You say “lateral thinking”. I say “kinda bizarre”. Some daft Swiss arty types have a book out called Umdenken. Babelfish tells me that this means ‘reorient one’s opinion’. The book details an art project in which they re-used bits of common household objects in other ways. Among these were:
Credit to The Friday Thing newsletter for drawing attention to these loons.
Categories: Innovation
I like pretzels. I like ready salted crisps. I like peanuts, brazil nuts, hazelnuts and almonds. I really, really do not like those little cheesy goldfish snacks. Apart from the horrible synthetic-cheese-and additive-heavy-cracker taste, cheesy goldfish just don’t make sense. Who dreamed up a goldfish-shaped cheese-flavoured cracker? And who, what troubled person, dreamed up Mini Goldfish® Meat Loaves? Beyond grim.
I see on Clodagh McKenna’s site that she will be presenting a new radio series - Winter Food on Saturdays at 7.30pm on RTE Radio 1. It starts this Saturday and runs until December 31st.
“Each week Winter Food will focus on one ingredient or food type and a panel of producers, food writers and chefs will talk about how these foods are grown, where they are found and most importantly the best ways to eat them!
The first programme in the series, on Saturday 29th October, will focus on Halloween. Halloween was always a critical time in the Irish food calendar, coming as it did at the end of the Harvest and at the beginning of Winter.”
Categories: Clodagh McKenna · RTE · Radio
I had some prawns in the fridge recently and was wondering what to do with them. I knew I’d often seen recipes for linguine with prawns and chilli but I couldn’t think off the top of my head the best way to go about it. So I had a Google (oops, not supposed to say that now) for the recipe and found a fantastic site.
Videojug.com’s slogan is ‘Life explained. On film’ and that is pretty much what it does. On the site are lots of short, custom-made instruction films on everyday tasks, including cooking and, marvellously, how to get out of a car without showing your knickers.
The three-minute 28-second video for ‘How to Make a Prawn and Chilli Linguine’ couldn’t have been clearer or more easy to follow. And all delivered in an awfully-awfully don’t-mind-if-I-do British accent. The linguine was lovely. The husband hoovered it up.
I’ve always adored supermarket shopping. Dawdling around for hours doing a big monthly shop or popping in for a couple of dinner ingredients. The husband knows I have a bit of a problem in this regard and when I couldn’t drive, he used to bring me to the supermarket, buy some magazines and go sit in the car because our minutes-in-store versus products-chosen ratio differed so greatly.
When we go abroad, he knows I will vanish into a supermarket if I spy one and not come out for an hour, having methodically surveyed every shelf on every aisle. I’ll pick stuff up, examine it, wonder what it is or how I might cook it and finally force myself to leave with just three or four non-perishable items.
That’s why I spent ages clicking on all the links here and feeling wistful because I will never get to shop in a Jitney Jungle or a Buttrey’s Food & Drug. That is honestly how sad I really am.
Categories: Supermarkets
Fast food is generally pretty nasty and largely nutrition-free. Sometimes you need a quick bite, however, and that’s why I’ve always like Nude, the largely organic café/takeaway on Dublin’s Suffolk St. For not too much more than the price of a supersized ‘meal’ from you-know-where, Nude offers lots of healthy and tasty wraps, paninis, salads and so on. It’s also a franchise business, with outlets in Dublin Airport and elsewhere.
Nude, which is owned by Bono’s brother Norman Hewson, was ahead of the curve when it launched, anticipating the current trend of “fast casual” food.
Categories: Fast food · Food business · Organic food
Following on from this week’s experiments in brown bread making, my sister-in-law (a veritable queen in the kitchen) has made an eminently sensible suggestion.
“My mother passed on a tip to me for making brown bread: she weighs out several portions of the dry ingredients and puts them in individual sandwich bags so it is like her own ready-made brown bread mix. It takes the pain out of making bread, as all you do when you want bread is mix the contents of your bag with the buttermilk. I think this is great, as sometimes I find it so much hassle if I have to weigh out all the stuff.”
I couldn’t agree more so will have a little weighing session later on.
Categories: Bread · Brown bread
Bubble Brothers held its much-anticipated Big Wine Event in the Clarion Hotel in Cork last night. Unsurprisingly, as Cork’s best and friendliest wine people, they did a great job. There were 93 wines available for tasting along with one beer, for some odd reason.
They might have done a great job but, as an attendee, I could definitely have done better.
Categories: Big Wine Event · Bubble Brothers · Wine · wine tasting
Had another bash at brown bread this morning. Doubled the quantities to fit my 2lb loaf tin, used buttermilk and wheatgerm and scattered poppy seeds on top. Complete success. A+.
Categories: Bread · Brown bread · Cooking attempts · Irish food
My fear of Jerusalem artichokes will have to be conquered some other day. In the real world, Jamie Oliver, local Tesco stores do not stock Jerusalem artichokes. Radicchio and little gem lettuce were also unobtainable so, as much as it might leave Jamie horrified, I had to resort to using a bag of baby salad leaves and some new potatoes when preparing his Warm salad of crispy bacon and Jerusalem artichokes
Categories: Cookbooks · Cooking attempts · Jamie Oliver · Recipes · Salad
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