“The Pyrenees – Is it Home from Home?”

“TRAVELLING – It leaves you speechless, then turns you into a storyteller” – Ibn Batutta

As good as we are at travelling the world and embracing new cultures. I feel we Irish struggle slightly with being away from home for too long…

Now that may be an unjustified statement but as I travel from country to country indulging my inner vagabond as I work my way through a list of wanderlust destinations there is always over arching feeling that Home is where the Heart is.

“Blue Cheese Stuffed Portobello Musrooms

“What do you call a mushroom that throws a party – A fun-gi”

So calling this a recipe might be a bit of an over exaggeration as it’s so easy to make. Then again that’s what cooking is really, pulling together a couple of simple ingredients to produce a tasty end product.

“Blueberry, Feta & Carmelised Onion Flatbread Pizza”

“Laughter is brightest where food is best” – Irish proverb

When it comes to a quick tasty lunch with a bit of a wow factor this has to be one of the easiest things to throw together and most recently made an appearance at two of my last three Sunday lunches. Up until last year I don’t really think I used blueberries for anything other than mixing them through my porridge or occasionally indulging in a muffin!! However having fallen in love with using them in my Lemon, Poppyseed & Blueberry Pancakes I felt the little burst of squidgy flavour that occurs when they are heated needed to be explored across other dishes. So these flatbreads, which are a bit like a sweet pizza, totally fits the bill.

“A Quick Waltz Around Vienna”

“The streets of Vienna are paved with culture, the streets of other cities are paved with asphalt”

– Karl Kraus

You never really here folks mention Vienna when they are trying to decide where to spend a city break in Europe. Barcelona, Paris, Rome sure but the Austrian capital not so much.  I think however it may be suffering slightly because it sounds a little bit too like Venice. “Oh yeah the one with the canals” is what you’ll hear when you mention the city and your response: “No, no, the one with the famous psychologists and composers”. Doesn’t quite have you running does it!!

“Strong is the New Skinny…. Or is it???”

“Take care of your body, it’s the only place you have to live”

– Jim Rohn

For the last few of years there has been a distinct movement away from being “skinny” (remember the whole size zero madness) towards “strong”. A look that is deemed a more achievable, fitter body type. Women are now being encouraged to get into the gym, lift weights and grow that booty. Instead of ribs on display it’s now images of abs that are the Instagrammed pictures of choice. But do women actually want that more muscular defined physique that is associated with hard work in the gym or do they actually still want to look skinny but won’t admit it out loud for fear of being ridiculed by their gym bunny “strong” friends?

“Lemon, Poppy Seed & Blueberry Pancakes”

“Everything can have drama if it’s done right. Even a pancake”

– Julia Child

I’m late for everything. That or I’m tumbling through the door in a chaotic heap of bags, coat, hair, coffee mug and whatever else I can carry under my arm. I strongly believe it’s a genetic malfunction as nobody in my family seems to be able to arrive to any event during that elusive “plenty of time” window. Therefore posting up a recipe for pancakes four days after Shrove Tuesday wouldn’t exactly be out of character. However I really didn’t want to create a recipe that folks would only use once a year. The one I want to share is one that will give you the opportunity to have healthy pancakes all year round without compromising on taste. If anything I’m actually slightly biased towards these and would prefer them over the traditional milk, flour and egg recipe.

“So What is Mindfulness???”

“A mental state achieved by focusing one’s awareness on the present moment, while calmly acknowledging and accepting one’s feelings, thoughts, and bodily sensations, used as a therapeutic technique.”

Bloody hell, I nearly think I need to take a “mindful moment” just to digest that definition and figure out what it means!!! It’s a bit of a buzz word at the moment isn’t it – Mindfulness and I’m not entirely sure I really understand what the whole concept entails so when my friend Rachel suggested that we do some sort of morning workshop in her hometown I was all up for it.

“Zamora – lunch served with a dash of hipster”

“What contemptible scoundrel has stolen the cork from my lunch” – W. Clement Stone

A daytrip, even if it’s only an hour “down the road” is always an excuse to try somewhere new for lunch. What you don’t expect, until you are outside and staring at the closed sign, is that the place you had really wanted to try doesn’t actually open for lunch on a Saturday!! Queue hollers of “There’s no recession around here”, frantic Googling and even more frantic attempts at trying to find a car parking space in torrential rain and stubborn traffic.

“Naughty Protein Eggnog”

“Hallo! Whoop! How are you! Merry Christmas!”
Ebenezer Scrooge in
Charles Dickens’ ‘A Christmas Carol’ (1843)

So Eggnog for me has always been something that has only every existed in Tim Allen Christmas movies. As exotic a drink as Harry Potter’s Butter Beer, it was something that was sipped on as the family joyfully gathered around to adorn the tree with decorations and sing carol’s.  The reality is that unfortunately this idealised image is  as make believe Hogwarts itself . In my house anyhow, there’s no singing, there’ no decking the halls, it’s mainly just a stand-off over who’s going to tackle the Christmas tree lights and trying to see how long we can get the dog to wear reindeer antlers, tragically, there’s never eggnog!

“Munich Christmas Markets”

“A lovely thing about Christmas is that it is compulsory, like a thunderstorm, we all go through it together” – Garrison Keillor

Every year once the cobwebs of Halloween are blown away Christmas hurtles it’s way through the front door like a runaway Polar Express. You can see it coming, you can deny it’s coming, but the reality is that once the calendars herald the first of December you will find yourself humming along to Last Christmas, wondering if you were that girl being pelleted by George Michaels “snowballs”, would you have realised that he was more interested in re-arranging the “carrot” on your new squeeze’s snowman!!!    Figuratively speaking of course!