Almost Turkey Time

I'm so excited for Thanksgiving tomorrow! Thankfully one of my classmates (Rob from Belfast) has an American wife (Julie from Seattle) so we're not going to let Thanksgiving go by uncelebrated. They're inviting about 20 people (!!!) over to their house for a big ol' dinner - turns out she's doing two turkeys, way to go Julie - and the boyf (as my across the hall neighbor awesomely calls my boyfriend) got work off on Friday so he could come join us. Yay!

In the spirit of my recent cooking expeditions, I've decided to be bold and make a few dishes. I'm making a kidney beans dish, sweet potato casserole and Kentucky Derby pie! I'm using family recipes for all of them so the Derby pie isn't exactly like the one in the link, but it'll give you a pretty good idea of the ingredients. Sooo I went grocery shopping today and here's what I discovered:

• Pecans are expensive
• There is no such thing as corn syrup here, rather they use this
• Pecans are shipped from the States
  
• Contrary to belief they have ready made pie crusts so I only have to worry about the filling
• Pecans are still unbelievably yummy
• Irish sweet potatoes are shaped funny
• Screw baking I want to eat my pecans

Alack and alas I can't though. Tomorrow I'll have a running "I'm Thankful for.." post that I'll update throughout the day (who knows, you might get a shout out). In the meantime checkout what happens when turkeys are on the loose!

My First Trip Into Dublin

This is slightly out of chronological order from the last post, but I made a video from my first trip into downtown on Saturday the 6th. It was a nice foray, definitely a museum kind of day because of the weather. So I went to St. Stephen's Green, had an awesome little lunch in a cafe, visited both the National Museum of Ireland (Archeology & Ethnography site .... of course) and the National Gallery of Ireland. Then I walked up O'Connell St to the Hugh Lane Dublin City Gallery (a contemporary art museum) but... it had just closed. For another time eh?

Highlight of the trip would definitely have to be the 3 MUMMIFIED Irish Kings on display in the National Museum. I had no idea bog preservation was that awesome, you could still tell that one of the kings had had red hair! Oh or maybe the sad person who's job it was to wear the leprechaun suit plus giant papier mache head. That dude was still there four hours after I'd first seen him while walking towards the river. Talk about schadenfreude, just seeing him made me glad I was sitting on a smelly bus out of the rain.