Shane and I are set to leave Ireland in 2 days. We just moved out of our flat this afternoon (we’re staying with friends), but our sea and air shipments were packed up several days ago. Which means we’re living out of bags of carefully selected stuff.

When we moved here, it was the same situation, until our sea shipment arrived in Dublin. But it isn’t as easy as just buying new stuff to tide you over. Everything is more expensive here. Even in the charity shops.

So here is a stir fry I made in a soup pot (I didn’t pack the wok). I would say it isn’t ideal. But not the stuff failures are made of.

I know it’s cliche. But people in Ireland eat a lot of potatoes.

Chips (fries) are particularly popular and you will see them on pretty much every menu, be it traditional, Chinese, Indian, Italian, Thai…you get the idea. Shane has seen people at work order a slice of pizza with chips. Or a plate with some main dish like pasta, and roasted potatoes, mashed potatoes and chips all on the same plate. I’m not fooling.

I like potatoes, too. It’s not just from being in Ireland. They’re easy  to prepare, really cheap, and can be delicious. When I was a kid, my mom made baked potatoes for supper sometimes, and we always topped them with butter, sour cream, cheese, and broccoli. In Ireland, and in the UK, it’s very common to have a “jacket potato” filled with baked beans. Or coleslaw. Or pizza toppings. I bet you could even get a jacket potato filled with chips! But you probably wouldn’t want to. Probably.

Besides my undying love of french fries, I love hash browns, roasted potatoes, latkes, mashed potatoes, and tater tots. Even though tater tots do not exist in Ireland, I still feel solidarity with Ireland in my appreciation of the potato. Actually, except for a guy I knew in college who had a traumatic potato experience, I’ve never known anyone who didn’t like them.

Go eat a potato. You’ll be glad you did.

2 days ago, a lovely friend bought me a vegan truffle at one of the veg places here in Dublin. The truffle was nice. Chocolatey, coated with pistachios, a little fluffy, and super sweet. It reminded me of some truffles I made almost exactly 1 year ago:

Unlike the truffle I had on Wednesday, which was made with cocoa powder, icing sugar (powdered sugar), raisins, and some other stuff I don’t remember, the truffles in the picture are made with a blended cashew base. They were super creamy and dense and flavorful. I think the only downside was that they were a little soft and needed to be kept in the fridge. Next time, maybe I will dip them in melted chocolate to provide a bit of barrier between the middly part and my hand.

We’ve gotten a few takeaway Indian dinners whilst living in Dublin. There are a lot of curry shops around. Lots. That is, compared to the Seattle area. And there are a lot of East Indian places in Seattle. It’s also one of the easiest cuisines from which to order vegan dishes. Generally, I just order food from the vegetarian listing on the menu and specify no ghee/dairy (some people don’t think of ghee as dairy because the milk solids have been removed…)

I usually cook rice at home, because I bristle at the prospect of paying 2 euro per person for plain white rice at home. Tonight I also prepared the sauteed spinach and tomato recipe from Vcon to go with what I figured would be a pretty brownish sauce covered affair. I was right, even though the food was better than most.

I think I like the idea of a takeaway curry better than the actuality of a said curry. It always tastes good in my mind, but I’m often underwhelmed.

Some of the meals we’ve had are decent. It’s clear they used fresh veg and the seasoning is varied from dish to dish.

Some of the curries we’ve had were pretty rotten. Not literally, I suppose, but just unpleasant. Mushy veg, bad/non-existent flavor.

One thing these meals had in common, however, was that they were really greasy. I might be remembering curry back home through un-greased glasses, but golly. The oil that spills forth from these little aluminum tubs of lazy-person’s supper is abundant.

I’ll have to report when we get back to the states. My memory could very well be faulty.

One thing I love about being vegan is snacking. In my ideal mode, I eat bits and bobs all day long. There are certainly days when I forget to eat enough and I wonder why I feel like crap, but normally it isn’t hard. I love to eat. As long as I keep low-prep foods around: ripe fruit, leftovers, bean dip, roasted nuts, cookies, muffins, crunchy things, creamy things, frozen things, I will have a snack every 2 (or fewer) hours.

Now, this isn’t a matter of eating to appease boredom. I know that’s a bad idea, even though food is so entertaining… But my blood sugar level seems to be sensitive (it’s hereditary) and I try to maintain balance, otherwise I get irritable, exhausted, droopy, and I get migraines sometimes, (way less than I did before acupuncture, however). Also, it can be a challenge to get enough calories if I’m just eating 3 meals a day. Well, if I’m eating 3 healthy meals a day.

Whenever Shane and I are planning a day out on the weekend, my first order of business is snack food. We generally pack carrot sticks, apples, a banana, biscuits/cookies, and something crunchy like corn cakes or crisps. If it’s going to be a longish outing, we bring sandwiches as well (hummus and veg or peanut butter and jam). Part of this is to make sure we’ll have something to eat if vegan pickings are slim, and part of it is to protect Shane from my low-fuel wrath. A well-fed Becca means everybody wins.

Danger:

 We’re okay:

 May I present the York cabbage. One of the cheapest ways to eat your veg this side of the big water.

But seriously. I love the color on these things. And they taste pretty good stir-fried. For 99 cent, I’m not complaining.

I made this awhile ago. The recipe is from the Veganomicon. It was good, but I honestly enjoyed the mash more than the seitan. Oh well. I think the olives I used were too strong. They kind of overpowered the other flavors. Also, I’m not a big fan of capers. I try to like them. They seem…refined. But I’m just not into them. I will probably try this recipe again. I did learn that I enjoy seitan dredged and fried. This shouldn’t come as a surprise to me, since I love most things dredged and fried, but the seitan was suited very well with this treatment.

1. Macaroni and Cheez from Vegan Vittles by Jo Stepaniak
2. Pan-Fried Tempt-eh from Eat Drink and Be Vegan by Dreena Burton
3. Raspberry Chocolate Chip Blondies from Vegan with a Vengeance by Isa Moskowitz
4. Tuscan Hummus from Veg-Feasting by Vegetarians of Washington
5. Potato Latkes from Vegan Family Cookbook by Brian McCarthy

And, this isn’t a favorite recipe, but we’re going home in 14 days. Woot!

Beans make me so happy. They are cheap, nutritious, plentiful, and delicious. Delicious. I soak beans overnight, cook them in my pressure cooker, and freeze them in zippy bags. For the last year, the legumes we’ve eaten most often are chickpeas, black beans, and red lentils.

A couple of days ago, I wanted rice and beans for dinner and I didn’t have a lot of time, so I did the following:

• Saute chopped onion and garlic in olive oil
• Add ground cumin, cayenne pepper, bouillon cube, and salt 
• After this cooks for a little bit, add black beans
• Pour in some boiling water and stir
• I let this cook for a bit until it was creamy and hot
• Adjust seasoning

The only vegetable we had in the house was a bunch of celery, so I sautéed it and chopped a tomato to accompany the beans and rice. This meal was beautifully satisfying.

When Shane and I visited the UK and Ireland last summer, we noticed a certain tendency towards adding a pile of salad to plates in restaurants and cafes. Now, ’salad’ is a loose term. Here, it generally means a hodge-podge of moderately crunchy things with lots of mayonnaise. Sometimes you’ll find beans in a salad. Sometimes they are dressed with vinaigrette. It is also quite difficult to avoid red onions. Which I dislike. Coleslaw is ubiquitous in Ireland. I’ve a friend who particularly enjoys coleslaw and cheese sandwiches, and nobody gives her a funny look when she orders it.

I spent a day in Brighton this past June, and I wandered into one of the many vegetarian places. I ordered a take away bowl of various salads. I just asked for all the vegan ones (there was plenty of mayo on the others) and they were piled in my bowl. Despite the red onions, it was pretty tasty.