pork and cabbage

Another short post, another photo of a dinner I made.  Wednesday night dinner at home, accompanied by television and time with Conrad.  As tempting as it was to go get sushi again or otherwise go out, we stayed in and I cooked.  Pork tenderloin first seared then popped into the oven.  A wedge of roasted cabbage each.  And a loose puree of cauliflower, onion, and yellow carrot that functioned as starch and sauce both.  Nice little meal for a midweek evening. 

Monday in Vancouver

Sigh.

So every good intention to blog this week hit up against what turned out not to be sniffles from seasonal allergies but an actual cold.  Always fun.  I've been in bed an awful lot the past few days and eaten little and have done absolutely nothing of note beyond, perhaps, watching one more Oscars contender (Sinners, good movie).  But I'm feeling better today, happily.  100%?  Nope.  But I'm sitting here, sniffling a bit, half-watching Monday's American Idol, and digging into another blog entry.

Jeepers, it was a month ago that I was in Vancouver, right?  Still, let me do my duty and check in on the Monday there.  And what do you know, it starts off with a morning walk.

I love my morning walks.  With Conrad or others or alone, I just love that peaceful part of the day.  It will be interesting to go up to BC in the future now that they have changed their time zone to favour light evenings (meh) and find myself walking in darkness more, but ah well.  I still had a nice walk to start off a quiet-ish holiday Monday.  So once again, a photo dump from a walk that took my west and then back along the waterfront to the hotel.

But that's not all!  I was meeting Bryan for lunch, and I decided to do a bit of a stroll before that, taking myself almost right the way around Canada Place and getting some shots

before meeting up with him at Nightingale.  It was threatening rain later, and I wanted some step count before that.

Good to see Bryan. 

I made the right choice in giving myself one more day in Vancouver to catch up with people.  It meant getting together with him for a tasty meal of charred cabbage (so good!),

a vegan pizza with squash and peppers (nice and light),

and a carrot cake dessert (pretty but not as good as many carrot cakes I've had). 

What was especially cool was that in all the years I have known Bryan - 6 or 7 by now - I didn't know about his figure skating past.  So we were able to gab at length about Winter Olympics stuff, and it was great to hear his perspective on the performances and judging and personalities.

I came back to the hotel after lunch and chilled with the three-part ANTM documentary series before girding myself to head out into the rain and walk to dinner.  Hotel umbrella, thank you for your service!

I met Sherri

at Tavola for dinner.  She knew the GM well, but he didn't realize that I was meeting her when I arrived.  I liked the place.  Good neighbourhood spot with interesting food and good drinks.  I got served the wrong drink first, but they let me keep it while they made mine, and that was kind.  Her friend also topped up our wine, so that may have been the booziest meal we had.  But I very much enjoyed our food

and the seating at the end of a long communal table.  Also, Sherri and I had so much hometown gossip and more to get through.  It was a blast.  I think we were together for over 3 hours, not at all rushing and not at all being rushed.  I think Mark told me that he and Linda go there sometimes even though they don't live at all close, and I could see being a regular there if I lived nearby.

Sherri dropped me off back at the hotel.  My day of walking was done.  I put on some more ANTM and headed off to bed, very happy with the day that was. 

Wednesday dinner in

A brief post on a Wednesday after dinner.  I made a standby tonight:  pork tenderloin.  Alongside I put a wedge of cabbage roasted and with prosciutto inserted between leaves.  Some farro to complete the plate along with coarse mustard. 

Not a bad Wednesday dinner.

And beforehand, it was nice to chat with Conrad while we sipped daiquiris. 

No, none of the frozen slop that so many bars give you.  The real thing.

Tomorrow is my Friday.  Hooray for a long weekend ahead! 

cabbage for dinner

When did I last post my cooking?  It feels like ages, truly.  But you know, I'm not entirely joking when I tell people that my cooking really is tossing things in a pot and hoping for the best!

Tonight I filed slices of prosciutto between leaves on two quarters of a cabbage.  Some chicken broth, some olive oil, some salt and pepper, some leeks in the pan.  Farro in the bottom of the bowl.  It was a salty meal, just riding the edge of too salty.  But it was tasty, and a nice break from my usual things I make.  Plus:  fiber!

Thursday dinner made by me.  I'm reasonably happy with it.

Ireland trip day two: Dublin

It’s just gone five in the morning.  I’ve been awake for an hour and a half.  Not up and about doing things - I don’t want to wake anyone up.  Just relaxing, sitting up in the spare bed and browsing all over online.  Enough of that, though, Peter.  Let’s do something productive while we have that very early morning energy.  The jet lag is still very real, by the way, and given that I am exceedingly drowsy late in the afternoon (which corresponds to midnight or later Ireland time), I decided to work from home today and not do my commute for one more day.

Enough of that, onward to day two of the trip and a full day in Dublin.

I never had problems waking up early in Ireland.  Not super early like this morning, but 6:00ish.  I thought I might walk a lot on my own on my mornings on the trip, but this turned out not to be the case.  That first morning was the only time I did even a little of that, and it was mostly to find a bank machine and then nearby Starbucks.  It did give me a chance to get a construction photo for Conrad.  

And yes, he appreciated that.  But otherwise it was a short bit of walking near the hotel.

Our first stop that day as a group was at EPIC, the Irish Emigration Museum. 

EPIC apparently stands for Every Person Is Connected, but the approach inside was more like every-person-is-Irish-even-if-only-a-little-and-that-is-nothing-but-a-source-of-pride-even-if-there-is-a-whole-room-devoted-to-less-than-savoury-folks-but-wouln't-it-be-fun-to-make-a-Christmas-totebag-celebrating-those-rascals-as-well?  But I'll get to the museum in a moment.  First, let's appreciate the views on the River Liffey

where Des pointed out landmarks old and new. 

Ireland, and especially Dublin, has had some uptick in its fortunes thanks to Brexit, something we heard about again the next day.  A lot of tech companies have built up on the south bank across from EPIC, but the north bank of the river has its own development.  And it has its memorials - I learned later in the trip that population of the island only just recently reached the same level as before the famine in the 1800s.  What an awful statistic to consider.  An assembly of statues memorializing the terrible migration and loss near EPIC really hit the point home. 

Look how anguished, haunted, and hungry the figures look. 

Well done to the artist - I couldn't look away.

Into EPIC with us after that.  We had no guide, no staff person working with us directly.  Instead, we each were handed an audio device

and invited to walk through the exhibits. 

And that was fine for the most part.  I do wish we'd been able to talk with someone about what sort of archives or other materials they may be ingesting and processing to learn about their own work.  Do they have a library in the museum?  We didn't learn.  But we did learn about the Irish emigration experience at our own speed (within the constraints of the time limits we had that day).  And there were some interesting rooms in there - it wasn't all famine and other horrible circumstances. 

There was immense pride in Irish accomplishment, including by those of Irish descent abroad. 

The interactive nature of so much of the content set it apart from other museums as well.  No, I didn't really care about the sports (sorry!). 

Yes, the food and wine room was a wasted opportunity that seemed only to be about Irish pubs. 

Indeed, the gift shop didn't have much that related to the actual content of the museum and absolutely no postcards (I mean, come on!).  But it was an excellent museum all in all, set in a space that was effective reuse of an older structure.

Lunch came next, though as I previously noted, Des took us past where Handel's Messiah (I love that work so much) was first performed

and then around about Temple Bar before we headed in to the place booked for lunch. 

Temple Bar was very touristy, and Leigh later told me that she would never take visitors there unless they asked.  Lunch was lunch:  Irish stew, correctly made with lamb but with a curious dollop of mashed potatoes. 

It was fine.  Dessert never came, and we left but not before Des had words with the management.

After lunch Camila joined us, meeting up with us at Trinity College Dublin. 

Hooray!  I'm so sorry she had a flight cancellation that caused her to miss a day, especially since she was our tour leader.  Once we were all together, we went in to get a guided tour through the Book of Kells exhibit

and the Long Room

before meeting with our librarian tour guide and a colleague of hers to discuss libraries and then go see the other part of the exhibit. 

We did get to see the Book of Kells, we did not get to photograph it.  And we barely got time to shop for souvenirs.  I did like the tour, but I greedily wanted it to be a bit slower to allow us to take in things more, and I also wanted more time to meet with our colleagues from the college.  Ah well.  I did get a nice sweater from it!

We were running behind at that point, and that spilled over into our visit to Chester Beatty. 

It's funny, but when we went elsewhere on the tour and folks asked where we'd been, they always oohed and aahed over Chester Beatty.  And yet we got there not far before closing and had only a little time there with no guide (a mix-up, our lateness, I don't know).  So I enjoyed seeing items in one room and then it was done.  Alas.

I made it to the hotel with no time to turn around to meet Leigh for dinner,

but I freshened up and showed up slightly late.  It was so great to see her, and to get a meal away from the set menus of the tour meals.  She invited me to join her at Amy Austin,

a tiny place tucked in beside a parking garage entrance.  Funny location, good food and drinks.  Leigh and I caught up over a cocktail

and then bread with black garlic butter,

monkfish,

roasted cabbage,

lamb,

and a praline tart. 

I heard about her move to Ireland, her work at UCD where we were due to go the next day, and recommendations for where to eat and drink if I had a chance.  A fine evening.

A long entry, I know.  Our days in Ireland were jampacked, I can't deny it.  Day two was a success, and day three, another Dublin day, lay ahead.