I hope you all had a well deserved break over the Christmas holidays. It's hard to get back into the pace of normal life. First there's the sugar addiction to get over and then there's the effort of getting up early for a hard days slog to get re-accustomed to.... Especially hard these arctic mornings. Brrrrr...
I'm guessing most of you had a traditional turkey dinner for Christmas. Well, an interesting fact about Eileen Gallagher, founder of Urney Chocolates; she introduced the first White Holland turkey into Ireland in 1956. Eileen, a keen fowl fancier, acquired some fertilized turkey eggs on a trip to the USA and managed to smuggle them back to Dublin. She bred White Holland turkeys successfully for many years in Tallaght, producing up to 3,000 birds annually. Before that, the Bronze turkey would have been the predominant turkey breed in Ireland and goose would have been commonly eaten at Christmas. The White Holland is a smaller breed than the Bronze but matures earlier. There's much debate about how Eileen managed to get the eggs home though it is commonly agreed that the means weren't entirely legal... My preferred family myth claims she hid them in the lining of her fur hat.
