Slang and Food

I was sitting at the kitchen table where my little cousin was doing her homework, and I read a small post-it that her teacher had written describing how to write a lowercase e:

"Start in the middle and go around like a shellakybookie."

What on earth is a shellakybookie, you might ask? Well, I had the exact same question. Answer: Waterford slang for a snail.

Slang of course pops up occasionally in normal conversation, and my aunt thinks it is fun to "educate" me intentionally as well. And my cousins love to "correct" me when I use American words. My cousin Hannah also likes to mock my American "accent" as well (though to be fair, she also likes to imitate British accents: "Allo, gov'na!")

I've been informed that a "sidewalk" is not a sidewalk, it's a "footpath." Last week, I stopped to use the bathroom in a cafe by the beach. When I asked where the public restrooms were, the barrista responded (jokingly), "Why? Are you going to take a snooze?"

Clearly, I should have said "bathroom."

My aunt's mini-van is not a "van." It is a "people carrier."

I'm sure there are more, but I can't remember them all.

Before coming here, a lot of people asked about the food in Ireland. They wanted to know what kind of food was typical or traditional here, but I honestly didn't have an answer. I still don't, but here are a few things (obvious and perhaps a bit less obvious) that I've seen served here:

First, the obvious:
1. Fish and chips. You can usually order sausages, fried chicken, burgers, or chicken burgers if you prefer them to fish. I tend to pick chicken for some reason, so I actually haven't had fish with my chips yet. But they are both delicious!
2. Potatoes. Served in any form--mashed, roast, fried. My cousin Hannah likes to call the roast potatoes "hotties" for some reason.
3. Brown bread. So good, especially toasted with butter and jam. It is denser than normal brown bread (more like a soda bread).

The less obvious:
1. Blaas. This is a local specialty. Basically, blaas are soft rolls covered in flour. They are good just with butter or with meat and cheese. I've also seen burgers with a blaa instead of a bun.
2. Vanilla slice. If you just listen to the ingredients, it sounds delicious: thin pastry, custard, cream, topped with a little vanilla icing (and sometimes coconut). Okay, so probably not everyone would like this dessert, but I happen to like custard a lot, and I'm definitely not opposed to any of the other ingredients. For some reason the first time I tried it, I didn't like it. But last week I had some homemade vanilla slice, and it was delicious!
3. Digestive biscuits. On our trip to Madrid at the beginning of the semester, I introduced my friends to digestive biscuits, a kind of biscuit that is common in Ireland (and apparently in Spain as well). We got them practically every weekend we were travelling. We usually ate them with tea or Nutella, but they are actually best with butter (something we didn't typically have in Spain). My aunt and uncle usually buy the chocolate variety, which is also really good.
4. Biscuit cake. In case digestive biscuits aren't good enough on their own, they can also be put into a cake. It's kind of like fudge with biscuit pieces inside. I believe you can use digestive biscuits or "rich tea biscuits," another kind of hard cracker-like biscuit.
5. Chicken curry. I usually eat this with rice, but it is also commonly served over chips. Chippers or restaurants often have "curry and chips" as an option.

As with the slang, I'm sure there are more food items I could mention, but these are the few examples that come to mind. I'll try to include some more as they come up!