Bloomsday foods

We're just days away from Bloomsday, and that means that this is the best (and only) time of year to see the culinary oddities from Ulysses making their appearance in the real world.

For example, at the Greenmarket in New York, you can get your hands on "Bloomsday cheese."
(It's not the food that just most readily to mind from the book, but Bloom does eat a cheese sandwich in "Lestrygonians.")

Here's a short article from 2002 (in pdf) of someone who ate a Bloomsday diet for two weeks, including Leopold Bloom's famous pork liver breakfast cooked in butter.

Some events worth seeing, if you find yourself in one of these cities:

Kansas City -- Bloomsday Books. They don't have any of the info for this year's festivities on line, but in years past they have done a multifaceted event with reading, performances, and lots of drinking.

New York -- The New York James Joyce Society has a celebration every year where they read the entirety of Ulysses. I think they get famous people to do it. Anyways, it's in Manhattan, and supposed to be a really fabulous time.

Austin, TX - The University of Austin is hosting this year's North American James Joyce Conference, which I attended a few years ago. What's nice about this kind of event is that it's an academic conference with the levity and wit of a night at the pub. (If anyone is going to this, I'd like a conference poster!)

Philadelphia -- This is another big celebration, like New York, with signing, reading, etc. It's held at the Rosenbach Museum, which houses one of the best manuscripts of Ulysses.