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...