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Showing posts with label Irish. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Irish. Show all posts

Tuesday, March 17, 2009


Just back from Ireland in time to celebrate St. Patrick's Day. Every year, I make Corned Beef and Cabbage. Olivia is excited because its one of the few meals that I can cook and she still be able to smile while eating.

This year, I wanted to extend my preference for humanely treated, grass fed beef to my Irish celebration. There is no way your typical Corned Beef at the store has been treated well for .39 a pound. Anyway, last week I called up our butcher and put in an order. He asked me if I wanted the whole brisket, I asked how big that was. He says "I don't know exactly but around 4 pounds or so." I reply, "So no bigger than 5 pounds?" He affirms and I make the order. Fast forward to last night. Olivia picks up the meat on the way home. She asks me how much I think its going to cost, I give a reasonable price based on 4-5 pounds. Nope, its higher, because its 8 pounds of corned beef. Ha. Thats not what I was expecting. That might actually last a day or two, even with my ravenous appetite.

I included a picture of it pre-preparation. The Guinness is there for scale, and not because I've already started drinking today.

Thursday, September 18, 2008

We were super excited to go to the Kennedy School, a property of McMenamins, for the first time last night. As mentioned before, its a former public school that was bought and turned into a bar. Its been on Dave Atell's Comedy Central show and is pretty well known. We chose Sept 17th for our trip because it is also known as"Halfway to St. Patrick's Day," the worlds favorite holiday (tm). Several of the McMenamins historic properties were having Irish themed singing and dancing so we were "all-in". Unfortunately, upon further review, all this was happening at 5 or 530pm. How the heck are people who work supposed to go?? They did have some non-Irish events going on later in the evening, but, whaaa? Kennedy School must wait for another day.

Disappointed about not being able to have some Irish fun, we decided to take our first trip/meal in the Pearl District. Knowing it was a bit more pricey than the area we live in, we decided to try a sushi place as the places around us have been waaaaayyy disappointing. (Are we finally going to have something to miss from LA???)


We decided on Hiroshi. Widely touted on review sites as one of the best in Portland. Everything was fresh and decidedly presented well. However, it was more like going to a fine dining restaurant where a good deal of effort was placed on ambiance. They also did not have sushi accompaniment staples : Unfiltered Sake and Plum wine. It quickly became clear that if we were going to get full, it was going to cost more than its value. As we were walking around Olivia saw an ice cream shop she wanted to try. Off to desert!!


Maybe its the fact that I haven't had _real_ ice_cream in years, but the Cool Moon Ice Cream shop was amazing. Everyone there was A+ nice and let Olivia sample as many flavors as she wanted. All local, all natural, and all made right there in the shop. Great flavors. I broke down and dared my lactose intolerant self to have a cone with Black Cherry and a flavor that tasted like Nutella. Well worth it!!! Olivia had some sort of Coffee and Summerberry. Great way to end the night, and I didn't even get sick!