Cooking and Cliff walks.

The cooking adventure continues. Since my last post, I have made an omelette , disarticulated and cut up a chicken, filleted a fish for the first time in my life. I have made Chicken breasts with spices and Orzo, cooked pan fried mackerel with green olive, celery and raisin salsa and baked a California Three stone pie. The demonstrations continue every afternoon. Doug, Nils and I headed off on Wednesday night to Ardmore for a cliff hike and inspection of the town and medieval tower. Doug drives a very nice Land Rover. It continues to be very warm here so the boys Doug, Benjamin, Nils and I went swimming on Thursday and Friday. Early in the week the tide was high but by the end of the week it was very low. Tides are funny that way. Saturday I was able to share a taxi into Middleton and from there we travelled into Cork. Cork was a small city with a vibrant downtown. No homeless people. Kevin from Cork who is taking the course suggested I check out the university which was a bit of a disappointment as nothing terribly notable had happened at the university. I think a tour of U of Alberta would have been more interesting. The tour cost 10 Euros. The art gallery which Kevin recommended was also closed. I wandered around downtown checking Waterstones and the Dubray bookstores. People must still read in Ireland. There was a protest to stop the war in Gaza. Lots of people solemnly walking through downtown Cork led by a drummer. At least the Irish still have some morals. The English market was probably the most interesting place I visited. A large undercover market where I bought some beef for Sunday supper and a Poke bowl. I made it back to the train station by 3:15 to meet up with the people I had come with to Cork so we could share a cab ride from Middleton back to Ballymaloe. We reprovisioned in Middleton. Sunday I headed to the dairy operation on the farm at 7:30. It was sleeping in after having got up for 6 am the day before to help in the bread shed. They have 9 Jersey cows and sell both pasteurized and unpasteurized milk from the shop. I have been avoiding the unpasteurized milk but I wanted to go and check out the operation. They milk with equipment but the dairy man let me pull a tit. The cows are quite well organized and the milking went very quickly. The equipment is all designed for rapid self cleaning. We also got to feed the chickens ducks and calves. I left the chores a little early to meet up with Faith a semi-retired Family Physician from Toronto. We took a taxi about 10 minutes to a small nearby community called Ballycotton known for a beautiful cliff walk along the sea. It was very windy and the sea was the roughest it has been since my arrival. The views from the cliffs were very impressive. It was fun chatting with Faith as she has had a very interesting career having worked both in the US, Canada and internationally for the Red Cross in Afghanistan, Turkistan, Congo and Tanzania. Faith is taking the sustainable farming course which is different from our course. She feels that a lot of what they are being taught is not scientifically based.Read more