A customer just informed me that Brian O’Connell picked up on my blog post about rainy Olympics and lists my top ten rainy events in his “On the Move” travel blog round-up in Go Magazine (today’s Irish Times). It’s a sign of a busy day that I haven’t managed to open the paper yet!
The Sunny Side of Life
It’s funny how easily we’re pleased on this side of the world. Although it’s raining again today, the last two days were beautiful, and for that brief time, all the sogginess of the summer was forgotten. I happened to be entertaining an Italian visitor and had a day off, so we headed out Slea Head for a drive.
The great thing about having visitors is that it gives the perfect excuse to be a tourist oneself and to look afresh at one’s surroundings.
I have to say, even with all the complaining I’ve done about this wet summer, to drive out past such astonishingly beautiful landscape on a nice warm day makes me feel nothing but lucky.
We did it all – beehive huts, famine cottage, cliff strolls, photo-taking, feeding the birds, gawking at goats and donkeys, and to see the beauty through the eyes of the Italian made it even more wonderful.
Now, rain or not, it’s back to scooping ice cream, but I feel much better for the jaunt!
A Rose is a Rosé
Here’s a bit of news: We’re going to be in the Dome with the Roses in Tralee (for the fashion show and selection nights), selling ice cream – with proceeds going to support the event. In fact, we’re the only company who has been invited in!
We’ll see if the Roses like the pink champagne sorbet, which should keep spirits high! If I can smuggle in the camera, I’ll try to get some good glamourous ice cream shots!
Thank God No Olympics In Ireland
In this summer that is not a summer – when we have floods, road closures, train derailments and mudslides, when we have a bad June and July and then the entire average rainfall of August drops from the sky in a single day, when August has passed the record for rain with half of the month still to go (and it doesn’t look like it will improve), when everyone is talking about little else and everyone from the postman to novelists are reciting mournful soliloquies on the subject, then I’m just grateful that Ireland is not hosting the Olympics and is unlikely to ever do so.
Imagine the embarrassment we would feel when marathons would have to be cancelled, when sailors would be blown to France in a gale, when hurdlers would slip on the soggy track or when javelin throwers would have to hunt for their spears in the fog. In fact, we’d probably have to come up with our own events, simply to make sure at least some of the games could continue. If there was indeed an Irish Olympics, here would be my suggestions for events that would not be cancelled due to bad weather (and we might even increase our 
chances for a medal):
Ireland’s Top Ten Rainy Olympics Events:
- Puddle Jumping
- Main Street Canoe Race
- Mud Wrestling
- Sand Bag Piling
- Rain Dancing
- Bucket Emptying
- Wet T-Shirt Contest
- Climbing the Walls
- Water Polo
- Ark Building
Dingle Food Festival 2008
The schedule is starting to come together for the 2008 Dingle Peninsula Food and Wine Festival. It looks like it should be even more packed and interesting than last year.
Besides the cookery demonstrations in St. James’ Church, wine seminars, and taste trails (oysters and Guinness at John Benny’s, seared scallops at Strand House, etc), there will be a whiskey tasting and a coffee tutorial. There are even representatives from a Tasmanian wine company (with wine) flying in for the event!
I’m still not sure what we’ll do for it, but it will be hard to beat the 16 shades of chocolate we presented last year!
For those of you who want to come to the festival, it’s on the 3rd-5th October, and it would be really, really wise to book ahead both for meals and for lodgings, especially now that the National Irish Food Awards will be happening in Dingle at the same time…
Technorati tags: Dingle, food, festival, wine, feile, gourmet
Live from the Kingdom
My brother and I going to be on Radio Kerry this evening at 6:00 with Weeshie Fogerty talking about things ice cream. You can listen live here.
Sneak Preview – Clear as Crystal
We’ve decided, for the National Irish Food Awards, to make the gold medals from Irish crystal. The photo is a prototype from Sean over at Dingle Crystal. I kind of wish I wasn’t involved, so I could try to win one. It would look quite well in one of the shops! By the way, as you probably noticed from the top link, the website for the awards is up, with an application for download for Irish producers with products in made in Ireland…
“Anna Banana”
There’s a photo I took of one of the ice cream girls in the Irish Times Magazine today along with a “how to” on the frozen banana pops and a mention of the book. They suggest frozen grapes as well, which sounds great!