I’ve just realised that it’s been quite some time since I last updated you lovely folks on what’s been happening around here. I’m sure most of you have been having your own Christmas and holiday celebrations, and I hope that wherever you are/were you had a relaxing time.

My Christmas was quite surreal. I think that, for me, Christmas consists of many elements that make up the holiday experience and  without some or all of those things then it’s impossible to really feel ‘Christmassy’. This year was kinda like that. For a start, it’s always nice to open a present on Christmas day which didn’t happen to me this year. Apart from money, this year my two presents were a bottle of wine from one of our drivers, and a few small little things that Valerie gave me before leaving for France (although one of those was tickets to Jersey Boys - most awesome musical ever!).

Another important thing for Christmas is to be with friends and family. Although I was with the few people that were still there at Christmas at my accommodation, it wasn’t really close friends. More, people I know and hang out with from time to time. Actually, many of the people I spent Christmas with were people I met for the first time. My friend Robert is with me for the holidays but he’s been missing his family so we both felt a little weird this year.

On Christmas eve we had our Christmas dinner (apparently in France and Korea it’s traditional to have the meal on the 24th) which was chicken soup prepared by Sue, and after some sort of eggplant with garlic (not so tasty in my opinion). We had a small bit of chicken instead of turkey and then strawberries and chocolate for dessert, so not the traditional Christmas meal we all love. Still, I enjoyed it and it’s always worth trying new things, if for no other reason than to appreciate what you’re used to.

Afterwards, we headed out to Union Square for some photos and went to a bar with a group a nice Brazilian girls who’d asked us to take a photo for them. It was definitely a strange Christmas, and sad in a way that many people in America just try to get Christmas over with. It’s certainly not the same without family and being at home, as much as I hate to admit it. In saying that, I’d probably have been bored at home too.

Christmas Day me and Bob went to Fisherman’s Wharf on the cable car (he’s a tourist) to get a hot bowl of clam chowder. Have to say, it was a marvelous alternative for a cold Christmas Day. Didn’t do much else that day, just chilled out and watched Blade Runner (which really isn’t that good!).

So now it’s coming up to New Year, and my other friend Caroline is here in SF to visit. All three of us are crammed into my wee room, technically breaking the residency rules at my place. In a few days I’m moving too so they’re coming with me. Tomorrow night for new years we’re going to a friends apartment for a party as the discos and parties at the clubs are all $50+ just to get in. This way we can have fun for cheaper, get some good food, wine and take it easy. The guy’s apartment is on top of Russian Hill which means you can see the whole bay from his window, so we’ll see the waterfall of fireworks on the Golden Gate Bridge. I think the plan is to have the party of his roof and then head to the Ferry Building for the midnight countdown - it seems to be the place where a few hundred thousand gather.

My biggest news is that I have managed to get a few days off work for the start of January, and I’ve found some cheap flights to Honolulu so *fingers crossed* I’ll be joining Valerie there for a few days. Pretty short, but I need to go. I simply must! Still very tentative at the moment and extremely last minute but I’ll get something sorted.

Sorry for the lack of photos recently too, I have some from Christmas which I’ll try to find and load up on Flickr. Hope everyone has been having fun, see y’all later.

It’s been a slow week for blogging, and a slow week for me in general - evident by the lack of a blog entry for a week now. So, as a little change, I’m going to show you good folks (many of whom are students with primitive cooking skills) how to prepare a cheap, wholesome and most of all, tasty Shepherd’s Pie that will astound everyone.

On Sunday night I made this very dish from a mixture of a recipe I found online and my own creativity. I made lots of it and shared it with some people, who all were looking for seconds afterwards. Je suis un excellent cuisinier.

You will need:

• Potatoes, roughly 4 large ones. If you like a lot of topping, go for 5.
• 2lb of ground beef
• Carrots and peas (fresh is better, but tinned comes ready prepared and is still good)
• 1 tin of beef broth
• 1/2 cup milk
• Small amount of butter
• Pinch of salt
• Lots of shredded cheese (optional)

Cooking Time:

About 1 hour

Serves:

Around 4 people, I fed 3 with everybody taking seconds…so maybe more.

Popular with:

Everybody! It’s Irish food so everyone loves it. Especially Brazilians.

The Recipe

1. The first thing is to wash and peel your potatoes. Afterwards, cut each potato into quarters and place into a saucepan of boiling water. Add a pinch of salt for flavour, and 1/2 cup of milk to make the potatoes really creamy.

2. Let the potatoes boil for a few minutes, then turn down the heat and simmer for about 25 minutes. It might also be a good idea to preheat your oven at this stage. Keep it fairly warm, around 7 or 8 on the dial.

3. Meanwhile, preheat a large frying pan and melt some butter into it to grease it. Chop up your carrots and peas (you may add onion if you wish, personally I think it’s evil) or simply open your tin and drain most of the juice.

4. Add the ground beef to the frying pan and keep the temperature at a medium level so as not to burn the meat. When the meat is brown, add in your carrots and peas. Cook together until the meat is a nice dark brown and the vegetables are hot. Add in the beef broth periodically while stirring to give the whole thing a rich, juicy texture.

So far you should have something like this:

5. By this stage your potatoes should be nearly ready. Test that they’re soft by poking them with a fork, and if all is good drain the water/milk and mash them up. In the absence of a potato masher, a whisk is an effective alternative as shown below:

6. While mashing it might be a good idea to add in the some more butter to improve the flavour. It helps to make the potatoes more spreadable too.

7. When they’re done, use the rest of your butter to grease the inside of a baking tray and add your beef mixture into it. Spread it out over the tray and make sure it’s still nice and moist.

8. Spread the potatoes on top and make sure it covers as much as possible. Use a fork to rough up the top of it so that it can turn a nice golden brown when done. Place it in the oven as close to the top as possible and leave for about 30 minutes.

9. The final stage is to bring it out the oven when the top is crispy and golden brown. Depending on your tastes, you may wish to add cheese to the top. I love cheese, so I added almost an entire bag of 4 Italian cheese to the top of my pie and let it melt for a few minutes before serving.

10. The end result is a really tasty Shepherd’s Pie that will feed a whole house. If you want, you can serve it with chips or some garlic bread, that works quite well. And it goes down great with a cold pint of Guinness!

So that’s it. give it a try and tell me how you get on. I guarantee you’ll love it (not a guarantee). Hope fully I’ll have something more exciting to blog about in a few days.

Dude I had the most awesome weekend. Myself, Sue and Valerie rented a car (actually, we got upgraded to a kick ass SUV for an extra $5 each) and headed up to Lake Tahoe for a weekend of snowboarding, ice skating and general winter tomfoolery. The car’s less expensive with 5 people instead of 3, so we also picked up two random guys that we found on Craigslist. They chipped in with rental costs and gas and were generally helpful on the way up and down.

Lake Tahoe

I love those pointless little statistics you pick up at places when you visit. Here’s a couple of cool things about Tahoe:

• Lake Tahoe is so deep that if it were to completely empty, it would cover an area the size of California in 14 inches of water.
• It’s 97% freshwater and on a good day you can see up to 100ft in the water.
• It’s right on the border between California and Nevada with about 2/3 of the lake in California. But it means if you get up early and fancy a beer you just have to cross over to Nevada to take advantage of their 24 drinking laws.

I like to educate my readers as well as entertain.

We left around 7pm on Friday evening in our Ford Escape and headed down the highway towards Sacramento. As it was a kind of holiday, I wore shorts. For us Irish it’s practically the law that in times of holiday, shorts are mandatory. However as we got closer to Tahoe, and higher in elevation, the weather turned a little more nasty and it got very, very cold. There was both snow and ice, so much so that we had to stop at a gas station and buy snow chains for the tyres (as required by law). It took a little over 4 hours to get to South Lake Tahoe, about 180 miles but driving conditions slowed us down.

After dropping the two other guys off, we checked into a nice little motel on Lake Tahoe Blvd, near Heavenly Ski Resort. It had all the mountain furnishings - wood panelling, wooden floor and, of course, tea and coffee making facilities. Pretty cheap too, only about $20 each for the night. I got an awesome nights sleep, but a freezing cold shower in the morning thanks to a particularly annoying French girl abusing the hot water supply. I mention no names.

Snowboarding

The next day was bright and early to Heavenly. It’s often considered California’s premier ski resort. We managed to rent everything we needed - waterproof ski pants, a ski jacket and snowboard - all for about $40. Then when we got everything on, we took the gondola up to the top of the mountain.

I’ve never snowboarded (or skied for that matter) before so I was expecting to spend most of the day on my ass. As it turns out, I did fall over a considerable amount of time but generally I came away fairly unscathed and was able to make some decent progress. Best of all I had a blast doing it and despite feeling like a bear had sat on me the next day, I really want to go back and do it again.

I was particularly proud of two things that day. My first moment was flying down the mountain and not knowing how to stop, so when this little kid skis out in front of me I panicked and just fell on my ass causing my board to dig into the ground. I completely snowed the kid and stopped just in front of her and her mother, who looked more than a little upset that I had turned her little girl into Frosty the Snowman. I’ll admit, I felt bad initially and duly apologized, but afterwards I chuckled and am rather proud of my achievement.

The other moment involved a similar scenario, trying to slow down but figuring that the piled up soft snow to the side would surely decrease my velocity. Much to my demise, turning also featured on my ‘to-do’ list so I hit the snow at full speed and instead of slowing down, I simply cannoned over the top achieving a mighty impressive (and trouser browning) 5 or 6 feet in the air. Initially I landed it, but the landing completely threw off my balance and about 2 feet later I folded like an accordion, busting my knee and going down the hill on my back and facing the wrong way. When I did eventually stop though I was congratulated on my “knarly move”. For almost 2 seconds, I had fooled many people into thinking I was a professional.

As the day went on, the weather turned pretty severe and the slopes were both hard to see and hard to fall on. At 4 o’clock we called it a day and headed back, just before they closed up for the day. With the wind chill factor, the temperature was about -10 Celsius and my clothes were literally frozen. My hood wouldn’t go down because it was frozen and taking my glove off for more than a couple of minutes caused all sorts of problems getting it back on because it too was frozen stiff.

That evening, we went for sushi at the Naked Fish restaurant (try the tuna roll, mmmm). Have to say, it’s growing on me - sushi. Afterwards, we checked into a different motel. We talked the guy down a bit and managed to get an awesome room for around $30 each for the night, complete with two double beds and Jacuzzi. I spent about two hours in the hot tub with some ice cold drinks. Perfect way to end the day.

Day Two

I briefly thought about going boarding again the second day, but finally settled on it being a totally stupid idea as I was in terrible shape. Instead we went for breakfast at IHOP and went to the beach by the lake to build a snowman. As he was our first American snowman, we settled on a suitably American name for him.

Chaz proved rather difficult to build, so he’s really more of a snow invalid than a snow man. And don’t slabber about my hat - yes, it looks like a caramel dessert but it was only $1 and it serves it job.

In the afternoon, we went ice skating near Heavenly at the outdoor skating rink. Steve, I’m much better now than first year in uni! Speaking of ice-skating, they’ve got an outdoor rink on Embarcadero now in San Francisco, ooohhh. Needless to say, out of me and Valerie, I totally showed her up with my blinding array of flourishes and moves. Somebody mistook me for Christopher Dean, but I cleared up the confusion.

Finally, before heading back to San Francisco, we took a walk around one of the casino’s on the Nevada side of the city. Compared to Vegas it was pretty crappy, but still fun to see. After, we picked up our two passengers and drove back to SF in much less time than before due to better driving conditions. Got back home quite exhausted and overjoyed to discover I started work on Monday at 6am.

Think I’ll go back next weekend.

I moved room today at my place, so here’s my new address (for all you that want to send a Christmas card/present to your favourite Irish friend). I also put in my new cellphone number (I figured it’s too expensive to have my own phone since I hardly use it so I’m using the company phone instead, all paid for of course). And finally, I put my Skype in there because I know loads of people have Skype but probably don’t know my username. Remember, Skype to Skype is free so I can chat to you for free if you have it!

So…instructions:

1. Grab your mobile / notebook etc.
2. Write down my new details
3. Save for future reference!

Have a good weekend whatever you’re doing, I’m off to Lake Tahoe to go snowboarding for the first time!

Oh, and in case I can’t call - Happy Birthday Dave for Saturday!

Firstly, relax…I’m not talking about myself here. I’m a long way off from that.

I’ve been caught in a weird place these last few weeks. Recently I was on Facebook and noticed one of my friend’s status changed from ‘In a relationship’ to ‘Engaged’. Came as a bit of a surprise to me. I guess being over here in America removes you from the loop a little bit, and as much as you try to keep up with what’s going on at home, there’s still things you’ll miss.

It’s still a new thing for me to have a friend that’s engaged to be married. I know it happens all the time, but somewhere along the line I’ve slipped into that age group where your friends around you are getting married. Granted, the ones involved are older than me (well…actually the guy is around the same age) but still I feel like the whole world is changing around me and life never sits still.

So I’m busy musing all this over when I notice on Bebo that an ex-girlfriend of mine is now married too. And she was only six months older than me. Scary. For me, it seems too young but I suppose there’s no perfect age to get married. A lot of things can change so fast and you don’t even realise. In a way it’s sorta sad that I get most of my information from social networking sites these days.

Today, again I was on Facebook and there’s another status update. Two friends of mine from university, who I thought were just good friends, are now engaged too. Of course, my first flippant reaction was that the whole world is getting married and clearly I’ve missed something. It’s a huge step to get married, because you’re essentially sacrificing your own freedom for the happiness and benefits found with sharing life with someone you love. I know that my friends haven’t taken the decision to wed without serious thought first, yet it makes me feel both young and old at the same time.

I’m still young, and I know that marriage should be way down my list of priorities but I’m reminded of the old proverb that if you haven’t found the person for you by the time you leave university then it becomes much more difficult. When I come back home, my full time education will only last one more year so if this theory holds true then I’m short on time. Taking a risk and moving country was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. But nothing worthwhile is easy, and I’m so glad I did it. As a friend of mine once said “I’m fed up with being safe and discontent. At least if I take a risk and it doesn’t work out, I can say I’ve tried”. I went through the same thing - at home I had it easy, but I was still discontent. I couldn’t have picked a better opportunity. I’m in the middle of California, I have a whole year and every day is different for me. My life here is totally different to back home and at the moment I wouldn’t trade it.

So congratulations to my friends that are taking (and have taken) the next step in theirs lives. I hope that will be me someday, but for now I’m happy being who I am, being where I am and doing what I’m doing.