Twitterings & Photo Friday

So as y'all can see from the new sidebar I've given in and joined Twitter! I'd been hearing about it for a while and was never that interested, but I finally looked into it and realized that this'll be a great way for me to give little updates between blog posts etc. Oh and please join me! I get the impression that twitter is only as fun as the network you've got on it. But if you aren't that keen on joining you can still check in either here for my updates (ie tweets - how cute is that btw?), or here if you want to see older updates (my blog widget is only showing the 5 most recent).

Also! Check it out!!! We have some very healthy coriander in the top corner, emerging chives right below it, and some baby basil to the right of the chives. There's also about 3 visible teeny tiny parsley shoots as well. The mint is being lame though :(, I got nothing yet from that corner.

Cooking Adventures

Big surprise, living on my own away from Bryn Mawr's amazing dining halls has forced me into the kitchen. Which, irony aside, I'm surprisingly enjoying (Crazy I know right??) and turns out I'm not that bad at it. It's alright, go ahead with the "I told you so's." But I'm seriously ok at it. A couple weeks ago up in Belfast I made enchiladas for D and his roommate and they were edible, tastey even! I've slowly been working my way up the sauce enhancement ladder for pastas (ha sounds like I'm pumping steroids into them, I swear its just fresh veggies/herbs).

And today I made soup from scratch, and guess what? I didn't even have a real recipe. I just cobbled together a few different ones and figured it would work out. And it did! This a big deal for me. It was a lentil, potato and carrot soup with loads of garlic and a bit of onion. The prep work was a bitch (I need a sous chef apparently), but I took genuine pleasure in the tasting, stirring and checkups. It was quite palatable and tastey. Wished I could've fed it to someone else though, I got a bit tired with congratulating myself ;)

I want to take advantage of spending the weekend in Dublin and go to the Temple Bar Food Market, (though who am I kidding, I'm sure I'll end up in the book market eventually) and cook something totally awesome with the local, fresh produce. Wish me luck!


ps- tried to upload a vid of my kitchen, didn't work. Sorry!

My First Trip Into Dublin

This is slightly out of chronological order from the last post, but I made a video from my first trip into downtown on Saturday the 6th. It was a nice foray, definitely a museum kind of day because of the weather. So I went to St. Stephen's Green, had an awesome little lunch in a cafe, visited both the National Museum of Ireland (Archeology & Ethnography site .... of course) and the National Gallery of Ireland. Then I walked up O'Connell St to the Hugh Lane Dublin City Gallery (a contemporary art museum) but... it had just closed. For another time eh?

Highlight of the trip would definitely have to be the 3 MUMMIFIED Irish Kings on display in the National Museum. I had no idea bog preservation was that awesome, you could still tell that one of the kings had had red hair! Oh or maybe the sad person who's job it was to wear the leprechaun suit plus giant papier mache head. That dude was still there four hours after I'd first seen him while walking towards the river. Talk about schadenfreude, just seeing him made me glad I was sitting on a smelly bus out of the rain.

On my first night out in Dublin, or "Whoooo COPPERS!"

So night before last I had my Irish initiation to a 'country' bar. It was called Copper Face Jacks (more affectionately known as Coppers) and this link's comment section says it all and more. PLUS it was the night after the All-Ireland Hurling Championship (the Super Bowl of hurling in Ireland if you will) so the place was awash with Counties Kilkenny and Waterford fans. The DJ had an almost wedding dance style of mixing, playing a few rap tunes, then a Jackson 5 and Blues Brothers, then a Cotton Eyed Joe-style "Everybody knows the step but Katie!" song. Essentially it was a dance your heart out, laugh at the creepy dudes and sing along at the top of your lungs party, and it was frickin' awesome. Oh and don't worry, I picked the steps up just fine :)