Wish We Were There — Virtual Ireland Trip #WeekendCooking

Weekend Cooking hosted by The Intrepid Reader includes badge which is a collage of four cooking related photos

A Virtual Travelogue

When our 35th anniversary trip – a week of sight seeing and line dancing in Ireland – had to be canceled, we felt sorry for ourselves. Along with everyone else who had plans to go anywhere in 2020.

Everyone with plans in 2020

Eventually, we rebooked Ireland for 2021 and swapped in an August road trip to the one dancing event of Summer 2020 that hadn’t been canceled. When those plans also had to be scrapped, we decided, to heck with it, we would go to Ireland virtually.

It had been months since our last trip, after all – our virtual Bermuda cruise in April – and we were tired of staying home.

First we found a place to “stay” during our whirlwind trip, which turned out to be an authentic Irish cottage at the Irish Cultural Center in a town not far from us. (These pictures (taken with the camera on a timer) got everyone confused when we posted about the first night of our “trip” on Facebook! Responses ranged from amazed to aghast when skim-readers of our posts thought we had actually flown to Ireland while the second wave of the pandemic was still in full swing.)

One of two backgrounds my husband bought online ahead of time to make our trip selfies more realistic.

The Irish Cultural Center also has a pub on its grounds with outdoor dining, so we started there on a Friday night and ate a lovely, socially distanced dinner out, while listening to live music. Fish and chips and Guinness stout, of course!

Saturday morning we headed out for a full Irish breakfast.

We walked some of our breakfast off at a local park where we’ve been doing outdoor line dancing on Saturdays this summer and that turned out to look a lot like Ireland in our vacation photos. Though perhaps the grass doesn’t look as green as you might expect. Coincidentally, Ireland was experiencing the same summer heat wave we were for the past several weeks!

On Saturday, we participated in a virtual line dance event straight from Ireland, with Gary O’Reilly – one of the choreographers we would have been dancing with on our actual trip to Ireland – and Maggie Gallagher. We felt as though we were visiting their homes to learn some new dances and dance some old favorites together. The event was 1-5 p.m. our time, so we took a break midway through for a quick cup of Barry’s Irish tea spiked with poutin.

All that dancing during the day and we were ready for dinner. The cozy cottage backdrop had been whisked away and our living room was now a cozy pub where we ate a delicious grilled salmon and champ dinner with Bailey’s pudding for dessert. (The corn on the cob we had to smuggle in, because I read somewhere they don’t eat corn on the cob in Ireland. Summer corn won out over Irish authenticity.)

Social distancing is easy in this cozy pub.
No wait staff to take our picture, though!
Grilled salmon, champ, and American corn. Shh!
Stout actually doesn’t make you stout.
Bailey’s pudding

During Saturday night’s pub dinner, we enjoyed virtual live music.

The same cozy pub also served up a delicious Sunday breakfast complete with gluten-free Irish soda bread and freshly made rhubarb compote!

More walking around the neighborhood of the “pub” after a big breakfast on Sunday morning. (I was told the parish church on the next block from us was built as a replica of an Irish church, which is what I reported to our fellow travelers on Facebook, but couldn’t find factual confirmation of this online.)

Lunch at the same pub (Hey, the food was good, and it was so convenient and close by) was Green Pea and Mint Soup, Cottage Pie, and Spicy Red Cabbage.

For tea time later, we had Bailey’s Cheesecake Brownies (G/F), donut peaches, and iced coffee spiked with Bailey’s.

Monday breakfast
Breakfast before spending the day at the library (aka going to work)

Dinner on our last night was at Mr. Dooley’s Old Irish Village Pub. We started with Irish Nachos as an appetizer, and both had the Guinness Steak Tips for dinner.

Our trip ended with ice cream cones at Foley’s (an Irish name, right?) and a nightcap of Bailey’s at the pub.

For the meals we didn’t eat out, I used An Irish Country Cookbook by Patrick Taylor for several recipes including the Cottage Pie, Spicy Red Cabbage, and the Pea and Mint Soup.

I also enjoyed reading through The Irish Cook Book by J.P. McMahon, but most of these recipes were too advanced for me and would require too much time in the kitchen and also a more adventurous palate! I think I used the recipe for champ from this one, but it was basically a recipe for mashed potatoes with a lot more butter than I would normally put in!

The recipe for the gluten-free Irish soda bread came from Gluten-Free Baking Classics, 2nd Edition by Annalise G. Roberts, which is part of my cookbook collection.

cover image of Gluten-Free Baking Classics

The most popular food photo and most-requested recipe on Facebook was, hands-down, my labor of love – the heart-shaped Bailey’s Cheesecake-Marbled Brownies. This recipe came from Jenn Segal at Once Upon a Chef.

Bailey’s Cheesecake-Marbled Brownies with gluten-free flour substitution

We’re thinking of a trip to Virtual Mexico next…

Happy Weekend Cooking!

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