“Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns.” — George Eliot I love October. The temperature is still on the pleasant side of chilly — crisp and invigorating as opposed to the cold damp of wintertime that settles […]
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Every now and then, you buy a bag of apples that smell so … appley. The kind of smell where if you close your eyes and breathe deeply, you can almost imagine yourself transported to the middle of an apple orchard on a crisp, sunny autumn day. This weekend, you can do just that at […]
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It took me a long time to accept the sad fact that Ireland doesn’t have a culture of big breakfasts if you’re eating out. No waffles, no corned beef hash, no farmers’ breakfast skillets, no buttered rye toast, no bottomless cups of coffee in chunky diner mugs. What we do have, though, is the fry. In […]
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When I was 38 weeks pregnant with my daughter, my house was more of a building site than a home expecting the arrival of a new baby. We’d bought it only a few months before and were in the final throes of remodelling, which it badly needed. Up came the floral blue carpet, down came […]
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Suburban Illinois in the 1980s wasn’t a terribly cosmopolitan place (not that it is now either). When it came to food, the most exotic thing I ate was fettuccine Alfredo in the local Italian restaurant, and the first time I had pesto, it was from a dried packet mix. It was a sad, dusty, lifeless […]
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My elder trees were slow to bloom this year, and when they finally did, I think they were wise to me. I’d been eying up the flowers impatiently for weeks, yet the only decent ones were way up high, out of my reach even with a ladder. I had plans for them — elderflower gin. […]
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In 1998, I took a trip out to Boston with some college friends on spring break and stopped at my friend’s parents’ house in Michigan on the way. When we got back to Wisconsin a week later, I still vividly remember going to the café where I worked before class with my friend. “My parents […]
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All the food served at the Inishfood festival in Donegal last month was memorable, from one perfect oyster on the beach to a tasting menu with so many courses I lost count, but one of my favourite things was a small loaf of bread served at lunch, still warm from the oven. Thibault Peigne is a […]
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It’s mid-May, but the weather feels more like a blustery March. It’s enough to make me start despairing that summer will pass us by yet again, but for now I’m still holding out hope that warmer weather is just around the corner. But if we can’t have warm sunshine in reality, we can at least […]
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I was scrolling through my Instagram feed last week and saw a photo from New York City of bunches of rhubarb piled high at a farmers’ market. ‘Rhubarb is at the Greenmarket!’ the caption read. ‘Just one stall is selling it. Get here quick before it sells out.’ Commenters on the photo were rushing over […]
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