Seeing as how Thursday is Paddy's Day, here are a few tasty samples to whet your appetite- literally & figuratively!
According to the journal.ie, ''For the second year in a row, a national food survey has shown that the traditional Irish dish of bacon and cabbage is the most popular meal in the country.'' As my job is running a garden centre where we sell way more cabbage plants & seeds than any other veg, I can't argue with that.
My hubby makes a tasty variation on the bacon & cabbage, with brussel sprouts. I know what you're thinking, but they are in the same family as cabbage, & I promise these are really good! You wouldn't know you were eating brussels!
Another traditional Irish favorite is Guinness. Like Kristin at Dinner Du Jour, I'm not really a fan of drinking it, but in cooking it is wonderful. Here's a link to her blog post featuring Steak & Guinness pie, & Chocolate Guinness Cake-- she's got few other recipe links for Paddy's Day there, too.
Doyle's in Graiguenamanagh. Yes, it is also a hardware shop. Photo by meophamman on flickr
If you fancy a pint of the black stuff in here in Graignamanagh after our Paddy's Day parade, why not try the Cosy Inn, Matt Doyle's, or O'Shea's, or, well, I could go on! Why not do a pub tour & try them all for yourself ;-)
Dungarvan beers- vegan friendly, even! photo by irishcraftbeer
But Guinness is not the only beer in Ireland! Craft brewing here is starting to take off, and Beoir.org has many of them listed. Here's their calendar of beer-y events, and do look around their website for lots of cool craft beer info, & where you can buy the beers. Dungarvan Brewing Co. is a new local-ish company that has some of Terry's favorite craft beers. And ooh!-- just as I was going to publish this, a wonderful new blog post came up from fabulous foodie Simply Splendiferous which fits in perfectly with the Dungarvan beer & food themes. Here it is: http://simplysplendiferous.com/2011/03/saint-patricks-day-irish-beef-and-stout-stew-and-a-new-irish-stout.html Nice!
If you would like to find a bit of non-edible treasure for Paddy's Day, why not join in on this online treasure hunt! You can win fab handcrafted items from Etsy Ireland. The clues go up on their Facebook page daily, so you can scroll back & catch any you may have missed, in time for the last clue on the 15th.
Last but not least, to get you in the parade spirit, here's last year's RTE TV's snippets of parades
all around the country (& elsewhere!) It is fun to watch, but if you don't want to see it all, skim forward to around minute 17.05 to see Graignamanagh's parade-- maybe we'll see you here this year, or in the future! Enjoy!
A little Graignamanagh parade ;-) photo by Sharon Cheong
On the last Sunday Sampler I posted links to the big St Patrick's Day Festival in Dublin & other events going on around the time, so check it out if you missed it. Have a wonderful St. Patrick's day where ever you are!
Hi Susan, thanks for the mention/link on your fun blog. I used to work in Kilkenny yeeaars ago in Kilkenny Design Workshops and I loved Graignamanagh, wonderful place. Glad to see it's still buzzing : )
ReplyDeleteThanks, Ailbhe- we're living in county Kilkenny for 8 years, & in Graig for about 4 years now, and we absolutely love it. There are so many places in Ireland that I love, & but this little gem has got such a friendliness & community spirit that I don't think we'd ever want to live anywhere else!
ReplyDelete