Irish artist Pigsy in Spain!

Exciting news!  My twin sister and her husband, Irish artist Pigsy, have upped sticks, and with their little dog have moved to SPAIN! The beautiful city of Malaga to be precise. 

The plan is to enjoy the sunshine, eat tapas, drink wine and for Ciaran to be inspired and paint!

 

They have rented the cutest little apartment on the cutest little city street.  Pigsy is hooked up with studio space and I am so excited for him and them to see what this time abroad brings!

 

If you want to follow on their journey, the best place is Pigsy's Instagram - click here.

 

All very exciting, and the best of luck to them!

The Eatening continues....OnlyWood Pizzeria Trattoria

After my most recent blog post about the few great places we've eaten out in lately, well to top it all off my friends, I post here to tell you about OnlyWood Pizzeria.

It is up a little laneway, just off of Duval Street and is one of the cutest, little, most authentic Italian trattoria style restaurant you can imagine outside of Italy. Well I say authentic Italian, but actually, for me, I say it felt like 75% Italian authenticity, 15% Chicago/Wicker Park hipsteria (is that a word?? It should be!), and 10% Key West...the Key West element was the big fat cat under our table asleep (I kid you not).

The pizza! Goddamnit the pizza! The 4 maili has 4 different types of meat to kick off proceedings. Well, what type of meat I hear you ask? The meat I tell you, that is just the start of it. Prosciutto di Parma, pepperoni, sweet (dear, sweet sweet) Italian sausages, and ham, enveloped with a luscious San Marzano tomato sauce with a homemade mozzarella for that final elevation. Oh no, that's not all, the final kicker being the complex, rich, oily flavour of basil.

Did you ever taste a food that hugged and carressed your mouth from the tip of your tongue, to the arch of your throat? A food that "felt" just so luscious and buttery, that tasted savoury with just the right amount of sweet? A food that left you speechless, to the point that all you were fit for was to sip your incredibly well valued glass of house wine, while staring into your dates's eyes and both just nodding, just knowing,  this was the one of the finest, luscious, carbohydrate laden meals you would ever share in your life. Well this pizza is all that.

I was going to finish this blog by saying that if this pizza was an alcoholic beverage it would be champagne. But no, we'll leave it there now.

The Eatening

While making sure we are taking precautions about the coronavirus, we have still managed to sneak out for some nice meals lately.  

We went to Martin's twice in the last week. Twice! We adore this place.  It's really special to us for lots of reasons - one in particular. And we just don't get there enough like we used to. We used to regularly go there on Sunday's but they are now closed on that day. Patrick was off work last week on vacation so we took advantage of this and TWICE we went!

We treated ourselves to a lovely sushi dinner out, in Origami.  Sushi and sake 

And finally! We have been going to Stock Rock cafe, by BOAT, our own boat, a lot lately.  It's a tiki hut so obviously I instantaneous fell in love with it.  To my mind, here is nothing better than fish tacos and jerk wings in a tiki hut.  Would you agree? 

I have posted a photo below of where we dock our boat and the restaurant/bar.  Now do you agree?!

 

New crockery - dessert and salad plates

How adorable are these!  Yep. they're Easter themed, but I am going to use them all year round - heck, bunnies are for life, not just for Easter I say!

And best of all they were a BARGAIN.  Combination of timing (after Easter) and because our Pier1 is closing down (sad face) meant I got them at 90% off.  Each set of 4 were originally $29.95, but after discount I paid $6 for the lot! Woohoo!

Covid19...what is going on here

It feels like we are now averaging about 20 cases a day here in Key West. Versus about 8 a day initially since reopening on June 1st. We are a population of about 25,000.  To put that in context, back home in Ireland it seems they are averaging about 20 day also.  Ireland is an Ireland with a population of about 4.9 million.  

Sigh

I arrived to my local Denny's for my special fortnightly Amy treat of me, a copy of the New Yorker and pancakes and syrup.  It was closed.  For "deep cleaning".  Code, I believe, for a staff member has been diagnosed with coronavirus.  

I hope they get through it and recover well.

Sigh

But life continues here at Duncan Street and we continue to control what we can control i.e. reduce our social circle, wear a mask when out, social distancing when talking to others (we have conversations with our neighbours standing on either side of the street!), hand washing and avoiding touching mouth and eyes etc.  I can't lie we probably eat out more than anyone else I know. But we are trying to be careful there - choosing carefully where we eat and ensuring social distance.

Stay safe out there friends

BIG FISH

Over the last month, since I blogged last (shame), we've been doing a ton of fishing and eating.  Mainly we have been out on our boat but we did also go out for one big fishing charter for our friend's birthday. And caught THESE:

The fishing on our boat has been pretty good.  Plenty of Grunts caught, which we actually always throw back now...because...we are porgy hunting!!!  Porgy is a little fat fish with the most delicious all white meat.  Versus a grunt which can be a little bloody and gutty. And omg, I was mad for a colorful porkfish for ages, finally we caught and cooked one.  And it was inedible! Completely inedible.  

The big success story to report is that Patrick caught an amazing mutton snapper!! Last piece of bait, last drop of the day. 19 inches of pure plump perfection. It took 5 minutes to land on the boat, and we had to use our net for the first time. 

We cooked it and ate it family style - with a full half of it left over for dinner the next day!! It was huge!