Suddenly, I'm blogging

Hello everyone --

Thanks, Dan, I'm glad to get on the blog bandwagon.

I know Maureen is compiling detailed info on the itinerary and such. Maureen, you have been working overtime on this and Marty's lovely memorial site. But could someone refresh me on the basic info -- i.e. the dates of the formal "tour," and where it starts and where it finishes? Or has all this been explained somewhere on the evite and I have somehow missed it? David did get his sabbatical, which makes it likely that we can go.

I made IRISH STEW tonight to mark the holiday. (My supermarket happens to make good soda bread, so we bought that.) I used a Joy of Cooking recipe that called for boneless stew meat from the lamb shoulder or neck. My supermarket only had the boned variety, so that's what I used, although I could have had them cut up a boneless leg of lamb. It was O.K. and David and Jon liked it, but the bones were a little inconvenient, not to mention inelegant. I was trying to remember Nanny's Irish stew -- can't remember whether there were bones in the meat, but I do remember it being pretty basic -- a piece of meat, a carrot, and a potato in broth, right? I remember the stew, the roast chicken on Sundays with lumpy gravy, and the tuna salad with apples. Someone told me that Nanny learned the apple trick while working in a fancy household in Boston.

Anyway, Happy St. Patty's Day to one and all.


Love, Jeanne