Irish Food and a Mile Run

Yesterday's post was all for the dorm lovers. Today, we'll cover something interesting for those people that love to eat. Yummy. Below are pictures of several meals that I have consumed in Ireland. I had several great meals during the first week before I decided to document the meals. My favorite of the entire trip was an Irish Angus Steak at Locke's. It was cooked perfect and thick and juicy. Plus it cost 24 Euro. It had better be good. Here are the rest of the meals that highlighted the trip.

BBQ Ribs at Thunder Road Cafe in Dublin. We had not eaten all day so I was slightly famished. I ordered ribs thinking I'd get a rack or two, but they gave me three. With a lot of determination and a determined will, I made it through. All in all, good meat and the ribs were cooked well with a nice sauce.

The final damage:

For July 4, the entire group ate together at a boxty restaurant. Several people in our group had boxty before, but they said this was different than what they were used to. For those who don't know what a boxty is, here you go. My boxty was filled with chicken and covered in a nice creamy sauce. Pretty solid.


During the Heritage Road Trip, we ate lunch at a small local restaurant that had a great Sunday special. I went with the lamb and mint. You can tell we were in the United Kingdom when we ate because the meal had an English feel with the peas and carrots. Overall it was pretty solid. I also had a little Irish tea to go with the meal but did not care for it, even after adding the milk.


For dessert in Irvingstown, I had warm apple pie with a custard sauce. It was really good, but after the lamb and the fried mushrooms I had as an appetizer, I was getting pretty full.


For dinner in Cork on Friday, I went with a traditional Irish meal. This included steak, eggs, mushrooms, chips, and black pudding. Most everyone here hates black pudding. I didn't find it that bad.

During our excursion to Galway, we ate at a basement restaurant called The Mustard. (This is where the Nebraska girl was our waitress). They had an ostrich burger on the menu. I tried it. It didn't taste that different than a normal hamburger and plus it had a lot of toppings on it so, it was difficult to gauge the true flavor of the meat. It was solid nonetheless.

Perhaps the greatest week for trying good Irish food was this last week. One professor took us out for dinner on Tuesday, Wednesday's dinner was paid for by the University of Limerick and we will also get a "free" meal on Friday. I say "free" because it is coming out of the surplus money we have in our study abroad budget. So really we paid for it, but it tastes much better not thinking about it.

On Tuesday, I opted for the Irish sirloin steak. Again, good stuff. It was covered in a pepper sauce and had lots of onions and mushrooms on top. I still say Locke's steak was better, but this wasn't too shabby.


On Wednesday night, we went to a small village Killaloe for dinner. We ate at Gosser's cafe (Which wins the silver medal for best name, just behind The Hurler) After missing out on the lamb on Tuesday — they had only one to cook, so a lot of our group opted for lamb Tuesday night. Again, no complaints here. After nearly making the mistake of ordering it medium well, the dish came with a slice of nice tender meat with a rice/mushroom/onion mix in the middle. I'm running out of adjectives to describe good food, so we'll leave it at that.


For dessert, I had warm apple pie. It was supposed to be homemade, but the lady that made the pies was out sick. I couldn't tell the difference.



Live Update:
Wednesday also included a trip to the Limerick District Court. As the court in Dublin, it was hard to hear, but we could understand the gist of what was happening. Also, we saw (or didn't see) two big events while we were at the courthouse. We were up in the balcony so we couldn't see the guy with the guards, but we did see a bunch of people arrested for DUI and theft. One common trait, they all wore wind pants. Here you can read up on what happened while we were at court.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2008/0723/breaking48.htm

http://www.limerickleader.ie/news/Faction-fighting-near-Limerick-courthouse.4314953.jp

After dinner came the last big event of the night -- a little event we call the beer mile. Jillian (the one who had done this before), Ramsey and I undertook the adventure. We scoped out the UL track and determined how it was going to go down because the idea is to get in, do it and get out without drawing any attention or getting caught.

For the event, I drank Red Bull, Jillian had Carling and Ramsey had Tuborg. The idea is to drink four beverages and run four laps as quickly as you can. It is difficult. By the third lap, your stomach is full of liquid and you are burping quite a bit. I know it isn't that healthy, but it was a lot of fun. I was the only one to actually finish the race (8 minutes, 15 seconds), but the full dinner and the larger than normal cans made it difficult for the other two. After a 1.5-mile walk back the body began returning to normal and I actually fell asleep with reasonable ease less than two hours later. It was a good night. I don't know if I will do it again, but I can check it off the list.

Cheers,

LJLA