June 16 – Bloomsday in Dublin, Ireland

Bloomsday commemorates the day in 1904 made immortal by the most famous circadian novel of English literature, James Joyces’ Ulysses.

James Joyce

Joyce picked that date because it was the one on which he first went out with his future wife, Nora Barnacle. Every year in Dublin fans dress up, recreate the events of the novel, go on pub crawls, attend readings, and otherwise celebrate in locations throughout the city. Increasingly, American cities stage Bloomsday events as well.

Leopold Bloom as shown in the online graphic adaptation of Ulysses drawn by Robert Berry available at http://jamesjoyce.ie/ulysses-seen/

The challenge of depicting Dublin has captured the imagination of other writers. Here is one of my favorite descriptions of the city, an excerpt of the poem “Dublin” by Irish poet Louis MacNeice:

This never was my town,
I was not born or bred
Nor schooled here and she will not
Have me alive or dead
But yet she holds my mind
With her seedy elegance,
With her gentle veils of rain
And all her ghosts that walk
And all that hide behind
Her Georgian facades -
The catcalls and the pain,
The glamour of her squalor,
The bravado of her talk.

…

She is not an Irish town
And she is not English,
Historic with guns and vermin
And the cold renown
Of a fragment of Church latin,
Of an oratorical phrase.
But oh the days are soft,
Soft enough to forget
The lesson better learnt,
The bullet on the wet
Streets, the crooked deal,
The steel behind the laugh,
The Four Courts burnt.”

[Note: The Four Courts of Dublin is the name of the main courts building, located on Inns Quay in Dublin. Housed within are the Supreme Court, the High Court and the Dublin Circuit Court. Until 2010 the building was also home to the Central Criminal Court.]

Happy Bloomsday!!

Leopold Bloom, anticipating Bloomsday, one might say, with a walk through Dublin (from the Ulysses Seen graphic novel)

May 15 – National Chocolate Chip Day

According to a recent marketing study, chocolate pulls in $90 billion in global sales annually, $19 billion of it in the United States. Approximately $9 billion of the $19 billion is spent by my household.

In any event, for some hazy reason probably having to do with marketing, today is “universally acknowledged” (to paraphrase Jane Austen) as being National Chocolate Chip Day. I always try to support national holidays, and thus will do my part.

By the way, if you are attempting to sound erudite about chocolate, it helps to know that the plant from which it comes – the cacao tree – is pronounced kah-KOW. I just include this because of the way I always used to say, “c-a-c-a-o however it is pronounced.”

Chocolate comes from the cacao tree, which is formally known as Theobroma Cacao.

What are the essential properties of a dessert utilizing chocolate chips? In my opinion, the most essential is gooeyness. (In fact, I consider gooeyness the most essential for most food, but I’ll wait for other holidays to tell you about that.)

But you know what? You are going to see zillions of recipes today for chocolate chip cookies to help you celebrate this day, so I’m going to go a little outside the box here and offer two alternatives, both of which are from my recipe pins on Pinterest. (Even if you didn’t know which Recipe Board was mine, you could probably guess since almost every recipe label starts with “Gooey” or “Ooey Gooey” or, of course, “Chocolate.”) Because they come from other blogs, I will just link to them, for your clicking, viewing, and cooking pleasure.

First, for an insane sugar rush to start your day, I present:

Glazed Cinnamon Rolls Stuffed with Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough

And then later, you will need dessert! And so I present Deep Dish Salted Chocolate Chip Cookie Pie

Click on the links for wonderful recipe ideas, and wonderful ways to celebrate this important day!

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This post will be linked to this Saturday’s Weekend Cooking, hosted by Beth Fish Reads. Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, quotations, photographs. where bloggers share food-related posts. Stop by her blog and see what’s cooking this week!

For Mother’s Day: Poet Seamus Heaney Remembers His Mother With Love

Seamus Heaney, the Irish poet and playwright often called “the greatest poet of our age” won the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature.

Seamus Heaney

In this excerpt from the wonderful poem about his mother, “In Memoriam M.K.H., 1911-1984” he muses on how doing together the simplest everyday necessities can foster an unparalleled closeness:

When all the others were away at Mass

I was all hers as we peeled potatoes.

They broke the silence, let fall one by one

Like solder weeping off the soldering iron:

Cold comforts set between us, things to share

Gleaming in a bucket of clean water.

And again let fall. Little pleasant splashes

From each other’s work would bring us to our senses.



So while the parish priest at her bedside

Went hammer and tongs at prayers for the dying

And some were responding and some crying

I remembered her head bent towards my head,

Her breath in mine, our fluent dipping knives –

Never closer the whole rest of our lives.”

He ends by observing the “heft and hush” of the world without her, how when people die, you feel above all the presence of their absence:

A soul ramifying and forever

Silent, beyond silence listened for.”

Happy Mother’s Day to our mothers, present in whatever form, always there, no matter how or where.

April 12 – National Grilled Cheese Sandwich Day

The Ancient Romans were the first civilization to make a cooked bread and cheese sandwich, and it has remained popular ever since. The classic American grilled cheese sandwich dates from the 1920s when inexpensive cheese and affordable sliced bread became available.

Today, there are entire restaurants devoted to grilled cheese, and there is even a Wisconsin Grilled Cheese Championship.

This year’s contest in on April 27 at the Iowa County Fairgrounds in Mineral Point, Wisconsin. If you go there, you will be able to purchase grilled cheese sandwiches, of course, perhaps from the Chubby Cheese Truck (featuring the Gouda Girls)!

The Chubby Cheese Truck

These are the competition categories:

Classic: any type of bread, real butter, and cheese. No additional ingredients.

Classic Plus One: a savory sandwich with any type of bread, “butter,” and Wisconsin cheese plus one additional ingredient. The interior ingredients must be at least 60% cheese.

Classic Plus Extras: a savory sandwich with any type of bread, “butter,” and Wisconsin cheese plus unlimited additional ingredients. However, the interior ingredients must still be at least 60% cheese.

Classic Dessert: any kind of bread, “butter,” and Wisconsin cheese plus additional ingredients to create an overall sweet (as opposed to savory) flavor that would be best served as a “dessert” grilled cheese sandwich. However, the interior ingredients must still be at least 60% cheese.

If you can’t get to Wisconsin, no problem! There will be Grilled Cheese Festivals all over the country!

Orange County, California loves grilled cheese!

The categories for “sammiches” in the Grilled Cheese Invitational in Los Angeles are quite whimsical:

Love, American Style : White bread, butter, orange cheese (American or Cheddar). NOTHING ELSE.

The Missionary Position: Any type of bread, butter and cheese. NO ADDITIONAL INGREDIENTS.

The Kama Sutra: A sandwich of the savory nature, with any type of bread, butter and cheese PLUS additional ingredients, and the interior ingredients must be at least 60% cheese.

The Honey Pot: Any kind of bread, any kind of butter, and any kind of cheese, and the interior ingredients of the sammich must be at least 60% cheese, PLUS additional ingredients, and with an overall flavor that is sweet and would best be served as dessert.

If you’re on the West Coast, you can catch the Los Angeles festival on April 20th at Los Angeles Center Studios.

From the 2011 Grilled Cheese Invitational

And there are scores of devotees who, even without access to a festival, at least on this one day, forget lactose intolerance and go for the thickest, meltiest, gooest sandwiches they can get!

Personally, I feel that nothing quite compares to a melty gooey grilled cheese. …except perhaps one served with a vanilla milkshake.

Happy National Grilled Cheese Sandwich Day!

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This post will be linked to this Saturday’s Weekend Cooking, hosted by Beth Fish Reads. Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, quotations, photographs. where bloggers share food-related posts. Stop by her blog and see what’s cooking this week!

March 17, 2013 – Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

As you probably know, Saint Patrick’s Day or the Feast of Saint Patrick actually takes place on the anniversary of St. Patrick’s death. Saint Patrick, who lived circa AD 385-461, is credited with bringing Christianity to the Irish masses with his clever use of the 3-leaved shamrock to explain the Holy Trinity. Today, Saint Patrick’s Day is a holy day of obligation for Roman Catholics in Ireland.

Jim and I seem never to be far from Ireland spiritually no matter where we end up. For the past ten or so years, we lived in Tucson, which was founded – according to some historians – by the red-headed Dublin-born Irishman Hugh (also known as Hugo) O’Conor in 1775.

Tucson Statue of Hugo O’Conor

Just a few months ago, we moved from Arizona, and now we live sort of near to Chicago, if you count an hour and a half away (in no traffic) as near. As of 2010, Irish-Americans were still counted as the largest ethnic group in Chicago. So it seems appropriate, this year, to focus on how Chicago celebrates this very popular holiday.

The Chicago River is a system of rivers and canals with a combined length of 156 miles running right through downtown Chicago. It links the Great Lakes and the Mississippi Valley waterways.

Every year since 1961, the city has turned the Chicago River green on St. Patrick’s Day. The dye is spilled from small boats, and gets drawn into the flow of the river.

The formula for the dye is kept secret, and some people get worried about what the city is putting into the river. (Allegedly it is vegetable dye.) (In any event, as one wag observed, “One would ask how this is different from the rest of the year when the river is always a murky shade of green.”)

Nevertheless, the Friends of the Chicago River organization doesn’t object, opining “It’s not the worst thing that happens to the river.”

This year, the dying began at 10 a.m. on Saturday, March 16th. This was also the day of the big parade, which began at noon.

But there are still ways to celebrate!

Of course, there is green beer. According to CBS Chicago, this is how you make it:

Green Beer

There are a few different routes to go to get that perfect St. Patrick’s Day green. With a lighter, more yellowed colored beer, try using blue food coloring instead of green. The mix of yellow and blue will create a dark emerald green color.

For a lighter more lime green color, stick with the traditional green food coloring. A mix of the two is worth trying to get that perfect shade of green.

How To:

Add 2-3 drops of food coloring in to an empty glass.
Pour beer in to the glass (no stirring required).

But I’m more interested in this recipe for Irish Coffee, offered on the same website. (We had it when in Ireland, and I couldn’t get enough of it! I even got one from room service one evening, much to Jim’s horror. But I placated him soon enough by giving him half!) Even though the recipe sounds simple, in combination the ingredients create magic!

Irish Coffee

Ingredients:

1 1/2 oz Irish whiskey

1 tsp brown sugar

6 oz hot coffee

Regular cream or Bailey’s Irish Cream (amount to taste preference)

How To:

Combine whiskey, brown sugar and coffee in a mug. Stir to dissolve. Pour Bailey’s and enjoy!

What to have with it? That’s easy! Green bagels!

Or green Peeps!

Or green-just-about-anything! But don’t count on getting any of this in a downtown Chicago bar unless you enjoy wall-to-wall people and endless waiting!

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!!

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This post will be linked to this Saturday’s Weekend Cooking, hosted by Beth Fish Reads. Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, quotations, photographs. where bloggers share food-related posts. Stop by her blog and see what’s cooking this week!

March 14, 2013 – Celebrate Pi Day!

Pi, Greek letter (π), is the symbol for the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. Pi Day is celebrated around the world on March 14th since Pi = 3.1415926535…

Thanks to computers, Pi has been calculated to trillions of digits past the decimal point, and is called “irrational” because it continues indefinitely without repeating and without ending.

So we cannot solve the mystery – now, at any rate – of what the final value of Pi is. BUT! There are other mysteries associated with Pi.

For example, isn’t it suspicious that Albert Einstein, one of the greatest minds of all time, was born on March 14th?

And here’s an even greater mystery! Why do so many people celebrate Pi Day with a SWEET PIE instead of a PIZZA PIE? Is there really anything better than deep dish pizza? I leave it to you, readers, to weigh in (so to speak) on this timeless condundrum.

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(You know you want the recipe for Stuffed Pizza that goes with this picture! Fortunately for you, I am including a link to the King Arthur Flour site, from whence it comes.)

Happy 3.14159265358979323846264338327950288419716939… Day!

A Valentine’s Story

Moses Mendelssohn, a brilliant philosopher (sometimes called “The German Socrates”), was thought to be quite unattractive. He was quite stunted and misshapen and had a hunchback. The Prussian emperor said about him, “Never have I seen such great wine in such an ugly vessel.” In 1762, on a visit to Hamburg, the 32-year-old Mendelssohn met a lovely girl named Fromet Gugenheim. Apparently when Fromet laid eyes on him, she was so frightened by his appearance that she actually burst into tears.

Moses Mendelssohn

Fromet Gugenheim

The story goes that Mendelssohn explained to her that when he was born, his future wife was also named, but at the same time, it was said that she herself would be humpbacked. “O God,” he said, “a deformed girl will become embittered and unhappy, whereas she should be beautiful. Dear Lord, give me the humpback, and let the maiden be well-made and agreeable!”

Several months later, they were married. They had six children surviving to adulthood, and one of their grandsons was the famous musician, Felix Mendelssohn.

January 26, 2013 – Celebrate Australia Day!

Today is the day Australia celebrates what’s great about Australia.

As the Australia Day Website explains:

Australia Day, 26 January, is the anniversary of the arrival of the First Fleet of 11 convict ships from Great Britain, and the raising of the Union Jack at Sydney Cove by its commander Captain Arthur Phillip, in 1788. Though 26 January marks this specific event, today Australia Day celebrations reflect contemporary Australia: our diverse society and landscape, our remarkable achievements and our bright future. It also is an opportunity to reflect on our nation’s history, and to consider how we can make Australia an even better place in future.”

One of the things I love about Australia is the abundance of great authors who come from there. The list of Australian authors includes many familiar to Americans, such as Geraldine Brooks, Kate Morton, Markus Zusak, and Thomas Keneally, but also many others not so familiar. The availability in the U.S. of books by Australians is hit and miss. Here are some authors whose books we can get:

John Marsden: His “Tomorrow” series is one of the most popular book series for young adults ever written in Australia. The first book of this series, Tomorrow When The War Began, has been reprinted 26 times in Australia.

Margo Lanagan: (multiple award winner)

Justine Larbalestier (irrelevant but interesting gossip: she is married to author Scott Westerfeld):

Melina Marchetta: (she has become one of my favorite authors)

Lucy Christopher: (technically Welsh but she has lived the longest in Australia)

Books by other noted Australian authors are unfortunately harder to find (but at least some of their works are available in e-book form):

Vikki Wakefield
Kirsty Eagar
Leanne Hall
Gabrielle Williams
Myke Bartlett

Help celebrate Australia Day by requesting that your favorite bookseller stock books by these wonderful Australian authors! And while you’re at it, have a Tim Tam Slam!

A “Tim Tam” is a chocolate cookie made by Arnott’s in Australia and widely known as “the unofficial biscuit of Australia.” Nearly 400 million Tim Tams are produced every year! A Tim Tam is composed of two layers of chocolate malted biscuit, separated by a light chocolate cream filling, and coated in a thin layer of textured chocolate.

Tim Tams were named by Ross Arnott after attending the 1958 Kentucky Derby and decided the winning horse had the perfect name for his new biscuit.

According to Wikipedia:

The Tim Tam Slam, Tim Tam Shotgun, Tim Tam Bomb, or Tim Tam Explosion is the practice of drinking a beverage through a Tim Tam. Opposite corners of the Tim Tam are bitten off, one end is submerged in the drink, and the drink sucked through the biscuit. The crisp inside biscuit is softened and the outer chocolate coating begins to melt. For best results, use a hot (not warm) beverage, and stuff the entire Tim Tam in your mouth once you feel the hot beverage touch your tongue through the Tim Tam. You have to be fast in putting it in your mouth or else it may break off into your drink.”

Want to see how to slam? This short and very cute video will demonstrate. (It looks a bit like they’re doing cocaine. Not that I would know personally, but from movies, you know….)

Happy Australia Day!!

New Year’s Eve 2012 – A Champagne Toast

Champagne is a wine produced in the Champagne region of northeastern France. It is generally made of a blend of three grapes: Chardonay, Pinot Noir, and Pinot Meunier. These three grapes make up 98% of all Champagnes produced.

One of the most famous champagnes is Dom Pérignon, named after a French Benedictine monk of the 17th Century who contributed to the production and quality of champagne. Contrary to myth, he did not invent champagne; that honor goes to the English scientist and physician Christopher Merret. (Merret also produced the first list of British birds, but nobody seems to care about that much.)

How did the story about Dom Pérignon inventing champagne get started? An ad in the late 19th century had him saying, “Come quickly, I am drinking the stars” and the legend grew. Supposedly, one of his successors at the Abbey of Hautvillers spread the story in order to garner historical importance and prestige for the church. It’s a lovely myth, in any case. And Dom Pérignon did, apparently, make actual contributions to the production and quality of champagne.

Dom Pérignon

If you want to sample the stars yourself, you can expand your efforts to check out entire galaxies! You can get REALLY BIG bottles of champagne. Here are the names for the most common large sizes:

Magnum – 2 standard bottles
Jeroboam – 4 standard bottles
Rehoboam – 6 standard bottles
Methuselah – 8 standard bottles
Salmanazar – 12 standard bottles
Balthazar – 16 standard bottles
Nebuchadnezzar – 20 standard bottles

Happy New Year!!!

Merry Christmas 2013 – Meaningful Gift Exchange

My Friend Amy is hosting a carnival this year to collect ideas on meaningful gifts. The idea I want to share is a project called The Little Free Library Movement. As “On Wisconsin Magazine” reports:

With a roof and plexiglass windows and doors, Little Free Libraries look like dollhouses for books. The concept is simple: take a book, leave a book. There are no due dates, late fees, or library cards required, and the doors are open every day of the week, twenty-four hours a day.”

Todd Bol and Rick Brooks who started the project, know of more than 3,000 of the Little Free Libraries around the world now, located in all fifty states and thirty-two countries. But they believe – and hope – there are even many more!

Get a gift and leave a gift, and what better gift than a book? You can read more about the history of the project here, or learn how to buy or build a Little Free Library here.

Merry Christmas!!