Evaluation

Why the long delay for this, my last posting?  First, there was an 8-week wait for my results.  In the meantime,  I  changed my e-mail address; my laptop would no longer automatically log me in to my blog; and I couldn't remember the password.  When I asked for help, it was sent to my old e-mail address, which is a dead end.  A few days ago, I found a slip of paper with the password on it!

So, did I pass?  Yes, I did.  But my fears were legitimate, because I just barely passed some parts of the program.  My diploma for the cooking program reads "Commended," while the diploma for the wine program reads "With Distinction."  Although I didn't like the approach to much of the testing, I think my final overall evaluation is about right.  After a few months to think about it, I better understand my weaknesses.

Do I regret having taken the program?  Absolutely not!  Should I have skipped the testing and just received a certificate of attendance?  Tougher question.  Although I didn't know the attendance option existed until after the mid-term test, what would I recommend to someone like me just starting the course?  If skipping the testing, I could have had a more relaxing time in Ireland -- more weekend trips, more golf, less homework in the evenings, etc.  I wouldn't have spent days during the last week studying a lot of stuff that I'll probably never use.  On the other hand, I wouldn't have learned as much about cooking and, more importantly, I wouldn't have learned as much about myself.  I am very focused when cooking, which can be good, but which also contributes to me being weak at multi-tasking.  I too often forget to baste the roast in the oven, or check on the roasted potatoes while I'm doing the green veggies and the roast.  There is only so much you can do with timers, writing notes, etc.  When stressed, I rush too much and make careless mistakes.  For me, the testing route was the better one, but it might not be for may people in similar circumstances.

How would I critique the program?  I wrote an evaluation in my posting of January 30, 2011.  I'm repeating it here with a few additions and modifications.

Good

• Food demonstrations.  Four different individuals did the demos and all of them were good to excellent -- clear in their descriptions, dynamic in their presentations, and open to all manner of questions (really important). Rory was my favorite (but you already knew this if you've been reading the blog).  I was sometimes annoyed by Darina's insistence on "her approach," especially with assistants who obviously knew more about the recipes.  But, she's the leader.
• Instructors/teachers. I had 12 and each of them really tried to help. None are perfect, but I'm very pleased with their attitude, skills, and teaching abilities. I got annoyed with ones that I couldn't find, but that's probably because they had other overlapping duties. For me, the instructors/teachers were the best part of the program.
• School and farm. The farm is to die for and the school facilities, not including the equipment, are generally good.
• The curriculum, excluding the formal testing.   Amazing how much we cover in 12 weeks. 
• Cottage mates. I shared with 5 women and I got along fine with four of them.  
• Living in Ireland. Great to experience a different culture for more than a week or two. In general, the Irish are very friendly; but, over 3 months I learned, there were surprising exceptions.
• The other students.  Were almost always helpful and pleasant.  The generational gaps made some interactions challenging, but that was to be expected.

Not so good

• Equipment. The equipment in the demos is out of date and the equipment that the students use is worse. Blenders are attachments on the top of mixers that don't all match. Ovens were decent professional quality when new, but kitchens have at least two different brands/sizes, so roasting pans, baking tins, and racks have to be searched out to match the right oven.
• Cooking space. My space varied a little from week to week, but it was always skimpy. 
• Approach to learning factual information.  Like drinking from a fire hose.  Too much info to absorb.  Not a big deal if you're skipping the testing.  Regardless, the leaders should decide on a more limited set of material that is important and focus on helping students learn it.
• Written testing.  Too much material and, especially, too much that will be of limited importance to many of the students.  The "fire-hose" approach didn't work for me and, based on comments I heard, it didn't for many other students.

Mixed

• Recipes. They cover an incredible breadth, but they are what you would expect from a cookbook published in the 80's. Cooking with lots of butter, eggs, and cream. Good for learning the basics.  The cake recipes are particularly bad -- too dry.  Darina adds recipes from her world travels, but some of her basics needed to be updated or replaced.

All in all, I'm a satisfied customer.  I'm really glad I had the opportunity to participate in the Ballymaloe 12-week program.

Writing this blog was a helpful part of my experience in Ireland.  Thanks to all of you who have taken the time and effort to follow it.  A particular thanks for the comments and, especially, the words of encouragement or attitudinal correction.  It is with a touch of sadness that I end the blog.

Vacation Time

It can be quite boring looking at a slew of someone else's vacation pictures, so I'll try to keep this short.  After clearing out of the cottage at Ballymaloe, Charlene and I headed to west Cork.  A few hours later, we were at the town of Skibereen, where we stayed for three nights in a charming 19th-century farm house.  It is still an active dairy farm with about 80 cows.  Skibereen and the surrounding area was hit particularly hard by the potato famine in the mid 1800's and we learned as much as we could take at the Heritage Hall in town.  Sunday we had beautiful weather and we drove over back roads to Bantry.  The scenery along the way was lovely.

We toured Bantry House, which is owned by a descendant of the original Earl of Bantry.  Dressed in a sharp blue blazer, he was manning the reception desk for self-guided tours while keeping an eye on his grandson, who was in a baby carriage in the entryway.  Although the inside was fascinating the outside gardens were just starting to spring out.

And the view from the top of the Hundred Steps was special.

From Bantry, we drove about 20 km to Glengarriff, where we took a ferry to Garnish Island and then strolled the lovely Gardens of Ilnacullin, which is like a national park.

Monday was dreary with rain, but we had a great time in the nearby town of Schull (pronounced and sometimes spelled Skull).  After strolling through the town and driving along the nearby coast, we had a wonderful time visiting with one of the students from the school, Marie, and her husband, Michael, at their lovely holiday home near Schull.  She cooked us a delicious curry dinner from one of the recipes from the school.  I relaxed and drank quite a bit of great wine, so Charlene drove us back to our B&B.  I think she handles this "wrong side" of the road more easily than me.

Our final vacation spot was the harbour town of Cobh, which used to be an important port of call for cruise ships, including the Titanic.

In addition to visiting shops, taking in the Cobh Heritage Center, and playing a little golf, we visited the Fota House and Gardens and the Fota Wildlife Park.  Charlene drags me to zoos, but thus was different.  You feel like you are right in with the animals, which in some cases you are.

Here only a thin electified wire separates Charlene from the big animal.  Nothing separated us from the kangaroos and lots of birds and small animals.

By one of the ponds, a mother duck wandered through our mist with about 15 very little ducklings.  They surrounded a little boy and his mother and the little boy was somewhat frightened and stepped onto the wheel of the carriage that his mother was pushing.  I watched in fear that he would fall and crush some of the ducklings, but thankfully not.

Before the flight home, Charlene did her miracle work and managed to pack everything into our suitcases; and we had no overweight charges.  I managed to strain my knee at Cork Airport when I realized I had forgotten my passport in the safe in our room at the airport hotel and chased after the shuttle bus  It didn't prevent me from doing miles of walking in Chicago O'Hare, where cancelled flight and an unplanned overnight delayed our arrival back in Albuquerque.  Both Charlene and I have colds and I'm waking up for the day at 2 a.m., but all this will pass eventually.

I should probably end the blog here, but I plan to update my evaluation of the school and living in Ireland.  I know that some of you will want to know  how I did on my final and, although I don't expect the news to be good, I'll pass it on when I get it.  In the meantime, I'll keep smiling with my memories

Last of a Great Culinary Experience

Sorry it has taken me so long to complete the story of my Irish culinary experience.  After the final exam and a farewell dinner, we were rushed the next day to get out of our cottages.  From then until our return home late Saturday, I've had limited internet access.  Enough of apologies, let me get on with it.

My cooking/practical final, was the last time slot (done by random drawing), which was Thursday noon.  In another random drawing, I drew one of the easiest breads (or so I thought), a brown soda bread.  My order of work was similar to what I put in a previous blog, with the bread inserted and a few other changes.  Of course there were hiccups along the way, several of which occurred with the bread.  As I was adding the baking soda to the dry ingredients, I had the required sieve close by but started to add the soda without using it.  I caught myself, but not before some of the un-sieved soda fell in the mix.  I put the spoon down back in the jar of soda; so now I didn't know how much more I needed to add.  I guesstimated and sieved in the remainder.  I had earlier looked for a baking pan that would fit in the slots in the oven I had been given, but I left it in the now preheated oven.  I took it out, but it was too hot to put away, so I put it on my counter space, got another baking sheet, put it next to the hot one, and proceeded to finish mixing and shaping the dough.  I put it onto the baking sheet, but in my haste, it was the hot one.  I could have started over, but I put the bread into the oven and hoped for the best.  When I took it out of the oven later, it hadn't risen as much as I thought it should have, it stuck to the pan (not normal), and a piece broke off, as I used a spatula and lots of muscle to free it from the baking sheet.

The stuffed chicken went in the oven as planned, I prepared and poached the pears.  While I was heating the cream to infuse it with the sweet geranium leaves, I was distracted by being unable to find something and the cream boiled.  I dumped it our and repeated the infusion with fresh cream without boiling.  I prepared my vegetables:  carrots, potatoes, and kale (replacement for Brussels sprouts, which I had been told weren't in season).  While the carrots were glazing (cooked in a sugared water until the water evaporates) and the potatoes were in the oven roasting in duck fat (after having been first brought to boil in water), I cooked the kale in boiling water and started to drain it in an empty sink.  Well, the lid of the pot slid off and the kale followed the lid into the sink.  Fortunately, no instructors were around and I scooped the kale back in the pot, cleaned off some sink debris, and proceeded to puree the kale. 

By now, the chicken was out of the oven and covered and setting, while I made the gravy.  I started whipping the cream to go with the poached pears, but it wouldn't fluff.  In desperation, I got more fresh cream, beat it to firm peaks and added half of the infused cream that wouldn't whip -- wallah, soft whipped cream.  It wasn't until I was preparing my presentation that I realized that the now very crisp potatoes were still roasting.  Despite all the little blips, the final presentation actually looked pretty good.  Left to right:  leak and potato soup with nicely browned croutons; chicken leg and breast on stuffing with bright orange glazed potatoes on one side, bright green kale on the other and crisp roasted potatoes on a separate plate (I'd picked the least browned ones); and fanned poached pears, with soft whipped cream in a tiny pitcher and a sweet geranium leaf for garnish.  Even the bread didn't look too bad on a bread board nearby.  One of the tasters talked to me afterwards (not usually the case) and seemed surprised that I was deflated by my performance.  I was allowed to take a large part of what I had cooked back to the cottage and, except for the potatoes, I couldn't taste any of my errors.  However, when I had been offered the bread, I refused -- didn't want to be reminded of the comedy of errors.  My total time was 3 hours and 45 minutes -- 30 minutes of penalties.  Sounds bad, but I think this was the shortest of anyone in my cottage.  Several people took 5 hours.

After the stress of the cooking final, I tried to study more for the written final.  I'd been through all of the material I could find, but reading is different than memorizing.  In many cases, I thought "they couldn't possibly expect us to remember all the 10 steps" of this or that.  The 5 hours of written exams in three session were on Friday, April 1st, and the joke was on us.  Many of the questions did indeed ask for 10 of this, 6 of that, 20 of something else.  Some I actually knew, a few could be reasoned, but many were just impossible.  I felt devastated when done.  I felt better when, at the farewell dinner, I responded to Stephen's question about the final:  "a lot of dumb questions about s__t that I don't give a damn about," and everyone around shouted their concurrence. 

The farewell dinner was prepared under Rory O'Connell's leadership and it was outstanding.  I imbibed lots of the wine with new-found knowledge from our many tastings but longstanding drinking ability.  Despite the severity of the day's testing, a very good time was had by all.  We joined many who walked to the local pub for Guinness after the dinner.  Yes, the Irish really do know how to celebrate.  Charlene and I were surprisingly steady as we walked back to the cottage.  Next morning I was up before most and Louise, Bryony, and I did the lion's share of cleaning the cottage.  Packing after 3 months was a strange experience.  Goodbyes were short or missed as most of us rushed to get out by the 11 a.m. "deadline."  I was more anxious to get on with our vacation, the details of which with a few pictures will go in the next blog.

Taking a Break

I'm taking a break from my studying -- my brain is going into memory overload.  Lot's has happened since my last full blog, so I'll catch you up.  The most important first:  Charlene arrived in Ireland!  She was nine hours later than scheduled (missed connections and later flights in both Chicago and London), but she got here.  Fantastic!  It took a few hours for the familiarity of 42 years of marriage to kick in, but of course it did.  A wonderful weekend in Kinsale certainly helped, but more on that later. 

Today (Monday) I cooked for the last time at Ballymaloe, except for my practical final.  It felt strange and a little sad to realize that I wouldn't have the benefit of an excellent crew of instructors to advise and guide me in my future cooking experiences.  I'll also miss the adrenalin rush that goes with a tough cooking assignment that I'm not sure I can handle.  As Rory O'Connell said one day in demo,  "Things sometimes have to be a bit scary."  Three months of a routine and you get used to it and it becomes the "norm."  My norm is changing again, but fortunately it will soon be going back to many things that I know and love.

As I've mentioned before, my confidence has been building and this week-plus was my most relaxing time of cooking.  My partner for the week, Olivia, extended the long weekend and I had the section and choice of menu items to myself.  I decided to cook a Thai chicken curry, which turned out O.K. but didn't excite me, and a puff pastry called vol au vents, which were filled with pastry cream and compote of apple with sweet geranium flavoring.  To make the vol au vents you roll out the pastry, cut them into shapes (mine were rectangular) and then cut down into the pastry a little ways in from the edge all around.  After they are baked, you remove the part of the top that was scored and hollow out a space for the filling, bake a few minutes more, fill the hollowed part with the pastry cream and compote, and put the top back on.  Not only looked neat but tasted really good.  On Tuesday, Olivia was a no-show and I chose to make a beaf consomme, which takes lots of effort and requires expensive ingredients.  Even though mine tasted like it should (according to Mami), I think it isn't worth the effort.  Fortunately, I also made poached salmon with Hollandaise sauce, which didn't require too much effort and was really good. 

Because Charlene was scheduled to arrive Thursday morning, I made arrangements to not cook and to not do my extra duty on Thursday.  When I learned that she would be delayed, I had the time to cook but not the inclination (played hooky).  On Friday, my anxiety level was back down and Olivia and I both cooked.  My seafood chowder sounded great but wasn't, while my stuffed chicken sandwich sounded mediocre but tasted pretty good.  I wish I could say that my last day of cooking was inspirational, but it was not to be.  The roast pork with sage seasoning was O.K., but the cuts of pork we used are too fatty for my taste.  Although the custard on the creme brulee I made is best cooled overnight, I attempted to add the caramel topping after just three hours.  I chose to sprinkle sugar and then caramelize it with a blow torch (really).  Since the custard wasn't fully set, this didn't work perfectly.  I probably would have had better luck if I had made caramel and then spooned it on.  Next time!

So far there have been no pictures, but the weekend fixes that.  Here is a shot of Charlene with the center of Kinsale in the distant background.  We are about 100 yards from our B&B, the Chart House, which is a restored Georgian structure with period pieces, that provides "luxury" accommodations.  Fortunately, luxury is not synonymous with expensive, in this case.  Great place!

On Saturday, we took a walking tour of Kinsale that provided real insight into the histories of Ireland and Kinsale.  In the 17th century, taxes were collected at the building in the next picture.  The tax code is posted and would fit on one page!

Saturday night, Charlene and I celebrated our belated 42nd anniversary with dinner at the Crack Pot, which is a small, intimate restaurant with candle-lit tables.  Very good food and wine, excellent service, great atmosphere, reasonable price (for Ireland) -- who could ask for more.  So what that the name doesn't fit.  We then went to a pub frequented by locals for a "pint or two."  We spent about 1-1/2 hours in interesting conversation with two local gentlemen.  The Irish talk about the "craic," which has to do with fun and good conversation.  Saturday night I think we experienced it.

On Sunday we visited Charles Fort, which was built following the unsuccessful Spanish invasion of Ireland at Kinsale in 1601.  The fort, which has a now classic star-design (was relatively new in 1601), was in use through WW1.  The following views are from the inside of the fort.

Many of the walls in the fort are overgrown with vegetation.  Here is just a single plant growing out of a rock wall.

This is the end of this edition of my blog, but it is not the end to my Irish cooking experience.  More to come, but the doors are starting to close!

Preparing for the Finale

Because Charlene will be arriving net Thursday and I would like to spend a little time with my beloved, I'm starting to study for the written final, as well as study for the wine exam next Wednesday.  Consequently, this will be a relatively short blog, or at least written quickly (remember my quote from Ben Franklin).

Cooking this week was lots of fun.  Monday, I cooked a roast duck with potato stuffing and gravy, roast potatoes, and Jerusalem artichoke slices.  The duck was BIG; so, even though mine was the first in the oven, it was the last one out.  Tasted good, but duck is a little too fatty for me to love.  Preparing the gravy was good practice for my final, as was roasting the potatoes, and both were very good.  Jerusalem artichokes were new to me, but I liked them and will look for them back in ABQ.  On to Tuesday and cucumber salad, a plate of smoked fish with horseradish sauce and sweet dill pickle, cauliflower cheese, and a Bakewell Tart (named after the town of Bakewell, where it originated).  I first prepared the pastry for the tart, which has an almond-based filling, but uses more sugar and butter than almonds.  The hard part is the pastry, including a lattice top, but I was up to the task!  Unfortunately, even though it turned out well, I don't particularly care for it.  I do, however, love the cauliflower cheese, which uses a Mournay sauce that is so rich tasting you can feel your stomach drop inches when you swallow.  The plate of fish was really just putting ingredients together in an attractive manner -- not my strong suit -- but I managed.  Interesting side note:  when I was starting to assemble the plate and went looking for dill for garnish, I realized that I had used chopped chives, not dill in the mayo.  Oops!  So, I added lots of dill and it tasted fine.  Until now, no one knew the difference (got away with one).

Thursday was St. Patrick's Day, a national holiday here (they don't worry about the religious implications, like some in the U.S. do about Christmas).  Surprisingly, we had cooking and demo on Thursday, so we could have Friday off and a 3-day weekend.  And we had lobster!  I love lobster and, because of cost and the land-locked nature of New Mexico, have it very rarely.  Well, I made lobster in a cream and fresh herb sauce.  The sauce was quite complicated and I had to make Hollandaise sauce as an ingredient.  After one false start on the Hollandaise, Tina helped me for a minute or two and I made the only Hollandaise in our kitchen; so others used some of mine with lots of thanks (felt kind of nice).  I normally like my lobster plain with butter for dipping, but I've got to admit that this lobster in cream and herb sauce was outstanding -- best meal I've had here.  Tina told me to take the lobster and the warm salad my partner had prepared into the dining room and eat them warm before I cleaned up.  I was in 7th heaven.

One of my cottage mates, Louise, invited me to spend the long weekend with her and her husband.  Originally Bryony was going to join us, but her plans changed.  Below are pictures I took from the window of the my bedroom at their home.

In the 1st picture, the hills on the left are the ones that extend onto the Dingle Peninsula, which is one of the most beautiful places in Ireland.  In the 2nd picture you can see ocean water with another small peninsula behind it.  Very beautiful place to live.  Below are Louise (right), Mark, and Sue, who is Louise's long-time friend who joined us.  Of course, Lizzy had to get in the act.  For Friday's dinner, I attempted to cook the dinner I will do for my final exam.  Let's just say that I learned a few things.  In any case, I had a most enjoyable evening with some very nice people. 

While Horace just relaxed!

 Just to show you the vagaries of Irish weather, the pictures from the bedroom window were taken about 9 a.m. and, by the time I left at 12:30, it was too rainy to go just down the road and play the Castlegregory 9-hole golf course, which was one of my favorites on a previous visit to this island.  Shucks!

Last Sunday I took the cliff walk from Ballycotton.  Here is one shot to give you an idea of the beauty along the coast on a beautiful afternoon.

Charlene and I will spend next weekend in Kinsale, so I don't know when I'll prepare the next blog.  Have patience and know I'm thinking about my friends and relatives in the good old U.S. of A.

Plan for the Final Exam

Since some of you gave me comments, I'm sending out this short update.  Today I turned in the menu for my final exam, so I am committed.  In case you are curious, my menu is very traditional and boring compared with some:

• Potage a la bonne femme (leek and potato soup) with homemade croutons
• Roast stuffed chicken with gravy
• Roasted potatoes
• Brussels sprouts
• Glazed carrots
• Poached pears with sweet geranium leaves and sweet geranium cream

I'll also do whatever bread I'm assigned.  I've either done each of these dishes or something very close.  In some way, each of the dishes is similar to ones I had as a child.  I haven't actually cooked Brussels sprouts here but they are cooked like other green vegetables, which at Ballymaloe means cooked too long and not crisp.  Also, this isn't the season for Brussels sprouts, so they may tell me to substitute. 

Kind of strange, but I'm starting to look forward to the challenge.  My plan of work will be something like the following:  start with making the stuffing, preparing the chicken, and getting it in the oven ASAP; start the bread; poach the pears; boil and infuse the cream with the sweet geranium; refrigerate the pears while reducing the syrup; start the soup; prepare the vegetables (but not cook -- too early); make the croutons; pre-boil the potatoes; back to the bread (depending on the type); potatoes in the oven with lots of duck fat; start the carrots; boil the Brussels sprouts; whip the cream; move the chicken to another pan, while I make the gravy using the drippings; puree the soup.  About now I should be removing the chicken from the oven to rest for 15-20 minutes.  Reheat the soup; finish the vegetables; carve the chicken; and prepare the presentation.  Several little things I haven't mentioned (and probably one or two I've missed), but this is most of it.  Piece of cake!  Actually, if it happens anything like this and I get done in 3-1/2 hours (1/2 hour over), I'll be happy.

Crunch Time

This coming Thursday, we have to turn in our memus for the 3-course meal we will cook for the practical part of the final exam.  During the 3 hours we will have, we must also make a loaf of bread, but we won't know which bread we will make until the day before the exam.  There is also a 4-1/2 hour written final exam on our last day, Friday, April 1st.  Is it a joke?  Afraid not.  But there is an alternative -- skip the whole exam process and receive a certificate of attendance.  This is particularly tempting for me, because Charlene will be here that last week and, if I skipped the exams, we could start our vacationing earlier.  Of course, if I skip the exams, I won't know how I measure up when under pressure; but, I also wouldn't have to study lots of stuff for the written exam that I almost certainly will never use again, e.g., Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) as dictated by Irish law (one of 25 topics).  Yuck!  Tomorrow I'm going to sort out all the study material and I'll decide early in the week.  Don't hesitate to provide me comments.

From the serious to the trivial and fun in the Q&A world -- this Friday there was a pub quiz run by Stephen, the student I've mentioned in previous blogs.  What's a pub quiz, you ask (like I had to)?  Assuming this one was typical, participants pay an entry fee (5 euro for this one, with profits going to Darina's India fund, a charity), form teams, and each team answers a set of questions -- kind of like a trivial pursuit.  There are prizes for the team with the most points and this one also had a raffle with lots of prizes.  Needless to say, conducting it in a pub means there is lots of one more activity, which also contributes to the atmosphere.  Here is a picture of our non-award-winning team, EU+1, with our Guinness (mine is actually a Beamish, a similar stout that I think has more body) in clear site.

Paul is Irish; Bryony is originally from Great Britain but long residence in Sweden; Louise is also from GB but now Ireland; Stasha is from Holland; and of course I'm from the U.S. (the +1).  My contribution to our effort was totally neutral -- I directed us away from one correct answer, towards another correct answer, and otherwise knew nothing that others didn't know.  We were doing well until the music section, which counted double, and for which I knew almost nothing (no questions about John Denver).  I was worse (if that's possible) on identifying pictures of celebrities (although I did recognize the Dalai Lama).  All of this was loads of fun -- just wish I could hear better is such noisy settings.

The week had another unusual activity -- we took a tour on Thursday instead of cooking and a demo.  A bus took us to:  a smoke house near Cobh (pronounced "cove"); a farmer's market in the sheltered parking of a shopping center near Cork; the cheese making plant for Cashel Blue; and to the lovely town of Lismore for multiple stops.  In this case, pictures are much better than words.  Here is a picture of Bryony and Paul sharing a table at the farmers' market with an adorable child and her grandfather.  This is near a stall that sells the most delicious hot chocolate and or coffee (mocha coffee for me -- delicious!).  You can see they put little servings of chocolates on top of the cups of liquid.  Sure wish we had markets like this in Albuquerque.

I'm not a big fan of blue cheese, except on certain salads, and some of the other students thought the tour rather boring.  I found it quite interesting, with lots of opportunities for fun.  Here is a self portrait of me in my sanitary digs for the tour.

I could try to explain that wide-angle lenses at close distances give distorted images, but think what you may of that mug. 

On the way to Lismore, we climbed the Knockmealdown Mountains and looked back on the Blackwater Valley.

I chose this particular shot because some of the sky is actually blue, but also because of the spots in the foreground, which are trash!  One of the surprises (and disappointments) on this 12-week visit has been the trash that I notice along side the roads (lots of time to look when I do my power walking).  This is the most extreme case, where someone had just dumped an old set of table and chairs over the side of the road at the most incredibly picturesque spot.  Fortunately, Lismore is still beautiful.  Here is the castle as seen from the car park near the town.

In Lismore, we visited a cafe, where the former Ballymaloe student-owner shared practical experience in running a cafe-business.  Next to the O'Brien Chop House, where this owner (all the way on the right in the picture below of the gardens in the back of the restaurant, where serving occurs in the summer) got lots of attention from the young women (yes, he is quite handsome) but he also did a great job of explaining some of what it takes to operate a successful restaurant.

Last stop in Lismore was a butcher shop, where we heard how the animals are killed and cut apart.  Not the prettiest part of the food business, but a necessary one, unless you go vegetarian.

On that cheery note, let's finish this edition with my cooking experience this week.  On Monday, I had only two dishes, seared tuna and lemon rice, but I had to make the accompaniments for the tuna.  The piperonata (a sweet pepper sauce) was delicious, but I could do without the tapenade, which is heavy on the olives and too bitter for me.  I seared the tuna as instructed, i.e., very hot grill for only two minutes per side.  Yes, very rare in the middle, but I'm a convert -- rare is right for tuna!  For Tuesday, I convinced my partner, Alex, to let me have only two of our five dishes, so I could make a white yeast bread (very time consuming).  One dish was vanilla ice cream, which I had to start first thing, so it would be ready for lunch.  It took longer than I expected and, by the time I got it in the freezer, it was too late to start the bread.  So, I finished off a rather relaxed morning with green pea soup with fresh mint and cream.  This was not like pea soups I've had before, but delicious -- a keeper!  When Rose tasted it, she said it was seasoned just right.  When I told her I thought it was too salty she said no!  Well, this is the salty world of Ballymaloe (read into the pun as much as you want).  Friday, I finally got to make the bread I had been trying to squeeze in.  I made an Italian focaccia, using a white yeast bread as the base.  With lots of olive oil, olives, sun-dried tomatoes, and sea salt, it was/is (still eating it at the cottage) delicious.  I also made an Indian Naan bread, which was more work than I think it is worth, and pears poached in a saffron syrup.  If you have priced saffron, you know that these are expensive pears!  If I do the final, I may do these for the dessert, because they taste really good and don't take too much effort.

There are three primary kitchens for the students plus the demo kitchen, which only a few at a time use.  Each of the primary three can have roughly 20 students.  We rotate between the kitchens and I'm back to the kitchen I started in on week one.  Returning made me realize how different I feel about things.  Much less pressure, but also a lot more confidence on each days cooking.  Shouldn't be surprising, but 9 weeks is not a long time to develop cooking skills.  Not sure I'm really that much better, but the confidence is there, regardless.

I haven't heard from most of you in a long time.  Comments are welcome.