Sweet Charity

In an attempt to get into shape and do something good and new, I’v decided to run the BUPA London 10,000 for the British Heart Foundation. The race is on the 25 May, which gives me adequate time to get fit enough that I can actually complete the race on two feet, hopefully ahead of the people in giant bear costumes and people walking with small children.

As much as the training is proving both an enjoyable and challenging hobby and ample distraction from the task at hand, ie – my masters, I am doing the race for the British Heart Foundation and I am hoping to raise £400 by race day. So if you feel like helping me out in my efforts to raise the money, please go to my sponsorship page here. It’s a quick, easy and safe way to donate money.

The British Heart Foundation is a truly worthwhile charity that devotes its time and resources to research, support and care fort hose living with heart conditions. Money used to sponsor me can fund research, nurses and home support for heart patients. You could help to make someone living with a heart condition’s life much more comfortable. That’s got to be worth a few quid surely!

So, please do support me. I’ll hopefully do you proud by not falling on my face on race day. yay!

Life Lessons #3: Dos and Doughn’ts of comfort baking

Do:  Make sweet sweet triple chocolate cookies after a frustrating day with a glass of wine and the lovely Fleet Foxes in the background.

Don’t:  Insist upon dessimating the cookie dough supply by eating it by the spoonful straight from the mixing bowl. You will feel like a complete sow when you wake up in the morning. I learnt this. I feel richer for the experience, but that is probably just a temporary richness brought on my so much chocolate.

They are delicious cookies though…

Electro Pop <3 <3

I just wanted to share my thoughts on how much I love the new wave of electro pop that is taking over music. I don’t know about Ireland, but in London I’m very excited about new acts such as Little Boots and Ladyhawke. there’s just something so pretty, fun and enjoyable about it. It’s an addictive sound, with some lovely lyrics to boot. the tunes I’ve heard so far from these too have left me in anticipation of what else is going to come our way in 2009. (In particular check out the extended version of Stuck on Repeat by Little Boots, and Meddle, my personal favourite. Also, my Delerium and Paris is Burning by Ladyhawke.)

In this vein of thought, I have allowed myself to become entirely swept up by the pop electronic revolution and have come up with a name for my (hypothetical) electro pop outfit. Are you ready: The GinandTronics! Don’t you want to go to see them already? The only thing missing form the mix (geddit? it just gets more perfect!) is another member (to justify the plural) and some talent/ability to make decent electro music. but I have decided that the latter is superfluous to requirements these days. If Peaches Geldof can forge a career on being a talentless poser, so can I. and I’ll even be nice to people.

Banoffee Pie

Banoffee pie is great really. If you enjoy baking then you will appreciate how easy but satisfying it is to make. If you’re not much of a baker but you’d like to give it a go, then banoffee pie is probably the best dessert to know how to make. There’s no actual baking involved, so you get to avoid all the confusion of kneeding, crumbing, folding etc., it’s not at all complicated to make and it looks quite fancy. It’s also a good dessert to know if you ever have to go to a dinner or birthday party and think you should bring something. It’s the kind of thing you could make with your kids without them burning themselves or you wanting to throttle them for doing it wrong. It’s also, as I discovered today, a great dessert to make for your cake loving housemate on his birthday when you don’t have a clue what he would like or any money to buy him a present.

Here’s how I make banoffee pie:

Ingredients:

For the biscuit base:

1 packet of Hob Nobs (i use plain, but if you like, go for chocolate.)

150g butter

For the toffee filling:

1 can of condensed milk

80g dark brown sugar

80g normal/caster sugar

170g butter

For the top:

4 large bananas

300ml double cream

1 cadbury’s flake

Method:

1. Put the hob nobs in a plastic sandwich bag and crush them into crumbs using a rolling pin. (or if you don’t have one, like me, whatever round blunt implement you can find. I use a teabag caddie.)

2. melt the butter in a pan and stir in the biscuit crumbs. Once it’s mixed, spoon the mixture into a loose-bottom cake tin. (9inch) If you don’t have one of these either ask your neighbour, like I do, or use a deep pyrex dish or cake tin. smooth the biscuit mixture across the tin and slightly up the edges. Pop in the fridge for 1/2 an hour.

3. While the base is in the fridge, make the toffee. Heat the butter and sugar in a pan and stir until all melted into syrup. Pour the can of condensed milk into the ban. Bring this mixture to the boil, stirring all the time. It’s turn into a light brown, thick caramel. Be really careful bringing to the boil as being spattered by boiling toffee is not fun. so keep the heat low enough.

4. Once the toffee is ready, pour it over the biscuit base. smooth it so that it covers the whole base evenly and then return to the fridge for an hour and a half.

5. Fast forward an hour or so – peel and chop up the 4 bananas and whip the cream. Once the toffee has set, remove the tin from the fridge and cover the toffee with the sliced banana. Keep some banana for decoration.

6. Spoon the whipped cream over the banana until the pie is completely covered. use the remaining banana to decorate the pie. Then crumble the Flake all over the top to add the finishing touch.

Put the pie back into the fridge to eat whenever you feel like it.

And there you have it! Interestingly, this recipe for the toffee is how I decided to make it, but if you actually boil the can of condensed milk unopened for 2 hours, keeping the water topped up the whole time and the pot covered so the water doesn’t evaporate, the condensed milk actually turns into caramel. Once made, this toffee can actually be stored in the cupboard until you need it. Which it pretty cool.

Happy pie-making!

The New Adventures of Esshmeryurareyer….

Firstly, I have to apologise for the lack of updates to the blog in recent times. The last week has involved a lot of settling in, getting organised and, more importantly, exploring. I think it’s more valuable to go about actually living/reading/meeting people than it is to update a blog daily based on random brainfarts, so I’ve been out there living a wee bit. And let me tell you, London is a pretty good place for that sort of thing. And not just the breathing in breathing out type of living, but the actually enjoying yourself type of living. I’m not going to turn this in to an extended version of a postcard or a primary school news copy, but I will share a few of my favourite bits of London so far. So I don’t forget, if for nothing else.

I’m living in a predominantly Turkish community, with a large black population also. As I walk around the high street in the middle of the day I stand out like a sore thumb. I’m definitely the neighbourhood short, blonde oddball. The major benefit to living where I do is that I am surrounded by ridiculously tasty, ridiculously cheap Turkish food. It turns out this food is ideal for me as it has all the tasty parts of Eastern food, with none of the spice. I’m going to be fat as a fool in no time, but I honestly will be too contented to care.

The other great thing about the neighbourhood is the fabulous little arthouse cinema just down the road. I’ve made it my business to make Monday nights my cinema night (cheap tickets on a Monday). It’s called the Rio and it’s liek the Kino in Cork, but with wider options for grazing and a bigger auditoriom. They sell cake, popcorn, coffee. It’s wonderful. So far I’ve been to The Wave and Linha de Passe. (Former more interesting/engaging than the latter, with the latter more likely to clean up at film festivals and award ceremonies.)

The really strange thing about London is that nobody can seem to say my name. I understand that it is an Irish name and no one has heard of it, but it only has four letters and is pronounced phonetically. I’ve had the extreme reaction in a Hoxton nightclub of ‘EMER – Are you taking the piss? What kind of name is that?’ to which I meekly responded…’uh, I don’t know, it’s just what I’m called.’ More often than not, people just politely do the introductions and then ten minutes later when parting rather awkwardly go ‘Emhrmiraryer’ through their fingers as they grasp for the right name. One Indian guy I met in my course induction got straight to the point and asked me to say it twice and then spell it. We had no more problems then, but the downside was that the exercise was so drawn out that I forgot his name… So basically, I’m getting used to being looked at like some kind of Irish version of a Pokemon.

As well as settling into the college side of things and doing all the boring bits to do with banks and phones and things, I have been doing the culture thing as much as I can while I’ve had the free time. Enjoyed a visit to Tate Modern last week. To be honest, don’t really get a lot of modern art. It’s not bad, but I, personally, can only get so much from coloured squares or a picture of a hamburger. I do love a lot of the photographs they have in there though, particularly ones from the 1930s and 1940s, as well as a numbe rof their more political exhibits. (My particular favourite was the room of Soviet propaganda posters.)

The Imperial War Museum was much more my type of thing. An interesting, if slightly reserved and unmissably British, Holocaust exhibition was one of the things that I spent a particularly long time perusing. The Secret War section was definitely the best part. It was so interesting. There were examples of equipment used in Secret Service operations, such as Nazi insignia and pens with hidden bugs, as well as written records of missions undertaken during wartime by the Secret Service. There was also a room at the end of the exhibition designed to ‘make you think’ about the need for and dangers of secret wars, and the significance of the secret service in the history of Britain and in the protection of British subjects. Plenty of quotes from world leaders adorned the walls. Churchill’s 1945 quote stood out to me: In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies. Many of the quotes struck me because they were said over 50 years ago, but could easily have been said in modern times. It does make you think, which I suppose is the point of museums.

Anyway, I’m enjoying life here so far. If all the above didn’t do it for me, the builings, parks, rivers, canals, markets, shops and food probably would seel the deal. I’m very excited about starting my course next week, so hopefully, when I do, that will be another thing to add to the list. I’m optimistic.

What’s the Story Now?

It’s official, I am a Londoner now, and my blog title makes no sense anymore really. The photo on the front is of the harbour in Cobh, not the River Lee as it used to be, and I no longer live on the banks of the Lee. I’m a lie, a sham, a fraud. I just don’t think that Thoughts of a Cork Girl Living in London Story has the same ring to it. I’d rather be a fraud than a losebag. And so, the blog stays. Except I will be posting from London now. You have been told.

I just got here this morning and was greeted by blues skies sunshine and friendly birds. In case there was any fear I had stepped into a Disney movie, these birds were big old pigeons and the signs explicitly stated that I was not to feed the little buggers. 

The area of Hackney where I am living is food heaven. There are (cheap) Turkish restaurants everywhere and if you stroll a few more minutes down the road there are Vietnamese restaurants everywhere. The best fish and chip shop in all the borough is around the corner, and there is a market that sells all sorts of fruit and veg. on Thursdays and Fridays. Anyone who knows of my love for food will understand how happy all of this is maikng me.

In terms of the house itself, the plasterers have been in and are supposed to be gone by now, but they still haven’t finished. Consequently I haven’t been able to fully move into my room yet, but it is the first one to be done and until then I’ve been given a temporary room, so I’m happy enough. Just a bit of suitcase living until the place is painted. It will be nice though having a nice, clean freshly decorated room. And I  found a shop that only sells things for 98p down the road, so i’m going to furnish it almost exclusively with things from there. Classy, like. Oh, and there is an Argos across the road for all my flatpacking needs.

So other than that, it’s all bout settling in, looking around and enjoying the city until I start college next week. You could say the world is my Oystercard. (badum-cha!)…I’ll get my coat.

The Lovely Girls Festival 2008

As another long, wet summer draws to a close, it is time once again for the finest tradition in all the land : The Rose of Tralee International Festival. Paddy Powers have the odds at the ready (Cork is 3-1!), Centra have stocked up on share-size boxes of Cadbury’s Roses, and Newbridge have carefully crafted 27 contemporary takes on the medieval torque, weighing about 2 stone apiece, to adorn the necks of the young ladies. We will judge them, oh yes. We will look at how they stand, their dresses, their breathing, listen to their stories – indeed every move will come under scrutiny, for the title of loveliest girl in the land is nothing to be sniffed at.

A couple of months back I wrote of my own brush with lovely girldom when I took part in the Cork Rose competition. While not quite making it to Tralee (robbed) I did have an amazing time being a Rose, and met some cracking girls altogether. But alas, my lovely laugh was not quite lovely enough, so it was back to the uneventful, unsexy world of academia for me. I still wear the sash sometimes you know, around the house when I do the washing up, just to feel like a princess. Joking. But seriously.

Seeing as I’m leaving Ireland in a few weeks and I actually took part in the festival this year, I am even more excited than usual about the Rose of Tralee, and I’ve been glued to it every year since I was old enough to say ‘whaaat is she wearing?’ So my plan this year is to watch the first night of girls in front of the telly with a few friends, a box of chocolates and lots of tea. Then on night two I’m heading to Tralee to experience the festival for myself. I’m reliably informed by one of the locals that the best fun of all is to be had out around the streets, watching the live music and the fireworks, and that only ‘the posh people go into the dome. Wouldn’t be seen dead in there!’ I agreed via text wholeheartedly, as I whimpered and put my ‘one west-coast-cooler-for-the-lady-sandals’ back into the bottom of the wardrobe and took out my ‘mind-the-cow-shit-when-you’re-lepping-in-the-street’ pumps.

Nevertheless, I am excited. Apparently the atmosphere is great and why wouldn’t it be? The offies open late for the occasion, drinking in the street is allowed, and then the entertainment just kind of swells around you. I am looking forward to my last bit of old-fashioned Irishness of the summer before I head off for a week in the sun on Thursday.

Wherever you are planning to watch the Lovely Girls this year, I hope you enjoy it!

Me with some of the other girls at the Cork Rose 2008

The Triskel Cafe Bar

If you live in Cork and enjoy a nice cup of tea and a sit down, you might be interested to know of a little discovery I made today. Looking for a nice place to have a bite to eat and some tea, we stumbled upon the new cafe in the Triskel, tucked away in the little lane behind the Long Island.

I am not normally one for shameless raving and plugging and, what’s more, I am usually loathe to share hidden gems with the masses, but seeing as the Triskel Cafe Bar is both new and lovely, I feel it is my duty as a citizen to spread the good word.

The first thing we noticed when we passed the outdoor tables, the beer-stocked fridge and the twee decor is that it really didn’t feel like we were in Cork anymore. The advantage of being off the main street is that you are sheltered from all the hustle and bustle. We ordered some hot baguettes (goats cheese – with added chicken – they let you mix and match) and sat down. The tables are adorable with old-fashioned floral oil tablecloths. The chandeliers are adorned with teaspoons and teacups. The music is soft and folky. The lighting is good. Also, maybe due to the location, or the fact that the cafe in its current form has only just opened, it is nice and quiet, and you don’t feel you are in any kind of rush to finish your lunch.

The food is tasty in a lunch-time-sandwichy way. Good goats cheese always gets the thumbs up from me, and it was particularly tasty, as was the chicken. The chicken is free range, the bread is from the nearby Alternative Bread Company and the cheeses are all sourced from various farmers’ markets by the owner of the cafe. The fresh food, bold flowery tablecloths and unmatched cutlery all give the Triskel a real country village cafe feel, which is really something when you consider it is in the centre of the city.

The side salad wasn’t the most exciting thing in the world. It was basically lettuce. Also, they make all their yummy looking desserts on the premises in the morning, but storing them uncovered on a table next to the door meant there were a few flies around. But these are things I imagine will get ironed out when the place has been open more than 3 days, so it didn’t take away from the experience for me.

The best thing about lunch in the Triskel Cafe is definitely the tea part. We were in for quite a treat when the waitress emerged with three china teacups and saucers (each one different), little shortbread biscuits and a big blue china teapot. To make it all the more lovely, the tea was made using tea leaves. I love tea leaves.

After a very satisfying cup of tea and a hearty lunch, we finally felt ready to brave the charming August rain and weave our way back into town.

If you’re in Cork and looking for a nice cup of tea and a sit down, pop over to the Triskel.

Because we need the eggs…

I watched two of my favourite movies the other night. First I watched the wonderful Annie Hall, probably to this day the best film on relationships between men and women I’ve ever seen. I then watched Four Weddings and a Funeral, a film that satisfies my strange penchant for Hugh Grant films, despite the ghastly character/performance/presence of Andie McDowell.

Back to Annie Hall. I love it so much. But it does make me a bit sad when I watch it. Seeing two people kind of fall into being together, and then watch as something that you’re not sure they should ever have had together develops, then falls apart, and then becomes something really really significant to both of them makes you think.

I was sitting smoking a cigarette on the front step afterward and I had a thought. What if I’m as bad as Alvy Singer (or any other Woody Allen ‘character’) at relationships? It is a serious possibility. My destiny could be to meander through life trying not to fuck up too much, before eventually dying alone thanks to my lack of affinity with cats.

You see, I think relationships really are funny things. I mean, how often do circumstances, mood or timing (or level of inebriation) lead us into something, and before we know it, we are in a relationship we had never planned or envisioned happening? And then, it’s all down to us to work with the raw material… Sometimes, you do just fall into something without even realising it, and then you can’t imagine not having it. Then, when it is gone, truly gone, and you move on, you can’t imagine being there again.

Annie Hall makes me see how this can happen. I fall for ideas of people in my head all the time. A great post I read by Annie Rhiannon made me smile. It reminded me of those times when you see someone and a story in your head makes you think for a fleeting second that they could be your soul mate. It’s not a real voice most of the time, just a subconscious narrative that makes your toing-and-froing a little bit more interesting from time to time. But sometimes, when you are in a whimsy of day-dreaming, imagining an odd hypothetical fate, someone catches you unaware and asks you out. Then, you have a something. And I suppose it’s real. You know nothing about each other, but all of a sudden all your concentration goes into the other person and finding out about them. Then your trusts, fears, hang-ups, opinions and crutches become magnified by a giant lense pointed at you by someone who is deciding whether you can make the jump from potential sex-partner to possible-dating person. Or if you get rellegated altogether to one-off mentaller. I think about this stuff, and have a constant inner monologue, which is why I worry about my lack of affinity with cats…

I like Annie Hall because I like the characters. They are flawed, obsessive, neurotic, charming and interesting. They’re not perfect, but you want it to work out for them. You feel like they’re as bad as it all as you are, and they’re what your hope is riding on. When it ends, it’s sad. Because you realise that people like Annie and Alvy are good people, flawed people, people who try hard, people who make mistakes. They are like you. And you were rooting for them the whole time. Then, to make things worse, you watch Four Weddings and watch that adulterous posh American slut come in and mess Hugh around for an hour and a half, steal the love of one (awesome) woman’s life (Kristin Scott Thomas) and ruin another woman’s wedding day in the process. And she gets a happy ending when she turns up (in a trenchcoat without a scrap of make-up on i might add) to his wedding, spoils everything and then turns up (unannounced) at his house hours after he got decked by the girl he left at the alter. And then she says that awful line…Bitches like her are just the type to be standing in the lashing rain and not even notice. I’d probably get splashed by a muddy puddle as Hugh sped past me on his way to see that curly-haired harlot, or struck by lightning as I rang the doorbell.

But we keep going. We look (and when we do we won’t find, it’s the law), we give up (then it comes…), we are oblivious (when it is staring at us like a giant doe-eyed puppy), we try (all the wrong things), we fight (about nothing), we say sorry (without understanding why), we make up and give it another go (without understanding why), we break up (and down), we move on (and start again), we swear we’ve learned our lesson (we haven’t.)

The last lines of Annie Hall really hit the nail on the head for me when it comes to relationships. Woody Allen is narrating and he talks about meeting Annie about a year after they split up for good: I thought of that old joke, y’know, the, this… this guy goes to a psychiatrist and says, “Doc, uh, my brother’s crazy; he thinks he’s a chicken.” And, uh, the doctor says, “Well, why don’t you turn him in?” The guy says, “I would, but I need the eggs.” Well, I guess that’s pretty much now how I feel about relationships; y’know, they’re totally irrational, and crazy, and absurd, and… but, uh, I guess we keep goin’ through it because, uh, most of us… need the eggs.

The Club Brasserie

I went for a meal in The Club Brasserie, on Lapp’s Quay in Cork, the other night. I’m always looking for good restaurants in Cork, and it’s worth bookmarking when I find one. The Club Brasserie is one of those places that is superbly located, with a view of the Lee and City Hall from the boardwalk on Lapp’s Quay, and has a really good menu, nice staff and pretty decor while still being reasonably priced. This is hard to find, so I figured it was worth raving about.

We had a table booked for 8, but stopped in at Kudos in the Clarion for a pre-dinner cocktail first. The waiting staff were very polite and friendly when we arrived, and didn’t seem at all annoyed that we were a few minutes late. Granted, it was a Tuesday night and we were the largest party in the restaurant but still, things started out on a nice note.

The people at Club Brasserie were attentive, without being annoying. They took our drinks orders, kept our breadbaskets full, our serviettes replenished and made sure everyone knew all the specials (i.e. – all the things you want in a waiter) yet weren’t hovering or doing that classic thing they always manage to do to me of asking me how everything is when my mouth is full of food. And one of them said my dress was nice. So a giant tick next to them then.

The food is obviously an important factor, and the food at the Club Brasserie is delicious. To start, a couple of us split the Calimari and the feta cheese and lamb salad. The calimari was really good and came with a mildly spicy cocktail sauce dip. The lamb salad was just beautiful. I would go back there alone just to sit at a table outside and eat that salad. Salads are not supposed to taste that good. Something about warm cheese and strips of juicy lamb is just so right.

For my main course, I had the seared brochette of lamb with baby potatoes. The lamb was gorgeous, and served in a sweet, fruity sauce with mint sauce on the side. Something about the sauce just worked really well with the meat. I love lamb anyway, so it wasn’t hard to sell me on lamb skewers. But it was pretty good.

Most of the rest of my unadventurous friends opted for steaks. All feedback was good, except for one friend who ordered medium rare and got a very well done steak. I have to say though, at €19.95 for sirloin and €26.95 for fillet steak, it was great value and people certainly seemed happy with what they got. When you go out and order a steak, you clearly want a big hunk of meat and a big pile of chunky chips, and the steaks at Club Brasserie did not disappoint.

Two of our party went for the pork belly. I tasted this and it was fantastic. It was also monstrous. Definitely a job for more than two people or a rotweiller or a bear. Seriously though, there is nothing like a good bit of stuffed pork and this really really was good. We nearly had to bring down the tone of the evening by asking for two prying boards to get my friends out of their chairs and to the pub afterwards, but it was worth it to see the contented, sleepy and uncomfortably full looks on their little faces.

As for dessert, they were out of baked Alaska, much to the dismay of one or two of our party. But they did have a scrumptious Eaton Mess (meringue with cream and berries all messed up) and several other lovely things that we definitely didnt need to eat but enjoyed nonetheless. One of our party ordered cheesecake but ever got it, but seeing as he was one of the people who had the pork belly, this was probably for the best. They did bring me an Eaton Mess with a birthday candle in it which was lovely.

Just a special mention for the location and setting. The restaurant is located just on the banks of the Lee and has a beautiful view of the City Hall, which is beautifully lit at night. The interior of the restaurant is fabulous too, almost resembling an old-fashoned French salon. The high ceilings and chandeliers are a nice touch, but not too over the top. The lighting in the restaurant is just right with low lighting in the foyer and at the bar, and huge windows, along with the chandeliers, to keep the tables well-lit. The Club Brasserie would be a great spot for an early eveing bite to eat and glass of wine, with table outside where you can watch the world go by, or for a slap-up meal for any occasion.

Overall, between the vino, the prosecco, the yummy food and the pleasant people and surroundings, the Club Brasserie was a very pleasant dining experience and one anyone looking for a nice place to eat in Cork should definitely check it out.