Easter Weekend

Easter in Ireland is always a great weekend...a little different than Easter in the states but fun times nonetheless.

It kicks off with Good Friday (also known as Great Friday in my circle of friends.) It's meant to be a holy day where there is a certain amount of fasting and abstaining. Because of this Good Friday is one of two days in Ireland where the pubs are closed (the other being Christmas). You also can't buy alcohol in the stores on Good Friday in Ireland...because of this the day before you see tons of people in the Grocery store with carts overflowing with cases of beer, wine and liquor...just in case. LOL

My friends several years ago decided to rebel against this antiquated Irish tradition of abstaining on Good Friday and spent the day getting drunk and having good times(this began the tradition of Great Friday). Great Friday went from being 6 people in a house to a house party with over 200 people. It then evolved into a full blown festival which has had much local success in the past. This year was meant to be the biggest years festival yet, but unfortunately the day before the Festival there was some trouble with a local Guard who decided to push around what little power he had (you know, instead of dealing with a real problem like the drug crime that had ridden this city) and shut the festival down over an 80 year old technicality. (Apparently you need a license to dance in public in Ireland....where is Kevin Bacon when you need him?!?)

Anyways after the tragedy which was this years festival my friends brought it back to Old School Great Friday and we had a nice session with close friends. It was great craic and I some how lasted until 7 in the morning, even though I had been up since 7am the previous day working! (woot maybe I'm not so old after all haha!!)

The next day is known in our circle of friends as Terrible Saturday....this day involves a lot of laying in bed wishing for death and watching movies on the computer.

Today was a nice Easter though. I think Easter here is a little more laid back than the Easter's I knew in America. There are no baskets- no non-chocolate gifts, no deviled eggs (sad face), no Easter egg hunts or egg dying (double sad face) and a serious lack of fuzzy bunnies.

I decided that I would attempt my first ham this year and I'm pleased to say that I did not food poison myself or James (woo hoo!)

I found out on the interwebs that its about 20 minutes per pound so I proceeded to weigh my "small ham" as if a 5 pound ham is small for two people.


Lets just say I will be researching a lot of creative ham recipes this week....lol
(BTW I got that ham for half price....5 euros for a 5 pound ham....I call that a success even if we had gotten food poisoning!)


I saw a lot of recipes recommending basting but I had no clue how to make a baste or what exactly basting involved so I just took the plastic off and popped it in the oven. 2 hours later I pulled it out and it was finished! (I gave it some extra time....just in case. I usually bake all of my meat to death anyways.)
After a quick whip-up of mashed potatoes and some veg we sat down for a traditional Easter roast which was much easier to make than I thought it would be! Dinner success! I believe I will start laying down some family traditions for these holidays.

Oh and of course its not Easter in Ireland without getting an egg....

Yum! The Easter bunny was good to us this year! (Its not a basket but hey, who can turn down an oversized Maltesers egg? not this girl!)

Happy Easter everyone!