fresh veggie delivery

Tags

beets, cooking, food, food delievery, Green Earth Organics, health, healthy, healthy eating, organic food, organic vegetables, potatoes, vegetables

Recently I decided to try out something new and ordered vegetables online. The whole thing started when Green Earth Organics popped up in a conversation I was part of on a facebook networking page and because I liked what they said I decided to check out their website.

I loved the idea of a box of seasonal, organically grown vegetables delivered straight to my door and their prices were reasonable too. The boxes on offer come in different sizes and different contents: large ones for families, ones picked for juicers, one with purely Irish produce,  and one filled with favourites. They even have bags of fruit and an array of other healthy products.

Since I live on my own I opted for a small box for the test run and this morning a white van pulled up outside my door delivering a box filled with freshly picked vegetables:leeks, beets, broccoli, potatoes, carrots, onions and parsnips. Green Earth Organics even added a handwritten note and recipe to help inspire their customers what to cook.

Now I can’t wait to cook the vegetables and find out if they taste as good as they look. So tonight I’ll be enjoying some fresh beetroot and I see some yummy vegetable soup over the weekend.

I can’t believe how excited I am about this but I have to say I am impressed how easy and efficient my online vegetable shopping experience has been. So I’ll possibly be seeing more of the friendly carrot Green Earth Organics has on their logo as I think I may become a regular customer: fresh vegetables delivered directly to my door is just to good to pass up on.

a box filled with healthy vegetables

payment in kind

Tags

baking, blueberry, blueberry and penut butter muffin, friends, home baked, muffin, payment in kind, thank you

For a while now I have been thinking about building a storage space for the logs for the fire and with space being such a big issue I just knew I needed help, and someone who had a few saws and other useful tools. So yesterday morning a lovely friend of mine came over to take a closer look at my tiny back yard and see if my idea would work.

It was a wet and miserable morning, rain bucketing down in big heavy drops but we both braved the weather and took a closer look, measuring tape in hand. Now my friend with all the carpentry tools will help me build a small log storage hutch and my log will be safely stacked and dry come the winter.

To show my thanks for him taking the time out of his busy day I had baked blueberry and peanut butter muffins which we enjoyed over a cup of coffee (him) and tea (me) and lots of chat: payment in kind – for a kind deed.

an issue when you home baked blueberry and peanut butter muffin – a yummy thank you

pea soup comfort

Tags

autumn, comfort food, cooking, food, healthy, home made, pea soup, recipe, soup, stew, vegtable

There is nothing better than a hot plate of soup when it’s cold and wet outside, and when the soup is thick and stewy it is just pure bliss.

Since I live on my own I often just buy a tub of fresh soup as I don’t want to be eating the same dish all week long. While they mostly are yummy and filled with vegetablely goodness they do tend to be more on the slurpy side, lacking that little bit of bite and substance.

So yesterday I took the wooden spoon into my own hands and stirred up a batch of pea soup, one of my favourites. Since I didn’t have a recipe, and I was too lazy to google it I decided to make it up as I went along and was delighted with the result.

I chopped up some onions, added a handful of cubed bacon and braised them in the pot. Once they had simmered nicely and the onions where clear I took the mixture out of the pot and put it to the side. Then it was time for the peas.

I bought a large glass of fresh peas in my local shop, added some broth, a bit of salt, a tad of pepper, some garlic and a good handful of a soup mix (lentils, split peas and barley) and let it cook.

While the soup was bubbling away I chopped up two carrots. After about ten minutes my hand blender blended everything together while still having a stewy consistency. Finally I added the onions, the bacon and the carrots and let the soup simmer away for a little while (until the carrots were soft).

Once all was done I poured myself a large bowl of soup and enjoyed every comforting spoonful and I am delighted that I made enough to enjoy more of the scrumptious soup today.

new cup – new habit

Tags

black tea, Canadian artist Frank Johnston, cups, Frank Johnston, fruit tea, herbal tea, photo, photography, tea

Habits are hard to break, even harder when you’ve had years of building up the habit. For me it was cups and cups of black tea all day long. A while back I decided I had to try and and ween myself off this caffeine inducing habit and over the summer I was able to stick to my new herbal/fruit tea regime.

But once I settled back into my Dublin life again I fell back into my bad tea drinking habit. I found it hard to resit the call of yummy Irish tea – with a dash of milk the perfect hot source of comfort.  However, since my recent Canadian visitor left a beautiful bone china cup as a surprise gift behind I have been back to drinking herbals, fruit and licorice in the afternoon, and I feel better for it.

I’m not quite sure what made me switch again, maybe it’s the pretty forest scene (Sunset in the Bush c.1918) by Canadian artist Frank Johnston that makes me what herbal over black, maybe it’s because the tea tastes so much better when sipped from fine bone china, or maybe it’s the fact that the cup is square – not round.

Whatever the reason I have been enjoying my afternoons sitting at my desk, the flavours of herbs and fruit filling my nostrils looking at a beautiful cup and remembering a good friend.

my new fine bone china cup

taking myself out for lunch

Tags

cannoli, Da Mimmo, Dublin, eating, food, Italian, Italian food, pasta, photography, photos

The grey weather isn’t budging, whenever i look out the window it really looks grim so to cheer myself up I took myself out for some lunch.

There is a wonderful little Italian down the road called Da Mimmo – great food, wonderful service and only a few minutes walk away. And since they have a great lunch menu I grabbed my book and took a stroll across the road.

Da Mimmo’s recently opened up their new venue, a few doors down from their original home, so it was the perfect time to try it out. The food is still as tasty as ever, but I have to admit I missed the cluttered old-fashioned look they sacrificed for more of a  ‘hipster-feel’.

I had bruschetta for starters (comes with the lunch deal), and I have to say I have never had better, the fresh bread laden with tomatoes and herbs had me licking my fingers. Then I had the pasta of the day, yummy and creamy, the perfect comfort food for such a miserable day, and I treated myself to some cannoli and coffee. And while the mixture of cream cheese (I think it’s goats and ricotta), pistachios and pastry was truly define, I was too full to eat both … so I took one home with me – a treat for tomorrow!

waiting for my lunch

yummy pasta

mmmhh – a rare treat, Cannoli

boycotting starbucks

Tags

advertisement, Butlers, coffee, Dublin, irish, marketing, online marketing, starbucks, tea

Marketing strategies and advertising campaigns are all around us, even if we may not always know it or even see it. But the one campaign that many unsuspecting coffee drinkers seem to not be aware of is the blogging of Starbucks cups because of misspellt names.

Whether or not this started out as simple mistakes or it is a purely customer driven campaign, it is sort of genius to utilize Instagram and Facebook pics and irate tweets to populate the internet with photos of the Starbucks logo. But it really bugs me and makes me want to boycott them more.

As someone who doesn’t like Starbucks – their coffee is just really expensive foamy milk and sugar – it is just another reason for me to not walk through their ever increasing number of doors in Dublin. I’d much rather spend my hard earned Euros in small, privately owned coffee shops and the wonderful Irish coffee chain Butlers (On a side note: Butlers allows you to select a praline with each cup of tea or coffee – genius and yummy marketing strategy).

And while I do understand the hoards of tourists looking for free WiFi when they travel, in Dublin Starbucks is far from the only solution. Most places offer up their broadband for free and the whole city has lots of hotspots anyway.

So if you happen to be visiting Dublin I’d recommend you join me in a Starbuck boycott and find all the wonderful and quirky little coffee shops dotted around the place. Leave your Euros with the locals and don’t put your hard earned cash into the pockets of huge conglomerates.

some milky tea off the beaten track

Weekly Photo Challenge: Dinnertime

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community garden, cooking, Dinnertime, food, mudisland, onions, Weekly Photo Challenge, Weekly Photo Challenge: Dinnertime

I have a thing for onions – and I do believe that most dishes are better with them in it. The best onions I have eaten in recent years are the ones we harvested in the community garden Mudisland. They were  a little bit sweet and just full of flavour. Sadly it’s still a long way off until we can harvest this years onions – but at least it’s something I can look forward to!

late night cake

Tags

birthday, blueberry muffin, cake, cupcake, donut, food, late night snack, muffins, tastes

It was my birthday yesterday and somehow I managed to spend the whole day without eating any cake – no birthday cake, no celebration cupcake, no ta-da donut – nothing, Nada.

So, on my way home from my late night lecture – I try to keep my students awake and involved every Monday from 8-9.30pm – I decided it was time for a muffin, a little bit of sweet to end my birthday on.

But when I got home the phone kept ringing, the minutes flew by and my muffin sat uneaten on a plate, neglected. Then I needed to do the washing-up, pack my bag for today and make sure I had all my printouts ready to go. By the time I finally got to sit down and read the few last pages for class the clock had struck twelve and it wasn’t my birthday anymore.

The blueberry muffin still sat uneaten on the kitchen table and I had spent my entire birthday without cake. I was unhappy with this, and so was my tummy – dinner had been a long six hours ago and the noisy rumbling wouldn’t let me forget it.  So, to my tummy’s satisfaction, I decided that since I hadn’t gone to bed yet it was still my birthday and I enjoyed some late night cake as a last birthday treat.

orange thoughts

Tags

autumn, colour, colours, communication, food, Orange, photography, spontaneity., thoughts

We may be having a bit of an Indian summer here in Dublin but autumn is well and truly here. If you don’t believe just look up and see how the leaves are now all turning a from vivid orange and look around to see the bright orange Halloween decorations appearing on windowsills.

As our world turns orange, even if only for a short while, I was amazed to find out two very interesting facts about this vivid colour.

The first was that it has been proven that bright orange physically improves the oxygen supply to the brain, which in turn improves mental awareness and stimulation. This basically means that the colour orange helps you concentrate and possibly makes you somewhat smarter.

The second interesting fact is that orange also stimulates your appetite. Maybe this is because lots of home grown foods turn a vivid shade of orange when the are ripe – just think of carrots, pumpkins and nectarines – or maybe it has to do with needing more food in the colder months. But either way it is the reason why many restaurants choose an orange hue in their decor.

An added bonus is of course, for both people and restaurants alike, is that orange is widely know to improve communication and spontaneity.

lunchboxes and sandwiches

Tags

college, food, lunch, lunchbox, lunchboxes, masters, sandwiches, school, snacks

Going back to college has meant going back to making sandwiches in the morning. And while carving out those precious few minutes to prepare some satisfying food has been tricky, the reward is great when that grumbling tummy rears it’s hungry head.

But with making sandwiches comes the problem of transport. How does one get the painfully prepared food whole and not mushy to school? Well, my lovely and generous friend C. has now solved that problem in the form of a multipurpose plastic box.

Not only can I now safely transport my sandwich I can add a few other snacks as well – some yummy bites to tide me over until I can enjoy dinner at home. An added bonus, this folding box is green, my favourite colour.

Today it will have its first outing and I hope that it works out the way it should. After all no one likes soggy falling apart sandwiches.

my cube of food

folded out, carrots, apples and yogurt covered cranberries

and the final lid open to reveal my sandwich