There’s me on my way to Fallon & Byrne.  How unutterably chic!

Nah just kidding, I did a load of eating this week but I also had a visit from my friend The Energy Vampire.  I was zapped.  Totally due to a miserably grey few days in Dublin.  No matter how hard you try to perservere with cheeriness, after having changed your socks three times due to dampness and having your new haircut – which you don’t really like – going frizzy AGAIN in the rain you’re like….pffff., just pass me the tub of philadelphia cheese with a spoon and I’ll stuff a cracker in my mouth at the same time as the cheese and chew.

I did make one or two nice things over the last week but between one thing and the other it didn’t make it up on the blog.  For shame.

Did I mention that I bought some beautiful purple sprouting broccoli last Saturday in the Temple Bar Food Market in Meeting House Square last week?  Strangely, it’s the first Saturday I’ve made it down since we moved in to the city centre.

It was very nice indeed to have a look at the beautiful veg from Denis Healy’s Organic Farm, which has moved from the Meeting House Square to right outside the Button Factory on Curved Street.  The move is MUCH better for space – it used to get awfully crowded in Meeting House Square – but I can’t help feel that there’s a need for a few extra stalls in Meeting House Square to fill it up a bit now!  Never happy.  Tsk.

Denis Healy’s Organic Farm veg….look at the crazy alien cauliflower/broccoli yokes at the top right!!

My favourite stall is probably the olives stall.  Genius.  All of my favourite things.

I’ll have…everything, thanks.

There’s also a lovely stall in the corner run by a very kind lady (I think it’s the McNally Family Farm and I think the lady is called Jenny) who serves a great selection of organic salad leaves and fresh herbs that are hard to get anywhere else, such as fresh oregano.  She also has great jams and chutneys, and a small selection of seasonal veg like these gorgeous leeks and swedes.

So I bought some beautiful purple sprouting broccoli as you can see in the picture above, a big bag of it for €3 half of which I gave to my Mum who is an avid broccoli fan.  I swear, she thinks it cures everything from cancer to atheism.  I served up my half steamed on its own and made a lovely hot cheese sauce for dipping, which made for a very rustic hands-on style snack.  Twas delicious.  No pictures of that though as it was just too messy.  I might make it again with a more sophisticated cheese sauce.

I got some beautiful wild tomatoes and some lovely rhubarb which I cooked for dinner that night.  I made a kind of rhubarb fool thingy with yum vanilla sugar.  I had the most wonderful sensation when I was chopping the rhubarb – it brought back a very powerful memory of being years younger and helping my granny chop her home-grown rhubarb for her amazing rhubarb tart, which she still bakes to this day even though she’s 90 this year.  I always knew smells and sounds bring back memories powerfully, but I didn’t think I’d get it from chopping something!

Head down to the market in Meeting House Square in Temple Bar tomorrow…especially if it’s a sunny day!  *Fingers crossed*

MP3

I was listening to loads of great stuff over the weekend, but THE BEST track that came up on the iPod was this gem from Dionne Warwick called You’re Gonna Need Me.  It was released in 1973 and the production of the track is years ahead of its time, like, can you hear all the backwards reversed bits and the horns and the backing vocals?  And her vocals are just so….incredible.

Dionne Warwick – You’re Gonna Need Me (Just Being Myself)

Categories: Dinner