Do you have time for a bite of breakfast?

Posted by TheYank at 9/12/2009 8:12 AM EDT

{Warning: reading this may cause heart disease.}

Have you ever wanted to break a world record in the Guinness Book of Records? Well, an eatery in Cavan has set the challenge for you: the fullest full Irish breakfast ever. In fact, it's the fullest breakfast ever offered, topping the old six pounds-six ounce record held by a restaurant in Bristol. The breakfast at Cavan's Hard Boiled Egg weighs in at more than seven pounds.

Seven pounds of breakfast. Just let that sink in (or better yet, maybe not). I've held seven pound babies in my hands, but I've never thought about eating one.

Seven pounds. McDonald's is under fire for coming out with their third-pounder burger, which tops the old quarter pounder by a fraction, but imagine the uproar (and the upchuck) if they changed their quarter pounder for a four pounder and threw in 3 pounds of fries with that!

I know, I know. Too horrible to contemplate. But what of the offer from the Hard Boiled Egg?

The breakfast consists of the following: ten rashers (thick bacon slices), ten sausages, ten eggs, five pieces of pudding, five hash browns, French fries (presumably the thick, greasy Irish kind, not thin salty McDonald's fries), tomatoes, mushrooms, baked beans and ten slices of toast. I don't know if the pudding is black pudding or white pudding. If you don't know what either of those delicacies consists of you may be just as well off. Offal and awful might just cover it (although I've been known to eat both).

Have a look at this picture from Irish radio station Newstalk. This looks bad enough, but the beans and toast aren't even here.


When I first heard about this my first reaction was something along the lines, “If only I were 25 years younger ...” as if the breakfast were an attractive young woman or an invitation to play baseball again. But the truth is, even when I was 20 I wouldn't have been able for ten sausages, ten bacon slices and ten eggs.

When I was 20 I wimped out on a challenge to a chicken-nugget eating contest, one that was won after a mere 34 chicken nuggets. I knew I'd have trouble past number 9 or so, a child's portion.

Then there are the baked beans. I don't know why baked beans are even part of anybody's breakfast, but Mike McLellan writing in the Tracy Press (Tracy, CA) says that beans should be as closely associated with Ireland as potatoes are. He says that Boston's reputation as the baked bean capital of America is thanks to the influx of Irish immigrants in the 19th century. Okay, I suppose, beans in the breakfast.

We can't see the beans in this picture, but if they're going to be in proportion to the rest of the breakfast there would have to be a vat-sized bowl of them. Oh boy. What if someone actually ate that amount of baked beans? How many days would it be before they would be fit for human interaction? (Or even non-human. Why should a dog or a cat have to suffer?)

No, this breakfast is not for me and never was. It needs a John Candy. {Remember how he polished off the 48oz steak in The Great Outdoors? That's the spirit required here.} This is a challenge for a man with a serious appetite, an iron gut, a cavalier attitude to his own personal health, and, let's face it, no qualms about producing antisocial smells for a few days. {I'm not sure if this is sexist or not, but I cannot picture any woman having so little self-esteem - and intelligence - that she'd even attempt to eat such a breakfast.}

This is a great “I dare ya” to all the men of Ireland and any passing tourists who happen to be feeling a bit peckish during a visit to Cavan Town. The challenge is yours. Your name in the Guinness Book of Records and immortality - well, until someone eats an 8lb breakfast - await.

The breakfast costs €19.95 (about $30), but is free if you finish it in half an hour. Bon appétit.

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Comments:

jacersisityourself wrote:

This had me in big guffaws... but I'd never try a whopper of a full Irish. No, nay never! I'd say the seven-pound breakfast is for a few lads on a Saturday morning after the Friday night pints before they go play their football and hurling matches in the afternoon.

But I do enjoy the full Irish brekkie - I love cooking a good oul' full Irish, with all the foods mentioned except the french fries - who'd want more potato when you've got your fill of delicious Hash Browns? French fries are for wimps' lunches and supper's fish 'n chips, preferably the thick greasy ones, not your wimpish MacD's type. When I was a kid I couldn't eat pudding after I found out it was made from pig's offal, with pig's blood added to make black pudding (they're both now often served as a pre-meal delicacy in some of Dublin's finest eateries).

But I've grown to love both black & white pudding, deliciously seasoned tasty stuff. Then there's the fried eggs.. oh what a treat! - especially if cooked half-soft and served topped with a splash of good oul' Chef brown sauce. Fry or grill the rashers to near burnt, add pan-heated tomatoes and mushrooms with a sprinkle of onions, the ever delightful sausages. As I cook all these, I get that whiff of their appetite-whetting odour. Aaargh! Now I can't wait for breakfast in the morning!

9/12/2009 4:18 PM EDT

TheYank wrote: jacersisityourself, I'm sure you're right that this breakfast is for "a few lads on a Saturday morning after the Friday night pints before they go play their football and hurling matches in the afternoon." Uggh. I feel unwell just thinking of running after eating all that. I have to admit I like black & white pudding myself, particularly the like the black. Actually, I like all the breakfast foods, but in manageable portions. I don't require 7lbs. 9/14/2009 7:54 AM EDT

Padraig wrote: black pudding. no one can do it better than Ireland. Living in germany, they call "brutwurst" translation blood sausage. Same thing but they can't prepare the good way after those pint filled nights of good craic. 9/15/2009 12:53 AM EDT

Never so far from home as on Sep 11, 2001

Posted by TheYank at 9/11/2009 7:28 AM EDT

The weather is perfect today. Just like it was then. We all remember the absolutely perfect weather in New York eight years ago, but it was almost exactly the same here.

Eight years is a long time. Just trying to think how much has happened makes my head spin. Children growing up, family members dying, career changes - so much. Then there's the wider world: wars, natural disasters, economic collapses, elections and new governments. It's actually been a good while.

Yet, when I see the date on a milk carton or an ad for an upcoming soccer game or on my computer screen memories flood in and it's as if everything happened only yesterday. Suddenly eight years seems like a blip.

There is a September 11 season on television here, especially on Britain's Channel 4. I watch all the documentaries and wonder afterwards what motivates me to watch them. I just can't help it. Still trying to understand, I suppose.


Everyone has their own memories. What I remember most clearly are the feelings: confused, sick, angry, but more than anything I remember feeling like I wasn't where I should have been. On the evening of September 11 I went out into my backyard and looked up into a beautiful sunset, into the west, roughly towards NY and wondered to myself, "What on Earth am I doing 3,000 miles away?"

That feeling came over me slowly. Wasn't there initially. I was in an office in Dublin when the news first came through that a plane had crashed into one of the twin towers. I assumed it was a small single-engine plane and tried to focus on my job, but of course any news story about New York always distracted me. Then, in what has now merged into a time span of seconds I learned that it was a passenger jet and that a second plane had just struck the second tower.


A sort of fog came over me from that moment. Just like everyone else around the world, the people in the office sat transfixed, watching the television. I remember my wife calling to talk about it and saying that she'd heard the Pentagon had been hit too. I didn't believe her. That would have been just too fantastic a tale. I was sure it was just another rumor. But, two minutes later the station we had on reported the Pentagon attack. My God!

I never imagined the World Trade Center buildings would fall, but once the first did it seemed inevitable the second would too. And when that finally happened, I went back to my desk and sat down for a few minutes then grabbed my stuff and left. I didn't say a word to anyone. Must have been around 4:00. No one was working.

That's when it started. I walked down the street to the train station, up to the platform and onto the train feeling increasingly like an alien in a city I'd lived in for 10 years. I stared blankly around me on the train home, but I felt like a gulf was opening between me and the others around me and everyone else in Dublin.

I was glad when I got home. My wife understood exactly what was going through my mind. I couldn't take off the television at home, but I didn't want the children to watch. It was too late, of course. They'd already seen too much because RTE preempted their children's programming with live scenes from New York. Everyone was too shocked to think rationally.

The sense of alienation hardened over the weeks and months that followed. I didn't want to talk to people, even friends. Couldn't avoid them all, unfortunately. Lots of conversations ended with me being really angry.

Now so much time has passed that the sense of alienation has faded, although it hasn't completely gone away. I doubt it ever will. I took New York - America - for granted before September 11. That will never happen again and it's that sense that keeps me apart from most people here.

{If you're interested, this is what I wrote on this date in 2003.}

Look for your relatives in the 1911 Census

Posted by TheYank at 9/10/2009 11:35 AM EDT

Now we're cooking. As Kelly reports elsewhere on the site, the full 1911 Census of Ireland is now available online. This is absolutely tremendous.

For those of us whose grandparents or great-grandparents had not left Ireland by this time, it's actually exciting to see the forms. I found my great-grandfather's form, which included all sorts of little tidbits that I didn't know. First I had some trouble finding my great-grandfather's census form. Why? Because the database lists the family as Fahey and not Fahy, which it should be.

Yet, unlike the error by the people at Ellis Island, where my grandfather's name was spelled as Tahy, the problem with my great-grandfather's census form is that he didn't seem too settled on any particular spelling for the family name. He seems to spell the name with an "e" in his signature, but without the "e" in the "Surname" column.

This might seem a little odd, but if you read Mike O'Laughlin's column on Irish family names you'll get an idea as to how this might have happened. My great-grandfather was born in 1848 and - I'm assuming - grew up speaking Irish more than English. As an Irish-speaking friend once explained it to me, "The Anglicized name wasn't really their name anyway so a lot of people didn't mind how it was spelled in English."

Again, don't be put off if you have trouble finding your relatives. It's worth it to make that extra effort. And, be sure to have a look at the House and Building Return. That can take a bit of effort to figure out, but you can get an idea as to what the house was like and how it compared with their neighbors'.

I can't wait for the 1901 Census to go online next spring.

No more 'nod of peace'

Posted by TheYank at 9/10/2009 10:57 AM EDT

You might remember a few weeks ago I mentioned that the priest at our local church had decided to do away with the sign of peace due to swine flu. He didn't come up with this idea all on his own, however. It was a response to a statement from one of the bishops asking people to stop shaking hands at the sign of peace.

So, instead our priest asked us to turn, nod and smile at the people sitting near us. To say the least, this was a little strange. I half expected the padre to say, "Now bow to your corner and do-si-do your partner..."

And you know what I learned? It's actually easier to turn and shake hands with a stranger than it is to turn and look at them all the while trying to ensure your smile looks genuine, but not overly friendly. I know after one 'sign of peace' I walked out of Mass thinking to myself, "That lady who was sitting behind me is going to think I've been drinking." It wasn't even 10am yet!

Well, no more. I don't know if the priest got wind of how uncomfortable the new regime was making people, but now we're only being asked to say a short prayer for the people around us. And that - let's be honest here - is a whole lot easier than worrying about whether your smile looks like a grin or a chuckle.

Celtic, Notre Dame and "Go Irish"

Posted by TheYank at 9/5/2009 10:15 AM EDT

The Irish kick off this afternoon and here's hoping that they don't let down against what, on paper, looks like inferior opposition. That has been too common a refrain in recent years.

You know I'm talking about soccer, right? Oh, maybe not. You may well have thought I was talking about Notre Dame and their season opener today. In truth, I was thinking about them too, but the Irish national soccer team has a “crucial World Cup qualifying match” this evening in Cyprus. It was in Cyprus 3 years ago that the Irish lost – were humiliated – in what was then a “crucial qualifying match” and missed out on the 2008 European Championships.

I've often thought it kind of funny that the phrase “Irish football team” refers to two completely different teams playing two completely different sports and which is which depends on whether you're on the east or west side of the Atlantic. In Ireland gridiron football really does not exist and the phrase “Go Irish” – if used – would not imply quarterbacks, wide receivers, linebackers or defensive tackles. (I haven't actually seen a lot of football the past 20 years, so I'm not even sure if the positions are the same as I remember.)

As you can imagine the Irish national soccer team is one team that everyone here (in this part of Ireland – Northern Ireland has its own team) agrees on. We'll all be rooting for them later and in their next two games coming up in Dublin against Italy and Montenegro.

Funny enough there is one more soccer team that just about everyone in this part of Ireland also agrees on and that's Glasgow Celtic. Despite the fact the Irish national soccer team and Notre Dame's football team share the name “Irish football team”, Celtic is in many ways more like Notre Dame.

Like Notre Dame, Celtic has roots in Catholic charity. Celtic was formed in the late 19th century when Irish Marist Brother Walfrid established the club as a means of raising money to help Irish immigrants who had flooded into Glasgow, Scotland in the years after the famine.

Br. Walfrid's club quickly took root and developed into a soccer power and its chief rival was Glasgow Rangers, the Protestant team. The intense rivalry of these two clubs – and it's still fairly intense – helped ensure that Celtic acquired a strong following among Irish Catholics in Glasgow, across Scotland and in Ireland.

Notre Dame's football program grew into a national power in the early 20th century and its success had a similar effect in America.

The small Catholic college in Indiana acquired the nickname “Fighting Irish” for reasons that are a bit murky these days. In fact, Notre Dame's players were as likely to be of Polish or German origin as Irish, but the name – which was a put down initially – became a badge of honor signifying the grit and tenacity of Notre Dame's teams. During the 1920s the name “Fighting Irish” created a legion of fans among the east coast Irish, for whom college was mostly an aspiration they had for their children.

These “subway alumni” transformed Notre Dame from a small mid-western regional power into a national force, drawing massive crowds to their games at Yankee Stadium and other eastern stadiums.

The subway alumni hope that this year's Fighting Irish can push the last few years' poor showings into distant memories. It all starts today. As for Celtic, they had a let down last year and have already endured disappointment in Europe's Champion League in the early season play. Today Celtic's Irish fans will forget about their club for a day and root for an Irish win. The two games kick off this evening, with the Irish soccer team starting at 2:45 EDT and Notre Dame at 3:30.

I can't even escape the Yankees in Ireland

Posted by TheYank at 9/4/2009 7:36 AM EDT

If you've been dropping by here for a while now you know I'm a baseball fan. I'm a Met fan and of course by extension that also means I'm a Yankee hater. All of which means that this has been an awful summer baseball-wise.

Living in Ireland can be a comfort at times like these because, for the most part, I can put the Mets' woes and the damn Yankees' current good play out of my mind. Other than the not-quite-occasional-enough e-mails from friends and family I don't have to endure the Yankees at all. In fact, often I can go a whole day or more without the Yankees entering my consciousness, although that's been getting harder the past year or so.

You see, Yankee caps and shirts and other stuff have - God knows why - become fashionable here. I can be walking down the street, minding my own business when I'll see some unthinking 18-year-old girl wearing a Yankee cap. As we walk by one another I'm sure she wonders why that middle-aged guy is sneering at her, but it's no more than she deserves for causing me pain when I think I'm a safe 3,000 miles away from the Yankees.


And now my local supermarket is getting in on the act. On a recent trip to get groceries what should I be confronted with? Only a shelf selling Yankee bags. 'Back to school' - lecch. I hope whatever kid carries that bag around gets double homework everyday!

John Condon of Waterford, "youngest battle casualty"

Posted by TheYank at 9/1/2009 7:02 AM EDT

As I mentioned last week I returned to Flanders because I didn't feel like I'd seen all I needed to see there. Following my last visit I became fascinated by World War I and the Irish role in it. I wanted to return to see some of the places and the graves of those I'd been reading about.

On my list was the grave of John Condon from Waterford. I came across his name in a book about the Irish in the Great War. Condon is listed by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission as the "[y]oungest known battle casualty of the war." His headstone says he was 14 when he was killed on May 24, 1915. Condon's grave is thought to be the most visited among the hundreds of thousands of soldiers' graves from the Great War.

Having read that about Condon, I thought I should pay a visit myself. When I arrived at the right cemetery - there are hundreds around Ypres - I realized I didn't have the grave reference. Uh oh, I thought. I didn't have to worry, however, because while walking through the cemetery Condon's grave almost shouted out to me what with the Irish flag and the little wooden crosses left by those who had visited recently.


As I was standing in front of this one grave among the thousand or so graves I couldn't help wondering how any 14-year-old managed to convince some (too willing?) recruiter that he was 18.



Since I've come home I've learned that Condon may have done no such thing. First, I went looking for the Condons' census form from the 1911 census. That's when doubt first entered my head. I couldn't find any family with a John of the right age to be Private Condon. So a short Google search turned up this, from the local Waterford newspaper in 2007.
According to Michael O’Connor, Director of Waterford Heritage Services, John Condon was actually born in 1896 and was 19 when he died, not 14. He hadn't fooled anyone, but was actually the same age as so many of those who died in Flanders between 1914 and 1918. And Michael O'Connor says that the Condons' census form from 1911 lists John as a 15-year-old "General Labourer."

A little additional digging and it turns out that John Condon may not be buried in that grave at all. This site claims that the remains of a different missing soldier, 35-year-old Patrick Fitzsimmons from Belfast, were misidentified as Condon's back in 1923.

Uggh. It was all so much simpler when I was just going to visit the grave of the youngest soldier killed in the war.

{Maybe not as interesting as being the youngest battle casualty, but the Condons' 1911 census form shows that John's mother, Catherine, is listed as 40 years old and married 26 years. They were certainly different times.}

Great pictures of Ireland in the 40s from Life

Posted by TheYank at 8/29/2009 5:20 AM EDT

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, which means I just stumbled onto 15,000 words from Life Magazine on 'old Ireland'. Life's web site has a collection of 15 pictures, mostly black and white from the 1940s. They're all great photographs.

These days we're all so familiar with those pictures of Ireland's beauty in full color that the black and white take a little getting used to. Colleen Bawn Rock in Killarney looks exactly the same today, but Life's 1946 black and white picture manages to make it look alive, if menacing, when compared with a color shot from today.

There are a number of rural scenes depicted, however I prefer the urban scenes to the rural, nature shots. Those shots more clearly show the changes in Ireland over the past 50 years.

There's a picture of a barge sailing down the Liffey, carrying "freshly sealed" casks of Guinness. That's a scene you don't see these days as Guinness leaves the brewery on trucks now. Another picture - in color - shows boys playing hurling on the streets of Dublin. You'll still see boys playing on the streets, but the clothes have certainly changed.

However, there are two in particular that interest me. The first is of O'Connell Street in Dublin on January 1, 1943. The picture was taken from the top of Nelson's Pillar, which has been gone since 1966. I wonder what sort of impact that picture made on America at the time. Compared with just about every other major European city, Dublin in the picture appears so tranquil and undamaged. By way of contrast, London was half way to becoming a ruin by this time and 90 miles north, Belfast endured more losses in the spring of 1941 than it did during the entire 30 years of the troubles.

And then there's my favorite - a picture of a vast throng of people in the center of Dublin at midnight on Easter Sunday 1949. The crowd is just tremendous. They're all there to celebrate Ireland finally becoming a republic, which was declared effective Easter Monday 1949, 33 years after the Easter Rising.


I've read about that moment before and I've even wondered if the decision to declare a republic was popular at the time. Based on this picture, I have my answer.

If you'd like to see the full collection, click here.

Ted's death - big news in Ireland, hardly news in France

Posted by TheYank at 8/27/2009 5:48 PM EDT

Last night I stayed in a little hotel just on the French side of the France/Belgium border. This morning I got a copy of the local paper (it was just lying around, I can't speak French) and was thumbing through it. Inside I came across a small item with the headline, "Ted Kennedy est mort." Like I said, I don't speak French, but even I could understand that one.

And I could pretty well understand the whole article. Why? Because it was about 35 words. That's it. That's all the coverage Senator Kennedy's death got in NW France. Quite a contrast to all the words written about Senator Kennedy in today's Irish papers.

There are times when America seems far away from Ireland, but when I'm in France or Belgium it seems as if the distance to Ireland is far greater than it is when I'm in New York. The death of Senator Kennedy was one of those times.

Of course Senator Kennedy was connected to Ireland, which is why the coverage was so extensive in the Irish papers. Still, there was a lot of analysis of his Senatorial career completely unrelated to his efforts on behalf of Ireland. There's just so much interest in America in Ireland, far more than there is in the goings-on in Ireland's fellow EU members.

Excepting Britain, I would say that 95% of the population would be hard pressed to name any European politicians that are not Prime Ministers. And, 95% may well be too low.

If you find yourself on the road to Doornik ...

Posted by TheYank at 8/27/2009 5:24 PM EDT

Yes, as you know if you've been reading my twitter posts, I'm back in Flanders again. Two more days. I didn't feel like I'd finished touring the WWI sites back in July so when I saw Ryanair flights were going for very, very little I decided to come again. It amazes me how cheaply I can fly to, travel around & stay (for a night) here.

Late August is not, apparently, an ideal time to visit Flanders. Why? Because it stinks. It's as if every farmer in the region is spreading slurry at this time. Farm smells are one thing, but slurry's another.

Driving in Belgium is an experience. I may have mentioned this after my last visit - can't remember now - but Belgians are nuts behind the wheel. There seem to be no rules of the road. There are speed signs, etc., but everyone ignores them. I'm pretty sure - never 100% certain of anything where all the signs are in Flemish - but I think I drove down a closed road yesterday.

I followed a dozen or more other cars doing the same thing - swinging out around a sign that seemed to me to be saying "local access only." Seeing as the detour signs were so infrequent, I was just as happy to ignore the signs so I could follow my map.

Also, I learned one hard lesson on this trip: when you pass into Flanders the names of cities change. Yup. I was driving south on the highway looking for the road to Tournai, which is how it was spelled on my map and on the signs coming up from the airport. However, in Flanders there were no signs for Tournai. Nor Mons. Fortunately they provide the French spelling for Rijsel (Lille).

It was only after I went wrong a few times and was driving around in circles and finally took the last road that was available to me that I saw a sign that helped: Tournai is Doornik and Mons is Bergen (as in the NJ county) in Flemish. All the signs in the Ieper (Ypres) region use only the Flemish spellings Doornik & Bergen. I saw many, many signs for Doornik, but had no idea that was the same city as Tournai. Other than a local, who would?.

That debacle cost me about 20 minutes when I was trying to find my way back to the airport, which was about 90 miles away. Those 20 minutes weren't crucial, but they were enough to cause me agita. And there's a lesson for Ireland in that.

A couple of years ago the Irish government decided that the town of Dingle should no longer be known as Dingle, but as An Daingean. An Daingean is the old, Irish name for the town; Dingle was a later development.

Some (most, I think) of the locals objected, claiming that tourists would have trouble finding the town because they're looking for Dingle. (I'm sure there were other objections too, but I can't remember them now.) And they have a point based on what I experienced in Flanders. It's one thing to change a town's name, but you'd better be sure to change all the road signs and maps otherwise, yes, tourists are going to get lost. And annoyed.