the hydranchula goes to ireland: new year's, new foods

the hydranchula goes to ireland is a series of posts i'm writing during my j term study abroad in dublin, ireland. these posts will look a little different because they will have proper capitalization and pictures because professors like proper capitalization and pictures. please follow me on instagram to see what i'm eating and drinking up to every day.

read the rest of the story here.

Finding a butcher can be difficult. Not that I would know; I’m a vegetarian. But I’m fascinated with meat. Not all meat, though, chicken and pork don’t really do it for me. I’m a beef girl. My favorite thing to do on a lazy day is head to Eataly where I grab a small cup of pear or coconut gelato (it’s the third best gelato in the world, so I’ve been told) and walk around the meat section. I love checking out the marbled steaks and string wrapped roasts. Everything is so beautiful, but rarely do my desires to purchase any meat go too much past wanting to bring it home and keep it as a pet. A dead pet.

I’m a vegetarian for health reasons. When I ate meat, I ate a lot of processed and breaded and fried meats. I was a cheeseburger junkie, but the meat didn’t make my body feel the way it made my mouth feel, so I gave it up. I occasionally eat fish and every once in a while; I’ll fold for a cheeseburger from Five Guys.

But now that the ban on European beef has been lifted in the United States, I’m considering a switch back to my old carnivorous ways. I’ve been a pretty good vegetarian for the last three and a half years, so the thought of eating meat, and not just any meat, but beef, is a little weird for me.

So where do you even buy good meat? As much as I love Trader Joe’s, I don’t feel great about buying meat from a package. And as much as I love window-shopping at Eataly, I don’t think my student salary can afford it. A butcher just seems like the best option.

While doing research for the final project for my Ireland class, I used Yelp to help me figure out some butcher stats in Chicago and Dublin. Typing “butcher” into Yelp for near Chicago yields 962 matches. The same “butcher” search finds 943 matches near Dublin. At first, I was surprise to see more butchers in Chicago. Although it was only 19 more, I couldn’t believe it. In my 18 months in Chicago, I’ve never noticed a butcher. You can’t walk down a street in Dublin without finding a butcher.

            Then I remembered population. Dublin had a population of 506,211 as of 2011. Chicago’s population? 2.719 million as of 2013. So for about the same amount of butchers, Dublin has about one fifth of the population.

            That’s so many butchers! Crazy, right?! Butchers are the new Starbucks, I guess. It’s got me wondering if reintroducing Irish Beef into the US meat market might start a change in the way people buy and eat meat.

            Visiting Europe has made me reevaluate what I eat. From what I saw, Europeans seem to have a healthier relationship with food. Portions are smaller, the quality is better and a lot of people still leave food on the plate. So, since I didn’t really make any New Year’s resolutions, I thought I might type up something like a food manifesto… or something like that. So here they are, better food choices for 2015:

1. Go to more local and famer’s markets: support local farmers that make better choices for how food grows.
2. Buy organic: spend a little bit more money to lose as many chemicals as possible.
3. Read labels: don’t buy anything with ingredients you can’t pronounce or don’t know what they are. If they have to be explained, you probably don’t want them in your body.
4. Shop more often: do two small shopping trips a week instead of one big one every two weeks, this will help guarantee that the food is fresher
5. Stop buying processed food: just stop.

the hydranchula goes to ireland: a bit about paris, its ladies and indifference

the hydranchula goes to ireland is a series of pots i’m writing during my j term study abroad in dublin, ireland. these posts will look a little different because they will have proper capitalization and pictures because professors like proper capitalization and pictures. please follow me oninstagram to see what i’m eating and drinking up to every day.

read the rest of the story here.

Europe is interesting. That’s a general statement, obviously, but it’s all I can really come up with to describe how I feel about my tour so far.

Take for instance: I’m in Paris right now, so when I tried to use Google it’s instantly Google.fr. I started typing “How to” and the first things that pop up are:

“How to…”

            …”get away with a murderer”

            …”becomeParisian in one hour”

            …”be Parisian wherever you are”

            …”basic”

Interesting, yeah? I’m not sure what to make of the first one, but I wouldn’t mind learning how to become Parisian in one hour considering I’ve been walking around the city in a torn jacket and a pair of Irish dirt covered Dr. Martens.

Here are some things I’ve noticed about Parisian women:

No one seems to color their hair, and if they are it’s only to cover grays. Blondes are few and far between in Paris. This is something that pleases me, because the only thing I love more than being blonde is being the only blonde, and yet it’s got me thinking maybe I should cut off all of my blonde hair. There isn’t very much that seems to go into the hair routine passed There must be something freeing about accepting yourself for what you look like.

Along with no hair bleaching or coloring, the rest of the beauty routine is pretty natural. Makeup is minimal and made to look natural. This is easy for me because I avoid eye shadow and liner at all costs (due to Raccoon Eye Syndrome that hit me hard from ’05-’08). I haven’t seen too much lipstick, and when we went to a bar (for a little taste of Paris night life) people were a little too interested in our lipstick. We were all wearing dark berry/winecolored lipstick, and all of the French boys said we were “very punk,” while the French girls tried to ignore us.

A coat can be made of one (or both) of two things, and two things only: wool or fur. Things that look like wool or fur are also acceptable if you don’t have the budget for it, but you better be saving for the real thing. Since the coat covers the outfit, it’s important that it makes the statement the clothes can’t: I’m cold, but I’m still Parisian.

Loafers are a common style of flat shoe here. Any type of sustainable flat is okay, like oxfords, but I noticed loafers were the most popular flat shoes. No socks, of course, unless they are patterned and the pants they’re worn with are cropped to the ankle. This is the only way to really spice up an outfit in any way since jewelry isn’t very flashy.

Wedding rings are much simpler here than in the US, where it seems like the engagement diamond needs to be surrounded by a million other diamonds because it’s lonely or something. Other jewelry is minimal and gold or silver, and all styles are very classic and timeless. The flashiest piece of jewelry I’ve seen so far was on the right-hand ring finger of an elderly woman. Her hair was perfectly coiffed; she had on large Chanel branded black sunglasses and a floor length dark brown fur coat. Her wedding ring was of modest size, and she had on another simple gold ring on her left-hand index finger. The flashiest piece of jewelry I’ve seen so far was on this very glamorous woman, and it was an emerald (about the size of the average healthy garden pea) surrounded by small diamonds. The whole thing was set on a gold band, and it was really very simple and boring.

I was a little nervous about Paris because all I’d ever heard was that the people are rude. Like a stereotype, “American’s are fat and stupid,” and “Parisians are stinky and rude.” You know, smelly because of the no shaving thing…

But the people weren’t really rude; they just seemed indifferent to my existence. A little irritated that my French was spotty, at best, but mostly they just didn’t really care that I was there.

Which is funny, because after spending a little over four days there, I feel pretty indifferent to Paris’ existence.

the hydranchula goes to ireland: part 3

the hydranchula goes to ireland is a series of posts i'm writing during my j term study abroad in dublin, ireland. these posts will look a little different because they will have proper capitalization and pictures because professors like proper capitalization and pictures. please follow me on instagram to see what i'm eating and drinking up to every day.

read the rest of the story here.

Dublin Day 4:

Dublin day four was not very interesting. We may or may not have gone out to Temple Bar (which is a very popular street full of pubs and restaurants, even a TGI Friday's) the night before and had a few glasses of cider. So on the fourth day, we slept until 15.00 (3 p.m.).

We had dinner that night as a class with a local journalist who spoke to us about what it is like to be a Journalist in Ireland. 

The dinner itself was very good. We keep eating this vegetable soup, which is more like a creamed vegetable soup. It sounds healthy, but it is probably not because it is so delicious.

After dinner, because we slept all day, we went straight to bed and didn’t wake up until we had to.

Dublin Day 5:

Since the class started, our days are not very eventful. We meet lots of interesting people that have lots of interesting things to say, but it’s all very educational.

We had a bit of free time between our morning class and dinner, so a few of use decided to try and see some of the National Museums. After walking around the park, following the street signs for the museums, we got a little turned around. What would take Google Maps five minutes to walk to, takes us 20 minutes to walk to.

But we found our way. We walked through a door toward what I thought was a reception desk. There was a Garda officer (Irish Police officer) standing at the door. I thought it was weird, but I ignored it. We walked up to the reception desk. The man behind the desk asked us if he could help us.

“Oh, we just want to see the museum,” Alex said. He told us the museum was the next building over.

“Oh. Well, what’s this building?”

“This is Parliament.”

Whoops! We turned around and left as fast as we could, trying to hold in our giggles. I guessed this was the type of thing that made Americans look stupid in other countries. Only we would think that an official government building, armed by multiple police and large gates, could be a museum.

We went to the Arlington Hotel for dinner and a show that night. I wasn’t very interested in it because the dinner was Irish (and the vegetarian options at authentic Irish restaurants often, for lack of a better word, suck) and the show was a mash-up of traditional Irish music and dance. I was into the music, but not necessarily the dancing.

After spending enough (not a significant amount of time, but enough) of my childhood following around a friend whose family danced, all I could picture this show being was a bunch of twelve-year-old girls lined up in green dresses, throwing their feet on hardwood. I wasn’t feeling it.

For many people, I think the food was very good. But I think that I made terrible menu choices, and I ended up being very hungry. The dessert was good, even though there was no cobbler or crumble option.

I tried to drag my eating out as long as I could. I figured I could distract myself from the terrible show if I had something in front of me to hold my attention. It worked, for a bit. I played “find the potato” in my little pot of vegetarian chili until the music started.

One of my favorite things about Irish music is the storytelling that goes along with it. A song is never just a song, it's always a story. Stories of love and loss and drinking lots of alcohol.

And then the dancers came. They jumped up on stage, and as much as I wanted to dislike it, all the pounding and the kicking and the sparkling outfits, I kind of loved it.

I was a bit sad when the show ended, but I was excited to go to bed. We met for dinner around 19.00 (7 p.m.), and it didn’t end until 22.30 (10:30 p.m.).  We’d been awake since 08:00 (8 a.m.), and I was exhausted.

So, of course, we went out to Temple Bar.