, who at the time was trying to break her good-girl image. I remember she wore a skimpy outfit and smoked cigarettes and made out with one her male costars in between takes. That male costar was a very wet-behind-the-ears Ben Affleck, sporting a bitchin’ Vanilla Ice hairdo. (It should be noted that many years later, we realized the cast was actually quite impressive: Matt Damon, Matthew McConaughey, Brendan Fraser – all of whom were complete unknowns back then – as well as the late, great Spalding Gray were all in the movie). We soaked in the atmosphere and did everything we could to get an understanding of the storyline, but because we were just extras no one told us anything. We had no idea what the movie was about but we didn’t care. We were just happy to be there.

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Mon 21 Feb 2011

The Secret Life of Twins

Posted by Clare under Drogheda Ireland, Japanese in Ireland, Twins
[8] Comments

Japan room

My sister and me in our bedroom in Kamakura, Japan (I can’t tell who’s who in this pic!)

Even though I live thousands of miles away from her, I still forget that most of my friends here in Ireland have never met my sister. For the last several years, we lived fairly close to one another in Los Angeles and shared a good number of friends, so it’s a strange thing that many of my new friends here have little clue about my other half.

I say “other half” because we’re identical twins, a detail that I often forget to mention and which always elicits expressions of shock and awe. I usually refer to her as my sister in conversation as it never occurs to me to specify twin sister. I think for a lot of people it’s hard to grasp that there is another person who looks just like me and who walks and talks a lot like me out there in the world somewhere. It’s essentially telling people that I have a clone, a true, genetic clone. Of course since I’m used to being a twin, I don’t think it’s that big a deal.

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