Ballymaloe

Hi everyone, We, Mum & I, are safely at the cookery school in Ireland for the next few weeks. We have been all around counties Clare and Galway in the week leading up to school. Some changes in this little (tiny) Irish burb since i was here last…one is that the road i used to take to walk to the beach is now closed because of new housing developments, so yesterday i found myself in a hectacre (2 1/2 acres) of potatoes trying to get around the new houses and walls and back to the road. The potato farmer was very kind and showed me the new way after telling me all about the varieties and ways he grows his potatos. I can imagine I am the first American gal he’s ever found wandering around his fields! Second change is that the roads are still treacherous for pedestrians – they are extremely narrow, with high rock walls and no curbing and wild drivers careen about on them at an alarming rate of speed. That is all the same as before, only now all the wild drivers are on their cell phones! EGAD!!! I was much safer in the farmers potato field, believe you me.