Guinness is Good

Went to Ireland over Easter weekend. Lots of hiking, biking and of course Guinness.


Stayed near Killarney National Park. Beautiful. We decided to take a bike ride through the Gap of Dunloe (Lonely Planet's advice). Aaron figure it would be about 8 miles of riding. 17 miles and a mountain later we made it back to Killarney.


Check out the pant leg

First we took a boat up three lakes and a river to the gap

Our boat


Gap of Dunloe



Just a pic from the bike ride

The next day we drove around the Ring of Kerry, seeing as neither of us could walk.




Hiking in Killarney National Park



Tripping and falling on my arse. Luckily it was the last day.

She's back...

Sorry for the lack of posts. Blame it on rainy weather, no traveling and a serious lack of motivation. The sun is now shinning and we have several trips planned, I need to get caught up.

Went to Oxford a couple of weekends ago. Of course we picked moving day for the college kids. Still a lot of fun. Wandered around and had a great lunch.


What???



Christ Church College

Sunday lunch part 2

How can there be a part 2 to Sunday lunch? Well, when you smear some of the garlic on a baguette, add the leftover chicken pieces and have a sandwich for Monday lunch. Beats the heck out of deli ham or turkey any day.

Actually, I've come to believe that almost anything beats the heck out of processed deli ham or turkey. Lately I've been having chorizo or good salami sandwiches. The full flavor of the meats let's me eat less while still satisfying my taste buds cravings. Excellent for helping me cut down on the quantity that I eat. I highly recommend it.

Maybe I should start the campaign for flavor in sandwiches. What do you think? Would anyone care or would they still just go get a sandwich at Subway where the meat comes out of a plastic bag?

Cheers,
Frog

Sunday Lunch

Over the last several weeks Wife and I have been cooking a big Sunday lunch. Mostly this is my excuse to cook something elaborate. Dishes have included pork shoulder roast braised in a tomato and red wine sauce, fettuccine Alfredo, and lasagna with meatballs. Wife also made an extremely delicious Guinness chocolate cake in honor of St. Patrick's Day. To put it bluntly, we've been eating well on Sundays.

Today took it to a whole new level. Yesterday I started feeling ambitious so I decided that I would try to make some bread. I've made bread before, but I wanted to do something a little more involved than the standard white bread in a loaf pan.

Lately I've been eating some salami or chorizo on baguette sandwiches for lunch because they're very full of flavor so I don't feel the need to eat so much. The only problem is that the baguettes we can get from the grocery store are not as good as what I got used to when a Panera was close by. That's why I thought I should try to make some baguettes.

The recipe I used came from the Williams and Sonoma baking book, which we highly recommend. To get things started you make a sponge. This is something I'd never tried before so already on to something new. It was really cool to see the sponge start to grow. The start of my bread was alive! ALIVE!

Once the sponge had developed for three hours (next time I'll leave it longer to develop more flavor) I made the dough and began the standard rising process. Knead, rise, punch, rise, shape, rise, bake. The shaping part was really the only bit that went wrong. Had it gone better I would have posted a picture of the finished product. As it was, I thought it better not to post a picture of some bread that brought to mind something that wasn't exactly family friendly (baguette, not family friendly - you figure it out).

Good bread can be a something incredible on its own, but find something excellent to slather it with (good French butter or fresh goat's cheese come to mind) and it becomes something ethereal. Well, today's lunch provided just such a substance for slathering.

A favorite Good Eats recipe of mine is the 40 cloves and a chicken. It's a very simple dish of baked chicken with roasted garlic and thyme. The chicken and garlic bake with the thyme in olive oil so the garlic goes all soft and spreadable. It was the perfect thing to spread on slices of the baguette. The chicken gets very tender since it's almost braised and I use dark meat so it's that much more juicy. I made some sauteed kale with bacon and garlic to go with everything and we washed it down with a very tasty Cotes du Rhone (E. Guigal 2003 for the curious).

Now I'm going to spend the rest of the evening digesting and relaxing. Hope everyone else out there is eating well too.

Cheers,
Frog