Ides of merch

Snow Glow Elsa doll, entertainmentearth.com

Ah, the annual 'you won't believe what people will do to get their hands on *insert your overpriced piece of plastic here*' story.
This year, it's the Elsa doll from the movie Frozen but tradition goes way, way back. Some of the parents currently chasing their tails in the quest for the toy may even remember the fuss over the Cabbage Patch Kids dolls of the early 1980s, that's if they can stop tussling with rival parents in north Dublin toy shops for long enough.

Cabbage Patch Kids dolls, from Nameberry.com

I won't pretend to know what's at play here, why otherwise sane mothers and fathers would entertain the idea of paying €500 for an Elsa Snow Glow Doll. Or how it came to pass that we live in a world where, apparently, boxes that contained some incarnation of the toy are now being exchanged for cash.
Instead, I'm gonna focus on the fact that I've just bagged up 3 portions of Slow-Cooked Beef in Espresso Bean Sauce, which I brewed overnight on Saturday. I harvested the recipe from boards.ie after nabbing some steak pieces on the same day that I picked up the oxtail.
Due to work commitments and a rising panic over fruit and veg that have to be used up NOW, I'm freezing the whole lot until later in the week, but I want to note that the leftover sauce may end up marinading chicken pieces in a couple of days. It's rather tart, vinegary almost, so why not pair it with more versatile fowl?
Let's see how this goes...

Offaly nice

I suppose it was bound to happen. All the pre-existing conditions were there: my love of slow cooking, the vogue for offal, the arrival of winter. And then I wandered into the SuperValu near my parents' home and spotted oxtail for sale at the butcher's counter.
As a rule, I avoid buying meet in supermarkets but SuperValu implemented a rigorous trace-back system as long ago as 1997, and their produce has never let me down, so when I saw the rounds laid out in the display cabinet, I stopped in my tracks.
My sister still raves about a chilli con carne she made after bulking out beef mince with some slow-cooked oxtail. And a friend of mine swears that oxtail is a delicacy in his wife's native Korea - the first time he brought some home from his local SuperValu here in Dublin, she castigated him for blowing so much of the housekeeping on such a luxury.
Of course, the truth is that oxtail is cheap as chips. I picked up 500g for less than €3.
I should have been a bit more discerning in my selection: in the end I got only a couple of the plump rounds that look like meaty oranges cut in half; the rest was made up of the longer, thinner joints.
But when I got around to cooking them (at midnight on Fri, natch), I refused to be deterred. For the first time in quite a while, I consulted Nigella Lawson's How To Cook, where I found an 'illicit' recipe for oxtail stew (she was writing during a two-year ban on oxtail in the late Nineties).
I'm afraid I strayed from her recipe: I dispensed with the mustard powder, flat leaf parsley, powdered mace, ground cloves (waaay too Christmas cake-like for me...) and the Mackeson beer.
But I was happy to brown the joints in hot oil, tip them into the slow cooker, then use the oil to sweat down chopped onion, chopped garlic, finely chopped celery and sliced carrots before adding in half a tin of tomatoes, about 150ml just-boiled water, half a beef stock cube, and about 200ml red wine.
After that mixture came to the boil, I let it simmer for a few minutes before throwing the whole lot into the slow cooker, tucking in 2 bay leaves, covering and retiring for the night.
The following day, the flat was filled with the aroma of rich, hearty, warming casserole, and I unplugged the slow cooker. My plan was to degrease the stew once it had cooled to room temperature but I'm afraid I'm a bit of a wuss about grease. I'd expected the fat to harden to globules I could neatly lift out. Because I used olive oil to brown the meat, I guess, the oil remained stubbornly fluid so after a couple of attempts at soaking up little puddles of grease with a kitchen towel, I decided to leave well enough alone.
While I was faffing with slimy grease, I decided I might as well do the unpleasant business of removing the unctuous morsels of flesh from the vertebrae. I'm quite squeamish so I couldn't swear that I got every last trace of meat from the bones. Urgh.
Anyway, last night, I steamed a few potatoes, returned the casserole to the hob (this time in a saucepan), reheated it thoroughly, mashed the spuds and poured myself a glass of the wine I'd cracked open the night before.
It was *delicious*.
The richness of the gravy, the tenderness of the meat, the sweetness of the vegetables... it was the culinary equivalent of a warm embrace.
Would I do it again? I absolutely would - though I'd be more choosy at the butcher's counter. And I'd enlist a less grease-phobic friend to help with the de-boning. Urgh.

Peas process

You gotta love Evelyn Cusack - the RTE weather woman knows how to politely knock bolloxology on the head.
Her talk of a cold snap put me in the mood for a hearty soup, so I defrosted ham stock and about 100g of cooked ham (both leftovers from a ham I cooked during the summer), chopped some onion, garlic and 2 medium spuds (missed out on bonus points by not having celery or carrot *sad face*), and boiling it all up with a cup of rinsed green split peas and 500ml of chicken stock.
Cooked overnight in the slow cooker, it was delish when I decanted a bowlful for my lunch in work yesterday.
I think Evelyn would approve...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-ehkocbOcY&feature=youtube_gdata_player

It's a dirty old night here in Dublin. It started raining at around 7am and it feels like it never stopped. However, I'm on a mission to lose a few pounds in time for the party season, so I ignored the weather and cycled to work, getting utterly drenched in the process.
Man, was I feeling sorry for myself by the time lunch rolled around - which I hope explains why I found myself in the Starbucks near my office. This was a bit of An Event for me. I've never had a satisfactory experience in an Irish Starbucks. In fairness, I'm not their target customer: I'm too old, I drink tea, I have a cheap Samsung laptop. But, look, I can change my ways, I drink cappuccino every now and again, and I used to own an iPod...
*smiles wanly*
For my part, I've never been convinced. They are always chilly affairs with little atmosphere, the menu is consistently baffling, and they always seem to be staffed at about 150% optimum standards, with peppy young people in aprons jostling behind the till to take your order.
So today, I denied myself the pleasure of ordering a pumpkin spice latte (I'm not much of a coffee fan, much less the sickly syrups baristas have begun chucking in) and grabbed a smoked salmon bagel.
I fully expected a heavy, indigestible affair - doughy, undercooked bread with miserly scaps of salmon - so I was pleasantly surprised to find large slices of (Irish) smoked salmon on a delicious bagel that had a light, enjoyably chewy texture.
Was it a thrifty choice? Hm. To tell the truth, it was a fairly unusual lunch option for me: I usually go to work on Mondays, armed with a couple of kidney bean burritos, fresh from the slow cooker. But I knew that supper was sorted (I cooked a double helping of amatriciana last night), and I needed a break from the office. I decided to forgo the coffee, so lunch cost me *just* the price of the bagel. Which was €4.95.

So, no it wasn't an altogether thrifty choice. I can't even say it helped me clear my head, because I spent the break looking at my smartphone, ignoring the filthies I was getting from the iPhone users nearby.

But I could almost imagine myself ordering there again - yaknow, if I could come to terms with the poor broadband, confounding coffee menu, the perky youngsters fighting to write my name on a mug... 

Well. It's been quite a while since I was here. I wish I could say that I've been busy putting my life in order, writing a screenplay, learning French, travelling the world... You know, I'd *love* to be able to say that. Unfortunately, it would be a big fat lie. I'm still in Dublin, still dragging the divil by the tail.
Today, however, I managed to take advantage of one of the  perks of my job: I'd been invited to a book launch of Catherine Fulvio's latest book at Ballyknocken House in Co. Wicklow.
Catherine Fulvio is a very beautiful celebrity chef who seems to have stolen my dream life: she is a gifted food writer who has gone from founding and operating a cookery school at her family farmhouse to a fast accelerating career as a domestic goddess. I mean, that could be me, right? Right??
In any case, Ballyknocken House was a hive of activity today: archery, clay pigeon shooting, tours of the guesthouse, classes in the cookery school's show kitchen... Oh, and lunch in the big barn. I'm a bit of a tart for lamb curry, so the rogan josh with coconut raita went down particularly well. Not that it stopped me scarfing down 2 hotdogs also - or the 2 orange and almond polenta squares or (truly divine, this) a slice of parsnip and hazelnut tealoaf.
Having inspected the recipe for rogan josh, I've decided that I'm going to try making it myself. The list of ingredients for the curry paste is, as you might expect, quite long - but it's an excuse to raid the collection I've amassed over the years. The tealoaf will definitely get a run-out too - if only to give me the satisfaction of seeing the look on people's faces when they find out what the special ingredient is...
And, yes, before you ask, The Weekend Chef is a gorgeous read. At the launch, Ms Fulvio explained that she wrote the book because she'd noticed how many people regard cooking as a leisure activity, something they can devote themselves to at the weekend, as they create something delicious for loved ones.
It was a nice reminder that food isn't just fuel, and that cooking isn't just about throwing ingredients into a pot. She sees it as a way of getting the family together, and bringing friends together.
But I'd also argue that in a world where the production of almost everything we consume personally has been outsourced to industry (clothing, food production), the final preparation of food is something we still have the power to reclaim. And isn't there something comforting in that?

Whoah. That's a pretty big image. Still you get the point: the Chocolate Cola Cake was delish. Moist, tasty, good enough to eat for brekkie, to my eternal shame. Thanks to my heaving pantry, last night wasn't the orgy of excess it could have been. My friend brought 1 bottle of wine; I had one on ice here. I bought chicken legs instead of fillets. The veggies were from Tesco (pushed the boat out and splashed out on organic carrots, and went for the Tesco Finest new potatoes - not very thrift-tastic)... But I didn't make too much of an effort to save money - and my outlay for the evening was a grand total of €13. And I still have 2 chicken legs, half a bag of spuds, half a cake, half a head of broccoli and a few leftover veggies knocking around. Sometimes, I surprise myself...
Here's a blast of 60s nostalgia. The lovely Sergei mentioned that this song was No.1 the week he was born. Big Mistake. I had to google it and now I'm in love with the lead singer. It's the Alan Price Set singing Randy Newman's Simon Smith and his Amazing Dancing Bear. If this doesn't leave you with a smile on your lips, you're probably dead.

It's one of my rare nights to entertain tonight! You have no idea how stressful this makes me. I'm pretty much used to my own lowly standards of hygiene and cuisine. Inviting people into my home to judge me is not a pleasant prospect. Luckily, the friend who's calling over is a good one. Unfortunately, she's also an amazing cook. Who's had the opportunity to sample most of the de Winter standards. So... on the menu tonight is a chicken dish I cooked for lovely Sergei a few weeks ago. It's from the much-lamented Slow Cooked in Blighty and is very tasty indeed. Even better, it's something I can bung in the slow cooker well before my guest arrives, allowing me to focus on the side dishes of roasted vegetables and spicy broccoli. For afters, I'm making Chocolate Cola Cake to a recipe gleaned from the marvellous boards.ie Cake & Pie forum. I know: baking isn't thrifty but I have a few eggs which need using up (a work colleague gifted half a dozen from her own brood in Donegal!) and most of the ingredients are in the store cupboard. Right here we go...

Rice to see you

I'm heading to work soon, so this will be just a brief post. I'm actually in the middle of preparing my teatime meal: a portion of the beef curry I cooked last week and rice. Obviously the curry is ready to chuck in the microwave, so it was just a matter of cooking up some rice while doing a few chores (ahem) prior to work. What made the task moderately more interesting a prospect was the opportunity it gave me to try out the Thai rice I picked up in Lidl on Thursday.
I've never understood the obsession with non-stick rice. Growing up in a house where non-stick rice meant raw rice, I was always pretty happy just to get edible grains on to my plate. And, unlike many people my age, I must have saved *years* of my life by not avidly collecting cooking methods from friends, work colleagues and acquaintances. To be honest, my sister brought home from a year spent teaching in Spain a pretty fool-proof method of cooking rice which has served me well for ten years.
Still, I quite like the faint whiff of jasmine which accompanies Thai takeaway orders. So when I spotted actual Thai rice in Lidl, I said I'd give it a go. What a disappointment. I've followed the cooking instructions, and a big wodge of rice is currently sitting in a sieve, looking up at me lumpenly when I shove grains over and back to make it look more appealing. Bah.
Look, I'll divvy it up into portions, take one to work, and stick the rest into the freezer - and I'll do it with a smile on my face, dammit. But next time, I'm going back to the idiot-proof method my sister taught me all those years ago...

Ruby's Ridiculously Easy Rice (named after my sister's exotic flatmate - and tutor in the ways of cooking rice)
If you have the time, rinse the rice you are about to cook. Don't bother with a colander (the finer raw grains will simply slip through and flow down the plughole - I learnt this the hard way) - either grab a sieve, throw the raw rice in and allow the cold tap to run through until the water running out the other side is clear, or place in a small pot, *almost fill with cold water from the tap, stir the grains, gently allow the cloudy water to flow out by tipping the pot, repeat from [*] until the water flowing out of the pot runs clear-ish, and drain the rice as much as you can (again, a sieve is handy here, but do the best you can) Put rice to one side. Chop one onion finely. Chop one clove of garlic finely. Now take the saucepan in which you will cook the rice - it has to have a lid (I use a non-stick pot that measures about 10 inches). Place a good glug of olive oil in the base and, on a medium heat, cook the onion and garlic until they soften. Switch on the kettle and boil about 1.5 litres of water. Now take your rinsed rice and stir into the saucepan so that the grains are slick with oil and incorporated into the onions and garlic mixture. Quickly flatten the mixture down to make it level. Slowly pour the recently boiled water into the pan - but not too much. The water should *just cover* the top of the rice. Throw in salt and pepper to taste, and cover the pan. Do Not Stir. After a few minutes, you may hear the telltale sizzle of a pot about to burn. By all means, pour in another 100ml of hot water but do not let the water reach the top of the rice. And Do Not Stir.
I'm afraid I can't give you a precise cooking time: at this stage, I just get the ball rolling about 40 minutes before I need the rice, and start sampling the stuff about 15 minutes after the water first goes in. Once I think it's done, I just take it off the heat, keep it covered, and know that when I need it, I will have deliciously fragrant steamed rice ready to serve from the pot. (Yup, the water just boils offf so there's no juggling colanders and pots of hot water over the kitchen sink as my imaginary dinner guests twiddle their thumbs.) Honestly, you'll never go back to the old way...
Right, I'm off to work. With a lovely curry, nice-ish rice and Tina Fey's A Mother's Prayer for Her Child (thank you, Mighty Girl!)

Bean there...

Obviously, I shouldn't be gulping down a Mexican Bean Tostada as I type this. Certainly not one I picked up for €3.99 in the local overpriced supermarket. But I have to be at a pub table quiz in, ooh, 75 minutes, my too-short hair needs attention, and I'm in the grip of a bean addiction right now. My new Tuesday lunch is a homemade bean burrito, with the kidney bean-base rustled up on Monday nights. Well, I say 'rustle'. Really, I just chop an onion, soften in some olive oil, throw in some chilli flakes, rinse the contents of a tin of kidney beans, and chuck them in. Add a little water, allow them to warm through and then mash vigorously. Turn the heat off, and let them sit overnight, ready to roll in Centra tortillas the following morning. Grab some fruit on the way to work, and you have serious noms that are ridiculously filling. (Pic courtesy of Groovy Vegetarian)

Poor old Garret FitzGerald. I woke up to the news that the former taoiseach had died during the night. After the euphoria of Queen Elizabeth's visit and cúpla focal, the death of Ireland's favourite intellectual has been met with considerable dismay. So now I'm listening to the Pat Kenny Show, and pundits John Bowman and Diarmaid Ferriter talking about the legacy of an extraordinarily gracious, talented man. For people of my age, he will always be 'Garret the Good', the counterfoil to the dastardly Charles Haughey. But for a good 24 years after he left power, Mr FitzGerald served his nation as a commentator, the fatherly voice of reason who never chided us for our self-indulgent ways. The only thing missing from this radio discussion? Mr FitzGerald's own contribution. (image from michaelcollins.com)

I'm still feeling nice n warm n fuzzy after watching so much of the coverage of Queen Elizabeth's trip to Ireland. I don't care who knows it, I think the Queen is all right. I think that for somebody who was thrust into a life nobody would choose, she's come out of it the other side with good grace. And a terrific line in hats. I'm not all that keen on the concept of royalty: it seems fundamentally ridiculous that somebody - anybody - should retain a job just because who their parents are. But, from what I can see, she doesn't make a habit of weighing into her government's business and seems quite content to promote her country, and the welfare of her people. Now, the physical area over which she has dominion, and the fact that her police and army have jurisdiction over a corner of this island, I find a little more troubling - but not enough to take a day off work, go into town and protest over it.
But I'd probably have a little more respect for the protesters if they, yanow, had a little integrity. Or consistency. Or wore something other than a football club replica strip which is lining the pockets of commercial interests on the same side of the Irish Sea as their professed enemy. Yanow, like...

The beef curry was... okay actually. Quite bland but very more-ish. I quite like the idea of throwing everything into a pot and walking away, freeing up your time to make your flat presentable, so the slow cooker will be getting an outing again before too long.
Yesterday turned into the very worst of non-days. Just about managed to read the papers, got no housework done, none of the small, not very onerous chores. Then at 11pm, I got an attack of the shouldas and stayed up until 3am trying to make the day worthwhile, which it was, if you count trolling on boards.ie.
Still. If my weekend was a little uninspiring, at least it wasn't disastrously seedy, like Dominique Strauss-Kahn's. The disgusting toe-rag. Obviously, I can't assume he's guilty of a sexual assault or attempted rape but it seems pretty clear that he has a knack for leaving hotel rooms in haste and hotfooting it to the First Class Lounge at JFK without bothering to bring his mobile phone with him.
Now it appears that he has enjoyed a reputation within France as a roué with an appreciative eye for women.
Christ. From Berlusconi to DSK, why do we think it's acceptable for decrepit older men to - haw, haw, haw - think they have a chance with beautiful younger women. Why don't we just label these superannuated would-be seducers for the DOM that they are.
And, M Strauss-Kahn: next time, remember that it's Ireland you're meant to be trying to screw...

Note to self: if you are going to be organised enough to prepare a curry to decant into the slow cooker before leaving for work, at least make sure you know how the timer functions... It may save you returning home and finding a pot of uncooked Malaysian beef curry sitting lumpenly and coldly beside the takeaway menus...
In fairness, I wasn't too hard-up. I'd taken the precaution of swinging by the local Bombay Pantry and picking up 2 starters along with a portion of rice (Very naughty, I know, but it came to a not exorbitant €5.50 - on Eurovision night, people!) before popping into Superquinn to buy some fruit.
So although the Malaysian curry had to wait (until today: I can smell it now!), I had a *feast* of a pear starter, bhaji and samosa main course, and yummy Lily O'Brien chocolate (a present from Sergei) for dessert.
I'll get back to you on whether the beef curry was a success. Cos I've to go and weep for Jedward and the €2m they've managed to earn by not winning X Factor or the Eurovision...

I *guess* today would be a good day to wrap presents and write Christmas cards... It's definitely a day for doing things around the house. Finally finished off a tiresome work chore - and even nipped into town last night to see a play and have a drink. Yay! In fairness, I was very pleased with myself: back home, I had a ham simmering gently away in a broth of Coca-Cola! Had picked up the ham in Dunnes yesterday for €6, and when I got it home, I thought: it's now or never. You see, Nigella Lawson includes the recipe in her book, How To Eat, but I've always been too uneasy at the thought of placing good, wholesome, expensive (!) meat into a concoction that is cheap and artificial-looking. So I was quite giddy last night. And today, it's still standing in its cooking liquor, looking very sorry for itself. The next step is to make and apply the glaze, and then stick it in the oven. Before then, I must decide whether I'll reheat the cut of meat fully, or throw on the glaze, bung it in the oven and hope I don't catch food poisoning from half-reheating meat. Blegh. I'll let you know how I get on.
To serve with the ham, I have some Brussels sprouts (75c), tomatoes (€1.50 for 6) and a red onion (50c) with which I'm hoping to make a nice dish by Cafe Paradiso's Denis Cotter...
Not too shabby for a Thursday night dinner...

God, it's so warm and cosy in here... I've armed myself with the papers, got lots of provisions, so should be able to hunker down here until the morning. I work Saturdays and, given that the snow wasn't going anywhere, decided to leave the car at home yesterday. Getting to work wasn't so bad, but leaving the office and getting home at a not-very-late-at-all 8.15pm was horrific. Ended up abandoning wait for the train and getting a taxi home from the city centre after I panicked and started believing that the bus service had been halted. The only redeeming feature of the whole saga was the lovely veggie curry waiting for me at home. It was Friday, in the end, before I made it, so it had taken on all the gorgeous flavours of the charred aubergine and the cardamon by the time I sat down to eat it last night. The perfect end to a hellish day...
(pic thanks to infomatique via ipernity.com)

Well, it's chaotic out there - anywhere beyond my front door, they tell me. Buses running intermittently, trains under pressure, feral kids roaming the streets looking for thirtysomething women to pelt with snowballs... Grr... Dublin is definitely experiencing An Event. My secret addiction, discussion forum boards.ie, is chock-full of up-to-the-second weather reports (including my own for my own corner of the northern suburbs), and it's simply impossible not to feel like you are in a disaster movie of some sort.
All this cold weather has at least one unintended boost: it's impossible to spend money! Mounted an expedition to the supermarket yesterday and stocked up on provisions. Had modest scrambled egg/veg sausage/beans feast yesterday; and today, I've just stood up from a lovely butternut squash soup. Now all I have to do is finish an article I'm writing, and make the veg curry I've got lined up for myself. Simples...

Snow! Or a modest scraping of it, at any rate. Other parts of Dublin are, if facebook/twitter are to be believed, suffering sub-Siberian conditions. I'm lucky. I'm off work today, and got no place to go, no appointments to keep.
But after being hit with a €750 repair bill for my car, and a fairly lavish few days with my family in Galway, I'm definitely stony. And spotty.
So between the weather and my finances, finally cleaning my flat and cooking something substantial for myself (not just surviving on the cut-price M&S ready meals I happened upon on Sunday) is a must... I can do this

Ended up going for a hat-trick of Indian takeaways last week. Appalling. So, by the weekend, I was ready to try to rein it in again. Friday lunchtime, I had pasta leftovers, the same on Saturday. And then on Sunday, I did some baking (not an unqualified success this) and invited a friend over to help me consume some of the fruits of my labour. Yesterday, I allowed myself to be led to the poshest, most expensive sandwich bar near my office, which is in the poshest, most expensive part of Dublin. Before I was aware of anything, I'd parted with €7 and had just a small sandwich, a bitter coffee & an apple to show for it. ouch. So last night, on my way home from work, I called into the posh supermarket near my home, picked up 2 veggie ready meals for €6, a little fruit, some posh egg pasta, some toilet paper and a side dish of carrot & turnip (don't judge me: I was able to place half in the freezer, and bring half to work where it added not much zing to my frozen shepherd's pie). That haul set me back €17. Yikes.
So as late as I was for work, I made sure to gather my lunch together. It even helped me feel okay about topping up my train ticket by €20... which was the only money I spent, apart from 80c for a treat at work...
Of course, this is just piffling stuff. Apparently, the representatives of the EU bailout team - a sort of advance guard - will arrive in Dublin later this week, just in case our Government changes its mind about a digout from Europ. Good times, eh?
Well, I'm off to bed: heading to Longford in the morning to see an old friend. And the children who will have to care for me in my old age...

Strange couple of days...Spending remained quite modest on Monday: lunch was the €6 coffee & panini deal in Insomnia (which is the D4 version of a recessionista lunch) while groceries for my dinner came to about €8 (including €4 for Parmesan). Today was slightly different: brought generous portion of frozen shepherd's pie to the office for lunch, spent €3.50 on a side dish in the posh deli next door to the office, and spent about €9 at the chemist... but then treated myself to huge Indian takeaway on the way home. Like €12 or so. Just weird...

Huddling over my laptop, listening out for much-anticipated storm to hit my corner of north Dublin... It's been all over the papers & broadcast media for days now that Sunday night/Monday morning will be a mutha of a toodoo. Heard from Galway that it's pretty rough, and saw on the 6 o'clock news that the weather was pretty, ah, fresh up in Donegal, but apart de cela... nothing. The important thing for me is: it's meant me spending close to Nothing today. In fairness, I did rather overdo it the two days before that, including €40 which just disappeared out of my wallet on Friday night when I went to the - wait for it - cinema!
How? Due to poor time management, I ended up taking a taxi to picturehouse. Then €10 for ticket (The Social Network, thanks for asking, yes, it was very good), followed by a burger and 3 glasses of wine. I mean, really - is it just me or does that strike anybody else as incredible?