Daytripper!

We are heading back to London this weekend. We will be making a dash to the Barbican to try get day release tickets for the second last day of the Basquiat exhibition that we visited a little while ago.

This time we are flying British Airways and once again I've booked the Heathrow Express.

It will certainly be hectic.  We land at 8.40am and then we need to get over to the Barbican to get in line at 10am. Fingers crossed we get tickets.

New Year, New Recycling habits.

One of my new year resolutions was to be more discerning in my recycling efforts. This was very timely as a new recycling list came out in Ireland.

The new rules lay out very specifically what is recycled and what is not. Soft plastics was one I was unsure about but now I can see that it is not acceptable to put in the green recycling bin.

My bin company are excellent.  They are City Bin (I've blogged about them before) and every month they send me a report of my waste disposal.

I enjoy receiving the report as it spurs me on to continue to separate my waste.

Going forward, I endeavour to loosely bin my clean recyclables in order to ensure that they all get recycled.

All my kitchen waste - vegetable peels, food scraps, etc goes in the brown bin and then the rest goes in the black bin.

To see the new recycling list go to www.recyclinglistireland.ie 

Further to all of the above I am also going to try not bring items home that need to then be disposed of.  One big way I am doing this is I am bringing my own reusable takeaway cup when I go for a cup of coffee in Starbucks. I have no issue doing this - once I remember to!

Meatza!!

I haven't eaten sugar and chocolate since New Year and I am very much committed to low carb eating (it's working - I'm losing the weight that I put on over Christmas!)

So this week I am all about "Meatza"

It's basically mince topped with cream cheese and a small bit of tomato paste and then grated cheese along with pepperoni.  Like pizza but minced meat instead of regular pizza crust.

It's seriously tasty!

I don't know if I mentioned this before, but one great thing that I have noticed since I put fat back in my diet is that my hair has stopped thinning and I am actually getting new hair all along my hairline - so much so that my hairdresser asked if I had just had a baby.  I say it's all down to Kerrygold butter!!

Aswell as making "Meatza" this week, I also made "Crack Slaw" - you can see a video here all about this cabbage based LCHF dish. I am not a fan of cabbage but Ciaran loved this and even brought leftovers for his lunch the next day after having it for dinner.

RIP Dolores O'Riordan

RIP Dolores O'Riordan

This amazing Irish singer will be missed worldwide

Sign her condolence book here

Halo Top has arrived in Ireland

Do you know about Halo Top?

It's an ice cream that is marketed as healthy due to it being low sugar and low calorie while being high protein.

It comes in a variety of flavours and it has just arrived on Irish shores.

My sister told me that it was available in Tesco so I went this afternoon to buy some. I reckon there had been a rush on it as there was only 4 left in the freeze. 2 vanilla, 1 mint and 1 chocolate.  

I bought the chocolate.

I sat down to watch The Jane Austen Book Club and cracked open the tub of chocolate. 

Well......my verdict was........ that it was good.  Not Ben & Jerry's good. But when you are off sugar you don't have much options.

I will say that I found it very sweet but I was able to solve that by putting a big dollop of whipped cream on top which took the edge off the sweetness.

So all in all a nice treat at the end of the weekend before the week ahead.

Clearing out and Bookcrossing.....

I was doing a little clear out of my bookshelves and rather than give the books to a charity shop I decided to have a little fun and register them on Bookcrossing.com

I used to bookcross years ago - it means you can register your books and then track them when you let them go.

I left a little stack of books for people to take in my local Starbucks.

There's some good ones in the pile, hopefully there is some interest from readers and they go to a good home.

Homemade Clotted Cream

So I made Clotted Cream!!

Have you ever tasted it? It is an intensely flavoured cream that tastes somewhere between cream or butter.

It takes a good length of time to make.  You need to put it in the oven at a low heat for 12 hours and then it sits in the fridge for another 8 hours. Whoa.

Click here to see a video about how to make your own clotted cream.

Once fully made I put the clotted cream in to a jar to store.

 

And then I slathered a load on to the keto bread that I made this morning.

It was delicious!

I may make a strawberry trifle with the keto bread (it is nearly like sponge cake), strawberries and the clotted cream. Watch this space!