Today I emailed for several hours, baked these delicious lemon drizzle cakes, and watched Halloween Town. I can't believe I'm moving to England in 2 weeks. There is so much to do.

summer's end

We're in the final weeks of summer over here. Flip flops every day is no longer a sufficient footwear choice, and we've had a few rainy/stormy days lately. Since I'm finished up at my job I'm supposed to be productive; preparing for my studies, 2 proposals, holidays, all that stuff. 

But I've been fairly lazy, if I'm being honest. I've been pottering around at home cleaning, doing laundry, making essential oil with my new lemon balm plant (!), entertaining guests, reading my Paul Krugman book (the closest relation to 'work' right now) cooking, and generally doing things not taxing on the brain. I also spent a good few hours cleaning up the computer, and sorting all 19,000 pictures into appropriate folders. Good grief.

Today is Leaving Cert Results day for all the school leavers in Ireland, and I'm thanking my lucky stars those days are long behind me (7 years!) because boy, was that a stressful experience. All the anxiety, stress and strain of it, just to be told you either get into a course or don't. From there it all starts at a blank page again. Conjugating irregular verbs and solving for x aren't much use for most of us in the real world.

Leo has managed to get his hands on a sourdough starter from a colleague in work, so later today we are making sourdough, blancmange, and some tasty Autumnal dish from the Irish cook book I picked up at the library. Our evenings are filled with swims in the sea, watching a Cold War documentary, and drinking a lot of tea, both breakfast and lemon balm. Life, it's pretty good.

 

some irish things on a friday

I am having a truly Irish morning. I've just finished making the most amazing smelling soda bread from this recipe. The recipe called for some kneading, and let me tell you, kneading bread is a wonderful, stress-relieving exercise. I recommend it to all.

While in the mood of all things Irish, I've been listening to Luke Kelly. His voice will reduce you to wobbly child tears if you're not very careful.

Did you know, you cut open the top of the bread before baking so the fairies (that help the bread to rise, naturally) can escape and go help someone else? The more you know!

And finally, without getting too political, this beautiful Yeats poem.

Yeats is one of my favourite poets, as I'm sure is true of many. Just a few lines:

Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
O when may it suffice?
That is Heaven's part, our part
To murmur name upon name,
As a mother names her child
When sleep at last has come
On limbs that had run wild.

Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born. 

And just to lighten the tone, 12 buns a cooling, ready to be iced later (with tea as dye for the raspberry flavoured ones!).

it's almost pancake tuesday

It's a long time since I called myself a Catholic (another story for another day), but Pancake Tuesday is one of the vestiges of my youth I'll be holding onto. Ireland in the 90s was a fairly simple place, and when we were kids it was a bottle of pre-made pancake mix from Super Valu and unholy quantities of sugar and lemon juice in this pre-Lenten ritual.

In school we'd make pancakes occasionally, and later on as a waitress in college, the chef would always make sure we got a feed of about 7 pancakes before our shift began. Simpler times. These days my tastes are a bit more refined, but for all intensive purposes Pancake Tuesday exists solely to make an absolute pig of oneself. We've invited a fellow Irish woman over for the festivities, and I'm drooling over Pinterest images in anticipation.

Belated Christmas Post #2 | A Million Gingerbreads Shall Be Baked

I don't know a man alive that doesn't love gingerbread men. Well, I know one,  I have a friend who would rather not eat gingerbread, but I'm convinced she's never given it a solid shot and should welcome the spicy crunchy goodness into her heart.

Not only Christmas, but the entire winter period, is incomplete for me without having endless, fresh batches of gingerbread people in circulation. They're so easy to make, absolutely delicious, and I'll always favour something I've baked myself over a shop-bought item.

I follow this BBC recipe, it's incredibly simple and the biscuits turn out great every time.

          Ingredients

350g/12oz plain flour, plus extra for rolling out

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

2 tsp ground ginger

1 tsp ground cinnamon

125g/4½oz butter

175g/6oz light soft brown sugar

1 free-range egg

4 tbsp golden syrup

Preparation method

1. Sift together the flour, bicarbonate of soda, ginger and cinnamon and pour into the bowl of a food processor. Add the butter and blend until the mix looks like breadcrumbs. Stir in the sugar.
   
2. Lightly beat the egg and golden syrup together, add to the food processor and pulse until the mixture clumps together. Tip the dough out, knead briefly until smooth, wrap in clingfim and leave to chill in the fridge for 15 minutes.
   
3. Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4. Line two baking trays with greaseproof paper.
   
4. Roll the dough out to a 0.5cm/¼in thickness on a lightly floured surface. Using cutters, cut out the gingerbread men shapes and place on the baking tray, leaving a gap between them.
   
5. Bake for 12-15 minutes, or until lightly golden-brown. Leave on the tray for 10 minutes and then move to a wire rack to finish cooling. 
   
   *I used x2 the measurements to make a double batch. At times, I have also used molasses instead of golden syrup as I think it's a more nutrient-rich alternative, but it does make the biscuits a darker colour, so be warned. In addition, I chop up a root of ginger into tiny pieces and mix it in, because ginger is really good for you and I love it. 
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   

 Best eaten fresh from the oven when they're still ever so slightly soft in places but mostly crunchy. De-vine, as Candy Crush would say.

Good Things To Eat #Past Tense Edition

I'm looking through my Dropbox folder tidying it up, and of course drooling over all the delicious food pictures from yesteryear. So many good foods, so little time to remember them all, so here's some of my favourites.

The best café in Baden Baden, on the edge of the Black Forest

Homemade artichoke pizza

A birthday cake (I am unsure about the origins of this cake)

Cookies

Bread Cake

The best green tea ice cream in London

Tayeb's in Whitechapel

Pizza Love