A Day Like All Days

Yesterday gmjambear and I puttered around the house a bit and did some shopping. We picked up a workbench and tool rack to help organize the garage and make more room for our tools; also, we put up some more artwork and awards on the walls in the office and master bedroom.

This morning we went to Bear Brunch at Yo's Bistro in Burien. We had a very nice conversation with a couple of bears from Los Angeles who had just disembarked from a week-long Alaska cruise, and who plan on attending next weekend's bear run in Portland. For a short while the proprietor joined our conversation once he had a break in the stream of patrons.


L to R: Harry and Randy from L.A., and Yo, the proprietor of Yo's Bistro.

Afterward we stopped off at the Public Market in Seattle where a street fair was going on. We picked up four small wildlife prints (a falcon on the Seattle skyline, some salmon in a stream, a big brown bear fishing, and a couple of playful wolves in the snow) from the same artist, a bearish fellow judging from his picture, as he wasn't running the shop today; and also some totem-style T-shirts from a lady whose work I've always liked and have purchased before, for our own wear and as gifts. The bridge from the parking garage offered a unique perspective in which Mount Rainier appeared to rise from the middle of Qwest Field.



On the way back we picked up frames for the new pictures and some supplies for dinner. Then when we got home Gary completed the mowing while I unpacked the workbench. (Side note: it takes an entire weekend to mow the entire lawn because the cordless electric mower's battery runs out of juice and has to be recharged overnight between sessions. I find this annoying but Gary doesn't seem to mind.) Then we assembled the workbench together and re-parked the cars in the garage. It's a tight fit but we managed to keep enough room in front of the workbench to retrieve things from it fairly easily.

After dinner, which consisted of salmon burgers with mac and cheese and coleslaw, we tackled the new prints we'd just bought and hung them on the bedroom wall. They look nice with the Four Seasons view of Multnomah Falls we put up yesterday.

So in sum, it's beena nicely productive weekend.

My response to a recent post by chrishansenhome over on soc.motss, with respect to corned beef and cabbage as the quintessential Irish dish:

I was told by no less an authority on the subject than my mother (whose parents both emigrated from Ireland, in contrast to my father's side of the family who have lived in the States for a couple of generations longer) that corned beef and cabbage is Irish-American fare much more so than Irish, and that the substitution of corned beef for ham or bacon (the latter being more like the Canadian version than what one finds served with breakfast in an American diner) owes much to the influence of the Jewish community. (My surmise is this would have taken place in New York and Boston.)

She said cattle were relatively rare in the Ireland her parents left, due in large part to the scarcity of land on which to graze them, and pigs and sheep were the preferred livestock of those that kept them. Thus a true "Irish Stew" would normally involve lamb rather than beef, although Mom's modern recipe works well with either.

Of course, it's entirely possible that the culinary inventions of the Irish in America have made the trip back to the Emerald Isle. My parents were much amused that the entertainment of the day, in one of the Irish pubs they visited on a trip to Dublin and points northwest, was a band playing music one might describe as "rockabilly".

[Oh, and by the way...] Guinness Stout looks remarkably like cola once the foamy head has been consumed.

Now I suppose that last remark is just me being a comment whore, but it's so true. ;-)

I'll add here that as a child I did not much like cabbage, so my mom would often substitute green beans in the traditional boiled dinner. Now that I've grown I rather like it on occasion and will bring "Pig's Ass and Cabbage" -- as my late aunt called it -- to potlucks when an Irish or St. Patrick's Day theme is called for.

I forgot to mention that I made some more of vaneramos's recipe for banana bread this holiday season: three loaves that went to work and to church, and one loaf at my folks' place in Cincinnati. I've been making the simple substitution of Splenda for sugar, since my dad is diabetic and, although I'm not as of yet, my doctor advises me to avoid sweets so I don't become diabetic.

It's been going over really well, and the loaf I made for my folks turned out the best of the ones I've done so far.

Thanks Van!