Wendy’s Blog

While I was at grocery shopping, I saw this little item.

I had to get it! Pancakes, no pan or cooking required. And it’s American! Whohoo. Until now, I never thought about pancakes being American style or not. It was ok. Very sweet and fluffy.

So all this got me inspired making my own “American Pancakes.”

I found this simple recipe on the internet, of course. Internet is like a giant cookbook! UnQAed cookbook that is. I have made some hideous food out of the unQAed internet cookbook.

Anyway, here’s the recipe if you feel so inspired not to eat out of the packet. It’s not hard and it’s fun!

American Style Pancake

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 3 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon white sugar
• 1 1/4 cups milk
• 1 egg
• 3 tablespoons butter, melted

Directions

In a large bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, salt and sugar. Make a well in the center and pour in the milk, egg and melted butter; mix until smooth.
Heat a lightly oiled griddle or frying pan over medium high heat. Pour or scoop the batter onto the griddle, using approximately 1/4 cup for each pancake. Brown on both sides and serve hot.

So, I didn’t have plain flour, so I used some self rising flour and omitted salt and baking powder. Also, don’t heat up the pan too hot, you will end up with a burnt mess. The pancakes got butter in it so it didn’t really stick to the pan.

Here are some photo evidence of this yummy yummy goodness.

Being cooked!

Flipped!

Ready to eat!

Wow, the title of this post make it sound like I cure a salmon from a disease or something. But at last, this is not the case. In this case we ate him (her?!)

The foods I miss a lot about CA is sushi, taco truck, and ramen. Not necessary in any order. But I love them so much. It is hard to get good sushi here in restaurants. We tried a few and the fish that were severed looked like they died went to heaven and came back and died again.

So imaging my happiness when I saw a recipe for curing salmon! Salmon is very very good here, but like everyone I am afraid of catching a new best friend by eating it raw. This is like the best of 2 worlds and so easy to do too!

And this deliciousness is what you end up with!

This is what you need to make this magic happen:

• 3 large tablespoon Maldon sea salt – Hunt this down if you have to it’s the best salt ever.
• 3 tsps caster sugar
• Zest of 1 lime, 1 lemon, 1 orange
• Lots of black pepper
• 800g salmon fillets (Skinless and boneless)

Directions:

• Get a big ziplock bag and chuck in the salt, sugar, lime, lemon, orange zest.
• Shake it and mix it well.
• Cut up the salmon fillets in bite size chunks.
• Throw the salmon in the bag
• Add the black pepper
• Shake shake shake the bag. (This recipe is yummy as well as get you some exercise)
• Shake until everything is mixed.
• Let it sit in the refrigerator for at least 8 hours. (Remember you don’t want a new buddy in your tummy! Be patience.)

After it’ll look something like this.

When you are ready to eat these meaty goodness, rinse them off (to get the slime and zests of) and dry them with a tea towel or whatever paper towel you got on hand. Put everything back in the refrigerator until you are ready to eat them.

If you are super awesome and want to do more you can make an avo puree to go with it. I got some avo and they were hard. I thought I’d just blend them but my plan failed. They are now just like little chunks. Yuck. I guess there’s a reason why you eat ripe avocados. (BTW, each avocado here is like 2 Euros!!)

Anyway to make the avo puree,

• 2 Avocados
• 2 limes
• Wasabi
• Salt
• Pepper

Purees the avocados with lime juice, wasabi, and season with salt and pepper. Smear it on a plate.

To mix the soy and ginger dipping,

• 50 ml Soy Sauce
• 1 tablespoon grate some ginger
• 1 tablespoon honey

Mix it all together and put it in a bowl.

Eat until you can’t eat no more!

I made some scone this week and they were mighty delicious! It’s a lot easier than I thought it would be too! I had to guestimate on the butter because butter here doesn’t come in measurement blocks. More butter = More better right?!

One weird thing about scones making is that it doesn’t involve eggs! I had to read it twice to make sure I read it right. No eggs! I was sad because I bought eggs thinking I needed them. But it’s all right I love eggs!

Here’s the recipe I used:

3 cups self raising flour; 60g butter; 1 cup of milk. Sift flour into a bowl, rub in butter, add nearly all of the milk at once and mix in quickly with a knife. Add remaining milk if nescessary to mix to a soft dough. Turn onto a floured board and knead by pressing with heel of hand 3 or 4 times. Pat out to a round,2cm thick and cut out into 4cm rounds with a floured cutter. Place scones close together on a lightly greased baking tray. Brush tops with a little milk and bake in a preheated very hot oven 230C for10 – 15 min or until well risen and golden. For soft scones wrap in a tea- towel as soon as they come from the oven, for crusty scones cool on a wire rack. And always for serving, no matter how thick the cream says it is on the container, whip it until you can cut it!

I added raisins I found in the cupboard.

Extreme close up of the scone ready to be eaten!

Ready to eat with butter (of course) and bit of honey.

Not scone related, but it’s cute anyways!

Before you think I am all awesome and literary, the title of this blog didn’t come from me. I got the title from 24 Great Walks in Dublin by Frommers. I got this book last time I was home at Borders for a song.

If you are ever going to visit Dublin, I would highly recommend this book. The book breaks up different interests of Dublin and got just enough information to be interesting. Now I have been here for a while, most of these places are the places I walk by regularly but never know the history of. So it’s kind of nice to put a place to a face sort to speak.

Since we were going to go to the city center (yarn shopping!) I thought it would be a good idea to do a walk. Dublin is not super walkable like Copenhagen or Munich, but as long as you are careful you won’t get run over. Though I almost got run over a few times, but I am bad at crossing the street like that.

We started out at my utmost favorite shopping center Powerscourt Towhouse Center. The place was built in 1774 and converted to a shopping center in the late 1980s. It’s a nice place to have a cup of coffee and hang out. And most important of all, it’s got a yarn shop!

After that, we started our pub tour! Note, we didn’t go to every pub on the list. That would ‘take half a day to all day, depending how thirsty you are’ according to the guide book. By the time we started it was around 5, and if we take half a day it would be too late to catch the train! And no, we didn’t drink in every pub, just one very important pub.

Pub 1 : O’Neills

This public house has been around for almost 300 years. And before it was a pub, 1,000 years ago, it was the Viking parliament called the Thing. Brilliant name! We didn’t go inside for a pint.

On the way to our next destination, we saw this busker playing a guitar made out of an oil can. He sounded pretty good! I love how people make musical instruments out of random items, so creative. There was also a little person dressed up as a leprechaun. I am all for people busking, but I find it kind of wrong. But whatever you got to do I guess!

Oh also passed by a random guy wearing a kilt texting. There must be some event going on because I saw several group of men wearing kilts.

Pub 2: McDaids
This place is a famous hangout for writers. We went inside and it’s a really tiny pub with plaque of many famous writers. The decor of this pub is Victorian which I find very pleasing. It’s tiny inside though! Though we stopped in we didn’t get a pint. Start seeing a trend here people?

Pub 3 : Mulligan’s

This was our last stop. By now it’s 7ish, though it’s still bright out, the sky is starting to look angry. An angry sky, is a bad sky so making this our last stop was the most prudent thing to do.

I wanted to visit this pub because rumor has it that JFK enjoyed a pint here when he visited in 1945. James Joyce also wrote about it in Ulysses. The guide book said this is a classic example of working men pub.

I had a pint here!

It was yummy but I wouldn’t say the best pint I ever had! Sorry Mulligan’s fans!

Today happen to be some big rugby match. So Mr wanted to stay and watch it. We rooted for the guy in the red uniform, which was pretty dangerous consider everyone in the pub was rooting for blue uniform. While Mr cheered quietly with his pint, I mostly took photos and read the news paper.

By the way, the red guys won and we drained our pints and took the train home just in time for the rain to start.