Life changing it was – Part 3

Hey now.

Sometimes being the mother-of-four-kids-and-having-a-needy-husband-and-baby-ducks-and 18+ hens/ducks/chickens-to-feed……………phew, take a breath –  get’s a little exhausting.

My blogging brain went on strike this past weekend and it has taken quite the push to get me back in the saddle again this morning.

Photos do it for me every time though. I just load up some images and run a slide show on the computer and before you know it I am tapping away at the keys hoping someone is waiting to hear what I have to say.

** waves frantically and squeals with utter surprise to find someone waving back **

 

Photo courtesy of Simone van de Berg (www.JungleFrog-Cooking.com)

This is a photo (above) of the fab-four instructors from the ‘Plate2Page‘ workshop I attended a few weeks ago (sigh) courtesy of Bord Bía.

From the LEFT:  Jamie Schler, Jeanne Horak-Druiff, Meeta Khurana-Wolff and Ilva Beretta

So there we all were. Sitting in a very warm attic in Weimar, with four lovely lassies (our instructors) for the weekend. Little did I know that I was in for some pure and utter torture. Ok, maybe torture is a little extreme. The enjoyable kind of torture.

These gals are kick-ass teachers. To start with, they appeared not only to be Best-Friends-Forever but more like sisters. You know the kind I am talking about. They have years of inside jokes that they giggled about and they kept each other ‘on schedule’ by giving furrowed eyebrow looks, by tapping on their time pieces and — when all else failed — calling a big fat -TIME OUT!

Once the workshop had gotten well under way on Day 1, the Powerpoint presentations were whizzing by and the words were flitting in and out of our ears faster than lightning. We were traipsing (in smaller groups) upstairs to the attic to food style and shoot and then downstairs the sun room to ‘pink-post-it-note-hell’ where we had to (in less than ten minutes!) write on any whimsical topic the teachers had come up with earlier that day. The pressure was on.

I was terrified. A little terrified of the teachers ‘Take notes!’ ‘Hurry up’ ‘You are out of time’ ………ah, ladies, I know you want to run this like a silent-swiss-time-piece, but please check the registration paperwork.

I, am from Ireland. You know, that little island to the far far west of the continent where we take everything easy. Everything a little slow…..

Finally, I picked up the pace with an ‘eat or be eaten’ kind of feeling. You know, everyone else seemed like they were well able to keep the pace so I just pretended it was a drinking game, and hullo – the Irish know how to do that all to well!

One of the nicer assignments was the following:

This is a description of caviar.

Re-write it being careful with the adjectives you use to describe it.

This is what they gave us…

“Caviar has always had a hold on me. It is a mysterious ingredient, almost otherworldy; the individual eggs look like jewels from an alien planet. Caviar tastes briny and vaguely floral, and the textural surprise of the pop in your mouth has led more than one writer to liken it to pop rocks for adults”. 

Now, I am no expert here guys and dolls, but I have a feeling that whoever wrote this just did not like caviar. So, I thought I had a shot at this one, because I love me some caviar. Only the good stuff though. I don’t do schwag. Remember our motto at the restaurant about our draft beer ‘no crap on tap’? Same thing goes for caviar. The first thing I did (in 3 milliseconds because we had to hurry!) was pull out all their ‘bad’ words.

If you are describing something you want me to eat then these words do not belong in the description:

Alien, planet, briny, vaguely.

It just killed the essence of what I think caviar tastes like. (I think that above piece was written by someone very famous and well done to them!)

I wrote………

Caviar

Baby Bellini’s strut themselves on lavishly lacquered trays; enticing your taste-buds, and intriguing your soul.

Lilliputian onyx orbs of beluga-black sit invitingly on scottish smoked and double cream.

Each perfect little globe presents itself to your tongue forcing you to attempt the impossibility of savoring. One.By.One.

Firm and subtle they fight your urge to chew and gobble.

They teach you patience as they linger on your lips before releasing their ebony selves on to your longing tongue.

I really wanted this blog posting to be all about the fabulousness  of our Plate2Page instructors. If you are ready to develop your writing skills/photography/food styling skills then look no further.

I provided links above to all the instructors websites/blogs and you should sit down later with a bottle of wine and your laptop and troll though their sites. Not in a hurried fashion. They are so talented and so generous with something we all want more of.

Time.

Do not waste your money on going to the large blogging conferences unless you want to make a tiny amount of (maybe) decent contacts and learn a lot about how isolating blogging conferences can be unless you are part of the ‘in-crowd’.

Spend more money on participating in a teeny tiny workshop (15 students/5 teachers – max).

The value for money is outstanding and let’s face it, how often do you say that about something when you spend a chunk of money for a weekend away?

Those are all the WiseWords I have for today.

WiseMóna

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Life changing it was – Part 2

So yeah, where were we?

Oh yeah, head buried in the sand and slogging away at the Plate2Page workshop last weekend in Weimar, Germany.

I already gave a shout out to the first half of the group (on the last post) so now I will continue on with the list of the remaining fabulous food bloggers.

All the way from Brasil but making her home in Zug, Switzerland the lovely and talented

Deborah Duarte 

Deborah drive the lengthy drive from Zug to Weimar and then generously toted a lot of us around Weimar whenever we needed to step out for supper. Deb writes her blog in her mother tongue (portuguese) and although I will admit that I do not understand a word, I can read recipes and think that all her desserts look too good to pass up!

Have a peek for yourself!

http://temperinhos.blogspot.com/

Astrid Rauscher (Vienna, Austria)

I sat beside Astrid in class all three days and although she is one of the more reserved classmates, she is not to shy behind the lens and is a flyer on Twitter and other social networking platforms.

She has a couple of blogs that she writes. One of them being a food blog and the other one all about her cats!

You can find her here:

http://foodblog.paulchens.org/

Arthi Iyer (Manchester, UK)

My roommate for the weekend! What fun we had too. Thankfully, neither of us were snorers, but shared common ground in the fact that both our husbands are!

Arthi, who is originally from India is a workhorse! She bakes sweets and desserts and breads all day long to sell to local cafés and then also has a booth to sell her wares on weekends. I can see her owning bakery someday, and cannot wait to hear all about it!

Arthi joined the workshop with the hopes of improving her skills in both her photo taking skills and her writing, but she is a natural when it comes to food styling and taking shots. I can’t wait to see more of her work!

Here is a link to her blog http://debugcooking.blogspot.com

David Kiernan (Dublin, Ireland)

David was the other half of the winning team from Ireland. He has a killer blog over at

http://www.kitchen72.com/

and arrived on the hotel doorstep toting his first ‘grown up’ camera. He has already got the photography hurdle crossed and is now settling in to just fine tuning his skill. Lucky bugger.

Before I go on to round this out are you paying attention to where all my new friends live. Seriously.

Weekend travel around Europe will be a blast!

Jasmine Guetta (Milan, Italy)

Ah, the lovely, quiet and funny Jasmine. A girl who has been taking shots with her nice big camera for well over a year now and seems like the only thing she is struggling with is the fact that she takes too many photos. I cannot see why this is a problem because all her photos are great!

Her blog is all in Italian and not unlike Deb’s above, laden down with lots of delicious desserts and vegetarian appetizers and main courses. Dive right in. Delish!

http://www.labna.it/

(Google just translated her blog and it means ‘Love in the Kitchen’. Oh, too cute!)

The last participant to mention is Mitch.

Mitch, partner of Ken (hungryrabbitnyc) came along to support his other half. FOr the life of me, I can only imagine what the conversation went like in their room after the lights went down. Mitch was thrown into a sea of frenzied foodbloggers for the weekend and to be fair, he fit right in. We are all waiting patiently for him to start his own blog!

Ok, now back to the business of learning and workshopping.

How to look at your blog differently.

Treat it like it is your home and always have it ready for guests to pop in for a visit.

Create ambiance with the words you use in your blog post.

Find your voice.

Oh.Dear.God.

I do not think that anyone there actually knew that my home is just not that organised or tidy. That there are twenty plus feathered friends flocking to my back door every times it opens like a scene from the movie ‘Birds’ ….

I tried not to panic………and this is where the ‘write-on-the-spot’ part kicked in. On a post-it-pink piece of paper we had to pick a topic to write about, trying to stick to the guidelines we had just been given.

My topic, wait for it, was to write about making an omlette. Ah, hello. I married a Chef, so he could do all that.

How can I write about making an omlette when I can’t actually make one? AND, I do not write FICTION so do not tell me to make it up!

I made it up………on the fly.

Making an Omelette

Liberate the eggs into a glass bowl and admire the yellow yolks as they cling to the edge of the glass. Add black pepper and grind enough till it looks like a man with a moustache looking back up at you.

The cooking of the omelette is the hardest because in a split second the whole thing might burn to the core. Here at Chez Wise burnt eggs end up in the bin. Pour the yellow yolks into a bath of butter on the pan. Add Kalamata olives and a few bite sized hunks of creamy goats feta cheese that will linger for a lifetime on your lips.

Wait. Shake. Wonder. Flip.

Lick your fingers as the omelette slides from pan to plate and search for your fork because you will be eating this immediately.

The End

………….. eh, it was ok. If I would have had a bit more time I would have cleaned it up and worked on the ‘finish’. But 6 minutes is just not enough for a pink-post-it-piece. So that was not so bad. I can fake it. Right? Yeah, sure. Until the next exercise. Write the same exercise except this time you had to write it in a different tone.

Like ah……Fantasy Omelette Making. WTF??

I realise that by sharing the next excerpt with you I might run the risk of loosing every one of my readers, myself included.

This, is certainly the worst attempt I have ever made at writing anything ever….

Fantasy Omelette Making

What is this omelette that they talk of? This strange and gooey yellow mess on a plate that comes from round orbs called ʻeggsʼ that come from feathered birds? I have never heard of such a thing. Feathers on a bird?

Birds donʼt have feathers, they have scales and there is no need for us to draw attention to how this thing called an egg gets released from inside the feathered bird….Then goats are supplied to make this meal complete. Well, excretion from the goats that is. Warm, white, creamy stuff. They call this cheese.

You know, cheese – the white fluff that falls from the skies when the temperature finally rises. Yes, imagine eating it? So orbs called eggs and lumpy liquid called cheese floating on a heated stone until it resembles something you could lay your head on a bed time. A hard square rock.

The End

Clearly the talent lies in the truth for this chick. I just cannot make shit up.

I write what is real. What I can feel, touch, see, smell and hear.

Which brings me on to the next exercise. Tapping in to writing a piece using all the senses. Sounds doable I’d say? Topic this time around, baking bread. Ah hello? See above where I mentioned having married a Chef so I would not have to cook or bake? How can I write about it if I cannot cook it? Jeeze.

Faker-Baker. (You can totally tell too that I am not a baker because I added an egg to the dough/bread – ha ha ha)

— Touch — Taste — Sight — Smell — Sound —

 (you should read this in my voice – slightly drunk, I think?)

Baking Bread

Satin flour finds its way through my fingertips falling onto the smoothly sanded wooden surface. Willing spoonfuls open a well, and as I encourage a large yellow egg to fuse with flour I am mesmerized by clash of colors.

Cold water droplets fall on the doughy mixture like ice on fire. Knead gently and allow the dough to inhale and grow.

The glow of the oven invites the butter laden bread pan now filled with billowing dough into its lair.

We wait and watch.

Like sunrise bringing heat over distant horizons a darkening of colour warms the loaf exterior. Imagining the wafting scents of early morning Paris is not needed as the aroma swirls from floor to ceiling enveloping the senses and teasing the palate.

The loaf comes pert and perfect crown from its heated home and begs for time to rest but cold and firm kerryGOLD butter slides from your knife and slinks into torn nooks and crannies.

The brain has already told the mouth that this will be the umami moment you have been waiting for, so much so that the first bite — no slice — will slip so fast past hungry lips to growling tummy,

you will only recall that it tastes like………….more.

The End

Ok, enough for this evening. The Chef is waiting for his cuppa tea and the dog is itching to get out for a stroll.

Only one more piece to ramble on about and that will be this weekend sometime. All about the instructors. I decided to save the best for last and hope you will pop back in for a visit to read the rest of my thoughts on the Plate2Page workshop in Weimar. I am sure you can tell that I do not get out much and the whole social aspect of being at this workshop has elevated me to a whole new level of crazy….

Those are all the WiseWords I have for tonight.

WiseMóna

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Life Changing, it was.

This blog post is going to be a click here and view this, that and the other.

I plan on thanking a lot of sponsors, instructors, family members and then I plan on introducing y’all to some totally cool and über talented people.

Sign off now if you want nothing to do with all this jazz or stick around and learn something.

I certainly did.

It all started here when I got smitten with the competition bug. I was young and needed the money. What can I say.

Seeing as that was a total and utter disaster, I decided to stick my head in the sand (firmly) and never ever enter another writing (or cooking) competition ever again.

I waited a whole week to enter this competition. I wanted to go to Germany to learn how to point/shoot and click my camera in the direction of a few better photos. I also wanted to use a bit of that German I have been studying for TWO WHOLE YEARS now.

So – winner winner chicken dinner!

This, was the start of my ‘dream come true’. The trip to attend the Plate2Page Writing and Photography Workshop was scheduled that day after my summer exams finished. This could not have happened at a better time.

I was armed and dangerous. I was totally unprepared for the weekend that unfolded.

Arriving just after lunchtime on the first day, I was greeted warmly (hugs all around) by the four talented instructors. When you click on this page, it takes you to the Bio page for each of the ladies. Click all the way through to read their blogs. The photos will make you hungry and you will be reading their stories all night long. All night. All night, All night long…

Ok, and we are back……..

Ah, hold on guys, this looks an awful lot like ………ah………Work?

Ok, the list of things they said to bring was something like this:

• Camera
• Laptop
• Photo editing software

So that would take care of all the “WORK’ stuff and then surely there would be SHOPping too, no?

Ah, No. All work and no shopping makes a mature student-in-need-of-a-holiday kind of annoyed.

Except, it was hard to even get annoyed because, well, they were all so darn nice. I mean, nice, and funny and talented and ever so willing to teach, and inspire and share their combined years of knowledge with the group.

So lets talk about the group of participants first then shall we?

Right, before I get started, I can’t get through all of them in this blog post so I pulled names out of a hat and here are the first few:

Simone Van Den Berg (The Netherlands)

http://junglefrog-cooking.com/

Wow. What a talented gal. First of all, she is tall. As tall as me, or maybe even taller?

She showed me some photos she took of a few baby monkeys in Indonesia and that was it.

FB friends forEVAH!

Simone takes the coolest coolest food photos, can write in like nine different languages, has a kick-ass sense of humour, is pretty AND to top it all, is one heck of a nice person.

Ishay Govender-Ypma (South Africa)

http://www.foodandthefabulous.com/

Here we are again with another tall and gorgeous woman. Watch this name folks, Ishay is the kind of gal that could end up being head of the United Nations someday. She just has that quality. She can cook, she can take amazing photos, she loves all-kinds-a-food and did I mention she has a very handsome husband too?

Next up we slide over to North America and meet

Ken Leung (Manhattan, NYC).

http://hungryrabbitnyc.com/

Now this dude is an all-rounder. He put my ‘DishBitch’ title in jeopardy on the first day. WTF? Hands on, funnier then hell, determined as all get out and has the sweetest partner-ever (Mitch) who came with him and also participated in the workshop. I hope I can convince the Chef to tag along someday to something like this.

Jenn Oliver (Lausanne, Switzerland)

http://jenncuisine.com/

Do you know anyone that is allergic to Gluten? Well, if you do, then hang out around her website for a few days and you will be laughing happy. Jenn’s husband is allergic to gluten and she has tried and tested every recipe on her website to ensure there are no errors. In addition to all this vital information, you will notice that Jenn is one hell of a photographer. She just does not stop taking photos and they are all perfect before they get to Photoshop. Oh, and she is from USA – and funny as all get out to boot!

Last but not least — for today anyway — is the lovely

Julia House (kick ass name!) Canada

http://leave-room-for-dessert.blogspot.com/

Julia has a very sexy website. She is also a feisty red-head and looks so ‘Irish’. I was drawn to her immediately and we shared a lot of wine laughs. She is a dab hand with the camera and I hope that she will come visit me soon in Ireland as she has plans to re-locate to Europe for a few years with her husband. He works for Ikea. Lucky dog.

Our WORKshop days all went a little something like this….

Get up early. Way earlier than I would if I had been at home and I am an early bird.

Breakfast blur with the gang then get to work. Most of the participants knew quite a bit about the workings of a camera because they had probably read the manual and taken classes and actually tried to learn how to use their machines.

I slunk into my chair and hoped nobody noticed my teeny tiny little camera. And no, I still have not read (and cannot find) the manual.

The instructors spent their time teaching us how to style food on a plate to get it photo ready, how to take better, clearer, crisper photos and then how to write all about it……in five minutes. (as you can see from the above photo, I took photos of tea towels. They were lovely and even IRONED!)

Now, in the beginning, I was none-too-impressed with the whole speed of things and alright, they gave us a little longer than five minutes, but mother-of-god, who in their right minds would be able to bang out 500 words under extreme ‘timed’ pressure like that?

Real writers (aka Journalists or freelancers with paying jobs) would…………..

WORK…………….shop? Anyone?

Pressure.

Point, Style, Shoot, Click, Write, then wait a minute, READ it out in front of everyone.

Hell NO!

Ah, ladies, please read the disclaimer (that I might have forgotten to send) that states quite clearly that I do not read out anything in public ever. Ask my teachers. I, am Stage-Fright-Central. I can’t even speak my own name out loud.

But everyone else was doing it so I had to. All the while I could hear my Mother’s voice ringing in my ears saying ‘well, if everyone else jumped off a bridge would you follow them?’. No Mum, I can’t swim.

My fear of drowning slipped right out of my grasp and in this very (very) safe environment, I started to relax and read my stories out loud for the crowd.

AND, they liked it.

This, has been the longest blog post I have ever written.

So I am signing off for tonight and tomorrow I will resume with the storytelling.

I bet y’all are dying to find out what happens next!

Those are all the Wise Words I have for this evening, I have to go feed the new baby ducks!

WiseMóna

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O’Gratin Spuds

Sometimes you just feel like eating potatoes. And sometimes, you have a swag bag full of cheese left over from a Photography, Food styling and Writing workshop that you just don’t know what to do with.

I know I should be giving the full run down on the weekend in Weimar at the Plate2Page workshop and I will. It is just going to take a bit longer to collect and organise all my thoughts from the weekend before I can dish the details.

Aside from coming home totally inspired to take on the world one word-at-a-time, I also got a huge bag of goodies. One of the items — that the Chef relieved me of immediately — was a gorgeous Ergo chopping knife.

Whilst everyone was at work and school today and I started to get used to my new routine of no-class-until-September-2012-how-will-I-fill-my-time? and I decided to be like an all-fifties-housewife waiting by the door with a pie in the oven and a cold beer in hand for the Chef when he came home……

There was no pie in the oven. The Chef came home in a foul mood and I had to banish him (with his beer) to the polytunnel to get some sun and chill. Oh, and the kids were just pure hell.

Nothing like a good old dose of reality to keep a girl on her toes!

However, as I had already started slicing the spuds with my new knife, I felt that finishing what I had started was the least I could do.

If you attempt to make this simple peasant food potato dish just slice the potatoes as thin as you can. Otherwise it takes a bleedin’ lifetime for them to cook evenly.

All you need:

A few thinly sliced raw potatoes (6)

1/2 bulb of garlic (finely chopped)

A few springs of parsley (finely chopped)

Any leftover cheese you can find (grated)

500 ml heavy pouring cream

Salt & black pepper

Butter to grease your casserole dish.

Method:

1.     Grease your casserole dish

2.     Starting with the sliced potatoes, layer potatoes, garlic, salt, pepper, parsley and cheese.

3.     Pour in a little cream over top of each layer.

4.     Top with cheese and a little dusting of smoked paprika for colour.

5.     If you eat this immediately be ready to burn your tongue. It will be worth it.

Oh and you might want to make sure that you share this with your bed-mate. The garlic is a killer!

Those are all the WiseWords I have for today.

WiseMóna

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Freedom tastes good…

Last week we participated in the ‘Eat only Irish‘ for a week. We really enjoyed the experience and it encouraged us to really work harder at sourcing a lot more local product. But we missed a few things and in the end decided that we just could not live without black pepper, chili’s, sugar, wine, coffee and fruit (like bananas etc).

Strangely enough what the Chef and I missed the most from our diet was rice and beans. Now, we are not vegetarians or anything even close. We love meat in all shapes and forms (well except the processed kind – remember the ham story here?) but it is not the largest portion on the plate at all. And, because we have a gazillion kids floating around here, we try to make sure they have a very balanced diet. Plenty of salad, plenty of fruit n’ veg and plenty of protein.

A sneaky way to bulk up their protein of course is to serve rice with beans. You can read all about the health benefits right here.

So, a Mexican feast was already sizzling on the stove before I even got a chance start begging.

The awful thing about living in Ireland is that there are just no Mexicans living here. Well, there are one or two. (This one — Lily Rafo — is a fab foodie and blogger and if I were in town this weekend I would be sitting in her kitchen learning valuable tips on where to source more Mexican product!)

So, we rely heavily on shopping at one of the multi-nationals (grrrr) to find decent dried chilis and good quality rice and beans. OR on friends of ours that occasionally pop in for a visit and tote cans of Chipotles in adobo sauce in their luggage for us. Those, are the best kind of guests!

Before I go off on a tangent explaining why you should go out and buy a rice cooker (right here!) let me tell you something. I have owned a rice cooker for 16 years. I have perfectly cooked rice EVERY TIME and we eat rice 2 or 3 times a week. End. Of. Story.

Our homemade blend of rice consists of whole grain basmati, dried green (french) lentils and pearl barley. I mix up a packet of each (dry) in a large storage container.

When cooking our rice we usually add a little bit of chicken or beef stock to the pot, a bay leaf and for our mexican rice last night, we added a half a can of chopped tomatoes.

You turn the machine on. You put the lid on and walk away. The cooker does all the hard work, it will not burn (ever) and you will have perfect rice every time.

Now, seeing as you have so much time on your hands you can get busy cooking the rest of your feast!

Our favourite beans are pinto beans. They need to soak overnight and they need to cook slowly for a good two hours on the stove. Never (ever) put salt into the beans when you are boiling them because it just hardens them. Also, incase you are worried about the minor smelly side effect that beans might cause for you, guess what. There will be no smelly side effects if you cook your beans enough!

We like to cook the beans with a bit of smoked ham hock, but as we were trying to make a Mexican Feast we decided to use a smoky spicy chorizo. This went down a treat with everyone.

Guacamole is so easy to make and you can make it as spicy or mild as you like. All you need are some perfectly ripe Avocados (now I sound like a Tesco add…grr) a lot of garlic, a few chopped up tomatoes and a shallot, black pepper, franks red-hot sauce, the juice from one lime and a LOT of coriander/cilantro. A lot of people like it all mashed up but we like ours to be chunky.

Salsa is a no brainer too and will taste excellent if you just do one thing people. STOP refrigerating your tomatoes. It kills their flavour. Leave them sitting in the sunniest window in your kitchen and let them ripen as much as possible. Do a taste test. Try one right out of the fridge and once that has sat in your window for a few days. You will be hooked. Also, and I know I am rambling…….buy organic when possible. The amount of pesticides sprayed on tomatoes is criminal.

Alrighty, back to the salsa. Tomatoes, garlic, onions, black pepper, a few hacked up jalapenos, a bucket load of coriander/cilantro and more lime juice. You might need a bit of salt. Taste it.

At the table you can never have enough extra limes lying around for a bit of zip and the Chef cannot live without a dollop of good ole’ fashioned sour cream (or Creme Fraiche if you are stuck).

No matter how hard I try, I find it impossible to make a plate of Mexican food look good. But, I have decided to come to terms with this fact and just let it go because the food tastes so so good, you just have to believe it!

If I had used those little orange sweet peppers (first photo on blog post) then there would have been a little more pop-on-the-plate-for-photo purposes, but we filled them with cheese and ate them as a snack with my Mum before dinner!

Ok. Day one of summer holidays starts right now!

Those are all the WiseWords I have for today.

WiseMóna

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The downside of fostering

I know. Shut up. Get back to your books. Keep studying for your exams.

That is what the voices in my head are saying. But I am not listening to them.

I am listening to the cute little OscarWildish demon sitting on my shoulder screeching ‘spill the beans, get it of your chest woman, or you might explode!’ and truth be told, he is right.

I am no ordinary mother. I am a mother of four children. Not one of them is biologically or genetically ‘mine’ yet they all call me Mum.

For me, becoming a Mum required a lot of planning and paperwork and time and money. Yet, here I am, after all this carefully planned out and thoughtful ‘wanting’ wondering ‘how in the hell did I end up here?’

I know I am stressed to the max at school with my last of the summer exams tomorrow morning (hence the emergency need to spill my guts out to anyone that will listen) but the truth is that, now, a whole year after we welcomed the two little foster kids into our home, they are now starting to show signs of unsettledness.

Up to now, they have just been thriving. We have fed them, loved them and watched them grow. Now, they are starting to push the boundaries, cause a bit of ruckus at school and, dare I say it, offer a bit of back chat at home to us (the parents & Granny). They are kind of acting like ‘normal’ kids.

How does this make me feel?

Like pure shit actually. It does.

I kind of feel like maybe it is not worth it. Maybe all this work (us trying to have a big brood of kids) is just not worth it?

Yep – totally worth it.

Those are all the WiseWords I have for this rainy evening.

WiseMóna

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Bring the heat!

So maybe you like things a little spicy? Maybe you feel that, now, during this stage of your life, you can handle a little heat. You know, spice things up a little.?

All well and good if you are a grown up, but how do you get the kids to eat the same?  Easy, you start young and feed them Diavolo when they are still toothless.

Ok, that is what we did, and it seems to have worked well enough because now the kids crave what we crave!

Living on the coast (lucky us) we have easy (and affordable) access to A LOT of fish. So we consume as much as possible. Hey, when in Rome and all that…

Clarinbridge is known for its native oysters (and non-natives too) but did you know that there is a plethora of mussels to be picked in the clear Clarinbridge bay on a daily basis. Mussels, Clams and Oysters.

When we lived in the states and had the restaurant one of the long-standing appetizers that we used to sell was called Mussels Diavolo. It was hotter than hell with garlic and crushed red (dried) chili flakes but god almighty it was addictive stuff.

If you want to give it a whirl then load up with a whole (large) bulb of garlic, some olive oil, a ground up dried chili, some white wine (preferably chilled so you can drink some) and an enormous loaf of fresh bread.

Grind up the chilis in your mortar and pestle then add some olive oil. Chilis release their heat when they are soaked or sautéed gently in oil. Keep that in mind. If you treat them right they will blow your head off.

Finely dice all your garlic and sauté in some olive oil. Then as soon as it is cooking, throw in as much or as little of the chili oil as you can handle. If you are cooking for kids, then do what we do. We put one whole chili in to the oil with the garlic and after a few minutes we whip it out of there. Enough heat to get the kids attention but not too much to have them crying for water at the table.

Add in your mussels and clams (and we threw in a few nice plump Dublin bay prawns for good measure) then throw in a good big bowl-full  of chopped up tomatoes and a bit of tomato puree. Add squeeze of lemon and about a 1/2 cup of wine. Put the lid on the pot for a few minutes until the shellfish opens and the prawns look like they want to get out.

Serve with a huge loaf of bread and an ice cold bottle of champagne that’s been lying on the rack untouched since Christmas. I know, it is Thursday. The night before my exam. I was weak. He said Diavolo and the rest, my friends, is history.

I hope you are all getting a nice idea of just how easy it is to ‘eat only Irish food’ not just for a week but forever if you live on the island!

Those are all the WiseWords I have for today……..

WiseMóna

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Leftovers on hump day!

I know, I know, I am a day behind on the ‘ole blog……whaddayagonna do about it?

Considering we had a large leg of lamb on Monday night, the Chef was faced with a surplus of meat for his hump day hankering. So he decided it was just cold enough outside to give in to his Shepherds Pie craving. There is no hard and fast rule to making a Shepherds pie like he does. I blogged about it before and I am sure I will blog about it again.

He just bungs all the leftovers he can find into a casserole dish. Uses a rich meaty stock that he (always) keeps in the freezer and tops it all with leftover potatoes. Today (and you can tell from the colour) he doused it with a smoked paprika a friend of his had given him from a recent trip to Sapin. I know, I know. Not at all Irish. But look how nice it makes the pie look!

 

Rory (our eldest daughter) plated up her supper first and thought it was photo worthy. I had to agree.

Someone else at the table thought that onion straws for drinking water was a great idea and considering the onions were just picked, I can’t say I fault the playfulness here. That is until the slurping began. Emily Post would not have approved so we had to halt the fun and get back to the supper that was waiting.

Just salad and shepherds pie. Nothing horribly fancy and it was all leftovers so a minimum of cost on this one.

Oh, that white blob on the salad is worth a mention.

My all-time favourite Buttermilk Ranch Salad Dressing!

Homemade Buttermilk Ranch

(I omitted the non-Irish ingredients yesterday as we are

‘eating only Irish for a week’ but you can make it any way you choose!)

Ingredients

1 cup buttermilk

1/2 cup Glenisk greek yoghurt (or home-made mayonnaise is good too!)

1 teaspoon lemon juice

1/8 teaspoon paprika (smoked yum)

1/4 teaspoon Coleman’s mustard powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/8 teaspoon black pepper

1 tbsp chopped fresh parsley

1 teaspoon chopped fresh chives

1 teaspoon of chopped fresh dill (optional)

Method

In a medium bowl, stir together the buttermilk and yoghurt (or mayonnaise) until fully mixed.

Add in the other ingredients, adjusting for taste.

Keeps for a week, covered in the fridge.

Makes about 1 1/2 cups.

I heard a rumour that Thursday is going to bring a fishy diavolo dish to the table.

I.Can’t.Wait.

Hope you are enjoying the plethora of Irish goodies this week!

WiseMóna

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Pan seared Salmon with mint

Well now. We are moving on to day three of our ‘Eat only Irish for a week’ challenge and I have to say it is just going swell. Last night we had some beautiful pan seared salmon in a yummy mint, garlic, rapeseed oil and lemon juice dressing. The kids love salmon so not a scrap left over last night at all. Come to think of it, there are rarely leftovers in this house.

The Chef brought home a steaming-hot-outta-the-oven-gorgeous loaf of bread (made from N.I. Flour) but at the last-minute in a state of creativeness he topped it with some sunflower seeds, poppy seeds and pine nuts. Those of us committed to the challenge brushed them aside and those that were hungry ate every last bite.

The salmon only took a few minutes to sear on the stove top in the cast iron skillet and about ten minutes finishing it off in the oven.

A bit of buttermilk and white pepper mashed potatoes, a few shrooms, some salad from the garden and a bit of ham-hock n’ hot sauce mustard greens we found in the freezer from last year. I love finding things in the freezer!

I am sure that there are lots of families out there a lot stricter with the ‘Eat only Irish’ but ya know, it is exam time for me and there just are not enough hours in the day to be so rigid.

Looking forward to hearing how others are fairing out for the week. I will do a run down on the over all cost of the meals but can tell you already that there is little or no difference to our weekly budget.

Enjoy your evening, still blustery here in Galway, but the rain has stopped!

WiseMóna

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(Still) Eating Only Irish for a Week

Yesterday started a bit rough. I am entering into the two-week final stretch of the academic year which means ‘nose in books’ (as you can see) and exams. By this time next week I will be all but done with second year and free for the summer to resume my mothering chores of homework, laundry and dish bitch duties. It is difficult to say which appeals to me more.

Yesterday also brought the first day of ‘Eat only Irish for one week‘ and it followed hot on the heels of a food documentary that ran Sunday evening ‘What is Ireland Eating‘ these days. (you can watch it on RTE Player – and should watch it).

All this talk about food is making me hungry.

Of course, I am one of the lucky ones. I married a Chef and this kind of challenge is what he is all about. For the most part we will be eating right out of our own back garden. That is about as good as it gets!

We made the horrible mistake decision to let the children watch Philip Boucher-Hayes‘ food documentary yesterday afternoon after they had finished their homework and I am confident that they will never touch a piece of processed ham again (or any other kind of processed meat with the exception of chili dogs…….mmmmm…..chili dogs).

AND, they were headed in to school this morning loaded down with waaaaay too much information on all the ‘crap dat was injected into the ham’. Sorry teachers, I hope they do not ruin your lunch!

We will not be able to stick to the diet completely because the Chef & I just don’t function without Coffee. Or Wine. And, in fairness, as he reminded me last night, we are not really ‘eating’ our coffee beans or ‘chewing’ our wine, so this might be the loophole we were looking for.

We are days away from digging our own ‘early spuds’ so had to resort to a few bought items.

A bucketload of our own sautéed mustard greens and rocket using Donegal Rapeseed oil and Irish atlantic salt and a succulent leg of lamb from Roscommon with beautiful baby carrots from the Chef’s garden and a few lovely spuds from Athenry.

Untouched. No photoshop needed. All real vibrant colour from mother nature!

I know it seems grand to have a lovely big roast dinner on a Monday night doesn’t it. Well, considering I have to make 16 + sandwiches for the kiddos for the rest of the week, it seemed to make perfect economic sense!

Are you supporting your local community and ‘Eating Only Irish‘ for a week?

Ok, back to the grind. Must be nearly time for a break from all this ……..ah …………study.

Those are all the WiseWords I have for today,

WiseMóna

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