The Source in Rathmines

After work this evening I walked to Rathmines to buy some items in "The Source".

The Source is a shop where you bring your own container or use a shop supplied bag to buy whatever weight of an item that you require.

It's so clever really and a good way of cutting out food waste and also extra costs.

For example, I wanted to buy a cup or two of Coconut Flour rather than a big bag as I only plan on using it to make a loaf or two of Keto bread. And I only need this small amount.

I also plan on making Chicken Shawarma and so I was able to buy just what I needed, which is a few teaspoons of gound cardamon.

It's a fun little shop, and I enjoyed browsing everything and measuring out what I planned on buying.

One interesting thing that I saw is that they sell protein powders which again you can weigh out in a small volume rather than buy those big expensive containers of protein powders. I bought 100g of Hazelnut Chocolate protein powder that I plan to add to a Keto Cheesecake that I will make this weekend.

There is lots to buy in this shop (they even sell freshly made nut butters) so I plan to go again soon for another browse.

Let me know if you have ever bought from a shop like this before - how did you find it?!

Brigid's Bank Holiday

Happy Brigid's BH!

Great to have a break from work for St Brigid's Day.  With Monday off I made a plan to do a few things over the weekend. 

The first thing I did on Saturday morning was take the bus to Ikea over in Ballymun. The bus journey was fine but Ikea was packed and hellish. When I arrived I immediately wanted to leave! 

I was buying a lampshade so I got it quickly and left and got the bus back within an hour of arriving.

With Ciaran away playing squash in Belfast, I had the opportunity to catch up on a bit of reading and am nearly finished John Stamos' biography "If you would have told me"

Fun to read about John Stamos starring in Gore Vidal's  "The Best Man" - my twin sister saw him in this play - you can read about that here!

On Sunday morning, after a walk, I sat down with a cup of coffee to watch the Tommy Tiernan Show. I specifically watched it to see a lady I went to school with (about 35 years ago!!!) being interviewed by Tommy. She is Karen Dempsey the founder of "Entheos" and also known as the Bald Headed Priestess. You can watch the interview on the RTE player and I highly recommend it - she is one interesting lady!

Ciaran came back from Belfast in the afternoon and we walked to Ranelagh to get something for dinner. Before we went to Lidl, we called to Nick's Coffee as we knew Nickie Harrington was doing a pop up with some of her art and jewellery for sale. It was nice to chat with her and her boyfriend and I got these lovely new earrings!

And then for tomorrow I'm taking part in a parade for St Brigid's Day. What fun!

Watch this space tomorrow when I share all about how the parade of "Brigid's on Bikes" goes.

Edit - 

Here's a little clip from the Karen Dempsey interview on the Tommy Tiernan Show

Cinema Sunday

I've wanted to go to see "The Holdovers" since I first saw the trailer for it.

So this morning we went off to Smithfield (on bus & Luas) to watch it at an 11.40am showing in the Lighthouse.

Before we went in to the cinema, we had coffee in Mad Yolks Cafe which is just across the square from the cinema. There are loads of tasty egg breakfast dishes but we were happy with just an Americano. They serve "Full Circle" coffee and it was pretty good.

The view wasn't bad either as we were facing the Smithfield 360 degrees viewing tower.

After our coffee, we headed over to The Lighthouse and bought tickets for the show and settled in to screen 2 to watch the film. We like this movie theatre. They have signs up saying that vaping is not allowed in the cinema - this is appreciated as neither of us like the smell of vapes one bit and we've been to certain cinemas where people have vaped through movies. Ugh.

But thankfully no vaping today!

It was a really great film, we both really enjoyed it and spent the time getting home talking about it, the characters and the acting in general. Both of us agreeing that Paul Giamatti absolutely holds your attention in every scene. I loved the overall nostalgic feel to the movie and I think the 1970's was captured perfectly on film.

All in all a great morning on the "Northside" and I highly recommend going to The Holdovers!

Guess what these are?!

 

Any idea what these might be in the picture above?

Well they are intense buttery and toffee tasting. 

Still no idea?!

Well......they are called "Brown Butter Bites" and I made them on the pan today by simply browning butter and then pouring in to silicone moulds to set. That's it, that's all I did in order to make these sweet little buttery bites.

If you want to make them you can google exactly how to do it, but all you need ingredient wise is butter.  Next time however, I am thinking I will add in some chocolate flavour (or peanutbutter!) protein powder in order to elevate these bites from a regular Keto fat bomb to a protein fat bomb. Watch this space!

The most beautiful Yoga Studio in Dublin

There's a new yoga studio in Dublin! 

It's called Yoga Yard in Irishtown and it's open less than a year in a newly purpose built studio. 

I visited Yoga Yard this weekend and did a Hatha 25 + 2  class on Saturday morning.  Then on Sunday morning I did what was called "Hot Sunday Fusion" and boy was it hot as well as being very tough!! The Saturday hot yoga class is probably the one that I will be looking to repeat.

I signed up for a 5 class series over the next month and I look forward to doing some more yoga classes in this beautiful studio over the next few weeks. It really is the loveliest place with a spacious and airy reception and a spotlessly clean studio with a special floor surface not like most Bikram studios that have that awful carpet on the studio floor. The studio is also cleaned in between each class which is really great to know. Additional to the studios there are changing rooms with showers that again are spotlessly clean and well laid out - all in all really great facilities that make for a a brilliant yoga experience.

With the studio being about a 15 minute cycle away from my house it is very accessible and I can't see myself going to another studio after visiting this one!

It's a downhill cycle on the way to the studio so a little bit tough on the way home as there are a few small hills to navigate. But so very worth the effort :-) 

New Year - new you?

Happy New Year - here's to 2024!

To be honest, I'm not really in to the whole "New Year, New You" thing. To be fair, self improvement is always a good thing but on the other hand, do you really think you need to be a whole "New You"?

Small changes are probably something better to focus on rather than large scale resolutions. So with this in mind, here's a few things that I am going to focus on in 2024

First thing is sustainability.  I'm going to try buy less new clothes and items and instead try and buy vintage or secondhand, or alternatively reuse things.  Another thing that I will do is try and get a lend of an item that I may only use once or twice, rather than buying.

The next thing is I am going to do is read more because, well, nothing bad comes from reading more! Already I'm mid way through a book I borrowed from the library yesterday and have put my name on a request list for Reece Witherspoon's first book club read of 2024.

Looking after my body is my third focus, and along with getting more sleep, I am going to as always focus on my diet with continued intermittent fasting and a low carb diet. A change for me is that I am actively going to focus on getting more protein in to my body along with taking a vitamin D supplement.

I'd love to hear from you - what are your new year changes that you plan to make?!

Sharing a pic of myself that was included in my sister's "Christmas Portraits" project - to see the rest of the Christmas portrait pics on instagram, click here.

Announcing the winner of the 2023 annual "Christmas Sandwich Search"!

 

So here it is.....the winner of the annual Christmas Sandwich Search!

As you have seen in the past few blogs, myself and PIGSY have been on the hunt for the best Christmas Sandwich in Dublin. In order to complete this task we both put forward two places offering Christmas sandwiches and set off to eat in these places and sample their sandwich offering. We also included last year's winner on the list so this meant that we had 5 places to visit in the month of December.

The five cafe's / restaurants are:

KC Peaches (last year's winner)

Gerard's Deli (Enid's nomination)

Greenville Deli (Enid's nomination)

247 Deli (Ciaran's nomination)

Junior's Deli (Ciaran's nominaton)

Unfortunately we didn't get to visit 147 Deli due to certain circumstances but we did get to visit some bonus venues that were not on the list above. With marks out of 50, our scores for each Christmas Sandwich offering are outlines below (in no particular order):

KC Peaches 28/50

Farmer Brown's 36/50

Greenville Deli 38/50

Itsa Bagel 31/50

Gerard's Deli 29/50

Starbucks 33/50

Juniors Deli 32/50

Two Fifty Square 33/50

You can read back over detailed reviews of the sandwiches here but with the rating not just based on taste there are alot of variables that can effect where a sandwich ranks.

But the sandwich that won out in the end, was....drumroll please......

GREENVILLE DELI

I'm not surprised that this sandwich won, as it was actually the only one that we went and got a second time over the month of December and it was also the one that we spoke positively the most about.

It's been a fun event to do in the month of December and it also pushes us to try new places.  We are creatures of habit so we tend to over visit venues we like rather than risk giving a chance to alternatives.

Let me know what you think of our fun little competition and whether you do anything like this also!