September 23, 2011 · 10:58 pm

♥ Mango and Walnut Scones

Am I alone in sticking to a very limited choice of foods to eat for breakfast?  I usually select either the healthy option of a bowl of porridge with yogurt or the not so healthy alternative of a scone.  In an effort to make some tiny changes to my breakfast routine, when I was baking a batch of scones for the freezer I added walnuts and dried mango instead of the usual couple of handfuls of sultans.  I try to avoid dairy as much as possible but I have never been able to find an acceptable substitute to use for baking, if anyone knows one please let me know.

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September 21, 2011 · 10:45 pm

♥ Before Blogging



I have blogged now for just over six months and those months have speed by at a spooky rate of knots.  I know I don’t say this often, but I will today, thank you for reading Just Add Attitude, I very much appreciated that you do.

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September 18, 2011 · 9:30 pm

♥ Island Shopping: Inis Meáin Knitwear



Some clothes, well in truth, few, very few, live on in my memory long after I have consigned them to a charity shop and when they come to mind I wonder what was I thinking in that misguided moment when I placed them in the to-go-pile.  One such item was my Inis Meáin Knitwear cardigan with a shawl collar which I bought in London when I lived there (that’s quite a while ago – the late eighties and early nineties), it was warm, cloud-soft and comforting to wear.

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September 15, 2011 · 10:55 pm

♥ Coffee on an Island



The three Aran Islands are dotted across Galway Bay and beyond them, before the next stop America, is the tumultuous Atlantic Ocean.  I visited the middle island Inis Meáin (population approx 200) yesterday, it’s said to be the least visited and the least commercial of the  Aran Islands. (Inis Meáin is reached from the mainland by plane or foot-passenger only ferry).

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September 14, 2011 · 10:54 pm

♥ Postcard from Connemara

A rugged and hauntingly beautiful place, at the westerly edge of Europe, shrouded in clichés and sometimes in mist, the wild, windswept and wonderful landscape that is Connemara.

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September 11, 2011 · 9:12 pm

♥ Autumnal Sunday



Today had an autumnal feel in these part, the sky was daubed with grey-grained clouds, there was a chill in the air, and when I looked up at trees I saw that their leaves were on the turn.

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September 9, 2011 · 11:55 pm

♥ Irish Designers Create

Yesterday evening I went to see Irish Designers Create, a celebration of the work of seventeen of the brightest young creatives in the Irish design firmament, which is on at Dublin’s Brown Thomas department store.  The celebration started at yesterday’s Fashion Night Out and will run until the 18th September.  There I met….



Emma Manley:  The charming and gifted Emma has creativity flowing in her veins and indelibly stamped in her DNA (her Mama is a talented designer/artist).  Still just in her mid twenties she has packed an enormous amount into her life thus far.  She is a fashion graduate who has experience of the industry in both New York and London (in London she worked at the house of Alexander McQueen).  In 2010 she set up her own label, Manley.  Emma uses a mix of luxury materials (leather, chiffon and wool) to fashion sophisticated, feminine garments which are given a tougher edge by unusual fabric combinations, they are sometimes dotted with studs and always sprinkled with the fairy dust of über coolness.  The starting price of a dress from the Manley label  is €220. Web address: http://www.emmamanley.com



Anne Mette O’Connor:  Question. What do you get when your blend super niceness with creative talent, an extraordinary eye for detail and a phenomenal work ethic.  The answer in Mette’s case is a thriving jewellery business called AMOC (from the initials of her full name).  The beautiful piece that Mette is wearing  (in the photograph above) is made from silver, charcoal diamonds and ribbon, given the amount of diamonds dangling from the wonder necklace I didn’t dare ask the price but in her shop Mette has beautiful hand crafted pieces from around €100 (I did a post on AMOC in May to read it click here). Web address:  www.amoc.com



Heidi Higgins: On my way up to see the exhibition I spotted a dress I liked on a display mannequin, I assumed it was by one of the well know designer stocked by Brown Thomas so I stopped to ask the people working on the display about it, only to find myself talking to Heidi Higgins the designer of said dress.  She is one of the seventeen designers chosen to take part in the Irish Designers Create celebration.  Upstairs, Heidi a graduate of the National College of Art and Design, had a rail laden with simple chic timeless and stylish garments (mainly dresses) with an Audrey Hepburn-esque feel. The pure wool dresses some in bright jewel colours and some in neutrals were priced around the €300/350 mark.  Web address: http://www.heidihiggins.com



Laragh McMonagle:  My friend H who has a keen eye for all things beautiful  told me, via a comment on the blog some months ago about the work of Blackrock based jewellery designer Laragh McMonagle.  I didn’t get a chance to go to the exhibition that H recommended so last night was the first time I saw some of the dream like items from Laragh’s treasure trove.  Laragh is mainly self-thought and as you can see from the picture above she uses pearls, silver and gemstones in a pretty unique way.  Mea culpa I forgot to check out prices.  Web address http://www.bylaragh.com

I didn’t get a chance to look properly at all the other designers work so it is good news that the exhibition continues on the third floor of Brown Thomas until 18th September.

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September 7, 2011 · 9:58 pm

♥ Favourite Quotes//Six



‘But we get accustomed to mental as well as bodily pain, without, for all that, losing our sensibility to it; it becomes a habit of our lives and we cease to imagine a condition of perfect ease as possible for us. Desire is chastened into submission, and we are contented with our day when we have been able to bear our grief in silence and act as if we were not suffering. For it as such periods that the sense of our lives having visible and invisible relations beyond any of which our present or prospective self is the centre, grows like a muscle that we are obliged to lean on and exert.’

From Adam Bede by George Eliot 1819 – 1880.

I came across this passage many years ago; I find it comforting. So when ever life seems somewhat bleak and I have to rummage through dense dark clouds in search of hidden silver linings I read it again, the words have never failed to soothe.

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September 5, 2011 · 9:34 pm

♥ Coffee in Dublin//Four: Sixty Four Wine



It’s always good to know where to find a decent cup of coffee, so when I am in the Sandycove, Glasthule or Dun Laoghaire areas of South Dublin and in need of a caffeine pick-me-up, I head to Sixty Four Wine.  The owner Gerard Maguire has woven together three different but related strands to come up with a successful business.  Sixty Four is principally a wine emporium, so the front of the shop carries a large selection of vinous treats at every price point, in the middle there’s an artisan food section and at the back an interesting café (serving coffee, teas, breakfast and lunch) and a fine wine cellar.



The coffee is good and always arrives with a wedge of Valrhona chocolate on the side. The decor of the café is eclectic; a tiled floor, table tops made from the sides of wooden wine boxes, seating replete with comfortable cushion, quirky antiques, a bust of James Joyce in one corner and artificial lighting augmented by flickering tealights.  The mix is curiously appealing and the café has a post-modern feel (I mean that in a very good way); the sort of place you wouldn’t be surprised to come upon a skilled scribe scribbling by the glow of candlelight.



The owner Gerard is living the mantra ‘do something you love and you will never have to work a day in your life.’  He started his working life as a policemen and then became a lawyer with his own practice.  He is a long time lover of wine, so when he had a health scare  several years ago he decided, as he waited a week for his test results, that if all was well he would work from that day on at something he loved, the news was good and Sixty Four Wine was born.  Gerard is studying to become a Master of Wine; he is entering the third year of a seven-year long slog.



When I was talking to Gerard I couldn’t resist asking a would be Master of Wine to recommend a couple of wines at the €15 level and here’s what he suggested; a Godello (that’s a white wine, Godello is the grape variety, like clothes grapes go in and out of fashion and Gerard reckons that Godello is the coming thing) by the Spanish producer Rafael Palacios and Clos des Trias a bio-dynamic Grenache dominated red from the Ventoux.

Note: Sixty Four Wine is at 64 Sandycove Road, Glasthule, Co. Dublin and the web address is http://www.64wine.com

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September 3, 2011 · 8:14 pm

♥ Chocolate Tart



I am of the make-your-own-pastry-tribe but if you’re not and would like to make the tart you could always seek out a good ready-made pastry.   When a recipe calls for a pastry shell to be baked blind, I adopt a twenty-four hour approach to tackling it; I make the pastry and bake the shell the evening before it’s needed and then all I have to do the following day is make the filling and cook off the tart.  This is a Simon Hopkinson recipe, I suspect everybody is probably into Simon Hopkinson’s latest book, The Good Cook, post his recent BBC series, but the chocolate tart recipe is from his older and excellent book Roast Chicken and Other Stories published by Ebury Press in 1994.

INGREDIENTS

 For the pastry

175g butter

65g icing sugar

2 egg yolks

225g plain flour

For the filling

3 egg yolks

2 whole eggs

40g caster sugar

150g butter

200g dark chocolate broken into pieces (I used one with a 70% cocoa content)

METHOD

To make the pastry, put the butter, sugar and egg yolks in a bowl (or food processor) and work together quickly.  Blend in the flour, and work to a homogenous paste.  Chill for at least one hour.

Preheat the oven to 180°C .   Roll out the pasty as thinly as you can and use it to line a 20.5cm tart tin.  Bake blind in the oven for about 25  minutes or until pale biscuit in colour, but thoroughly cooked through.  Remove. Increase the heat of the oven to 190°C.

To make the filling, put the egg yolks, whole eggs and sugar in a bowl and beat vigorously together, preferably with an electric mixer until really thick and fluffy.  Melt the butter and chocolate together in a bowl over a pan of barely simmering water, stirring until smooth.  Pour on to the egg mixture while just warm.  Briefly beat together until well amalgamated, them pour into the pastry case.  Return to the hot oven for 5 minutes, then remove and leave to cool.  Serve with thick cream.

Enjoy!

Note: To bake the pastry case blind I lined it with tin foil and weighed it down with uncooked rice.

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