It's Not That Inspiring

Farmleigh Market

Wine & Cards in the Sitting Room

After a long day in her professional kitchen, Sarah, wife, mother and co-owner of the Gallic Kitchen (shop owner, farmers' markets vender and café supplier), transitions from preparing and baking her savory pies and sweet tarts to the house kitchen where she begins cooking the evening meal for her family of four as well as the additional eight or so HelpXers living in the house.  At this time, we HelpXers are sent to the sitting room with a bottle of wine to sit in front of a warm fire and chat about our days, lives, hopes and dreams or to play a couple of hands of cards.  The next hour or two allows Sarah and her husband Patrick some uninterrupted family time with their eight your old son, Arthur (“Artie”) and ten year old daughter, Florence (“Flo”). 

When dinner is ready, usually between 9:00 and 10:00, we file into the large kitchen/dining room, set the table and breath in the delicious smells of whatever Sarah has prepared.  The first night we were here in Durrow, dinner consisted of salad, roasted potatoes (we’re either in Idaho or Ireland given the amount of potatoes we eat!), and a tender and juicy lamb chop with a tasty mint sauce.  Now, when I say mint sauce, don’t you dare envision our American hyper green colored gelatinous mint jelly because this is NOTHING like that!  For those of you who have had Baby Bird’s chimmichurri, picture mint as the herb, no spice and a little sweet.  I am on a mission to perfect a mint sauce of my own.  Side Note: after many requests, stay tuned for a rough recipe for Baby Bird’s chimmichurri.  I say rough because I do not do tsps and cups; I do flavor and consistency and the level of spice for each batch depends on my mood!

Regardless of the tastiness of Sarah’s meals, the obvious problem with the current dinner situation is this: when exactly does Sarah get to change gears from go, go, go, always in charge and sit down, relax with a glass of wine, and enjoy the precious hour or two with her children and husband?   So, naturally, we boldly offered to assume the dinner making responsibility whenever Sarah wanted to break her daily routine and, what was that?  Take a break? 

Roast Chicken and Root Vegetables

Two nights later, Sarah cashed in her get-out-of-jail-free card and passed the torch to Jonathan.  Needless to say his crowd pleasing, and my personal favorite, meal of salad, roasted chicken, root vegetables (this time being parsnips, rutabaga, and carrots), and homemade gravy was a hit!  In addition, we were able to teach a few HelpXers how to properly roast a chicken and introduce two or three to the wonderful world of parsnips.  When asked what a parsnip looks like, I always flash back to a book I read as a child entitled Bunnicula about a bunny who by day is a cute, loveable, furry pet but by night is a wily and conniving vampire bunny who sinks his fangs into helpless vegetables and sucks them colorless.  A parsnip looks like a carrot after Bunnicula has finished with it.  Never read the book?  I have yet to find anyone else who has so don’t start questioning your childhood literary exposure yet.

Anyway, Jonathan’s meal went down so smoothly and deliciously, in fact, that then next day immediately brought a discussion of what Jonathan was making for dinner that night!  The truth is, while Jonathan’s chicken dinner was amazing, crispy skin and all, judging from the smile on Sarah’s face while for once only juggling a glass of house white and conversation with Flo, I think that first and foremost she was grateful for her gift of down time.  Glad to help, we’re here all week!  Ok, more like four to five weeks.

Grateful for Jonathan agreeing to cook dinner two days in a row, and being the generous and considerate hosts that they are, Patrick and Sarah didn’t want to add the burden of having to devise a cost effective meal for thirteen (the children had two playmates for dinner), so the following day came with a menu suggestion: Irish fish pie.  Here I am, a berry pie lover, a Dutch apple pie lover, a stone fruit pie lover, slowly becoming more open and accustomed to the idea of savory pies (Sarah makes a delightful duck confit pie), but I gotta tell ya, the idea of a fish pie did not get my glands flowing. 

Having never made or eaten Irish fish pie, or any fish pie for that matter, my curious and knowledge hungry husband hit the books.  From what he could gather from an Irish recipe book and a few dodgy online recipes, Irish fish pie seemed to be a variation of shepherd’s pie (brown your mince (ground meat), add peas, carrots, onion, spread on the bottom of a baking dish, cover with gravy, top with mashed potatoes and cheese, and bake).  I repeat.  Mashed potato topped fish, not inspiring.  Nevertheless, Jonathan accepted the challenge and sallied forth telling me to trust him, he’ll make it tasty.  Alright, fish pie it is.

I thinly sliced and sautéed two large leeks and a couple of slices of streaky bacon (belly bacon as opposed to back bacon) while Jonathan peeled the potatoes and set them to cook on the stove.  We then cut the various fish into bite sized pieces: cold smoked salmon, fresh haddock and a couple of other white fish filets.  He lightly poached the fish in a liquid of water, wine, onion, salt, lemon juice and herbs while I steamed some green peas.  Jonathan’s next move was, in my adoring opinion, a little bit of crafty culinary genius.  Using the now somewhat reduced poaching liquid as a base, he added milk, nutmeg and black pepper (channel light béchamel) and to cater to our gluten free HelpX friend, Muriel, instead of thickening the sauce with roux (oil/butter and flour), he thicken the sauce with mashed potatoes!  Now that we had our mise en place, it was time to begin layering: fish, bacon, leeks, green peas, sauce, mashed potatoes, light sprinkle of leeks for crispiness, and into the oven.

As everyone knows the creamy, rich marriage created by the union of the bland but substantial potato and the sharp but flavorful leek, is a promising start to any dish.  Needless to say, upon pulling the delightful smelling dish out of the oven and tasting the baked potato and leek topping, my spirits were lifted and I thought, ok, this fish pie business has potential. 

Fish Pie!

One by one, we each dished out a serving of fish pie and salad and found our seats at the table.  With a forced open mind, I forked a bite of fish, mashed potato and stabbed a few peas and hoped for the best.  I do have to admit, while the texture of mashed potato and poached fish and steamed peas offset only by a few crispy leeks was not the most stimulating, the flavor of PigWizard style fish pie was not as bad as I envisioned, bordering on pretty darn good!  The rest of the table, some skeptical and some excited for the meal, nodded their heads in mutual consent of a job well done. 

Upon asking Sarah for a critique on how this fish pie would stand up to tradition fish pie, she said that the main differences were that traditional Irish fish pie is made with béchamel as the sauce (richness) and one of the layers should be mashed hardboiled egg (texture), which Jonathan had noted in the recipe search and accidentally forgotten to add (thank God, in my opinion), but all in all, he had done very well!  Even ten year old Flo, who apparently does not typically like fish pie emitted several shouts of, “Delicious!”

Pleasantly surprised by the overall flavor and rather enjoying the smokiness of the fish and the potato-leek combo, I worked through my meal only to ultimately decide, along with Jonathan, that we probably do not need to ever eat fish pie again!

The Road to Durrow

Note:  As most of you know, after staying on the Finca los Tres Alcornoques in San Vicente de Alcántara for five weeks, we headed to Barcelona, my old stomping ground from six years ago.  With respect to the blog, as we had fallen more than a month behind, any available blogging time in Barcelona was spent catching up on our San Vicente posts.  And frankly, we were too busy living the good life of city, food and friends to spend too much time writing!  Fortunately, our experiences in Barcelona do not need to be shared chronologically and we have therefore made the executive decision to stay current with the blog and skip straight ahead to our new HelpX home.  Don’t worry, you will still hear all about Barcelona.  We promise to intermittently regale you with our stories of delicious food and more delicious food, cause that’s pretty much all we did!

“The Road to Durrow”

Monkey's All Packed Up!

After six weeks of visiting old friends, roaming the city and gorging ourselves on Spanish tapas, we packed our bags and left the beautiful but eternally sweaty summer heat of Barcelona for our next HelpX destination: The Gallic Kitchen in Durrow, Ireland. 

Gallic Kitchen Wares

Due to Jonathan’s diligent and persistent efforts on the HelpX website, we were able to secure two spots in the home of Irish couple, Patrick and Sarah, owners of the Gallic Kitchen.  That’s Gallic as in the French Gauls, not Gaelic as in Irish folk, a distinction which is clear after surveying Sarah’s menu of French style savory pastry pies and sweet fruit tarts.  While this HelpX host family does own horses and a fair bit of green Irish land, they are not technically a farm; however, with a fully functioning profession kitchen complete with café and several farmers’ market booths, from their HelpX profile they appeared to be an excellent segue to our next farm stay who could not accommodate us until September 1^st.

Johann & Baby Bird

After an emotional goodbye to my dear old friend Johann, at 7:30 p.m. we began our journey to the airport to catch our 10:30 p.m. flight to Dublin.  After a taxi and a train ride, we found ourselves at the check-in point for AerLingus at the Barcelona airport, holding our breaths that the attendant would not actually hold us to the 20 kilo weigh limit as it was likely that our bags were a mite overweight.  Now we had weighed them with our flat mate’s scale, but unless you have a nifty luggage scale like my dad, you will never really be spot on with test weighting the bags.  In addition, our experience so far with the strictness of Spanish airlines taught us that the limit was not actually enforced (even though we were 10 kilo’s over the limit on our flight from Extremadura to Barcelona!) so we weren’t too worried. 

Turns out that we were 4 kilo’s over the limit and AerLingus being an Irish, not Spanish airline, but who’s counting, we ended up having to pay €15 per kilo, yup, a total of €60 to get our bags on the plane; not an egregious amount but coming off of a minor spending spree in Barcelona, that €60 hurt a lil bit.  I told Jonathan that I didn’t need to bring eight dresses and twelve tee-shirts, but he insisted!  Anyway, we figured we’d help that bitter pill go down with a €3.50 glass of beer and a €6 mini bottle of cava at the gate (compare with €1.50 and €2 respectively if purchased at a bar back in the city).  Brilliant.

After a three hour flight and a time zone difference of one hour, we arrived at the Dublin airport at 12:30 a.m.  As we disembarked the plane, we stifled a few yawns refusing to be tired as our bus did not leave the Dublin airport until 5:30 a.m., and went in search of a place to park ourselves and our luggage.  As luck would have it, we came across a 24 hour food court complete with fabulous vinyl neon green couches, a TV that played an Irish news program on repeat, and lights so bright that guaranteed that neither of us would sleep a wink !  We staked our claim on one of said couches and settled in for the night.

As one well knows, sitting on a plane does not stimulate hunger.  Lying motionless on a vinyl green couch does not stimulate hunger.  You know what stimulated hunger in these two situations?  Boredom brought on by sleeplessness and, well, nothing better to do!  None of the hot food counters were actually open yet and the refrigerator only housed salads and, while they were actually quite impressive and tasty looking, they were also €12 and like I said, we weren’t actually hungry anyway, just bored.  After already having finished the piece of baguette and hardboiled eggs we had brought with us, I started drifting toward the French mustard packets.  In attempts to save me from myself, Jonathan went off to see what he could see at the airport mini mart while I held down the fort watching freshly downloaded America’s Next Top Model reruns on the laptop.

Oh joy!  Jonathan returned with a bag of cheddar popcorn and a clementine for me, a bag of salt and vinegar chips and a Twix for himself, and two coconut water juice boxes, complete with sippy straw!  My sweetie always comes through! 

A couple of hours later, about 4:30 a.m., we decided we had better have breakfast since we had a two hour bus ride ahead of us and we only had semi specific arrangements for how to get to the house after that (i.e. we had no idea when our next meal would be).  Still most definitely not hungry but grateful for the change of pace, we ordered a traditional Irish breakfast to share: two rashers (back bacon), two sausages, black and white pudding (sausage patty with and without blood), two pieces of white toast, scrambled eggs, and a grilled tomato.  Just a snack to keep us going till our next meal.

At 5:10 a.m., we tromped through the rain to our bus stop just in time to see it take off with a little wave from the driver.  Uh, problem?  As it was only 5:20, ten minutes before the bus was supposed to leave, I optimistically reassured myself and Jonathan that the wave meant that the driver was just getting fuel or something and coming back for us.  My current state of mind (tiredness, bordering on grumpiness which inevitably leads to weepiness) forced me to believe that he was coming back, and frankly did not allow for any other acceptable option. 

Luckily for everyone around me, namely Jonathan, the bus reappeared at a few minutes after 5:30 and we were once again on our way.  Thus began our first foray into the complications of dialing an Irish phone number (it’s harder than just dialing the number, I promise).  With less than €5 of credit left on our prepaid Spanish phone, we tried dialing Patrick and Sarah to let them know we had made it on the bus and we would be in Portlaoise (pronounced port leash) ready for pick up at 7:30.  Our efforts rewarded us with some blathering in Spanish about the number we dialed something something something.  After various combinations of including the country code, the area code, etc., we had tried every option on the Spanish mobile phone and therefore resigned ourselves to holding off until we arrived in Portlaoise so we could find a local payphone.

As the sun continued to rise revealing a crisp Irish morning, we pulled up to the bus stop in Portlaoise.  Exhausted and ready to lay our heads on our new pillows, we went in search of a payphone.  While the chill in the air was a welcomed contrast to the sweltering, sweatiness of life in Barcelona’s August heat, not only was I tired and a little grumpy, but now I was cold.  Luckily we found a mall whose doors were open even though none of the shops were.  With only a few euros in change and virtually no credit on our mobile phone, we again attempted to call Patrick and Sarah to please come pick us up!  This time there was no Spanish monotone lady telling us we dialed wrong, not even an Irish voice telling us how to properly dial an Irish phone number, only a few clicks and beeps and sucks for you cause the pay phone ate your money…again!  And again!  Needless to say, the more euros down the drain, the more frustrated and cranky we became.

Finally, as much as I scoff at the iPhone addictions of my husband and friends, I have to admit that it was Jonathan’s iPhone and the mall’s free WiFi that ultimately saved us: “How do you dial an Irish phone number?”  Oh, you are supposed to remove the country code and replace it with a 0?  Really?  And we were supposed to know that how?  We later found out that we were not the first HelpXers to be challenged by the dialing process, hence the websites dedicated to answering the How to…question.  Thanks for the heads up, folks!

With our last euro we were finally able to leave a message on Patrick’s mobile and hunkered down on a bench to wait for a return call.  As the computer battery was almost dead, I plugged it in to an empty socket near the bench until I was confronted by a helmet wearing, Segway riding mall security guard who stated that I was welcome to use the free WiFi but not the electricity.  Ok, then.  After about 20 minutes, Patrick appeared in his blue Gallic Kitchen van and we were finally on the last leg of our trip to our final destination: our new home in Durrow!

After about a 20 minute drive through green, green and more beautiful green, we drove up the driveway, past the neighbors cows, past Sarah’s horses and the kids’ ponies, and pulled up to a large brick house.  We were immediately greeted by a bounding golden retriever who couldn’t have been happier to have yet another two people who were willing to pet him.  So far so good!  We helped Patrick unload a few supplies from his trip to Portloise into the Gallic Kitchen professional kitchen which they had conveniently built a stone’s throw from the house.  In the kitchen we met Sarah who quickly introduced us to Claire (France), Kimberly (Taiwan) and Ruth (Ireland), before immediately sending us off to bed.  11:30 a.m. marked the conclusion of our 16 hour red eye and sleepless trip, and we finally crawled into our new bed for a much needed nap.

We awakened from our nap around 5:00 p.m. at which time Patrick immediately snatched us up and took us to Bob’s Bar in Durrow for some pre-dinner chit chat and a Guinness.  Despite our slightly rough road to get here, I gotta say, between the greenery, the crisp and refreshing air, the nice people and of course Guinness, I love Ireland so far!

Borris the Burro: My Finca BFF

"Can I have your peach?"

Upon arrival at the Finca Los Tres Alcornoques, my favorite animal immediately became the seven year old, fuzzy eared, sweet faced round bellied donkey, Borris.  Even his name!  What a perfect donkey name!  And his signature donkey look with his head down, ears pointing up and eyes gazing at you from under his lashes is enough to make anyone fork over the other half of whatever sweet piece of fruit they are eating!  I adored him so much that I figured he warranted his very own blog post!

"Food? Is that for me? Can I have it anyway?"

 After a few days of working on the finca; however, I quickly noticed that Borris didn’t really have a job or specific purpose on the farm.  This is very unusual in a farming area like San Vicente that typically frowns upon keeping (i.e. continuing to feed and waste resources on) animals that have aged beyond productivity, hence such dishes as coq au vin (old cock) and mutton stew (old sheep).  Why, you ask, does this finca have a donkey whose sole purpose is seemingly to eat everything in sight and get in as much donkey trouble as he can?  Well, I’ll tell you!

Donkey Rides on Brighton Beach, 1976 
(photo courtesy of Yvonne Thompson)

The owner of the finca and our hostess, Brin, is originally from Brighton, U.K. and according to her, it the dream of every British child to own a donkey.  This concept seemed strange as truthfully the thought of owning a donkey had never even occurred to me (until the birth of Shrek and his Donkey, the typical American childhood has been relatively limited in donkey exposure, save Winnie the Poo’s buddy Eeyore).  The thought of owning a donkey may have seemed bizarre because a trip to the beach for most American children means sun, sand, waves and sand toys.  For U.K. children, on the other hand, a trip to the beach meant the traditional seaside donkey ride!  Ok, now I get it!  If that was your childhood beach experience, what child wouldn’t want a pet donkey? 

Side bar:  Throughout the 1970’s the popularity of the U.K.’s beach donkeys increased, as did their societal awareness of protecting animals’ rights.  In 1973, Dr Elisabeth Svendsen founded the Donkey Sanctuary in Devon, which now includes eight farms and houses thousands of rescued donkeys.  My previous statement regarding Borris’ curious nature and aptitude for finding trouble seems to be typical donkey characteristics as confirmed by Claire, one of the grooms on Brookfield Farm: "Joseph has got the biggest personality of all the donkeys here at Brookfield. If there is a yard broom he can steal - he will. If there is a pot of paint he can stick his nose in - he will. If there are builders or workmen here that he can follow around and annoy - he will."  Extremely entertaining!

The Donkey Sanctuary has also helped sanction codes that protect the beach donkeys by prohibiting excessively overweight children from riding them as well as requiring that the donkeys are given at least one hour long break per day.  You can find information on how to foster or adopt a donkey from this fascinating charity at http://www.thedonkeysanctuary.org.uk/ (after browsing this site, I searched HelpX to see whether the sanctuary participated in the farm stay exchange and needed a donkey lover and her husband, but, to no avail).

Anyway, back to my darling Borris.  So, like most British children, Brin had always had the fantastical dream of owning a donkey, but now that she and her husband had sold their house in Brighton and bought a finca in San Vicente de Alcántara, Spain, the childhood wish had the potential for reality.  However, being the practical person that every successful farm owner must be, Brin’s financial priorities were focused strictly on essentials (e.g. how to utilize the four wells and set up a finca-wide water system, etc.).

That was until seven years ago, three years into owning the finca, when Brin was approached by a neighbor who said that he had a friend who had a baby donkey and was she interested in owning a donkey?  Concentrating on whatever frustrating project was currently at hand, she briskly brushed him off, “No, I don’t want a donkey!”  The next day, “Are you sure you don’t want a donkey?  He’s a good donkey!”  The next day, “You’re sure, really?”  “No, I can’t afford a donkey.”  “Just make an offer and I will ask my friend.”  In attempts to put him off for good, Brin devised a genius plan: tell the neighbor that all she could afford to pay was €100 when, as anyone knows, the going rate for a donkey was more like €300.  Quite “fluffed up and proud” of herself, she went inside the house thinking, ha, that’s the end of that!

Much to her surprise, two weeks later, the neighbor came back to tell Brin that his friend had consented and when did she want to pick up her new donkey!  Oops.  Apparently, an unspoken San Vicente pueblo rule is that if you make an offer on something and the offer is accepted, you’ve as good as bought it (i.e. it’s really bad form to change your mind).  Not wanting to create a rift between herself, a foreigner, and her neighbor, a long time Extremaduran finca owner, she resigned herself to the three foot high, three month old baby donkey.  Done and done.

I tell you, one look at Borris' super dooperly cute face with the long ears, of course the first thing you want to do is pet his soft donkey nose.  I think that donkeys are typically pretty shy and Borris was no exception.  Every time I would walk toward him he would back away giving me the cold shoulder.  Here, Borris, can I lure you with some greens?  Nope.  Brin told me not to worry, that he would get used to me being around the finca and even though he may be the "most moody donkey on the planet", he would come around.

Every day I walked from the main house out to the huerta to perform my daily gardening and greens gathering tasks.  After a few days, I suddenly heard this clomp, clomp, clomp sound behind me.  I turned around to find out that I was being followed by a donkey, whose curiosity had finally gotten the better of him and outweighed his shyness.  Well, almost.  As soon as I acknowledged his presence, Borris stopped and averted his eyes, dum dum dee dum…minding my own business.  When I put out my hand to pet him, he took a step back.  Giving him his space and time to trust me, I turned back around and again headed toward the huerta.  Lo and behold, after a few steps, Borris resumed his stalking game and followed me to the huerta!  This went on for about a week until he finally let me pet his soft nose.  That was it…best buds for life!  Don’t get me wrong, as close as we became, he still had his moody days when he didn’t feel like getting his nose pet; that’s right, Borris, just take your blood orange snack and take off.  Fine.  You can’t come to my birthday party.

CHOMP!

Speaking of snacks, for about half the time we were at the Finca Los Tres Alcornoques, Borris and the sheep were penned right next to the huerta, with only a flimsy fence between the ravenous beasts and the vegetables desperately attempting to survive in their overgrown patch.  I already mentioned the innocent donkey face look that would make you give him anything he wants; I’m surprised any of the other animals received their promised sack of greens what with Borris hanging his head over the huerta fence begging for scoobie snacks!

The finca was designed to have several areas in which to rotate the sheep and Borris so that they will always have green grass and plants to nibble on.  A few weeks into our stay, the remaining green grass in their current paddock had been completely gobbled down, which meant that it was time to switch to a different area.  Unfortunately, the next area in the rotation needed some fence repairs because there were a few areas in which the sheep could escape.  With summer rapidly approaching and so as not to let the last bit of grass growing on the finca go to waste, Brin penned Borris in the questionable fence section and the sheep in the next section. 

The following morning we heard a desperate, pitiful donkey bray from Borris’ new pen.  As I had not yet heard one peep out of Borris since we had been living on the finca, I was slightly concerned.  Brin warned me that I should check on him because there is always a possibility that this bray is the cry, “Help!  I tried to escape and now I’m stuck!”  She said that while theoretically he cannot escape, the little fence would not stop the mischievous donkey from nibbling on and potentially creating a hole in the fence.  Apparently, one year, while penned adjacent to the pig domain, Borris managed to free the pigs!  Too funny!  As it turned out, the bray was simply, “Come play with me!  I’m bored without my little sheep friends (even though I try to kick them in the head when they come near my food)!”

One of the highlights of the San Vicente farm stay was the day I finally got to ride Borris!  He had been trained for riders and in fact, Brin had hoped that her daughter would take to riding him which would also serve as a justification for his presence on the finca.  Alas, the little seven year old had no interest unless of course someone else wanted to ride him.  Go figure. 

Anyway, after fitting him with what was actually a pony saddle, thus barely fitting around his big donkey belly, Borris and I took a test lap around the front yard just to make sure he was happy with me on his back and to make sure the saddle felt secure.  Soon we were off down the lane, clomp, clomp, clomp…uh, Borris, you’re going a little fast…uh, did I mention that it had been a while since I had ridden (i.e. at least three years)…oh, boy, just hold on, wait, this in an English saddle (i.e. no horn)!  Don’t worry, I got the hang of it and we ended up having a blast!  Borris was happy to be getting some exercise and I was happy to see more of the countryside.  We saw some big ol' pigs, horses, cows, fruit trees and even more cork trees.  We got barked at by a huge vicious dog.  We were trotting happily along...wait, a fork in the road…do I forge ahead or just turn around now?  As most of you know, my sense of direction is not always the tippy toppest, hence the slight trepidation at the fork in the road.  Luckily, the two finca dogs, Marta and Filly had decided to come along on our ride and I was confident that if I lost my way, they would be able to lead us home.  Unfortunately I do not have any pictures of this lovely countryside jaunt because Jonathan wanted to take a picture of me riding away, but the only problem with that was that I rode away without the camera!  Oops!

Well, we managed to find our way back to the finca without incident and I found that I had made a friend for life!  Clearly Borris loved the ride because after I removed his saddle and got us some water, we parked in the shade to cool off where he repeatedly nuzzled and cuddled me with his big white nose.  You see why I call him my finca BFF?  Borris, I miss you already!

Borris & Baby Bird