Holiday prep!

We have an upcoming sailing trip so did a little bit of holiday prep over the last few weeks.  For me it was buying a new bikini in Superdry while for Ciaran it was attending a Radio Operator Course in the Irish National Sailing School in Dun Laoghaire. He attended evening classes for 4 days from 6pm to 9pm and then completed an exam at the end. After receiving notice that he had passed the exam he now awaits the arrival of his licence which is issued by the Department of Transport.

And so it looks like we are all set for our holiday!

We will fly to Dubrovnik in Croatia and then make our way across the border to Montenegro.  The day after our flight from Dublin, we will hook up with our crew in Tivat and head out sailing from there. We are onboard for 7 days with a crew change at that point. For the second week, the new crew will sail to Albania.  I'm looking forward to it - and you can look out for trip reports and pics when I blog about it here. For the meanwhile, you can also read a past trip report about our Caribbean sail

In other news, last weekend Dublin was heaving with American Football fans (40,000 to be exact!). The Aer Lingus Classic brought together the opening college game of Notre Dame and Navy. Notre Dame was the "home" team so Dame Street in Dublin was renamed Notre Dame Street and it was the scene of the biggest tail gate party Dublin has seen in the lead up to the game. It was spectacular with marching bands and Notre Dame branded posters everywhere - with the most massive one on the old Central Bank Building. I was actually in work that day but could see all the action on twitter along with Ciaran giving me a report while he wandered around the area. 

Unfortunately the weather was atrocious for the game with a lot of heavy rain. I had to get off the train at the stadium entrance and a lot of fans were soaking wet before they even got to their seats. I was wet myself but I did have waterproof trousers on. Among the busyness of the the stadium fans, I heard my name being called out as I walked against the traffic. Surprizingly it was a former colleague of mine who I had bumped in to the year previously when I was actually at the Aer Lingus College Football Classic of Nebraska v. Northwestern. What are the chances of meeting the same guy in the same place a year later!

I had heard there was going to be a Navy flyover just before the game, and at about 7.20pm we heard the loudest noise over our house. I ran to the door and saw 3 Ospreys fly over the house. Very exciting!

In upcoming cinema news, it is National Cinema Day this Saturday with all cinema tickets being just 4 euro. I've booked tix for The Equalizer 3 in Rathmines Omniplex but with Ciaran working all day, I may go and see an earlier showing of Barbie or Openheimer.  I went to see the new Mission Impossible movie about 2 weeks ago which was very good but I feel like Openheimer is probably the one that I most want to watch again. I'll let you know if I do end up going to one of them again......

Recyling!

We have three bins that are collected by City Bin - a black bin for general waste, green bin for material that can be recycled and then a brown bin for compostable materials.  Each of the bins are collected every two weeks, however I generally only put out my black waste bin out for collection about every 6 weeks as I fill it very slowly with most of my rubbish going in to the recyling bin.

So then it comes to glass containers which are not collected in the green bin as part of the recyleables.  

What I have been doing for the past while is collecting all of my glass bottles and jars in two large Ikea boxes that I stored out in the small yard to the back of my house.  Then when the boxes were full we rented a Go Car and brought all of the bottles to the glass recycling collection point at Tesco in Rathmines.

However, there is a new service offering in my area so I no longer have to go to the hassle of renting a car in order to recycle my glass.  

A leaflet came in my letterbox with details of a company called GlassBottleBin.ie and they offer kerb pick up of glass.  

I signed up immediatly!

It took about a week for my new bin to be delivered and I promptly filled it up with all of the bottles that were in my back yard. I'm now looking forward to my first bin pick up. What a relief not to have to go through all of the palaver of renting a car and taking them all to the bottle bank.

There is a another service offering in Dublin that provides "bottle bags" instead of bins but I felt that a bin and how the service was arranged was more convenient with this bin company.  As someone who doesn't have a car I think this service will work well for me and will probably cost about the same or less than paying for a Go Car every time I visited the Bottle Bank (however, I did tend to double job with maybe doing a clothes drop off to the charity shop).

I'm all for any service that can cut out hassles in busy lives so hopefully this will work out well for me. It already has smartened up my back yard as I have thrown out the probably 10 year old Ikea boxes that I previously used for recycling. 

Watch this space!

Seamus Heaney Exhibition in Dublin City

In the heart of Dublin City in the Bank of Ireland building at College Green, there is the most amazing Seamus Heaney exhibition.

Ciaran was at the opening night of the exhibtion and had visited it twice since then.  However, I had never been to it.

But yesterday on my day off work we were in town (I was buying a bikini for upcoming sailing trip) and as we passed the Bank of Ireland, I said "let's go in".  And how happy was I that we did - it's excellent, I highly recommend!

Here's the details of the exhibition - see here

I've written about Seamus Heaney on my blog before and you can read that post here

Heaney's "Mid-Term Break" brings me to tears every time I think of the line "A four-foot box, a foot for every year"

Pictured above is Ciaran sitting taking in the exhibition 

Let me know if you know of Seamus Heaney and his work and also let me know if you get to visit this exhibition!

The other thing we did was that we went on around to the front of the building where we visited the House of Lords chamber which is a room off the working bank.  You can read all about the House of Lords here 

This is worth a visit too and it is literally steps away from the Seamus Heaney exhibition.

Strawberry, cookies & cream icebox cake

So I made my first "Icebox Cake".....

I offered to bring dessert on Saturday night to friends who were kindly hosting us for dinner so I had a look online to see what I could make and bring.

I settled on making an icebox cake which was a new concept to me, as it is not something that is common in Ireland.

I decided I would make a mish mash of recipes and settled on the following layers which I created in my springform cake tin

Layer 1 - broken meringue

Layer 2 - Sponge covered in strawberry sauce/puree - I made the sauce by mashing up strawberries and sugar with lemon juice and lemon zest

Layer 3 - Whipped cream and vanilla essence

Layer 4 - Oreos (firstly dipped in cold milky coffee)

Layer 5 -  More cream

Layer 6 - more coffee dunked Oreos

Layer 7 - More Cream

Layer 8 - Chocolate ganache

Then on the final layer, I made a circle of mini meringues around the top with half an oreo between each one (I used some chocolate mousse to fix the meringues in place. 

And finally I filled the space in the centre with lots of strawberries which I topped with white chocolate chunks and crumbled oreos.

This was the result!

I made the cake early in the morning so it had a few hours to set up before I actually put the last layer of meringue and strawberries on top (just before I took it to the house we were visiting).

All in all I thought it looked good and tasted great so was happy with it and I will make it again for sure!