One good thing the coronavirus has given me is some time. It all felt very stressful in the beginning but now with everything closing down, not having to organise work or rushing here and everywhere, everything has slowed down. I’m also avoiding wall to wall reportage, just listening to enough...

I’ve been holed up with a box of lemons – literally. I inherited an entire box when we closed the shop this week because of the coronavirus and have been merrily making my way through it ever since. I have a big kilner jar of pickled lemons , or should...

This seems a long time ago now although it was only last month. It’s a little recipe that I write for the local paper, the West Cork People. I didn’t take my laptop on this trip so never published what I had written, so here’s a little escape from the...

Three weeks ago we were leaving Cuba after this little adventure. It was our second visit, having explored the ‘top’ end last year I was quite smitten, and wanted to see more. Below is a tale of our trip to the other end which proved quite challenging as  catching a...

This is just what we need at this time, carrot salad elevated to a vegan prawn cocktail status. It’s guaranteed to cheer up the day and boost our immune systems. This is a rehash of a salad that we’ve been eating for years but re-assembled. The carrots and avocado are...

This is a recipe from the ‘live to be one hundred’ collection. Revithnos is a chickpea soup from Sifnos in Greece.  It’s cooked slowly using just a few key ingredients – chickpeas, onion, olive oil, lemon and bay leaves. The slow cooking makes the chickpeas velvety soft in an emulsion...

Our chickens have no idea that the covid virus has slowed most of the world down so we have a lot of eggs They are laying like machines, their systems in synch with the daylight hours. The eggs are piling up in baskets on the window sill awaiting a mission...

Every Easter we bake hot cross buns. In fact I have eaten hot cross buns on Good Friday more or less all my life. Not for religious reasons but because it’s a seasonal culinary treat. A brief interlude when I lived in Belgium, but otherwise I’ve always lived in one...

Here’s a recipe to teleport you to Greece from your own kitchen using the humble spud. Just imagine the blue sea, the blue skies, sitting outside a taverna and all those tray bakes of vegetables, meats and fish. The Greeks are masters at traybakes and the tavernas often have rows...

I had definite ‘food slump’ last week, my brain just didn’t want to know what to cook so I ended up leafing through cookbooks in search of inspiration. At some point I came upon a recipe for barley risotto with feta which was interesting on two fronts. One being that...