Good Habits We Picked Up During The Whole Celtic Tiger Thing

Brunch - that was a bit of a Celtic Tiger era-adopted habit, wasn't it? Admittedly I was a bit too young and without income to be 'doing' brunch prior to that time, but I don't recall it being around pre-the late nineties/early noughties. Well, either we learned it from watching Friends or having fake credit card money stuff, but it has persisted long beyond the departure of those two particular phenomena. It's attractive on so many levels: it's technically two meals combined, therefore you get to eat more; the time is nice and flexible (like, any time really from 11am to 2.30pm) and there's a wide enough window there to schedule it comfortably around other activities without feeling rushed; it's spread over a long period of time, therefore you get to eat more; it's very sociable and relaxed, generally less expensive and fussy whether you're eating out or at home; there are both sweet and savoury options on offer, therefore you get to eat more. So, really my own personal love for brunch stems mainly from the fact that it's pretty much an excuse to eat twice as much as is usually socially acceptable, and even though it's supposed to be when you have both your brunch and lunch at the same time I generally manage to squeeze in a lil early brekkie and late lunch around the main event. Can't be going to hungry, now, it impedes the enjoyment of food, it's very important to remain topped up. When entertaining at home, I find brunch to be a far more chilled out endeavour than dinner. And even though going out for brunch is considerably less expensive than going out for dinner, I do find that my tendency to guzzle coffee gets a little bit pricey after cup number three. Not to mention the fact that I like to incorporate both a savoury and sweet element to proceedings, and I don't always find that menus quite accommodate that. So when the sun is out and a long, lazy bank holiday weekend is there to be enjoyed and exploited and just generally made the most of, what better way to catch up with pals than hang out and stuff face in the back garden for very chatty hours on end. 

Happy Birthday To Me

Things have been quiet round these parts of late, unlike in my actual real life, which has been pretty jam-packed - hence my absence. My efforts have mainly been concentrated on throwing a party to celebrate my thirtieth birthday and cleaning up afterwards. I'm not the only one who has aged this past week; my floorboards look like they fairly lived, quite a deal of food has passed through the door of my fridge and many glasses have met their fate in smithereens that I'm still finding in the oddest places. Rather than simply throw the front door open and invite my guests to come in and get drunk to mark my waving goodbye twenties and hello thirties, I figured I would make the festivities as food-filled as time would allow. Were I a more calm and organised hostess, this post would be peppered with pics of the lovely spring rolls that I made (for the first time - highly recommended - I'll be making them again), the crunchy, spicy Thai aubergine salad and the sticky honey & soy sauce marinated saussies, but there was no time or space for camera-wielding during my slightly frantic preparations. So, instead, the only documentation that remains of me eating my way merrily into my fourth decade (apart from an alarmingly rapid increase in the size of my thighs) is this lonely little slice of baked chocolate Oreo cheesecake. I had hit on the idea, you see, of making a cake for each decade; the chocolate ice-cream pie was an easy-peasy crowd-pleasy no-brainer; for those not so wild about chocolate, I decided to go for a lovely moist carrot cake - nice with tea or coffee for anyone who was deciding against alcohol; and since I'm quite a fan of a nice baked cheesecake I thought I would give this baked Oreo one another try, as I had already given it a go back in March and wasn't over the moon with the results. And so, while the sample slice in the above photo may seem rather jaded and forlorn, it is in fact a very triumphant little piece of cake that battled through the festivities of the night before to survive and become my breakfast the following morning. As for the rest of my culinary efforts, I feel that it is only fair I throw another party in the near future to share those tasty, picky little triumphs with you. Watch this space.

Oh I Do Like To Eat Beside The Me-Side

By which I mean: staying in is the new going out again. And also: I heart the 'burbs. Another one: I am so lazy/poor that I prefer to have pals over to my house so that we (actually, lets be honest, I) can eat as many portions as hunger/greed demands and refill endless pots of coffee and tea without having to fork out for the very unhardcore (but not without its own perils) substance addiction that is caffeine. Sitting chatting and eating for as long as time and responsibility allow is one of my favourite things to do. This is an activity that takes place primarily at weekends, and many of my weekend eating hours have been spent in pursuit of the perfect croque monsieur. C'est parfait comme brunch food: bread - check; cheese - check; eggs - check; meat - check. No invasion from healthy, green foodstuffs here, just carby, dairy, processed meatsy indulgence. It can be pretty hard to get an aw-fen'ick croque monsieur round these parts. I do love the cheese and ham toastie that they call a CM in Fallon and Byrne, but it just lacks the essentials (incidentally, those who think that a CM is 'just a toasted cheese and ham sandwich' need a good KICK). The beaut of a CM in Chez Max is certainly the real deal, but the €7.90 pricetag is only the start of it - add the price of at least two coffees and then a tip to that and you're talking the guts of €20 - OUCH! Non, merci. So when I saw that Nigella, ever the friend of the greedy lady, had come up with this beauteous wonder of a croque monsieur bake I was more than a little excited. It's low maintenance, squidgy weekend perfection. It'll even do for those times when you want the best of both worlds: a bit of a mad one on a Saturday night, without missing out on crucial home entertaining catch-ups over Sunday brunch. Get your shizzle together before you head out on Saturday night and it'll be sitting there ready to crack into the oven on Sunday morning, filling the house with smells that will warm you right to the core.

More Cake? Don't Mind If I Do

Hmmmm, yes I have indeed been up to my tonsils of late - yet somehow I have managed to fit a large amount of cake into my life. Curious. Or not so much - I mean, everyone thinks that baking is really hard but to be honest once you stick to what you're told then you're not going to go too wide of the mark. And time-wise I personally think that you get more return on your investment than when you cook a regular meal - like, it'll be there for the guts of a week, whereas a savoury, main coursey type meal things, well, they kind of disappear in a jiffy to be honest - in my presence, at any rate. When I was tweeting/FBing excitedly about my new Ottolenghi cookbook, my friend Gemma commented that I really must make the apple and olive oil cake with maple icing. Given that decisions are not always my forte when faced with an array of attractive options, I considered this one made. 

Jam Session

When I was, I think, about seven or eight a nurse came to school to instill some nutritional wisdom in us small mid-eighties Irish kideens. What I took away from her visit was that jam and tea are bad for you, so I diligently trotted home and told my parents that I would be having neither from thereonin, thank you very much. To this day I am mystified as to the allure of tea, not to mention the assumption that every living person drinks it, and sure what else would you have with your fry up/when you visit someone's house/when your head is done in. People just plonk it down on the table in front of you, and I think that it's only recently that my own family have stopped asking me if they'll put my name in the pot. Jam, however, I have become very happily reacquainted with, particularly since my exercise habits have really ratcheted up my sugar cravings. Since I began making my own bread I take particular pride and pleasure in having a slab of hot toast covered in lumps of rough-n-ready homemade jam or marmalade along with a big pot of coffee of a morning. I have hazy memories of my mam making jam (oooo, sounds like a Dr Seuss book!) when we were small. We had lots of fruit growing in our garden, and as far as I can remember gooseberries and blackcurrants were the most frequent visitors to the ginormous jam saucepan that wasn't used for anything else and went into hiding in the back kitchen when it wasn't jam season. I have similarly hazy memories of a particular type of jam sugar that was a key part of proceedings, but for the life of me I can't remember the name of the brand; it came in a blue tin and the name was written in curly, swirly writing, and I think that it began with a G...anyone want to help me out on this?! Argh, not only is it only going to drive me bananas, now I want one of those old tins to plant herbs in. Why don't I distract myself by telling you about my grapefruit, orange and lemon marmalade.

Cheer-Me-Up-Quick Cake

I reckon it's fair to say that I'm not the only person in the country who has needed a fair bit of cheering up of late. Cake is quite the cheerer-upper, I find, a comforting friend that doesn't disappoint. And what could provide more perk-me-up solace than a cake made from some beamingly orange vegetables? Carrot cake is a fresh, moist joy of a cake; I know that 'moist' isn't a very appetising word, but it perfectly describes that 'just so' texture between my-fan-oven-isn't-so-amazing-after-all and dammit-why-did-I-spend-so-long-in-the-shower. There's the nuts chunking out through the fluff, and somehow carrots taste like a natural treaty dessert ingredient, not at all like that gag-inducing Kelkin juice stuff that I went through a (frankly, pointless) phase of forcing into myself. Then there is the lovely chilled slab of icing on top; lets face it, the majority of the joy derived from a cake is via the icing, and I think that this applies to carrot cake more so than any other kind. This recipe came from my not-so-new-anymore Ottolenghi cookbook (as recommended by the lovely Lilly Higgins), which I haven't had much time to pore over and experiment with, unfortunately - but as things are slowly becoming less hectic I'm hoping to have some more quality time with this delight of a book in the near future. In the meantime, I honed in on this classic beauty to brighten up my little world. 

Still Alive, Still Stuffing My Face

Oh my, I have been quite the absentee blogger lately, haven't I? Only about a month ago I would have felt deprived if I didn't get the chance to blog every day, now I try to pinpoint one single day in the week that I might actually have the time and energy to devote to a blog post. Things are thoroughly hectic with me at the mo, I am up to my tonsils, and some of favourite things have fallen by the wayside - blogging, clearly, being one of them. Stuffing my face, however, has managed to sustain and retain my devotion, only my meals are considerably speedier, and, being conscious of the scope for making excuses and veering off into wildly unhealthy eating habits, I am constantly jamming in the veggies. Lunch is one that I like to have some vague semblance of a plan for, plonked in there, as it is, in the middle of the day, where the potential for the lack of a plan also means potential for tasteless, unhealthy, unsatisfying muck - and there is nothing quite like a crap meal to make me narky. The veggie-centric book by The Other Sophie In My Life is super handy on the 'my body needs LEAVES' or 'I need to feed myself with bright things like carrots and tomatoes' front. Pick a veggie, any veggie, find yourself a recipe in that section of the book, and get cracking safe in the knowledge that you won't be wrestling with with over-carbed & -dairyed & -animal proteined guilt at the end of the day.