Airplane Food ~or~ Getting To Scotland

Back in June I was lucky enough to be my mother's traveling companion on her dream trip to Scotland.  I can still hardly believe I got go!  Not only was it amazing to see Scotland (and a bit of Ireland), but I have memories of a time with my mom that I will cherish for the rest of my life. 

That being said, I know that one post would never be enough to share how awesome our trip was.  So I thought I'd revive things here with a series of posts and pictures.  And who knows, maybe a few other things in between. 

 We flew out of Chicago.  In the above picture you can see just how close the airport is to the main road, and where the trains come in between the airport and main road.  I'm trying to remember if that is a highway over pass on the right or if it was a runway that went over the highway. 

We got to the airport with plenty of time to spare and so had a few hours to kill.  I am actually surprised that I have so few pictures of it as I took well over 2,000 pictures of the trip.  I guess I didn't find O'Hare all that interesting after all. 

 Now we get to the part about the airplane food.  We flew on an Irish airline, Aer Lingus.  While there were things about the flight I did not enjoy (it was a very loud and busy overnight flight), the food was actually rather delicious and the attendants were so polite.  I mean it, if you've heard any stories about how nice the Irish are when you visit their country, you still don't understand.  They were that nice. 

But back to the food.  First off I was rather surprised at how much there was.  I've only ever been on one other long flight (two really since it was round trip) that included meals and this was a much larger meal than we got then.  We had Shepard's Pie with Salad, a roll, butter, a brownie and crackers.  Water and our choice of hot tea or coffee to drink.  I think the little container with the orange top in the bottom corner is the salad dressing, but I can't quite make out what it says. 

It wasn't the best meal I had on the trip, but it was surprisingly good.  It didn't leave me wishing for a better meal or wishing for a larger meal.  All in all it was a good way to start the trip if you ask me.

We had a short layover in Dublin, Ireland.  It was a smaller airport than I expected.  I'm not sure what I expected.  Maybe I just still had the size of O'Hare stuck in my head.  Overall though, Dublin is a bit of a blur.  I was pretty exhausted by this point as I had not gotten any sleep to speak of on the flight across the Atlantic.  

From the air I understood why they call Ireland "The Emerald Isle".  This was one of the last things I saw before we touched down in Scotland.  Did I mention how tired I was?  It was only an hour flight from Dublin to Glasgow, but I slept the whole way.  

And then we were there.  We had a hired car take us to our hotel where we really did think about sleeping for a while.  In the end, we just couldn't do it.  We had to go out and see a bit of the city.  I don't remember what this picture is of, but I do know it's not far from our hotel.  Glasgow is a large city and more industrial than tourist.  We still saw some beautiful sights there. 

Stay tuned for part 2...........

Sorry, I've Been Busy

OK, so maybe I could have found five minutes here and there to post something in the last three months.  And really, I should have.  I generally have a lot to say, even if no one wants to hear it.  Sometimes I just need to focus on other things.  The last three months was mostly about getting my kids through school. 

So now I'm writing today.  Just don't expect me to have too much to say in the next couple of weeks.  I leave tomorrow on vacation to Scotland and Ireland with my mum.  It would be an understatement to say I'm excited.  I'm also a little nervous about flying, but not nearly as nervous as I was when I flew to Germany almost four years ago.

Somewhere in the picture to the right is all the garlic I planted last fall.  I bet you can't find it.  But I promise you it is there.  I have actually been pulling some of the weeds closest to the garlic plants.  I'm hoping it survives until I get back home and can it properly take care of.


And would you just look at this beautiful plantain?  All this rain and cool weather has allowed it to grow to a size I've never seen before.  There is so much of it!  I'm thinking this will be the year I lean how to harvest it and prepare it for future use. 

There's so much more I'd love to show you, but I just don't have time right now.  I have to go pack. 

            SCOTLAND OR BUST!!

Perfect Portions: Salad

Browsing through Pinterest I'd often see salads in pint sized mason jars.  They all look really pretty, but I'd always think to myself that it would be so hard to get the dressing all the way to the bottom of the salad.  Of course you could dump it into a bowl.  But then you have the problem of all your toppings being on the bottom. 

Then it hit me.  Build the salad in the jar upside down!  Build it in layers starting with what you would normally put on your salad last.  Why didn't I think of this before?  Umm....probably because I wasn't trying to make salads ahead in perfect sized portions before. 

 See how pretty it is?  I'm doing the Atkins Diet at the moment trying to shed as many extra pounds before my trip to Scotland as I can.  Salads make the perfect go to lunch if they are pre-made and ready to go. 

You could layer this with anything at all you would normally put in a salad.  This one is (starting from the bottom):

Diced Ham
Chopped Hard Boiled Egg
Sliced Cucumber
Sliced Red Onion

Then I packed as much lettuce in as I could manage.  This time it happens to be a combination of iceberg and romaine.  I don't do iceberg lettuce often, but while I'm on Atkins I really miss the crunch of things like crackers and croutons.   The crunchiness of the iceberg helps a lot with that.

When I'm ready to eat my salad, I'll just dump it into a large bowl and put my dressing on. 

I wonder what else I can pre-portion.

Seven Year Old In The House!

Monday was Braden's seventh birthday.  First he wanted a dirt cake.  Then he found out it had whipped cream in it.  After that, he wanted a cake that looked like a turtle.  THEN, he read a story about a caterpillar in school and he saw a couple of caterpillar cakes while I was browsing Pinterest.  Once he saw them, he was in love and wanted nothing else.

To be quite honest, I was grateful.  This is one of the easiest cakes I've ever made for one of the kids birthdays. 

He's also pretty easy to please when it comes to food.  Chili dog Mac and Cheese is his favorite.  We don't often eat a whole meal of processed food around here, but when it comes to birthday dinners all bets are off.  The child gets what they want. 

It's pretty simple.  Combine chopped up hot dogs with boxed mac and cheese.  Then stir in a can of hot dog chilli.  We like the kind without beans!

I'm sure you could make the mac and cheese from scratch as well as the chilli.  For us, it's something we have so rarely that I've never bothered putting that much work into it.  And everyone needs a fast throw together meal to fall back on every now and again. 

Just  because I want to, here are a few more pictures of the birthday fun.