Ancient Church, Meeting Tommy & Waffles for Breakfast

Our last stop on our first day of sightseeing was in the town of Kilfanora where we learned a lot about the Burren botany and geology in the Burren Centre museum, followed by a visit nearby to an ancient church, St. Fachnan's.

Notice how narrow the street is? That's the church in the background. The blue bit at the back is a covering they have placed over the deteriorating high crosses and older sections of the church. It is very old...eleven hundreds.

That is one of the awesome thing about travel...getting to experience really old places.

It has some 12th century crosses with beautiful, although very worn, knot work designs, plus tombs of bishops.

During the time of the potato famine, Kilfnora was the smallest and poorest diocese in Ireland. Because they were barely able to hold it together Pope Pius IX in 1866 declared himself the bishop...a very unusual situation. There is a bishop's head over a carved window in one wall

and an ancient tomb inside the church with a very eroded tomb cover carved with a bishop.

The day had been a sunny one most of the day...rare indeed...but it started to cloud up in the late afternoon after we left the church. Sweetie tried to start the car, but found that some part wouldn't connect with he flywheel (he understood the mechanics, but I'm clueless). The museum was closing in 15 minutes and we were many miles from Ennis. He went into the museum and they helped him look up the Hertz phone # and called around the corner to Connors Garage.

This is looking back toward the pub just around the corner from Connors.

Tommy Connors came over, tried to start the car and confirmed that it was indeed a non starter. He walked back over to his shop and drove over a huge car carrier truck with a winch and pulled the car up onto the flatbed and secured it. The amazing thing was that Tommy did all of the talking to Hertz and arranged an exchange. We never even talked with them or signed anything! Next we were treated to a swift ride through country roads...an Irish roller coaster in some ways...as his son Jason drove the big truck hauling the car and took us back to Ennis where he dropped us at our B&B. He then drove to Shannon Airport, exchanged cars and dropped the new one at our B&B.

If you are ever in Kilfanora and have a moment, go say "Hi" to Tommy and Jason...two truly wonderful Irishmen and fun to talk to. We were really lucky that we broke down there instead of at one of the ruins on a back road and really, really lucky to meet Tommy.

A full Irish breakfast

was one of the pleasures of staying at B&Bs in Ireland, but I did find that I missed baking.

Once we were back at my Mom's and at the end of our stay, I offered to make breakfast. We had some fat, juicy blueberries from the market and delicious, sweet, ripe strawberries from the farmer's market. I decided to make yeasted waffles. The only waffle iron we had was for Belgian waffles, but they make some crispy, decadent waffles when paired with the fruits. I baked the blueberries in the waffles

and spooned sliced strawberries over. No butter or syrup was needed with these babies!
No sourdough starter needed for these either, just some time overnight.

The advantage of this recipe is that you start the batter the night before and only need to add the egg and melted butter in the morning.

Now, it's true, there is still some cleaning up to do and waffles do take a while to bake in the waffle iron, but the amazing ease of putting the batter together, plus the fact that they taste great, makes it worthwhile. An added bonus is that the house smells like freshly baked bread...hard to beat on a lazy morning.

The ingredients for this are so simple that most people will have them handy in the pantry. That makes it so easy to whisk the first part together one evening, cover it, let the little yeasties do their thing overnight, then finish it off and enjoy the next morning. We had a couple of cooked waffles left over (I know, hard to believe, but we did try our best to demolish them all...and failed) and they went into the freezer and then a couple of days later the toaster oven...and were still delish.

Sending this recipe over to Susan at Wild Yeast. Happy first anniversary for Yeastspotting Susan! This is one of the best place to see yummy yeasted recipes every week...check it out at http://www.wildyeastblog.com/category/yeastspotting/.

Amazing Overnight Waffles
from Mollie Katzen's Sunlight Cafe' Cookbook

2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon yeast
1 tablespoon sugar
½ teaspoon salt
2 cups milk
6 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
1 large egg (I used ¼ cup egg substitute)
Nonstick spray
Butter for the waffle iron
Sliced strawberries – optional, but nice
Pure maple syrup – hard to resist on waffles

Combine the flour, yeast, sugar, and salt in a medium bowl Add the milk and whisk until blended. Cover the bowl tightly with plastic wrap and let stand overnight at room temperature (or put in the fridge if room temp. is over 70 degrees F.)

The next morning, preheat the waffle iron. Melt the 6 tablespoons butter and let cool a bit. Beat the egg is a small bowl (unnecessary if using egg substitute) then beat it into the batter along with the melted butter. The batter may be a bit thin.

Lightly spray the hot waffle iron with non stick spray, top and bottom plates, and then butter a piece of bread and use that to rub some butter on top and bottom plates.

Add just enough batter to cover the cooking surface…this varies by waffle iron…about 2/3 cup. Lower the top and cook until golden brown…it’s OK to check now and then. It takes about 2-3 minutes. You want it golden brown, but not dark brown.
Serve hot, right away, with strawberries and maple syrup, or toppings of your choice.

Note; If you have too many waffles for the number of people you are feeding, bake the leftover batter a little less than the ones you are eating, let cool on a baking rack, then freeze and store in the freezer tightly wrapped. Re-heat in the toaster.

Cliffs and Rocks and Smoked Salmon

Driving in another country is always exciting as you navigate unfamiliar territory in an unfamiliar vehicle. Doing so in a country where you are also driving in the lane that usually contains oncoming traffic is unsettling.

Being passed, a high speed, on your right hand side by traffic coming in the other direction (when usually all that is at your right is the passenger who is giving you grief for missing the turn) is unnerving. Most harrowing is doing all this on very narrow roads that are lined with rock walls covered with hedges. Sometimes those rock walls are all that is between you and a drop down into the sea. This is a vacation?

Fortunately, I never had to drive while we were in Ireland. Sweetie quickly figured out how to tell if we were too close to the rock walls without actually having to run into them, and learned to ignore those folks swooping by on his right. Occasionally I had to remind him that he was in the wrong lane and might want to move into the left lane, but overall he was stellar! My job was to navigate and figure out which road on the roundabout would take us where we were going. Honestly, the signs were mostly really good, so it wasn't that difficult. Overall it was fun to explore on our own instead of taking tours and it was really exhausting. That meant more time on foot exploring towns and early nights.


On our first full day in Ireland we traveled northwest to the Cliffs of Moher and the Burren, standard fare on most tours of this part of the country. Since we were still new at this driving on the left thing, it didn't take much encouragement for us to stop where ever something looked interesting. All of these stone crosses caught my eye.

Fairly soon we were pulling over at a small churchyard near Ennistymon and taking photos of crosses. Modern gravestones seem to often be polished granite upright slabs, but the older graves often had these beautiful Irish crosses with beautiful designs carved on them.

This is one of hundreds and hundreds of ruins, many from the time of Elizabeth I or, more often, from the time of Cromwell. The 'Roundheads' laid waste to so many churches, monasteries and friaries.



Then I fell in love with some stone....

We continued west to Lisconnor where I fell in love with a local stone. Lisconnor stone has circular patterns in it which were formed by mollusk trails eons ago when it was still mud. Over time it became stone and it is often used as flooring stone since it tends to be easily formed into even thicknesses and is long lasting. Everywhere we went after learning about it in Lisconnor I noticed the use of Lisconnor stone, often where plain slate would usually be used as paving stone.

After Lisconnor we headed up the coast to and past the Cliffs of Moher. On approaching the turnoff for the car park at the Cliffs Visitor Centre we noticed lots of people streaming across the road toward the Heritage Center, plus two tour buses turning in.






Not being in the mood for so many people, we kept driving and were able to get some views of the cliffs at a distance, from Doolin Point. The first photo in this post shows what we saw.






Some of the photos were taken by the Hand Sister a year ago when she and my Mom and Health Sister visited Ireland. They did the full Cliffs of Moher experience, including walking along the edge...brave women!

Before reaching Doolin point we took a side road to get a better view of an interesting tower (probably a private residence) and a nearby elegant newer home sporting an old fashioned thatch roof. Experienced roof thatchers are rare and can command steep fees so these kinds of roofs are for the wealthy. Kind of ironic since they used to be a Iron Age roofing form for poor people. I think this castle was near Kilconnel.

The road curved around so from the town of Doolin, another popular place for tours to stop for shopping, we were able to see back across to the castle. Doolin also has traditional music in the evening.

Doolin Point is where you can catch a boat to the Aran Islands, home of those gorgeous sweaters. It also is the beginning of where you can see the worn stone of the Burren, with almost a moonscape look to it most of the year. In the spring the wildflowers growing up in the spaces between the rocks soften it.

From Doolin Point we traveled on the the Burren Smokehouse at Lisdoonvarna for some smoked salmon...delicious and salty. They also had some nice Irish music CDs - that's where I found the one for my former office mate who has a collection of music from around the world, so it seemed right that she have some Irish dance music, too.

From there we headed inland to Kilfanora and the Burren Heritage Center. That's where we had car trouble and experienced the true spirit of the Irish...next post.

Now we'll just have a cup of tea...a favorite end of the afternoon past time in Ireland.

Proper Tea

Lots of water, heated to a rolling boil
A teapot which has been preheated with hot water
1 rounded teaspoon loose tea - I love Earl Gray tea myself - for each cup, plus one 'for the pot'
sugar, milk (never cream), lemon slices
a tea strainer

Bring the water to a rolling boil. Once water is boiling, empty the hot water out of the tea pot, then add the loose tea. Pour in the boiling water, usually to about 3/4 of the capacity of the tea pot. Stir briefly. Cover with tea pot lid and let steep a few minutes. The longer it steeps, the stronger the brew.

Place a tea strainer over the cup you are pouring the tea in and pour your tea. Continue with each cup you are serving. Set tea pot aside, covered. Cover the pot with a tea cosy if it's chilly and you want to keep it warm for a second cup.

Serve at once with sugar, milk and/or lemon slices. Enjoy the aroma with each sip. Repeat as needed.