17 ideas for (super cheap and tasty) bean feasts
On New Year’s Day, we had a bean feast. Now, while I’d like to say that this was because of the Italian tradition of eating lentils for the New Year to bring wealth and...
Category: Kitchen
Useful kitchen gadgets and equipment, great products, storecupboard specials
Chocolate bread and butter pudding for Halloween
It’s a truth universally acknowledged at this time of the year that children will a) demand that you buy barm brack and b) poke through it to find the ring, then leave it, eviscerated...
In Season: Homemade Elderflower Cordial
First published on Irish Country Living. At the cottage we are surrounded by elder. The ditches on three sides of our half acre plot are spotted at irregular intervals with the gnarled trees. Ignored for...
Thursday jamborees: Damson Amaretto Jam
This time two years ago, we had a four-week-old baby, an obstreperous two-and-a-half-year-old, a newly renovated – but not entirely finished – cottage and a six-month-old brewery. There was no time, no money, and precious little peace.
So I made jam.
Actually, to be entirely precise, after morning naps on Thursdays, I grabbed a box of jam jars, a pair of girls and drove over to my mother’s house for lunch. In contrast to the chaos at home, the table would be laid, kettle boiling, floor swept – and an extra pair of hands ready to dandle a baby.
My homemade Crème de Cassis in The Irish Times and other blackcurrant ideas
It’s been a good year for blackcurrants. Normally I have to battle it out with the blackbirds to get a share for my kitchen but this year they have been able to gorge themselves...
Devilled Eggs for summer eating
We were at a pre-wedding family get together in New Zealand some years ago, right before one of the Husband’s sisters got married – and I was checking out the buffet table. It was the...
Summer holiday eating: 7 simple self-catering meal ideas
One tin crammed with Chocolate Buckwheat Cookies. One (small) bottle of homemade cassis. A couple of tubs of frozen hummus. One still-warm loaf of Cinnamon Raisin Bread, carefully wrapped in a tea towel. We may be...
Cooking dried beans from scratch and Moroccan Lamb, Chickpea and Lentil Harira
When we lived in New Zealand, I didn’t have very much money. After a close encounter with an Auckland courier truck and the consequent amnesia/fractured skull/broken collarbone it took a while to get my brain...