Ireland #3: Me Mudder, Da Tour Guide

"I can't remember what I did yesterday, but I remember these little things from over 40 years ago..." - Me Mudder

She is a wealth of local knowledge and history. She'll show you flowers and grottos and creeks and beautiful views no tour guide, book, or map could ever provide. She drives fast and fearlessly down tiny, winding, country roads, making guesses as to turns and directions, and always ends up in the right place.


We pass a monument and gravestone for a famous greyhound named Master McGrath. Yes, for real. I never would have noticed the small landmark had she not pointed it out. She remembers that her father used to stop the car and make the whole family get out to pay their respects to the famous dead dog.

She knows every beautiful little beach on the southern coast of County Waterford and County Tipperary. She knows exactly which turnoffs are worth stopping at, which will provide the best pictures.



It rains nearly every day in Ireland. Today it was pouring as she drove us down the curving roads of the coast. She eyes the blue sky in front of us, past the rain and black clouds. "That's where we're headed; it'll be sunny there," she proclaims. And sure enough, as we pull up to our destination, the sun breaks out and the rain lets up. And we see the most beautiful double rainbow I've ever witnessed.

"Never let the weather keep you from your plans - the rain always stops eventually."

She knows the exact mountain to visit to see the rhodedendrums that are only out for a few weeks of the year. We drive up The Vee (mountain area not far from Fethard) and are suddenly surrounded by the blossoming pink flowers. They're everywhere, above and below and on either side of us.


She tells stories that sound like urban legends; one about a man who was buried standing up on top of a mountain so he'd always enjoy the view. Another about a bottomless lake nestled between two hills. The thing is, these are not just stories. Everybody in Fethard swears that they're true. These stories are passed through the local residents - no tour or book tells you this stuff.

I know I could come to Ireland any time and my family there is constantly telling me to bring friends to visit, but honestly, I'd really miss having my mother as a tour guide. Without the stories, it just wouldn't be the same. They add so much history, interest, and hilarity to the whole experience of being here.

So, in conclusion, if you ever travel to Ireland, you should probably hire my mother to guide you. I promise, it's worth it.

Roots

Oh hay there! I have a question for you all. Do you think my mom and I look alike?


Yeah...most people don't. Wah wah! My mother is 100% Irish, which (because of math) makes me 50% Irish. Man, I love being Irish. We have like THE best music ever. Proof:

All God's Creatures


The Wild Rover


Boulevogue


These songs always strike such a strong chord in my heart. There are certain melody lines, certain inflections, in Irish music that are like no other music. The songs are so sincere and meaningful and heartfelt. Or, in the case of All God's Creatures, so hilarious.

And man, maybe Ireland isn't known for its food, but there are a few choice items that are so ridiculously amazing if done right. The other night, Genia and I went out to celebrate being Irish and spilt two dishes at Brocach: corned beef & cabbage and fish & chips. So delicious. Unfortunately, some of the more delicious things in life do not photograph well in a dark environment on a new camera I haven't quite figured out yet, so you'll have to observe these and use your imagination. And just trust me that they were absolutely delicious.


Here's my drink: a Murphy's. Look closely at the foam - see anything?


By the way, the people at Brocach say the name is Gaelic for "badger den." My mom says they're making it up. I believe her. But hey, the food is delicious and the atmosphere is pretty lovely.


I'll be traveling to Ireland this summer for my cousin's wedding, and I'm so excited to go. It's been awhile, and I miss it terribly. As kids, we spent many summer weeks in Ireland; I feel like I grew up there. My mother's entire family lived (and still lives) there, and I feel lucky that we got to know all my cousins, aunts and uncles, and grandmother as well as we have despite the distance. And Ireland is so beautiful. You know all those rumors about the rolling green hills and beautiful mountains and rocky cliffs and green everything? Well, they're all true. Ireland is one of the most beautiful places I've ever been. Besides the natural scenery, there are ancient churches and castles by the side of the road anywhere you go. It's amazing. Check out these pictures from my sister from our last trip there in 2007.












There is a feeling, an energy, a smell...something, that is so different from here in the US. Maybe it's memories of childhood and growing up, or maybe it's the lushness of the land, or maybe just different air. Whatever it is, I miss it and I love it, and I cannot wait to go back there. This trip is really going to be a special one for me.

Lastly, I'll leave you with this. On St. Patrick's Day this year, why not make it a little less about the booze, and a little more about the Irish? Seriously. Celebrate my homeland and my people, but stay classy about it, okay? I mean, if a bunch of rowdy Arab men can do it, you can too!

The Pita Inn

There's a little restaurant in Skokie, IL called The Pita Inn. Oh yes, that link has music. This place is amazing. Vegan and straightedge kids, hardcore carnivores and drunks, come from far and wide to sample tastes of the smooth hummus, garlicky baba ghannouj, and succulent meats. Well, wait. The vegan kids don't eat the meat. And maybe some of the straight-edge kids don't either. Sometimes the drunks may stick to the veggie options, but other times they choose meats. Oh lord, where was I?

Sometimes when I'm visiting my family in Chicago, I get to go on a little outing to The Pita Inn with Dad. If the weather is nice, we take his red convertible. He asks me repeatedly if I'd like to drive, and after saying "no thanks" three or four times, I finally ask "Do you want me to drive?" He promptly hands me the keys and settles into the passenger seat. I drive that car like an old lady. It's just too beautiful for my regular Impatient Jackass driving.

We drive to The Pita Inn Market, which is next door to the restaurant. My father is greeted by his friend at the counter immediately; they start laughing and catching up in Arabic, and I begin wandering down the aisles. There are at least 14 types of olive oil on the shelf right underneath about ten types of honey. Some of the honey has chunks of honeycomb in the jar, but no label. Just down from there are about 30 types of jam. My eyes linger on the fig jam but I move away reluctantly, remembering the jar I already have in my refrigerator in Madison. In the back of the store is a small refrigerated case with three kinds of feta cheese (French, Greek, Bulgarian) and several types of olives. Dad's friend hands us tiny plates with samples of everything to help us decide what to get. Behind us is the shelf of nuts: pistachios, almonds, cashews, walnuts, some with spices, some plain, all taking up an entire aisle. Another aisle of the store is devoted to non-food items including tea sets, olive oil soaps, other skin products, movies, dvds, hookahs, and tobacco. You can buy a beautiful tea set for under $20.

Each shelf in the store is stuffed full with groceries and other items that you'd find at most markets, as well as certain gems that you really cannot find just anywhere. For example: preserved lemons, a special food coloring that's used for the dessert kunafa, and sesame candy, along with various chocolates I only recognize from my childhood times in Ireland. Oh, and phone cards. You can buy a ton of phone cards here. I love this place. I could stand around in the aisles for hours.

I always leave the store with bags full of wonderful groceries that I wouldn't even attempt to find in Madison. My staples are hummus and baba ghannouj and fresh-baked pillowy pita bread, but I've collected some other odds and ends on various trips. Like this one - I also got a bag full of dates and a package of lahem b'ajeen (which my parents referred to as "Arabic pizza" when I was a child to get me to eat it. Nice work, Mom and Dad!). The jar of pickles is straight from my dad though; no store can compare.
At the bottom of this picture is the lahem b'ajeen, and at the top is the hummus. Delicious.

On this most current trip, I bought some of that unmarked honey. It's delicious, and very good looking, which is always a lovely combination.

Honeycomb!
I also bought a giant bottle of Sultan olive oil because, you know, it's called Sultan. And this kind of olive oil tastes different. Better.
I always feel well-stocked after a shopping trip to the Pita Inn Market, mostly because I can do so much with just these few items. I can easily put together several diverse meals with just a few items. Meals like this are some of my favorites. Maybe it's in the same realm as One of Each; you get so many tastes and flavors, and you can combine everything just as you like it. There is something so appealing about having just a few items, but so many possibilities.

What is it about food in general though? Food is memories. Food is comfort. Food is home. Food is family. Food is definitely my family. You cannot come into my parents' home (or my aunties' homes, or my cousins' or sister's homes - it runs in the family) without being well-fed and, very likely, uncomfortably stuffed. It doesn't matter if you're not hungry. Perhaps you'll sample new and unfamiliar fruits or be treated to homemade soup, or maybe, if you're lucky, get an entire meal complete with cousins, upwards of seven meats, zillions of sides, people stealing off your plate, and perhaps even a rendition of the family song. Eating, sitting around the table together, it's all so important and critical. Food is huge.

This past Sunday comes to mind. I eat brunch with my family in the backyard of my parents' home. As we finish our fried eggs and bangers and rashers (irish breakfast meats - sausages and bacon, basically), we sit in the sun, chatting, and my father, without breaking the conversation, hands me a small piece of Arabic bread with cheese and tomatoes stuffed inside. I take it wordlessly and eat it; the perfect ending to a lovely family breakfast, My Lovely Family breakfast. Irish and Iraqi, all in one. It's perfect and natural and delicious.

Yes, the food is delicious, and yes, this is a very important factor in deciding what to eat because, you know, you should eat delicious things. But there is also that little spark of culture and history and family, all wrapped up in a couple of food items. The need to connect somehow when I feel homesick. And this homesickness is not about Chicago as a city. When I'm homesick for Chicago, I turn on WBBM NewsRadio 78. We get totally clear reception up here. I listen to the traffic report on the 8's and it makes me smile with a little pang in my heart. But this other homesickness, this is about my family, and being homesick for them, for sitting around a table and my dad passing me olives at the end of a meal, and for my mom making the most delicious foods from both sides of our world, which is no easy feat.

And so, tonight's dinner: spoonfuls of hummus and baba ghannouj with sliced tomato, greek feta cheese, olives, and warm pita bread. So many items! So many combinations! So many sexy results!
Maybe tomato and cheese inside the bread.
Or perhaps a tomato dipped in baba ghannouj.
How about a single, perfect olive? How about 12 of them? Because that's how many I ate.

And as for dessert...I'm not huge on dessert-y things right now, but I did find the perfect, tiny bite - Turkish Delights! I remember tasting these at parties when I was younger and knowing they tasted funny, but also knowing it was a good funny. Like, "let me get a couple more of those" funny. They're usually flavored in lemon, mint, or rose, which is actually flavored with rose water.

Okay, I'm going to go try to fry an egg like my mother can. Please understand if I or anybody else in my family tries to feed you all the time. It's probably because we love you.

Dates. No, I Mean the Food Kind.

As a kid, I was a very picky eater. My mother would cook amazing Iraqi food, delicious salmon dishes, and flavorful, creative recipes of all kinds, and I'd eat fishsticks. On my birthdays when I got to choose where we went out to dinner, I'd choose Chili's or Applebees. For real, I would. Gross, eh? I think my father is still regretful about those meals, even 15 - 20 years later. Whoops a daisy!

I was always extremely resistant to Arabic food, or what I perceived to be Arabic food. My mother would make kibbeh, or "rice and gravy," which was basically white rice and red tomato gravy with meat and/or vegetables, and I'd pout and whine about it like a little baby. I was not a bratty kid, but this was one place where I really did it up. In addition to the beautiful cooking on which I missed out, there were lovely individual items that I hated on as well. My father always had a love for figs and dates, and believe it or not, I wouldn't even try either until well into my teenage years. What a fool I was...I cannot believe I missed out for all those years.

Now when I see dates, I feel like I'm home. My father speaks about the date palms in Baghdad and how they grew everywhere, and the fruit trees in the backyard of his parents' house, and my heart swells with love and pride and sadness, all at once. To be able to reach up and pick a fig out of a tree as you sit in your backyard reading...can you even imagine? It makes me want to cry a little bit. And so, I am incredibly thankful for my father's persistence (as well as my mother's patience) with my eating habits over the years, and happy that I now, finally, have so much love for dates and figs. See here for further evidence.

I was going to go grocery shopping tonight, but then it started raining really hard and the tornado sirens went off, so I stayed home. Somewhat short on food, I searched my fridge to find some satisfying Dinner Two ingredients (Dinner One was Special K Red Berries and almond milk when I got home from work at 5:15. Classy). I spotted the giant plastic container of dates my father had given me the last time I was at home, the bag of walnuts I bought at the Co-op the other day, and a container of Greek yogurt. It was totally a "HEY GIRL" moment. Meaning, I got real excited.

When Christopher visited me last fall, he seemed to make masterpieces out of practically nothing, at least in terms of food. I remember this dessert he made, poached pears with dates, honey, and cream.

I mean for real, it came out of nowhere. And it was amazing. So, I decided that Dinner Two would be date-based tonight. Please note, I used FANCY dates. That's right, I only eat fancy things.
Dates look like small, fat turds. Or giant raisins. Or both. Whatever gets you excited.
Now, for the extremely technical description of how to remove the pits and put in the walnuts:

1. Wash your hands real good.
2. Dig your fingers into the dates, making a lengthwise opening.
3. Pull out that damn pit.
4. Stuff a walnut back in there.
5. Wash your hands real good again. Probably clean underneath your fingernails for date guts.

Beautiful! Now, here's where my parents would usually leave it and put the dates on a nice plate to serve to guests. But I was in the mood for more ingredients, so I got out the Greek yogurt. Greek yogurt is really good; it's creamy and thick and not sweet. Plus it's full of protein, but I'm more concerned with the deliciousness. Although my father would probably criticize this part, I went ahead with it anyhow. He's a purist, you see, and he has extremely strong opinions on the treatment of fruits. A direct quote from him: When you want to mock lovely fruits, you put chocolate on dates or cheese on figs. This is an insult. Yeah. He is adamant about this. Sorry, Dad.
I drizzled a bit of honey on top of the dates, although it was totally unnecessary because they are incredibly sweet already. But it was a nice touch. It was like there were two different sweetnesses, but they blended together really gently and smoothly.
Dip the honey-covered dates and walnuts into the Greek yogurt, and you got yourself a snack! Yow! Thanks, rain and parents and food that was in the fridge! You made it a good night!

Road Trip With Mom! Days Two and Four: Memphis and a Bit of Nashville

Welcome to Day Two of Mom and my road trip! It's difficult to top a night at the Grand Ole Opry with all the olds, but Mom and I were determined to do our best! We had a lovely brunch on the riverfront, and bumped into a couple of lovely ladies who you all might recognize...



That's right, it's Reba McIntyre and Wynonna! Such a strange coincidence that we ran into these two superstars at a breakfast advertised as "Breakfast with the Stars" because there they were! It must have been our lucky day...

We (sadly) left Opryland, but our spirits were quickly lifted when we realized that, on our drive to Memphis, we'd be passing right by Loretta Lynn's ranch in Hurricane Mills! We stopped there and saw some fantastic memorabilia (we weren't allowed to take pictures - lame), went inside her tour bus, checked out the Motocross track, and even spied her personal horses. One had "LL" branded on it's butt. Kinda weird.




After our wonderful break, we finished the trip to Memphis. You know what man? I love Memphis. I thank the entire universe for Memphis. I know we only saw a tiny part of it, but really. This is where so much of what I love was born, and I couldn't be more thankful for that.

We spent our first evening in Memphis on Beale St. eating barbecue and fried catfish and listening to a jazz orchestra. Later, we went to B.B. King's club where we saw a blues band. My mom can totally hang! Fantastic night.


Beale St. at night.


Notes to self: On Memphis...Sometimes a city is just a city. And music is just music. And just because you're in a gigantically powerful, passionate city, listening to this beautiful music, it doesn't mean you'd fall back in love. It isn't the music and the city that make you love. It would have to be the person. This is what it means to be thirty and know yourself really well, and be open, but cautious, in affairs of the heart. Taking a cue from Johnny Cash, I'm keeping a close watch on this heart of mine...

Sorry for the cryptic junk - get plenty of vodka in me sometime and maybe I'll explain that one some time...Okay, so on to Day 4. I'm skipping Day 3 for now because I really need to process that entire day a bit more, but I don't want to keep you all waiting too long. I mean, I know it's very difficult to carry on with your regular life when I'm not blogging...sorry dudes!

We woke up in Memphis on Tuesday morning and headed straight to Sun Studio. Sun was a recording studio and record label in Memphis started by Sam Phillips. Okay. Deep breath. Dudes, we were in the room where Elvis, Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison, Jerry Lee Louis, Carl Perkins, Howling Wolf, and so many others recorded! Seriously, this was so cool. We heard original recordings of all these artists, including Elvis's first record ever - he'd recorded a song for his mother for her birthday the first time he walked into Sun.

Jerry Lee Louis, Carl Perkins, Elvis, and Johnny Cash.



Later, we went to the Stax Museum of American Soul. This was absolutely the high point of this trip for me. Do you even know how much I love Otis Redding? Ever since the first time I saw Pretty in Pink and Duckie danced to "Try a Little Tenderness," I was in love with Otis Redding. I love every song he sings. I love the way he dances. I love everything about him. Once in awhile, as I walk by Lake Monona in Madison, I feel a surge of anger and sadness - this was the lake that swallowed Otis's plane when he was just 26 years old. To think that he accomplished so much in such a short life, expressed so much amazing music and art - it just blows my mind.


Stax was fantastic. Here's the hall of records - I think it's every single record put out by Stax. It went on forever...


That afternoon, we drove back to Nashville, checked into our hotel, and had a lovely sushi dinner at Ru San's, which is my absolutely favorite sushi restaurant! The Hodi-Totonchi family, plus many of my sister's friends, have spent many hungover lunches and dinners at Ru San's in Atlanta...and there was one in Nashville. Fantastic!

Here's a view of our hotel - it used to be a train station. I'll get more daytime pictures today.



I'm really loving it down here.

Next up! Day Three: Graceland and the National Civil Rights Museum.