Ireland vs USA

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The last few days have been quiet. We have been doing school and mostly staying inside since the weather is quite wet! We did make another trip to Explorer’s World for some rock climbing on Friday and counted it as gym class. Saturday morning Mary had her return flight to the States to start the Spring semester at college, and Sean decided to go home with her. We will miss them both, but they’ll be back in March! The rest of Saturday was spent on boring house stuff; cleaning, laundry, etc. We all were craving pizza for dinner, but the pizza place in town was closed for vacation. Then we found a place called Diner that is styled after an American diner and happened to have what they call “take-away” pizza. Score one for mom and not having to cook!

Since we haven’t done much this week, there are not many pictures to share. The kids have come up with a few ideas for blog posts to fill in these slow weeks, but if any of you at home have something you’d like us to blog about, please post in the comment section and we will see it.

One of our ideas has been to post about the differences we have found between Ireland and the US. There are quite a few! We’ll start with cooking.

We wanted to try some baking, and we had all the ingredients for chocolate chip cookies, so we thought we would try. However, there were several problems. First, all the food items here are packaged differently; smaller portions and with metric measurements. We used Siri on the iPhone to help us convert the measurements, but then the kitchen had no measuring cups! We had to wing it a little and used a small kitchen glass that looked to be about one cup.
Next problem–no mixer! OK, we can handle that. We just mixed it by hand. Then tasted it, of course, just to be sure it was good 🙂
On to the next issue–the oven! Look at the cookie sheet in the picture. It is only big enough to fit 9 cookies, whereas most of the cookie sheets I’ve seen at home are big enough for 12 or more. Now notice how the small cookie sheet takes up the entire oven! The oven really is tiny, maybe a little bigger than my microwave at home. The oven temp is in Celsius, so I enlisted Siri’s help to convert that as well.
The first batch on the cookie sheet didn’t cook very evenly. The ones in front were underdone, while the ones in back were overdone, so I put the rest of the dough in a cake pan and made bar cookies instead. They looked a little funny, but they tasted good!
Irish potatoes are weird!
One night last week for dinner, we were supposed to have mashed potatoes and meatloaf. The girls peeled 5 pounds of potatoes, and I boiled them just like I would at home. When I went to drain them, they had turned to mush! Did I overcook them? I don’t think so, but I wasn’t exactly watching the clock, so maybe I did. Anyway, we had the meatloaf and used the watery, mushy potatoes for potato leek soup the next day. A few days later, I tried again, this time being very careful. They did the same exact thing! So, I don’t think it’s me, I think these potatoes are weird!

And just to show that some things have turned out just fine, the picture on the left is a delicious dinner that Mary made on Wednesday night, and the one on the right is the special breakfast we had on the morning that Mary and Sean were going home. More on the differences we have found later in the week!

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Published by broganfamily8069

We're a homeschooling family of eight - five girls and three boys. Our children are ages 20, 19, 17, 15, 12, 10, 7, and 5. We will be living in Ireland for the next six months, and then going to Tennessee! This blog is a documentation of our travels. Enjoy!! :)

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7 thoughts on “Ireland vs USA”

  1. What will Sean be doing State side?

    María Hidalgo Dolan http://www.DolanHomes.com http://www.MyHomeInEdison.com http://www.MyHomeInCarteret.com http://www.MyHomeInHarborCrossings.com

    On Sun, Jan 13, 2019, 5:44 PM Brogans Across the Pond broganfamily8069 posted: ” The last few days have been quiet. We have been > doing school and mostly staying inside since the weather is quite wet! We > did make another trip to Explorer’s World for some rock climbing on Friday > and counted it as gym class. Saturday morning Mary had” >

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  2. Loved the baking adventure. I have watched the Great British Baking Show where they don’t use too many measuring tools, but do weigh everything on a flat kitchen scale. Maybe they left you one of those…😊

    Irish potatoes are definitely different. I’m guessing you can google why.

    Please put my friend, Nore Eckert, onto your prayer list. She was 67 last Sunday, and died quite unexpectedly on Friday night. They lived next door to us for all the growing up years. They moved to Crystal Springs in NJ after retirement but we were in constant touch and remained in our friendship. We are shocked and heartbroken.

    L,K

    We are all just walking each other home.  Ram Dass

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  3. Hey Jen! Hope you had a Merry Christmas & A Happy New Year! I read through all your blog posts, so exciting! Looks beautiful there! That crepe spread looks divine! Maybe you could share the recipe some time 😉 Looking forward to following along in your adventures!
    Blessings,
    Lisa Dohan

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