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Make ahead homemade stuffing recipe
The beauty of this stuffing recipe is that it can be made well in advance. No more faffing around the day before Christmas, if you make this stuffing this week and lash it into the freezer then it’s all good to go on the big day.
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December 2018
With the Toy Show being on last night Christmas season has officially kicked off in Ireland; in fact I have a Christmas party to go to tonight. The kids are obsessed with Christmas and their pure joy and delight in decorations in the shops and music playing on the radio is brilliant. As usual for the start of December though I don’t have the decorations up and I’ve no Christmas Tree in the sitting room quite yet. I know I’m not the only one. I suppose it’s a hangover from the days of being so stressed out about money that we tried not to put the decorations up early or…
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Beetroot and Feta salad
My biggest battle with food at the moment is finding a dish that’s simple to prepare and light to eat. The life of a freelancer can be a bit unusual in that I have to roll with the work when it comes in. The past couple of weeks has been particularly jam-packed in terms of jobs-on-the-go, and while I always have a slow cooker meal underway for the kids, eating a full meal after 8pm at night is always going to be a challenge for me. In the past 7 days I’ve worked with 2 separate TV crews, and there’s more to film this evening with TG4. Tune into Nationwide…
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Leaving Cert Results Day
Being ancient (according to my children) means that I remember this day in crystal moments, not as a full day. Driving my mother mad by not collecting my results until later on in the day. Crying bitter tears as I missed my number one choice on the CAO by 5 points. Going to another school with friends to get their results. Standing in a local pub with a drink in my hand that evening not knowing how to celebrate as I felt like I’d failed.
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Opinion: Food Headlines Worth Banning
Let’s ban the urgency of headlines when talking about food when talking about food OMG if you read one thing about food today, read this, quick. Before everybody else reads it. Does this sound familiar to you? It certainly does to me, and I’m tired of it. A quick trawl through articles published in Ireland by bloggers, online magazines, and newspapers in the past month reveal the following headline samples:
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Potato Corn Soup Recipe – Ad
Potatoes are a staple part of our family diet, and so when Potato.ie aka “Potatoes More Than A Bit On The Side” got in touch to see would I be interested in designing a new recipe for all the family to enjoy it wasn’t a hard decision to take. The past two weekends, while I’ve been doing cookery demonstrations with Lidl Ireland on the road, I continuously say that if you have a bag of spuds (potatoes) and a tray of eggs you’ll never go hungry. I say this because I’m trying to explain what it’s like to live as a family on a tight food budget and yet try…
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July 2017 Allotment Update
It’s been a while is becoming my catch-phrase this past couple of weeks. I sat down at my desk on Monday and started to go through all my recipes on the blog. There are now over 550 published articles on the blog. It’s taking me some time to go through them all, dust them off, and start sharing them again. I hadn’t done that in months. Since the middle of May in fact when life (and death) got in the way of having time to do anything other than blog and work. The longer I continued to focus on work and family, the more difficult it became to sit at…
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How To Visit Taste Of Dublin On A Budget
Updated for 2017! For ten years I managed to avoid Taste of Dublin, I knew it was on, I knew where, and convinced myself that it wasn’t worth visiting and not to bother. However, in year 10 I was invited along as a guest of the organisers to check it out. This gave me the opportunity to head on in and see if it was worth the admission price, what’s on offer, and to figure out if it’s worth your while to head along this year (year 12). The Ticket Price The cheapest tickets you can buy directly online are €17.50 per person and these are available for the Thursday…
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Bloom 2017 For The Family In Review
I go to Bloom in the Phoenix Park every year, have done since it opened. I applied for media accreditation this year and Bord Bia were kind enough to grant me a pass. With the boys on a day off school today we packed up the boys and headed for the city centre early in the day to put the festival to our family test. Read on for more top tips on how to make the most of Bloom this year from a family point of view. Note, we didn’t have the elder lemon who is studying for her Leaving Cert (starts on Wednesday). It’s the 11th year of this…
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Crying Over Onions
It was the onions. The blasted onions. Everything up until I started watering the onions was manageable. I had kept my emotions relatively in check. Then as I started to water the onions the memories flooded back and I started to cry. There was a glass of water on the table at tea time in the Summer. We’d invariably have fresh salad for tea. Home cooked ham, tomatoes, lettuce, a slice of homemade brown soda bread, but not cucumbers. Grandad didn’t particularly like cucumbers. In the glass on the table would be fresh baby onions or giant scallions, peeled but still in one piece. Eye-wateringly peppery in taste. Grandad used…
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Prawn Pasta Salad Recipe
When I cook pasta for dinner in the evening I normally cook a double-batch – far more than I actually need. This is because it can be used in meals the following day. The teenager likes to add boiled eggs, sweetcorn, and mayonnaise for her school lunchbox to a portion of pasta. I like to make salads with mine. If you do have leftover cooked pasta, cool it down immediately after cooking by rinsing in cold water, then once cold put it into a freezer bag or box and the cooked frozen pasta will keep in the freezer for up to a month. This is a prawn pasta salad that…
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Easy Tomato Tart Recipe
Hooray for Irish tomatoes being in season! My tomatoes in the polytunnel are nearly ready but you should be seeing Irish tomatoes in the supermarket at this stage. There is nothing like the flavour of a warm sun-ripened tomato picked straight from the vine. This easy tomato tart recipe is uncomplicated, in fact it’s nearly too easy to call it a recipe! Don’t let the small number of ingredients listed here limit your options. I make this tart with chorizo, fresh basil (thyme, oregano, and sage also work well), peppers, courgette, onions, the list goes on. As a bonus, to go along with the recipe I’ve another simple video for…
