If you are going to write a blog post about a food establishment it is, I think, a tad unfair to rock up to check it out just as it opens. But that’s exactly what I did this week when, having spotted on Twitter some details of a new food venture in County Wicklow, I visited ‘The Delgany’ for breakfast in its first week of trading. Twice!
Category Archives: Ireland
The Delgany
Filed under Coffee, Food/Wine, Ireland, Restaurants/Cafés
To Kilkenny City via Jerpoint Abbey
What with a soft blue sky filled with sportive fluffy white clouds which were backlit by sunshine and some real warmth in the air, last Saturday felt like the end of the current glacial age had finally arrived. The meteorological deities had, for once, come up trumps as last Saturday was also the day I planned to make a return trip to Kilkenny. It’s less than two months since I was last there so I wouldn’t normally have returned so soon except that I needed to collect a ceramic tree I bought, on my recent trip, at the Future Beauty exhibition in the National Craft Gallery.
Waterfall Farm Shop
I think that shopping for food as close as possible to where it is bred or grown and/or in a retail outlet where the owners can give you chapter and verse on the provenance of all the items they stock is an eminently sensible idea. The Waterfall Farm shop is a place that melds the close to source ideal, as it sells lamb from Waterfall Farm direct to the public, with the wished for good product knowledge as the owners are totally au fait with the origin and other details of the hand-picked range of mainly artisan foods that they sell.
Filed under Healthy Living, Ireland, Shops/Shopping
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
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.
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.
Christmas Shopping in Greystones
Flowers by Lynda
It’s the week before Christmas and all through the land stressed out shoppers are scurrying around. At Christmas time there is little or no escape on high streets or other shopping areas from the madding crowds. It’s just the lucky few insanely organized folk who sorted all things to do with Christmas weeks ago who can now sit happily at home. Freighted as the festive season is with lorry loads of expectations those of us who have left things to the last-minute have no choice but to join frenzied fray. However one way to escape the worst of the madcap cacophonous crowds is to shop out-of-town.
Filed under Ireland, Shops/Shopping
The Irish Architectural Archive
On the east side of Dublin’s two hundred and fifty year old Merrion Square there is a beautiful centuries old town house that is home to the Irish Architectural Archive. I have to confess, somewhat shamefacedly, that the first time I heard of the Irish Architectural Archive ( from now on refered to by its initials – IAA) was when I went to the pop-up shop they hosted a few weeks ago as part of The Christmas on The Square initiative. I knew the instant I walked through the IAA’s door into an imposing flooded-with-light, large, high-ceilinged hallway which houses a compelling exhibition of scale models of building designed by Eileen Grey, that it was somewhere I would want to revisit.
Dublin: Vintage Photographs
One of the things I like about the photography class I recently enrolled in is that the subject is taught in the round. By that I mean the class is not just about the technical aspects of photography but instead takes an overview of the subject. For that I am truly grateful as in truth two and a half hours of tech detail every Tuesday evening would rapidly turn my brain to a mushy pea consistency.
Filed under Dublin, Ireland, Photography
Just Add Attitude
Just Add Attitude 