Ireland Recap

We are recovered from our Ireland jet-lag and back to the grind of work/sleep/eat/clean. But OH do we miss vacation. Ireland was absolutely fantastic, the weather was gorgeous when we were there, just as good as home if not better, we met a lot of delightful people, and ate and drank a lot of delicious things.

 

I mean, LOOK at this view. We didn’t get shots this gorgeous when we were in the Caribbean! The water was so blue!

Our first day, we were weary from a long three flights from Seattle to Dublin, but we rallied, dropped our stuff off at our hotel, and walked right into the hotel restaurant for our first Irish breakfast.

They don’t kid around about breakfast there. Once we were fueled and caffiened up, we hoofed it across Dublin. Our first stop – Trinity College for a tour and the Book of Kells.

Biblophile’s heaven!

The Long Room is full of old book smell. I love old book smell. If someone ever bottles it, I WILL wear it as perfume. Then we asked our tour guide for a suggestion of where to get our first pint. We settled on Bowe’s, which we walked past three different times before finally figuring out how to enter.

We managed to stay awake until 9, and then crashed. And, thanks to my friend jetlag, woke up every two hours, all night long. The next day, we took the train to Killarney to explore the western coast. I made Shayne drive (we returned home still happily married, miraculously) the rental car from the train to our B&B. And we ran into so many gorgeous sites! Like this castle by the side of the road.

 

We spent the next two days exploring all that County Kerry and the Dingle Peninsula had to offer.

When we took the train back to Dublin, we had a full day and a half to continue our explorations. Most of our time was spent wandering through shops and alleyways of delicious smelling takeaway restaurants. I didn’t manage to take a picture of the best fish and chips ever before devouring it (thank you Leo Burdock’s). Everyone talks about Irish and British food and how boring it is…LIES. There’s a lot going on in the Dublin food scene. I fully intend on going back when I have money to properly check it out.

We came back exhausted, but with cameras full of gorgeous pictures and hearts full of happiness. I could move there in an instant, I’m not even kidding. The people are as friendly as can be, the scenery is beautiful, and the food and drinks just made me happy. I gained some vacation weight, and I’m quite alright with it. This may have been a spontaneous trip, but it was definitely a success.

Asian Cod with Udon Stir-Fry

We’ve had a few truly beautiful Oregon days this week, and today took the cake. It felt like spring, it was in the upper 50s/mid-60s all day, and it didn’t rain. If you live in the pacific northwest, you know how crazy people get when they start sensing spring. All of a sudden, shorts and skirts are out, everyone is driving with their windows down, all the fair weather runners are out and about, and everyone is in a better mood. It’s awesome. The plus side about living in a rainy state is that, on nice days, you REALLY appreciate them.

Before I tell you about the latest delicious meal I created by accident, I first have to share our spontaneous spring break plans. This is the conversation I had with my husband last week:

Shayne: “What if we went up to Canada for spring break?”

Me: “If I need to renew my passport anyways…we might as well go to Europe.”

Two days later, my passport was in the mail for expedited renewal and we had plane tickets. To Ireland. Which has been one of our bucket list items basically since we first started dating. IF my passport gets back in time, we will be spending five days in Ireland, exploring Dublin and the Ring of Kerry, and we are beyond thrilled. The passport agency can expect multiple phone calls from me next week tracking my renewal. I’m banking on the LA passport agency as my backup strategy, as I have a business trip to California for the four days before we leave. I’m so excited to take pictures and document this trip I’ve wanted to take FOREVER. My parents still hear about how they went to Ireland without me in ’96. They spent 10 days exploring the emerald isle, I stayed with my grandma in Iowa, went to Methodist VBS where I knew no one, and then got the stomach flu. I’m still bitter.

That brings us to this week. As we are hoarding away all the money we can for touring and souvenirs, we are trying to eat on the cheap. Now, we ALWAYS try to stay frugal at the grocery store, but especially so these next few weeks. Lots of boxed rice pilafs mix and matched with various proteins and frozen veggie mixes. I also picked up a package of frozen cod, because it was on sale and I was jonesin’ for some seafood.

Today, after a GORGEOUS 3 mile trek in 6o degree weather with the boys (aka my dog and husband), I picked through my fridge and freezer looking for something to throw together for dinner, and pulled out the cod, a package of udon noodles I had picked up super cheap, 12 oz. of mushrooms, and a bag of frozen mixed veggies.

Here’s everything you’ll need:

-1 large or two small fillets of white fish (cod, tilapia, etc.)

-veggies, your choice

-1 pkg udon noodles (found refrigerated near the mushrooms/peppers in my grocery store)

-1/4 c soy sauce

-1 Tbs rice wine vinegar

-1 Tbs sesame oil

-1-2 Tbs brown sugar

-sesame seeds, toasted

-2 cloves minced garlic

Mix the marinade ingredients together first. Quickly whisk brown sugar into the garlic, soy, rice wine vinegar, garlic, and sesame oil until dissolved. Mix in a teaspoon of sesame seeds. If you want a slightly thicker marinade, whisk in some cornstarch (I couldn’t find mine today…whoops).

The makings of a marinade.

In a shallow dish, pour the marinade over the cod fillets. Cover and refrigerate for about 20 minutes.

Since I was using frozen veggies, I started prepping the stir fry while the first marinated. I tossed sliced mushrooms, and the bag of veggies straight from the freezer into a large skillet over medium heat, and drizzled with just enough sesame oil to get a good saute going. A little sesame oil goes a long way, and I just needed to keep things moist while the veggies defrosted. I was patient with this batch, since I burned a saute last week. Some people like their stir-fry with some crunch to it, but we are a no crunch family, so I had it sauteing for a while.

Rinse the udon for a minute or two under hot water to loosen it (mine came vacuumed packed). This better preps it for cooking. Add to your stir-fry, trying to gently break up the noodles. From the picture below, you can see I struggled with this.

Not going to lie…I was skeptical at this point.

After I got the udon in, I got a frying pan going over medium-high heat for the fish. Using tongs or a spatula, gently place the fillets in the skillet. Pour the extra marinade into the stir-fry.

I wish you all had smell-o-vision right now.

Get ready to multitask. Monitor the fish, which needed about 4 minutes a side when I cooked it. At the same time, bring the liquid in the stir-fry up to a simmer. This will get the noodles nice and soft, and impart a lot of flavor into them. I kept sauteing until all of the liquid had soaked into the noodles like a delicious, noodle-y sponge.

The noodles look a lot less pasty and chunky now.

When the fish is cooked all the way through (flaky and opaque inside), and the liquid has been fully incorporated into the stir fry, it’s time to get your grub on!

Shayne LOVED this. I’m always nervous with winging recipes, just because I’ve had some pretty memorable fails over the years that we still laugh about, but I’m starting to get more comfortable. It was immediately requested that this be added to our regular meal deck, so I’m going to go ahead and consider this a success story. It took a little time for prep and cooking, but it was easy, and so worth it. We ate the whole pan. And wished there was more. I will be buying udon a lot more now, that’s for sure.

I have a lot of comfort foods, but for some reason, just about ALL Asian inspired dishes are what I crave when I’m sad/sick/happy/angry/mopey/all the feels. As someone with a perpetually sensitive tummy, a big bowl of noodles or rice with some super flavorful protein always hits the spot without leaving me in pain. This meal left me full without being bloated, and was pretty darn healthy to boot.

What are your comfort foods?

Montana Dreaming

 

So Shayne and I just spent a wonderful week in Glacier National Park with my family (sidenote: I LOVE VACATION). We drove out on a Saturday, and came back the following Sunday. The days in between were jam-packed with hiking, soaking up the sun, thrifting, drinking, and laughter. The weather was incredible, and my cousins had really done their homework, so we went on some absolutely beautiful hikes. I 100% recommend that you visit Glacier sometime in the next 10 years before the glaciers disappear. And then I recommend that you hike the Highline Trail up to Granite Park Chalet, then down the Loop Trail (about 12 miles total). It was singlehandedly the most incredible hike I have ever done in my life.

You start out basically scaling a cliff (don’t worry, there’s a wire you can white-knuckle grip). You ford a bunch of cliffside waterfalls. You see marmots, everywhere, and beautiful wildflowers, and bighorn sheep. You have these amazing, amazing views the whole time, all  miles up to the historic chalet, which proved to be a beautiful spot to eat lunch. I have never seen such incredible views. Shayne and I did this with my two cousins, my dad, my uncle, and my outdoorsy aunt (the moms stayed home), and we all had a fantastic time, and were so proud of ourselves for finishing. The “kids” took the shuttle from the end of the trail down to the lake, bought a six-pack of Big Sky Summer Honey ale, and waded in glacial waters while waiting for our family to come pick us up. It was a fantastic day, and we all slept like babies afterwards.

This hike made me remember how much I love nature. I have a tendency to whine and complain when I start sweating (I know, I know, this makes me sound like a complete ass), but honestly, this trail was such a natural high that nothing could have gotten me down (though the second half of the hike was through a burned out forest and was a tad less picturesque).  The whole trip rekindled my love of the National Park system, places I’ve been visiting my entire life but probably started taking for granted in my cranky teenage years. I’ve vowed to get more hiking in locally while the weather remains decent, because there’s a bunch of hikes near the Portland metro area that I’ve been too lazy to get to. Plus it’s a damn good workout. My cousin was tracking our hikes with an iPhone app, and kept updating us with estimates of calorie burns. Shayne and I are both happy to be out in nature, so why haven’t we been doing it more often?

We spent the last night of our trip camping in the Apgar Campground near Lake McDonald, staring at the millions of stars through the roof of our tent. It wasn’t backcountry camping by any means, but it was amazing. I hope to do it again soon.