Ireland

My mom has always wanted to visit Ireland, so Kaitlin set us up for a trip in May of 2020. We were supposed to go to Cork, Killarney, and the Ring of Kerry. One of the special events Kaitlin arranged was a cooking demonstration and meal in a historic Irish home. The menu included spring pea and mint soup, stuffed chicken and mushrooms with parsley cream sauce, spiced vegetables, Irish bread, and rhubarb tart with berries. We would have participated in making the bread and the tart – Kaitlin knows how much my mom and I love to bake! I’d like to reschedule the trip which was cancelled due to the pandemic, but I don’t know how soon my mother will be comfortable getting on a plane.

Until we make it to the real Ireland, there are many Irish events right here in California. I have celebrated at the St. Patrick's Day Parade and Festival in San Diego and I know that many other towns also have festivals, parades, dances, and races commemorating the man who drove the snakes from Ireland. In addition to these spring events, Grass Valley has a Celtic Festival in September and Arroyo Grande, Fresno, Napa, San Diego, Santa Barbara, Saratoga, Visalia, and Yucaipa have had Irish Christmas programs.

My favorite of the many Irish pubs in California is The Field Irish Pub in San Diego. I recently went with Vonnett and Kevin. We are thrilled to be vaccinated and out and about, and the deck they built out into the street is so cute. I hope the outdoor seating never goes away! We started our meal with the potato and leek soup and shared the Irish Sampler which included Guinness beef stew, shepherd's pie, corned beef and cabbage, and whiskey chicken boxty. Boxty is a homemade potato pancake filled with chicken, Irish cheddar, mushrooms, and Jameson cream sauce. We also had the curry chips and the house burger, a blend of Irish sausage and Angus beef, arugula, wine stewed onions, homemade ginger tomato ketchup, and Irish cheddar. We finished with the apple caramel bread pudding and the house made cheesecake which drew the appreciative attention of the people at the next table.

We also eat well when Gladys hosts a St. Patrick’s Day party. I see some things in this collection of Irish recipes that I want to try the next time: https://insanelygoodrecipes.com/irish-recipes/

To travel to Ireland while staying at home, I picked online resources for dance, music, movies, a play, a sitcom, a poet interview, and, believe it or not, a college course:

· I’ve seen Irish dancing at the Redlands Bowl many times, but there is nothing like the original Riverdance! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9KkbU4yStM

· Hoopla has 17 full records of music from The Irish Tenors. You can also catch them one song at a time on YouTube. Here’s a good place to start: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLP2ZrwOxNk&list=PLtak_54z449qX0-ue2DsZqvbDVzDjcesZ

· My favorite movie set in Ireland is Far and Away. The attached list has 30 more movies and they all can be found on Amazon and most at the local library: https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/life/entertainment/g26252481/best-irish-movies/

· I found The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde played by a small college and appreciated it as much as the movie versions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWPftxsBPz0

· Derry Girls is a sitcom on Netflix that I enjoyed.

· In this interview with Seamus Heaney, he talks about his childhood in Derry and reads some of his poetry: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpdzarVGOfs

· The Great Courses has a series called The Irish Identity. It can be found on Kanopy.

That’s already a great list of resources and I haven’t gotten to Irish literature yet! My favorite is Picture of Dorian Grey by Oscar Wilde. I was fascinated by the story as a teenager and read it repeatedly. It can be found online through Project Gutenberg: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm

Here are a few more selections from the well-known and well-respected body of literature from Ireland:

· A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4217

· Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/829

· The Collected Works in Verse and Prose of William Butler Yeats, Vol. 1 of 8: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/49608

My Irish friend Forrest recommended that when we visit Ireland, we take the Waterford Crystal Factory tour. They have put a virtual tour up on their webpage: https://www.waterfordvisitorcentre.com/. Other places to visit can be found here: https://www.thecrazytourist.com/15-best-places-visit-ireland/. Of course, the best trips are planned by a knowledgeable travel advisor! Thank you to Kaitlin Darnell at Laura’s Travel in Redlands for planning our yet to be taken trip to Ireland. We hope to take it soon! In the meantime, may the travel industry survive and thrive. May we all survive, thrive, recognize our mutual humanity, learn to deal with our conflicts, and allow peace and health to flourish in Ireland and throughout the world.

Photo credit: Robert Thomas https://unsplash.com/photos/mqMY-BCpFec