Just Add Attitude

April 5, 2013 · 10:47 pm

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.

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Filed under Healthy Living, Ireland, Shops/Shopping

Tagged as Enniskerry, Farm shops, Farms in Dublin (well close to), Food shopping, Glencree Valley, Ireland, Michael & Hannah Keegan, Waterfall Farm, Waterfall Farm Shop, Wicklow

March 31, 2013 · 10:48 am

Happy Easter

Gosh, how the months slip by so speedily. I find it difficult to credit, even thought it’s early this year, that Easter is upon us already. BTW I only recently discovered how the date for Easter is determined: apparently Easter Sunday is the first Sunday after the first full moon that occurs after the spring equinox.

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Filed under Celebrations, Musings

Tagged as Easter, Spring

March 22, 2013 · 11:36 am

Reading and Writing (no Arithmetic)

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.

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Filed under Books, Musings

Tagged as Musings, Public speaking, Reading, The Portrait of a Lady, Toastmasters International

March 20, 2013 · 7:08 pm

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.

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24 Comments

Filed under Musings

Tagged as Blogging, Irish Blog, Musing, Writing, Writing a blog post

March 13, 2013 · 3:59 pm

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.

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Filed under Cake, Celebrations, Ireland, Recipes

Tagged as Baking, Cooking with Guinness, Guiness family philanthropy, Guinness, Ireland, Irish food recipes, Irish porter cake, Porter Cake, St. Patrick's Day, Traditional Irish food

March 11, 2013 · 6:37 pm

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.

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Filed under Craft, Ireland, Restaurants/Cafés, Travel

Tagged as Bennettsbridge, Craft, Crafts in Ireland, Kilkenny, Nicholas Mosse, Nicholas Mosse Mill, Pottery, Spongeware pottery, Susan Mosse

March 7, 2013 · 9:30 pm

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.

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Filed under Food/Wine, Musings

Tagged as Diet, Dieting, Musings, The 5:2 diet

February 27, 2013 · 8:13 pm

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.

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18 Comments

Filed under Craft, Ireland, Travel

Tagged as Campagne Kilkenny, CCoI, Craft Gallery, Future Beauty Exhibition, Ireland arts and crafts, Irish Blog, Irish Craft, Kilkenny, National Craft Gallery, Travel

February 1, 2013 · 10:01 pm

An Instagrammed January and 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.

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Filed under Musings

Tagged as Instagram, Irish Blog, Musings

January 25, 2013 · 10:41 pm

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.