Hello stranger

Well hello stranger. How're you doing?

Ok, so I have been REALLY crap and not posted on here since when....January...December even? I'll try to be more diligent about posting on here more, really. Especially since I now cook everyday. I've moved in with Gar to a little one bedroom house, we've got a cat that at the moment has lost her voice so she's just squeaking at us, and work for me is only a 20 minute walk away. We're living the dream.

Oh yeah, so other great news and a MASSIVE reason why I have no time to really blog anymore is that I have a job as an admin with an events company. It's certainly been keeping me busy and I've tried to found a ladies vintage appreciation society in Dublin. It's slowly getting there. If only I had more time to put into it really.

Anyway so far this week we've been eating a alot of comfort food. Gar's cooked his speciality, we've been to dinner at my mom's and had her rendition of jambalaya, I've made a massive pot of minestrone soup and last night we had potato and carrot rostis with halumi cheese, guacamole and tomatoes in olive oil, pepper and balsamic vinegar. It's been a tasty week :)

Merry Christmas and all that jazz

Just a quick post with some seasonal wishes for all those lovely people who take the time to read my blog.

Blue goes on tour!

Well ok, maybe the title is a bit of an exaggeration! Maybe it's more a tour of the clouds in between here and Spain...


In November I will be escaping our very soggy weather for 5 days to go visit a friend in Madrid whose on an Erasmus year. I'm also hoping to make it up to Bilbao to visit another friend. Though a recent recheck of Google maps to see where it is in relation to Madrid has shown me the two are not as close together as I had thought. Living in Ireland where everything is 2-3 hours on the motorway has perhaps instilled in me an expectation that everywhere else in the world is so easily commutable too (well with exceptions of places like America and Russia).

A-Z of Me

So I saw this on Retrochick's blog and thought it would be kinda fun to add to my own one too. So here's my A-Z of me, probably more information than you ever wanted to know about me. 

A-Age: 22

B-Bed size: Double 

C-Chore that you hate: Dusting, it makes me sneeze something terrible. Then I look like a fool if I wear a face mask to stop the sneezing. 

D- Dogs: A long weekend of looking after Gar's friend's dog and their apartment has definitely cemented my love of cats. They don't need to be walked, they can be house trained to poop in a box and they generally don't tend to eat whatever leftovers you have on the kitchen counter while also smearing it all over the couch. We've already agreed on names, for when we live together and can adopt some kitties. Orwell and Beckett after our favourite authors. Though zombie kitty is also pretty tempting.  

Back in action!

Just a quick post to say hello and say I'm still here! 


The past few weeks (dare I say months - has it been that long?) have been pretty busy. Between spending a ridiculous amount of time on buses, barely any time at home and feeling as per usual like I have nothing really to show for how I have spent my time, I haven't done alot of cooking. The few unsuccessful attempts I have had in the kitchen lately have actually led to a bit of a crisis of confidence. But everyone has their off days/weeks/months, right?  


Anyway I am back to the blog and back in the kitchen! 


You may have noticed that the overall look has been pretty heavily tweaked and I have been working on a number of new posts that will be published in the next few days. 

Shameless event promo.

Don't read this if you only care about food. But do read this if you're in Dublin Ireland the first weekend in August and you like classic cars, hotrods, girls or guys, bikes and awesome music! 

Country Pot Luck

County as in where are you from rather than Garth Brookes and line dancing. I can't remember how we ended up with this as a theme, but I found this quiz what country are you? and sent it around to everyone so we'd have a more impartial way of deciding who got what rather than everyone cooking Indian or Italian because we're more familiar with their cuisine. 

Starters:

France: paté and vegetarian mushroom paté

(There were also potato and vegetable cutlets that Paul made but I didn't manage to get a snap of them before they were all eaten)

Life status update: still breathing.

Well hello there folks. It would appear that I've had a good few visitors during my absence, which is really nice to come back to but it makes me feel that I should apologise for my sloppy housekeeping and lack of recent posts. I have some rubbish pictures on my phone of things I've cooked over the past couple of weeks, but the problem is I can't quite remember my recipes. Did I write them down? Hell no. Sloppy, I know. 

It has been a busy few weeks though. Pretty much all focused on a still-as-yet-unsuccessful job hunt, working in the garden to prepare my vegetable patch (fingers crossed I will have a decent vegetable and herb garden come summer! ) and doing a few things for my birthday. The day itself was spent in Dublin with job interviews, then dinner with Gar and then we checked out Tbone Kelly's acoustic session over a couple of drinks in the Gypsy Rose.  

Like last year, I decided to mark my birthday by getting a tattoo. This time round involved getting a much bigger piece and a trek to London especially to get it done by Simon Erl. I met him at the last Dublin Tattoo convention and I felt he was perfect to go to for a piece that I've been mulling over for a few months now. While it seems like an unusual combination of elements, it has a lot of significance for me and  as soon as the idea came to me, I was certain that it was something I wanted to get done. Because I was so confident in Simon's talent I just told him the elements I wanted and left it up to him to put them all together, which I think he did a wonderful job of. I know the shine in the picture takes a little bit from the details, I'm waiting for it to fully heal now before I snap it again since it's still a bit flakey.  

Ouch my face hurts

Woke up this morning with my usual hesitancy to get out of bed combined with an even sorer right side of my mouth than I went to bed with. Why is it that wisdom teeth must hurt me so much? Last year with all the stresses and strains of university the same tooth gave me a lot of hassle by becoming infected at one of the most stressful points of my year. Of course I went to the dentist to get it sorted who also told me that if I got a second infection he'd refer me on to get all four of my wisdom teeth removed. I don't actually have room in my mouth for 2 of the 4, so that combined with the pain I was in had me practically challenging my wisdom teeth to cause another infection. However as you can probably guess, this didn't happen.

Now I may be facing into the second infection of the same tooth/part of my gum, which hasn't even had the decency to properly come down yet. The bugger. I can't say I feel the same though about the possibility of having them removed now. I feel pretty apprehensive about it to tell the truth. I don't like the thought of surgery, particularly not on my face. I can get over the whole not being able to comfortably eat food for the next few days. It sucks but I guess it'll also help me loose those extra couple of pounds I put on recently. Well that and exercise. I've been too much of a lazy sod lately by not bothering to leave the house much or walk anywhere...

Cocktail hour!

Behold the furry purple squirrel. An unusual cocktail, which does not actually contain any fur or squirrels and isn't really purple... 

Valentine's day

I'm very aware that at the time of writing this not of this post will be food related. If anything it's more just writing about what myself and Gar were up to for the day and some general musings. I promise I won't gush too much! 


I find that Valentine's is greeted with a mixture of swoons and jeers. While I whole-heartedly agree that it is an over-commercialised holiday, in all fairness a quick lap around most shops on the run up to Christmas and Halloween will also show that they too are just as mass-marketed. How much we buy into it I guess is the big thing. For Christmas just gone I tried to make the bulk of the presents I gave and similarly I made my gifts for Valentine's this year. This year myself and Gar are celebrating our 2nd Valentine's day together so we agreed to make each other's presents. We also decided to spend the night in his place with a home cooked meal rather than brave the love-struck crowds in search of a restaurant with a free table and menus that we can both eat, we are staying in with a home cooked kitschy meal. 

Cowboys and ninjas themed pot luck

So you may be wondering what on earth is the title about for this post? Well to start at the beginning, a pot luck is kind of like a dinner party where each person attending contributes a different dish of food to the meal. On a monthly basis myself and some of my college and school friends now hold a pot luck dinner, taking turns to host. I think it's been a great for us to regularly hold an inexpensive and informal get together where we can all catch up on what's new in each others lives without there being an over-emphasis on alcohol or being drown out by loud blaring music - unless we want it and put it on. 


Since the first one went to well we've since agreed to try and make future ones more interesting by giving them a theme, chosen by the host from a hat. So far we've had the 1980s, sexuality, science and meat as themes. I was away when the meat one was on, part of why they chose meat because the veggie was in absentia, but I cooked a garlicy potato side dish for the first night, veggie coq au vin for the 1980s theme, biology cupcakes and focaccia bread men and women with fresh pesto and chili dips for the sexuality night. 

I think the science cupcakes have been my favorite thing so far because I got to show my true nerd. C6 H12 O6 is the chemical equation for glucose aka sugar,  there's two little neurons, double stranded DNA, diagrams of syphilis, bacteria, fungus and normal cells as well as XX and XY DNA.

Our most recent theme, cowboys and ninjas saw led resulted in a very interesting combination of dishes.  The menu for the night was:

Mains:

Homemade veggie pizza, 

Japanese butternut squash and sweetcorn burgers,  

Butternut squash soup served in a chili bread bowl, 

Teriyaki chicken, 

Rats on sticks

Sweets:

Orange and jasmine ninja and cowboy cookies,

Squished ninja and cowboy ginger and cinnamon buns,

Ginger shuriken cookies.

Photo time!

Almost all of us at the table, two are hiding behind the camera.

Squished ninja and cowboy buns

Welcome to Tombstone is en homage to my sister in law's great grandfather who was the Sheriff of Tombstone, Arizona, once upon a time. 

My orange and jasmine cookies

Christina's rats on sticks pasties.

Christina's rats again.

Sean's homemade pizza.

Sinéad's butternut squash and sweetcorn patties. They had a Japanese name, but it escapes me right now. 

Donal's Teriaki chicken.

Paul's butternut squash soup and chili bread bowl.

So much to catch up on...

So somehow I now have to restart writing the beginning of this post because I accidentally deleted it and have no idea how to restore it. Rats...

This morning I find myself very sore and stiff, so I figure what better time to write a new post than now since I'll probably be spending the rest of the day on the couch in front of the tv. For those of you reading this who might be wondering why am I so ouchie today, let me explain. Myself and my friend Clémentine recently decided that once a month we'll do something we've never tried before. She'll then chronicle each of our adventures in a blog she's setting up especially. Last month we went to the 7up on ice  in Arnotts, even though we've both been ice skating before, I think it was a first for us both to skate on eco-friendly ice and on the roof of a building in the rain. I wouldn't reccomend it really. Although I was one of the last people to leave the ice rink, the bulk of the people there had given up half an hour in. I think the reason being, aside from the rain and wind, was because they also found it was harder to get a grip and move around than on real ice. I don't think I'll be doing that again in future.

Amercian adventures

Tomorrow morning myself and Gar will be heading home after just under a week visiting my family in Salt Lake City. While there haven't been too many adventures food-wsie and I've eaten alot of stuff I shouldn't, primarily doughnuts. So worth it. There's still a few experiences to blog about which I will do after I get home on Thursday. How poop is that? Start the journey home at 9 o'clock Wednesday morning then arrive back 9 o'clock Thursday morning. Despite the long journey and questionable "vegan" food on the plane over, it's been well worth the trip to see my brother, his wife, my nephews and my niece.

Chat soon,
Blue