NILE BLUE CHEESE ARUGULA AND RAISINS, FENNEL, GRAPES FOCACCINE

For those of you just beginning to read this blog, my children Erin and Eli and I lived in Ireland during the mid-eighties.  We traveled through all of the British Isles and holidayed in the Canary Islands for Christmas and toured Israel and Egypt before finally returning home to upper New York State.  Most, but not all, of these recipes are from restaurant menus during that time.  I have been posting many hors d'oeuvres recipes because we had such an incredible variety during our Egyptian cruise.  I will include two more in this post.  Most of these recipes are taken in some form from my bible: Hors D'Ouevres by Eric Treuille and Victoria Blashford-Snell.

While living in Ireland, we made lifelong friends.  Some friends I have lost contact with and hope they might some day read this blog and contact me.  Others I communicate with often.  I will include some photos of our friends.  Only my son Eli did not really like living there.  He missed his friends from home.  The Irish boys in his class seemed much more immature for some reason.  He could not believe how they behaved especially in class.  As the months went on, he made friends and seemed to adjust somewhat, but not without some failed attempts on my part.

During the first month of our arrival we were settling in to our townhouse and a daily routine of school and writing.  The son of the O'Mahoneys, who ran the B & B where we had stayed our first week, asked to bring Eli to Trim's boxing club to begin lessons.  Eli was ten when we arrived in Ireland.  He was a very athletic child and played soccer and baseball at home.  Whenever he was at the plate or got the soccer ball, the sideline chanted, "E!  E!  E!"  I hated it though because I do not care for nicknames.  That is one reason I named him Eli.  I could not think of any shortened form for the appellation.  Little did I know my son's name would be reduced to a vowel!

I thought this would be a good way for him to learn a new sport and meet some new friends outside of school.  What a mistake.  My neighbors encouraged me to send him saying it was what all Irish boys did.  Boxing was a part of their youth.  All I could think of though was John Wayne as Sean Thornton in the 1952 film The Quiet American.  [If you remember he was a boxer in Pittsburgh who traveled to Ireland in the 1930s to reclaim his family's farm in Innisfree.  Back in the States as heavyweight champion, he had accidentally killed an opponent in the ring.]  

After a few weeks, one night my beautiful little son came home with two huge black eyes and said he had been hit in the nose.  And he said he truly had hated every minute of the boxing nights.  He was not a quitter--had never asked to quit anything before--but said that he would rather not pursue a boxing career.  I concurred, and thus ended his sojourn into the world of the boxing ring.  One example of the disparity of our cultures.

In the next post I will explain why I decided to take my children across the pond to beome European residents.  For the first time in many years, I have been reading the journal I kept faithfully each day, and it is bringing back so many memories and providing some real belly laughs.  I will begin to share some of it with you.