Sunday 31 March 2013

Clonakilty pudding

Have you ever eaten pudding?? It's an irish speciality - black pudding is made from oatmeal, beef fat and beef blood (yes blood!!!!!) and the white is made from pork.
I like to eat them with toasted brown bread - smeared like butter on the bread. With Irish butter of course.
If you are ever in Ireland I'd recommend you try this out - I promise you the flavour is phenomenal.



In my opinion the best pudding is Clonakility pudding!
 


 
"Cut to this width"
It has a very handy guide on the side of the box to tell you what width to cut each piece





 
 
 
The ones on the left are flipped over and half cooked - you can compare them against the ones on the right. You can see why they are called black pudding!

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   

Wednesday 27 March 2013

New car!

 
Old Car:
2001 Hyundai Accent aka The Golden Bullet
 
 
New Car:
2008 Ford Focus aka _______ (yet to be named!)
 
 
Old & New Car:



Sunday 24 March 2013

What a right pain in the neck!

Literally!
 
I have a crick in my neck. 
 
I think I must've slept awkwardly last night.  Although when I mentioned it at dinner today my Nana instantly diagnosed it as arthritis.  Eh, I'm 35, thanks for that Nana!
 
So here's my home remedy:
 
And this is me in bed currently.
 
I hope it's gone soon! 


A blog I wrote in India in 2006

“GIRLS – GIVE THE LADY BACK HER GOATS AND LET’S GET ON WITH THE WORK”
 
That has to be the oddest sentence I have uttered in my whole life and one that I imagine I will never repeat again! But that’s India for you - a country where everyday something more weird, more wonderful, more funny or more amazing than the day before can happen. This afternoon after work we travelled into the nearest town to find internet access and to get some essential supplies like chocolate and coke, eh, I mean water and medicines. Our form of transport was what the locals call a rickshaw. A more accurate description would be “pallet on back of bicycle”. Four of us to each pallet, 15 rupee (30 cent) for a return journey per person. Beat that Dublin Bus!
 
Off we headed “en convoy” waving at the locals along the road, and receiving plenty of hellos and big smiles in return. Very quickly we had a little entourage behind us. The local teenagers followed us on their bicycles. They are extremely friendly and delighted to get a chance to try out their (very formal!) English – the leader of the group introduced himself and shook my hand while still cycling along! We arrived in Maslandapur and located the internet shop by miming using a computer. Unlike Kolkata, where most shopkeepers have excellent English, here we have to communicate using a lot of hand signals. Rubbing your fingers together indicates “how much” and they then write the price out for us.
 
The internet shop had one computer! And it was out of action! Apparently this was due to the electricity power cut today – it goes off for a period on most days. “Maybe tomorrow” we were told. Methinks we can give up on any emailing until we get back to Kolkata next week!
A little bit of haggling and a few purchases later we were ready to return home. I have noticed that Miss Murphy gets the best prices in the shops and I have resolved to follow her haggling style in future. Female charm at its best. A little flutter of the eyelids goes along way, I reckon. Our chauffeurs were waiting patiently in the dark to bring us home. Bicycle lamps lit and when I say lit, I mean LIT! They have a little candle/oil wick in a lantern attached to the front of each bike. As we travel along in single file it looks like we are part of a “Lord of the Rings” film – a group of hobbits making their way across Middle Earth.
 
None of the other bikes on the road seem to have any illumination. And believe me there are a lot of bikes on the road – the bike being the main source of transport between the villages. I was wondering to myself “how on earth can they see each other” and it turns out that the answer is they CAN’T!!! One brave Indian man tried to undercut one of our rickshaws and with a kerfuffle of wheels, brakes and chains the poor man and his passenger went tumbling into the ditch. We all pulled to a halt and five minutes of shouting (but not much else) ensued. Eventually, one of our drivers broke things up and after a few last under-the-breath mutterings we were back on our way.
 
We will now have dinner and settle down for the night in preparation for another hard days work tomorrow. The food here has been fabulous – thanks to Mrs Grace. We are going to hide her passport so that she cannot leave us on Saturday! If the old saying “Early to bed, early to rise…..” is true we will be oh so healthy, wealthy and wise by the time we go home. Millionaires even! Rupee millionaires unfortunately!
 
Off to bed, but first, just in case you are wondering what the story is with the lady and the goats, here is an explanation. A village lady with two kid goats the size of kittens wandered on site yesterday. For five minutes all tools were laid aside and work was called to a halt as the girls ‘oohed’ and ‘ahhed’, petted and held the little goats. Twins! Katie and Lydia mark II!!
It’s the little things like this that makes India so special.
 
INDIA. CARLSBERG DON’T DO COUNTRIES BUT IF THEY DID…………



These are the only photos I have to hand.  I must dig out more.


 

Saturday 23 March 2013

Would you like to suggest a name for a new bridge in Dublin?!

 
Would you like to suggest a name for a new bridge in Dublin?
 

Here is your chance!

Jeanie Johnston Famine Ship

The Jeanie Johnston is an accurate replica of a famine ship which sailed from Ireland to America around the 1850's. 
 
It is currently docked in Dublin, Ireland where you can tour it and view it as a "ship musuem".
See here for more information.
 
Recently for St Patrick's day 2013 it was lit up green - like a lot of Dublin landmarks/buildings were. 
 
Here are two photographs I took of it:
 


On this photograph I put a green filter/effect on it. This means that the camera removes colour and just highlights any green in it. 
 
Pretty cool eh?!
 




MaltEaster Bunny

 
May I recommend you try a MaltEaster Bunny from the makers of Malteasers!
 
Incredibly DIVINE!
Chocolate shapped bunny with a malty crunchy cream inside.
 
Let me know what you think of 'em!

Medical lecture in Trinity College

Myself, Katie and a friend of mine went to a medical talk in Trinity College last Wednesday.
 
Myself and Katie had initially actually planned to go to a talk in the National Library on Kildare Street on DNA testing and the use of DNA testing in tracing your family tree/roots. 
 
However then Cillian texted me to see if I wanted to go to a talk on Cancer in Trinity that same evening, so Katie and I said we'd go to that instead.
 

The talk was presented by a doctor from the the Biomedical department in Trinity.  It was about cancer cells and how they proliferate and the work that this department is doing in researching how to target (and destroy) cancer cells.  They are doing this work with a particular compound (not named as far as I could discern :-) Top Secret!) on the cell during a particular piece of the tumour cell growth process.
 
I won't lie to you.  It went waaaay over my head. 
 
But I still enjoyed it - both doing something different in the evening in Dublin, plus also I enjoyed challenging my mind (even though, as I noted, it went way over my head!).



 

Monday 18 March 2013

DIY: New Ironing board cover



My ironing board has been in very bad shape for a long while now.  And for a long while now I have been intending to do something about it!
 

So today during a trip to Ikea today I picked up a new cover.  It was only €4.75.  What a bargain.




Voila!
It's like a new ironing board!
 



 

Ikea rocks!

Sunday 17 March 2013

Spot the Difference!

 
Can you see any difference with these three photos?!
 



Review: Botanical Choice Exfoliating Foot Mask

This foot mask is available for €3.50 in Penneys. 
 
You can't argue with that price, so now let's see if it works!
 
Inside the packet are two plastic "socks" with the product inside.
One cuts the top of the socks with a scissors and put ones feet inside for 60-90 minutes.
 
Okay so let's get the gross picture out of the way:
Yes these are my trotters :-(


 

As noted abve you leave your feet in the socks for 60-90 minutes. 
As you have seen my feet are baaaaad so I did it for the full 90 minutes.
 
You then rinse the product off with water.  My feet felt a little tingly at this point.
 
This is a pic of my feet after rinsing etc.
 
Okay! So now the fun starts. 
Over the next 5 days, apparently all the bad icky skin on my feet will litterally just peel/fall off.
 
I shall report back in over the few days to let you know if this product works and what my thoughts are about it.



*************************************************************************

23/03/2013
Update:

eeeeeeuuuuUUUUUGGGGHHHHH!!!!!


 


Saturday 16 March 2013

Marks and Spencer Restaurant Dublin

Marks and Spencer in Grafton Street has a very nice restaurant up on the top floor.

The decor / interior design of this restaurant is very very cool.


Mid 20th century chic!


Lounge lizard :-)



Eames inspired chairs 



How cool is this vibe!

I think this picture pays nice homage to a cool bottle/brand in a very cool restaurant:

I'd recommend you check it out next time you are in Grafton Street!

If you liked this blog post I think you will very much like to see my very cool upcycled cocktail bar/drinks cabinet project! <= click on the link :-)



Monday 11 March 2013

mmmMMMMACAROONS!

Enid & I went for a little potter around Grafton Street this evening - quite a treat for a Monday evening.
 
First stop  Brown Thomas where we treated ourselves to a Ladurée macaroon each.
 

Enid chose a salted caramel and I took chocolate. 
We ended up swopping half way through so we got to taste both.  Both were fabulous!

Easter eggs time a'coming

Is this the biggest Easter Egg you have ever seen?
It's not real chocolate though :-(

 
Whereas THIS my friends, is 1 kilogram of pure chocolate bunny!


How adorable are these two litle boyos!




 
Either this shop's stock is really old or Cadbury has mixed up Easter and Christmas!!!
 

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Fill your stocking???
Seriously???