Lost in Translation - again

Today Brett and I started cooking for one of our favorite dinner party menus - Cinco de Mayo. It doesn't really matter that it's October and our recipes aren't Mexican. It's just fun to cook and have a few friends over.

One of our biggest challenges with this party has been finding the right ingredients or finding an appropriate substitute. Today Brett was in the grocery store and he called me to find the translation for heavy cream or whipping cream since nothing looked familiar and the last time he guessed, he ended up drinking something that was like buttermilk...

The online translator was no help so I called a local American friend who has lived here for 10 years. He was stumped too and was describing things like sour cream and things that had the consistency of yoghurt. It was only after I said "it's like milk but used to make creamy soup" that he and his colleagues got it and told us to look for "kookroom" or "cooking cream." Brett finally found it and was able to make his soup :-)

One thing we couldn't find was Cool Whip type ingredients. My Dutch friend said "This is the land of dairy. Why eat chemicals?" Good point.

European cigarette warning labels

In Europe the law requires cigarette packaging to carry really large warnings about the dangers of cigarettes. Warnings on the packages I've seen are about 1/3rd of the front of the carton. They've attacked it from pretty much every angle - from beauty to health, to fear to relationships. A few text samples are shown below but they're even more frightening with the pictures. Think the US will ever get this agressive?

1) Smoking kills
2) Smoking seriously harms you and those around you
3) Smoking causes fatal lung cancer
4) Smoking causes aging of the skin
5) Protect children. Don't make them breathe your smoke.
6) Smoking can cause a slow and painful death.
7) Smoking contains benzene, nitrosamines, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide.
8) Smoking when pregnant harms your baby
9) Smoking clogs arteries and causes heart attacks and strokes
10) Smoking reduces blood flow and may cause impotence.

Some of the ads have supporting pictures as well that are pretty gross. I'm guessing it's working since Europe seems MUCH less smokey to me compared to 10 years ago.

Potato Potatoe

In the US we have TJ Maxx. In Ireland they have TK Maxx :-)

Traffic Calming Ahead

In Ireland we kept seeing signs that said "Traffic Calming ahead." We never figured out what it meant but it made us laugh each time we saw it. Was there classical music ahead? Soothing lighting? Aromatherapy candles? It was probably just a sign to slow down but it was fun to imagine.



We also saw this sign in Dingle. I guess you don't want to drive off a dock while driving in Ireland. Perhaps all too common an occurance here if they had to put a sign up? :-)

Sláinte

In many ways Ireland felt very similar to the US. Maybe it's the shared language, but the pub culture was also very familiar - especially if you've frequented an Irish bar or two in your lifetime. My favorites this trip: The Laurels (my namesake) and Murphy's (my favorite Irish bar in Old Town, Alexandria).



We saw live Irish music one night as well, and while I don't have any pictures it was a memorable experience. Picture 4 Irish guys in their early 50s jamming with a fiddle, accordion, guitar and drums. The locals all stopped by to shake their hands and buy them a pint between songs, while the crowds stomped their feet and clapped to the beat. It was a really festive and welcoming environment and all you could do was smile.




One other thing that made me laugh was the things for sale in the tourist shops. They had everything from slippers made to look like Guinness pints to Irish sayings such as:

"Finnegan: My wife has a terrible habit of staying up 'til two o'clock in the morning. I can't break her of it. Keenan: What on earth is she doin' at that time? Finnegan: Waitin' for me to come home." :-)

Stay left

Our "Opel Antara"


After spending 1 day in Dublin, Brett and I took our rental car out into the Irish countryside. They drive on the left there, and the driver sits on the right. The shifter is on the driver's left as well, so it makes for an interesting experience. At least the windshield wipers didn't go off everytime you wanted to turn left in Ireland like they did on our trip to New Zealand. That part of the steering column matched US cars. My job was to remind Brett to "stay left" at every turn or roundabout. For once, he didn't mind me being a "back seat driver" as it's easy to slip into US driving rules if you aren't vigilant.



We drove from Dublin to Limerick and then stopped in Killarney for 2 nights. We used Killarney as the home base for our drives in County Kerry and the Dingle Peninsula over the next 2 days. It was was overcast much of the time and there was a good bit of rain as well, but that's what gives Ireland such lush green landscapes.

The Ring of Kerry in County Kerry



The country roads are narrow and bumpy and we encountered more than one sheep on the road who had escaped their pasture, but overall it was a very pleasant drive.

A "red" sheep. We saw sheep painted blue, and green too.



The beach at "Inch" on the Dingle peninsula

You knew this was coming - another post on potato chips :-)

I'm sifting through all of our awesome countryside photos so stay tuned for those, but in the mean time, here's our Ireland potato chip post.

At the airport in Cork we had dinner at Subway. We tried a "local favorite" sub with chicken tikka in it. It was tasty - but then Brett spotted them. Prawn Cocktail potato chips! There they were, in a shrimp colored bag - but without any sign of shrimp or cocktail sauce on the package. The only supporting visuals beyond the bag color were icons featured a cutting board with peppers and cheese.

The only explanation we could think of was that the cutting board icons were a symbol of the Walker company's "Do us a flavour" promotion where all new chip flavors are submitted by consumers. It's a cool promo where you take a picture of the flavor you'd like to see on a chip and send it into the chip company. If your flavor idea is selected, you'll see your chip in stores for a limited time. On the Walkers web site there are some really interesting flavor suggestions like jelly bean, creamy cheese and bacon or salmon, avocado & soy. How fun!

As for our chips: they didn't taste like shrimp or cocktail sauce, but they were tasty.