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Happy Spring dear readers! If you’ve had enough Easter ham, Passover brisket, or just want to try a tasty vegetarian main course, here’s one of our newest “Meatless Monday” faves. Good friend and reliable recipe sharer, Leah, sent this recipe to me a few weeks ago, remembering that my kids love beans. My kids do [...]
My mom and stepdad live in Florida and have a pepper plant on their patio that produces so many jalapenos that my stepdad, at a loss for what to do with them all, used to bring them in by the bagful for a colleague who sat at his desk and ate them whole and raw. [...]
You all know I love make ahead meals (remember this and this and this). And I have a soft spot for casseroles. Well, here’s the recipe that is now both my favorite make ahead meal and my favorite casserole. I’ve kept a batch of this on hand in my freezer continually since I discovered the [...]
I vowed to post more recipes in 2013 and, like so many other New Year’s resolutions, find myself failing miserably by the end of January. Despite my blog negligence, I have been cooking up a storm. I now realize that the prospect of free time on the weekends thrills me because I know I will [...]
We’ve been hosting my in-laws for Christmas dinner — and Christmas Eve, and St. Stephen’s Day, and usually one or two more days besides — for years now, which means I spend a lot of my time happily wearing a path between the stove, sink and fridge in the days before and after Christmas Day [...]
This year, I decided to forgo the store-bought, China-manufactured, last-minute purchased gifts that I usually give out at holidays. I had the bright idea (insert sarcasm here) to make homemade food gifts this year. I figured, why not? I like to hang out in the kitchen. I like buying ingredients. I like one-of-a-kind treats. Well, [...]
As we gear up for the holiday season, here’s my gift to you: a healthy recipe with three ingredients and five minutes of prep time. New York Mouth sent me some freebies last month and in preparation for their package, I spent some time scouring (more like falling in love with) their website. They distribute [...]
The birth of a new child is usually heralded by the delivery of clothes, bibs, and other soft pastel things. In my experience, what most moms really need during those early weeks is a hot meal and long shower, not another outfit to wash and put away. It’s not that I didn’t love getting adorable [...]
We moved into a new house three weeks ago. Exciting to be sure, but as much as I’m relieved to be done with selling my old house and moving 8+ years of life into a new one, I feel a homelessness of sorts. The new house has the right space and modern amenities (a master [...]
October’s arrival sees us dusting off the jars of cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg for autumn baking and the return of warm bowls of soup or stew to wrap cold hands around. Here are 10 of our fall favorites. Bacon and butterbean chowder Pappardelle with butternut squash, blue cheese and pine nuts Cider-brined pork chops with [...]
My sushi-eating, blue cheese-loving kids have become picky eaters and my son smothers everything in ketchup. Over the summer, my heart sank a little further every night at dinnertime, when no matter what I put in front of the kids, it seemed to always be met with a yuck or eww (though at least I’ve [...]
Cookbook writers and TV chefs are always talking about dishes to serve when unexpected guests pop in or if you’re having friends round for a midweek dinner party. Seriously? Who on earth has a dinner party in the middle of the week? And who calls in unannounced and expects to have some little treat fresh [...]
When I dine out, I almost always order the dish that I can’t make (think soufflé) or one that is too labor intensive to make at home. Invariably, that means a mole sauce at a Mexican restaurant, sushi at our favorite Japanese place, or biryani when we’re eating Indian. For those not familiar with biryani, [...]
In celebration of our three year blogging anniversary (congratulations to us!) I’m making an exception to our normal dinner menu/recipe format in order to encourage you all to try canning or preserving during this produce-abundant time of year. Over the last few years, really since having kids, I’ve been trying to move towards more local, sustainable, [...]
They’re coming, they’re on us, the long striped gourds, the silky babies, the hairy adolescents, the lumpy vast adults like the trunks of green elephants. Recite fifty zucchini recipes! - from “Attack of the Squash People” by Marge Piercy It’s that time of year when gardeners are groaning under a zucchini glut, leaving them on [...]
Remember physically cutting recipes out of newspapers and magazines or writing them by hand onto recipe cards, to be filed away into boxes or binders? I was cleaning out my kitchen recently and found two big binders full of recipe clippings, shoved out of reach at the back of a cabinet, that I had completely [...]
There are few better — and simpler — summer dishes than fresh homemade pesto. Here are five of our favorites from the archives. Pesto Trapanese Red pepper and toasted almond pesto Spaghetti alla Genovese Walnut kale pesto Roast cod with pesto, chorizo and cherry tomatoes
No really. This is the best ever banana cake. I don’t even like banana cake and I’ve made this twice in two weeks. It was so tasty, so perfectly textured, so cream cheese frosting-y, I barely had time to snap a picture of myself eating it before it was gone. And yes, I do need [...]
The other day, a fellow expat tweeted, “When I see a tourist in Dublin on a nice sunny day, I always feel the urge to stop them and tell them how lucky they are.” “Never mind them,” I tweeted back, “lucky us! At least they get to go back home to a proper summer somewhere.” [...]
Last year I succumbed to a telemarketer begging me to buy a magazine subscription in support of a well-known charity. I’d like to tell you it was because I care deeply for the organization or felt pity for the poor saleswoman, but honestly, I just missed receiving a magazine with my name on it every [...]
The first time I met Shelia Kiely at a food blogging event in Ireland and she let it slip that she has six kids, I’m sure I had the same reaction she gets from just about everyone: “Six kids?” What’s more, that number includes not one, but two sets of twins. And as if being [...]
After years of minimal sleep and constant hovering over infants and toddler, I really appreciate the little things about having older kids. Things like talking with my husband over coffee in the morning (thank goodness for Saturday morning cartoons) or staying up late to watch a boring British mystery movie knowing the kids will sleep [...]
You haven’t seen it yet, but I make a pretty fabulous African influenced braised chicken dish. I adore the succulent melt-in-your pieces of chicken that are baked slow and low with a spicy, sweet peanut butter sauce and vegetables. Unfortunately, it’s so gosh darn good that I am always too hungry to take the time [...]
I know this casserole is not the prettiest thing you’ve ever seen on this blog, but sometimes the most homely looking food is the best-tasting food. And for goodness sake, it’s a casserole. No one expects it to be photogenic, right? Despite it’s ho hum appearance, this baked chicken and rice dish is one of [...]
The first recipe I ever asked my mom for was her turkey meatballs. The first food I fed my infant daughter that wasn’t from Annabel Karmel’s baby food cookbook was those same turkey meatballs, pureed in the food processor, which she gobbled up with delight. And if you’ve come to visit me from America, chances [...]
I’ve hit on the perfect play date treat with these banana, cherry and white chocolate cupcakes. Unusually for a cupcake these days, they’re not smothered with any frosting, so they’re not messy to eat and don’t make for sticky fingers. Plus they don’t have too much sugar in them, relying on the bananas for sweetness [...]
Whenever people ask where I’m from, I always hesitate before answering. Although I spent my teenage years in Illinois, I lived my younger years in Tomball, Texas, a tiny town near Houston. Inevitably, I answer that I was “raised in Texas.” Growing up in Texas during your formative years definitely leaves a mark. The food, [...]
It’s been a tough winter in my house, with bad colds, bad backs, the flu, food poisoning and fevers, topped off by my 3-year-old getting chickenpox last month. It had been going around his daycare since Christmas, so I had already resigned myself to the fact that he was going to get it; the only [...]
We’re eating citrus in our house like it’s going out of style–or at least out of season. Although February food can be rather bleak notwithstanding the plethora of root vegetables you can scrounge up, at least we can still find great oranges and grapefruit. I love the combination of chocolate and orange, especially in cake [...]
You think you’re busy now? I sometimes find myself thinking on days when I’m feeling frazzled by the ceaseless demands of two young kids. Wait till they’re old enough to want to be doing things after school and on weekends. I imagine future weekday afternoons and Saturday mornings spent ferrying them around to sports or [...]
Lucky for me, my co-blogger Kristin keeps up on the cookbook scene. I rarely buy cookbooks (I think I’ve purchased maybe three in my lifetime) but Kristin always send me a good one for my birthday. This year, I was thrilled to receive Super Natural Every Day: Well-loved Recipes from My Natural Foods Kitchen by [...]
I was in a pub in County Cork on New Year’s Eve 10 years ago when the euro was introduced in 2002. We were staying with some friends whose parents had a holiday home in Schull, and I remember there was a German woman sitting in the corner of the pub, smoking a pipe. After [...]
I wasn’t planning to post this week (birthdays, holidays, children, my excuses could go on forever), but this cake is so quick, easy, and different, I had to share. In case any of you need a holiday dessert you can make the ahead of time, this is the cake for you. It’s texture and flavor [...]
I was having dinner out with a friend awhile ago and after overdoing it with the starter and main course, none of the heavy desserts on the menu appealed to me that night. “You know what? I’m going to do something I’ve never done before. I’m going to go off menu!” I said, and asked [...]
My grandma’s neighbor is a baker and gives her leftover bread, which she sometimes passes down to me (lucky me!). This week I received two loaves of focaccia and decided to use one of them for a sandwich experiment. Not only was I looking for that perfect, toasted, crispy, savory bite, oozing with a little [...]
I originally posted this on February 15 2010, but have updated the recipe to make it easier and less time consuming. I’ve been trying to go back to cookbooks I haven’t used in awhile, so last week I pulled The River Cottage Meat Book by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall down off the shelf and cassoulet caught my [...]
I pore over cookbooks in my 30s the way I once devoured fashion magazines in my teens. The pictures aren’t usually as interesting but the content is much more useful. Not that I don’t appreciate knowing when leopard print is in and heavy eyeliner is out, but style changes so much that it’s hard to [...]
A couple weeks ago I was at The Tannery in County Waterford having lunch with a few other bloggers and food writers to celebrate the launch of the Cook with Avonmore site, which features Tannery chef Paul Flynn as their first guest chef. On the menu that day there was a choice of crab crème [...]
Madeleines are my new favorite thing to bake. I don’t normally go for recipes that call for hard-to-find ingredients or specific equipment, but a madeleine pan is a little luxury and even the tiniest kitchen could surely squeeze one in. They take only minutes to pull together and 10 minutes to bake, yet people are [...]
There are a million ways to make chicken salad, but my mom’s recipe makes a knock-your-socks-off, can’t-go-wrong sandwich, especially when served on a buttery croissant. It’s perfect to take to baby showers, wedding showers, work lunches, picnic lunches, or any other place where you aren’t sure how picky the eaters are going to be. Everyone [...]
I have an embarrassing confession to make. Despite living an hour’s drive away from Belfast for the past 12 years, the first time I visited the city was only this past March (I don’t count a couple trips to the Ikea off the motorway). But I tried to make up for lost time this summer [...]
Though I’m a city dweller, I see my fair share of corn at the end of summer. A half hour drive north, south, or west of Milwaukee (Lake Michigan borders our eastern coast) will lead you into corn country. At this time of year, the fields are just turning from gold to green or are [...]
I love cooking at this time of the year. Vegetables and fruits are bountiful and at peak tastiness. It’s not too hot to use the stove top. And a week’s vacation at the end of August left me feeling (relatively) stress free at home and work. Not wanting to add any unnecessary work to my [...]
Last week I went to visit a local cheesemaker, Peter Thomas, who makes the award-winning Bellingham Blue cheese. He also has a big garden and the beginnings of a small orchard, and after admiring all the fruit, he promptly pulled up more rhubarb than I could carry and sent his daughter out to pick a [...]
Back in December, a local DIY store had an unbeatable deal on greenhouses when they had them on sale for a little over €100, so we snapped one up. Granted, it’s as small and flimsy as you’d expect a €100 greenhouse to be, but it’s still standing, despite our reservations that it would all fall [...]
As odd as this is to admit, I’ve developed an addiction to canning. It all started quite innocently with a batch of strawberry lemonade concentrate a couple years ago. Then last year Kristin helped me put up a batch of garlic dill pickles. Now I’ve worked my way up to pickled peppers, spicy dilly beans, [...]
Just a couple weeks ago, there was a day in mid July where storm clouds were rolling in from the west, I made a cup of tea just so I could wrap my hands around something warm and I briefly debated lighting the wood stove to take the chill out of the air. I’ve lived [...]
This is the fifth year we’ve had a vegetable garden at our house in the country, but I quickly learned the first year that basil doesn’t grow well (if at all) outdoors in Ireland. We have a small greenhouse this year, but all the space is taken up with tomatoes, Kirby cucumbers and peppers, so [...]
A few months ago, a friend asked me how I keep track of all the recipes I want to try from my ever-expanding cookbook collection. “Don’t laugh,” I said, “but I have a spreadsheet.” I have separate sheets divided into categories like quick weeknight dinners, pasta, seafood, vegetarian mains and desserts and in each sheet [...]
Spaghetti alla puttanesca is a classic store cupboard staples recipe. Nicknamed “whore’s pasta,” Nigella Lawson writes that “the general consensus seems to be that this is the sort of dish cooked by slatterns who don’t go to market to get their ingredients fresh, but are happy to use stuff out of jars or tins.” Last [...]
