Our favourite stuff-your-face-with-quality-food bargain is back again, running from today until Sunday.  The selection includes:
Mains:
The Cook Menu Chicken & Wiltshire Ham Pie
The Cook Menu Spanish Style Chicken & Chorizo Stew
The Cook Menu Cajun Stuffed Chicken Breasts
The Cook Menu Chicken with Davidstow Cheddar Gratin
The Cook Menu Pork Medallions with Cider & Apple Sauce

Accompaniments:
Ultimate Potato Mash
Dauphinoise Potatoes
Mediterranean Style Vegetables
Desserts:
2 Tarte Au Citron Slices
2 Sicilian Lemon & Ricotta Cheesecake Slices
Strawberry Compote Trifle
Drinks:
Ke Sauvignon Blanc
Ke Cabernet Sauvignon
Cobborah Shiraz
The full selection is listed on M&S’s website.  I’m sure you’re all very familiar with this offer by now, but just in case – it costs €12.50 for a main, a side dish and a dessert that will feed two people, and a bottle of wine is included.  It’s very popular and sometimes sells out, although the last few times I’ve picked it up the offer has been very well stocked.  Continue reading »

As usual, a strange and random set of special buys this Thursday at Aldi, including:

Polo shirt – €5.99
Cadbury Easter mallows – €1.99
Galvanised plant pots – €24.99

Click here to see them all.
I like a lot about this supermarket. Here I go again: the quality of Aldi brands,  in particular the Specially Selected products, is not only better than Lidl. It’s better value than most own-branded and branded foods.
However!  Continue reading »

I had vague recollections of hearing good things about Odell’s St Lupulin when I saw it for sale. It’s a 6.5% ABV summer ale, with a name that promises big things in the hop department. I’m never sure with strong American beers whether that’s going to be a good thing or a bad thing. There’s only one way to find out.
The beers pours a rather sickly and pale cloudy yellow – my camera is being very flattering to it over on the right there.  Continue reading »

I spotted these amazing cupcakes in Leila’s book when I first scanned through it, they really pop out!  They would be absolutely perfect for kids parties as I am sure they would get a great reaction.  In fact there is a whole chapter in “A Piece Of Cake” dedicated to Leila’s fab cupcake creations, including flavours like, raspberry, lemon and poppy seed, banana fudge, blueberry corn, and carrot, ginger and walnut!  Continue reading »

Even the most fervent beer drinkers among us (myself included) are able to hazard a good guess at the most famous wine producing region in Spain.
Before those classy little numbers from Toro and Ribera del Duero found their way to these shores, Rioja was the only Spanish wine most of us really considered or were familiar with. As a result, prices sneaked up to reflect demand, but they seem to have found their level now.  Continue reading »

Time was when coffee in Dublin meant a mug of milky white coffee at Bewley’s, with nothing either grande or latte about it. Even so, it seemed like a big step up from drinking tea, if only because that’s what you did at home, morning, noon and night.
Then we got all fancy with our imported coffee culture: American styles, Italian names, and the spawning of a whole generation of grande skinny decaf drinkers.  Continue reading »

There was an article last Saturday in the UK’s  Mail Online about how UK Supermarkets and food outlets have come together to create a voluntary code on the labeling of pork products in respect of country of origin. (Read it here)
Since Ireland’s Pork Fiasco in December 2008 there have been noises made about exactly where our Pork comes from.  Continue reading »

The annual Liberty Wines portfolio tasting took place today. Below, a highlight video with my picks of the day.

Who are Liberty Wines?
Liberty Wines are a wine importer/distributor who set up in 1997 in the UK and opened their Irish office in 2002.  Continue reading »

For those of you that don’t know, this month is National Heart Month. Not to get too Debbie Downer about it but heart disease is the country’s no. 1 killer. We all know the co-relation between food and a healthy heart. Making wise food choices is so important and with childhood obesity on the rise reaching epidemic proportions we need to take back control of what we put in our bodies. We only have the one!
According to the American heart assoc.  Continue reading »

Here’s one of our new flavours. I think there are many uses for sea salt ice cream – it can really lift the flavour of a range of desserts, and we’ve brought it in to complement our new caramel and dark chocolate flavours. It’s certainly caught people’s imaginations, and it’s selling better than I would have thought.  Continue reading »

Sometimes, a deal is so good that the only response is for everybody to sit back and nod your head. See, you’re such a genius for finding it, that you don’t even need to speak.
That’s how I felt last weekend in Cork, when I visited my friends Cat and Jimmy (pictured) and spent a lovely, quite unsobre afternoon in the Sober Lane pub on Sullivan’s quay. When we got there, my excessive procrastination – where will I eat in Cork?  Continue reading »

Reading the lovely Lynnie’s blog post about her 80’s mix tape made me think about my very misspent youth in the hotspots of SoCoDu and Wicklow.We started off at the tender age of 16 in a local (now defunt, thanks be to god) hotel nightclub called Cinderella Rockerfellas… it was a bleedin‘ tip, but in the late 80’s, what other choice did you have apart from bottles of Stag and Ritz. Then it was but a hop, skip and jump down to an even worse dump called O’Sheas.  Continue reading »

My wheat-less diet is going really well so far. I’ve gained loads of energy, my mood has lifted, my digestion has got much better and I’m just feeling lighter all around. I have on a few occasions eaten wheat (for example when out to dinner etc.) but for the most part been eating wheat-free products & loving it. A friend’s mum introduced me to this bread..spelt bread!  Continue reading »

My wheat-less diet is going really well so far. I’ve gained loads of energy, my mood has lifted, my digestion has got much better and I’m just feeling lighter all around. I have on a few occasions eaten wheat (for example when out to dinner etc.) but for the most part been eating wheat-free products & loving it. A friend’s mum introduced me to this bread..spelt bread!  Continue reading »

Another winter warmer on the menu today!
This dish combines chicken, broccoli, leeks and pasta in a creamy white sauce.
Most pasta bake recipes use cans of soup to make the sauce, which adds more calories and expense to the meal. Not here! This dish has a simple white cheese sauce that tastes great and would work well served over pasta on it’s own.

The following recipe makes makes two portions.  Continue reading »

MILLEENS CHEESE

Charles De Gaulle (1890-1970) once said that the French had 365 different cheeses. The French politician was familiar with the southwest of Ireland but when he visited the country he would have found it difficult to locate any real cheese.
Milleens is generally credited with producing the first modern Irish Farmhouse cheese in 1976 and the company improved it over the following years. It is still going strong.  Continue reading »

My husband was recording in the house over the weekend and we had about a million people over. I made a ricky load of chilli and rice to keep the troops going – the chilli was scoffed but I had loads of leftover rice. What to do with it?
Well, you can do a number of things – stuffed peppers or a variety of vegetables for that matter, cabbage rolls, sushi, rice cakes, rice pudding or even stuffed grape leaves.  Continue reading »

It’s that time again: a new set of special offers at Superquinn.  Continue reading »

One thing that I’ve found makes cooking regularly a lot easier is having a “stock” selection of certain items close to hand in the kitchen at all times. I’m going to list the ones I always have some of below.
I’m going to start off with dry herbs and spices.  Continue reading »

One of the first things to grab me when flicking through Leila’s book was the fantastic food photography and styling.  There are some super shots of table settings and food spreads scattered throughout the book.  From what I have read Leila does most of her styling herself even more reason to be impressed!  As you might know, one of my huge passions is food photography, so I am always on the lookout for inspiration when it comes to the style of shots.  Leila also has a magazine in Sweden called “Leilas Country Living” which is packed with even more inpirational photo and style ideas, which has unfortunately stopped for some reason, but from the issues I have there is a great mix of styling and recipes.  Check out todays Leila recipe, Butterscotch Pecan Pie.  Continue reading »