I have recently finished reading Henry James’s ‘The Portrait of a Lady’; it’s the very first Henry James novel I’ve tackled *hangs head in literary shame*. It’s the current choice of my book club and as we meet only every other month there’s lots of notice about forthcoming books so they shouldn’t be time-pressured reads.
♥ Reading and Writing (no Arithmetic)
♥ Blogging: Writing Posts
The years can gallop by at an alarming rate with some traversing the calendar faster than a cheetah charging across the savanna. Incredibly (well to me at least) JAA is now two; well strictly speaking two and a bit as I published my first post on the first of March 2011.
Filed under Musings
♥ Baking: Porter Cake for St Patrick’s Day
I am Irish so therefore I like Guinness. Right? No, wrong. I don’t like it at all. I believe it’s an acquired taste but no sip of it that I have ever had has encouraged me to try to acclimatize my taste buds to what’s known locally as the black stuff.
Filed under Cake, Celebrations, Ireland, Recipes
♥ Bennettsbridge: Nicholas Mosse Pottery
It might seem slightly bonkers, given that I had driven for nearly two hours, to pull in for a coffee break just a few miles short of my destination. But that’s exactly what I did on my recent trip to Kilkenny city when I stopped in the pretty village of Bennettsbridge which is only four miles from the city.
Filed under Craft, Ireland, Restaurants/Cafés, Travel
♥ The 5:2 Diet
I think I mentioned before on JAA that I don’t *do* dieting. Mostly because I don’t believe diets work. Although I am not hippopotamus-heavy, I am a fraction well ok more than a fraction above my ideal weight and I am sad that a great deal of the nicer clothes in my wardrobe don’t fit because I bought them when I was slimmer.
♥ Trip to Kilkenny
I am back. Back blogging that is. I am also back from Kilkenny a lovely and vibrant inland city in the south-east of Ireland. And no, I was not sequestered in Kilkenny for the duration of my blogging break, just for a few days last weekend.
♥ An Instagrammed January & A Blogging Break
January was a chilly month unless, of course, you live in the Southern Hemisphere. Chilly is relative but used as I am to Ireland’s temperate climate I felt the cold bite as temperatures dropped to zero or a little below. Brrr.
Filed under Musings
♥ Showcase Ireland 2013
On Tuesday I went to Showcase Ireland the annual trade fair organized by the Craft Council of Ireland which exhibits the best and most innovative of Irish craft, design and manufacturing to both Irish and international buyers. Regretfully I had limited time so I speed around trying to take it all in but as there were hundreds of exhibitors I only absorbed a tiny fraction of what was on view. One thing however that stood out for me, as much as a skyscraper would on a road otherwise filled with bungalows, was the extraordinary passion and enthusiasm of all the exhibitors I spoke to for what they do.
♥ Sunday in Dublin
Ye gods and little fishes, the weeks of January are cascading rapidly into each other and the month is whizzing by almost as fast as a waterfall flowing swiftly down a steep ravine. I realised that it is nearly January’s end and I had not yet spend a day at leisure in town (town as I mentioned before is what native Dubliners call the centre of their city). Time to rectify that so today I headed townward.
Filed under Culture, Dublin, Restaurants/Cafés
♥ Baking: Chocolate Scones
One perennial on my annual to-do list is to eat in a healthy fashion. It’s not that my diet is intrinsically unhealthy just that it is forever in need of a little tweaking. Eating in a healthy fashion is a rather nebulous notion so I have honed in on just a few things I would like to do. One is to drink more water, more wheat grass juice and more blueberry smoothies. When I say more I am going to aim for an achievable one litre of water per day, two to three shots of wheatgrass juice per week and the occasional blueberry smoothie. The other change I would like to make is to dissolve my enduring belief that foodstuffs are divided into the good and the bad. In other words so long as I don’t overdo it I am not going to beat myself up for indulging in the occasional not-so-uber-healthy treat.
Filed under Recipes
