Besides my obsession with sunflowers, is an obsession with hydrangeas. The plants here seem to love the cool and rainy weather and the hydrangeas here are unbelievable. Pictures don’t do them justice. Some bushes will have 3 or 4 colors of flowers. Along with the flowers, there was a strange tree behind our place in Rathmullan. I have no idea what it was but it sure was different.

While Ireland has a number of famous chefs and hip food, we’ve managed to avoid all that. Princess Hot Dog likes to eat about every 3 hours. We finish one meal and she’s inquiring about the next.  This, she says, is because we forget to eat and she’s starving. The truth is we are traveling, the schedule is off and there’s not always the greatest place to eat when she needs her next feeding. I have some Digestive crackers that I offer up each time she asks about the next meal.  She finally told me to stop force feeding her those. Yeah, yeah – if you are really hungry, you will eat them.

The meat here is generally cooked well done and that’s not necessarily how we are used to eating it. Mike ordered a burger the other night that smelled like salisbury steak from a TV dinner. Not bad – just the smell didn’t match what was on the plate. We’ve had some good fish and chips. The other night I  had a very yummy goat cheese tartlet with a beet salad that actually made you want to eat beets. We enjoyed a wonderful salmon dinner at the wedding last night and tonight, a yummy ravioli. The other night in Rathmullan, we enjoyed some wood oven pizza and local craft beer. Needless to say, we aren’t the most adventurous eaters.

We did go into the grocery store the other day to get a few things. Kathryn tried Paprika Pringles (good), we’ve had a number of chocolate candy bars (need to try them all) and today I had some curry potato chips (good as well). There are a number of things named after I assume, items from Maryland – Maryland chicken and Maryland cookies but I’m not familiar with them at home.  Maybe our culinary expertise is junk food – not real food!  Food Network should hire us “Junk food Junkets – snack food from around the world.”