52 Churches

This soup is sort of from this recipe:

Bok Choy Soup

I used over a dozen fresh shitake mushrooms, four cups of chicken broth, a large bag of Bok Choy (leaves, stems and all), and no tofu in my version.

I’d never heard of borek before the Italian restaurant we stumbled into in Temple Bar on our last night. I was actually looking for a more Irish eatery, to try colcannon, but gave up in despair and hunger.

Yum, borek.

Michael and I both had the borek for an appetizer. I had a lovely (if, again, a bit over dressed) spinach salad.

Dressed with figs and sugared walnuts and feta.

Then we headed down the street to Botticelli’s . . . for icecream.

I don’t know why an Italian restaurant serves borek, which seems to be more eastern block and middle eastern . . . but I was having dinner in an Italian restaurant in the heart of Dublin . . . so I’m not really one to talk.

At one pub, the Copper Penny, our table sported a collection of condiment packets.

We determined “Brown Sauce” is roughly Worcestershire sauce. I just like that you can have malt vinegar for your chips (French fries).
I had the traditional Irish stew, but I forgot to take the picture before I ate most of it . . . so you’ll have to imagine a few chunks of beef, potato, and carrot in this stew.

Irish Stew, sans chunks.

I recently read Joel Fuhrman’s Eat to Live, and intend to give his six week plan (leafy green vegan) a try over the course of Lent.  We’ve been moving in that direction, and tried to stay largely on course while we were traveling.

Europe is not known for its salad consumption . . . and salads in February most anywhere are hard to come by.
This one was delicious, but, as you can see in the picture, the Irish are not big on having a lot of greens in their salads.

In the back, to the right, you can see Michael’s couscous.