My new favourite shop

I had a job interview the other day so I was supposed to be looking for a suit in Dublin - but I was distracted by something far more shiny and interesting...


Kitchen Complements is based on Chatham Street, just off Grafton Street, and it's crammed to the rafters with pots, pans, baking tins of all shapes and sizes, knick-knacks, gizmos and gadgets galore. You know, the kind of stuff that makes a foodie's eyes glaze over with the sheer joy of the all the culinary possibilities.

So I argued to myself that stepping inside would somehow help me with my quest for a suit by de-stressing a bit. Clothes shopping simply isn't my thing. There was nothing available that didn't make me look like I was wearing a sack and the interview was the next day... Aaaargh! That did it - I virtually ran through KC's front door to take refuge from all suit-related thoughts and spent the next hour rummaging around, oohing and aahing, and wondering what I could lug back on the train.

In the end, I decided to travel light and picked up these heart-shaped cookie cutters:

Yikes! That's not a flattering photo. Oh well, my blotchy hand isn't really the point - these cookie cutters are the perfect thing for making cute little jammy dodgers or custard creams for Veggie Kate's wedding next year, which is going to feature lots of tasty homemade treats from all her friends and family. It's such a cool idea. But I'll have to fly over to Scotland the week beforehand to bake in Veggie Kate's kitchen as there's a limit to how much I can get on the plane as hand luggage. Bloody RyanAir.

I'm looking forward to getting into the kitchen, testing out some recipes for the big day and making something special for such a wonderful friend. Sigh - I miss her so much already. Just read this and you'll understand the foundations of our friendship.

Eventually, after a hard slog around the shops, I cobbled a suit together that didn't look completely awful and went for the interview the next day.

I got the job. Hurray for distraction tactics and therapeutic shopping!

Heeeeelllloooooooo Ireland

No proper internet access at the new place yet, so Mr. B has kindly given up his work computer so I can quickly add an update...

After 10 hours of driving, ferry hopping and then driving again, we've made it to Ireland and we're staying with Mr. B's parents for the week, as they live in a nearby town.

Now it's a case of waiting for the rest of our lives to rock up in the removal van on Wednesday and start the grand unpacking, accompanied by the traditional house-moving conversation of:

'What's this - is it yours?'
'Um... no, it's not mine.'
'Well, it's not mine either...'

You know, the kind of stuff we should have sorted out before shoving every last scrap of our lives together in a van and driving several hundred miles.

There's also the small challenge of putting the kitchen together. If I have the presence of mind later on, I'll take a picture and you can see the chaos.

Happy days.

Food fantasist's rubber-lined dungeon

That’s a lot of money for a punnet of cherries. Still going to take a look the next time I’m in London - see for myself and all that. I’ll just have to take out a large bank loan first.

Questions, questions, questions...

The very lovely Gastronomy Domine has given me five testing questions to answer for this blog (thank you Liz). The answers are quite long so I’m going to split them up into five separate entries. I can never give a straight answer to anything…

1. Have you ever eaten the perfect meal - one where the food, company and surroundings were just spot on?

2. You've mentioned that you're moving to Ireland. Are you finding that a move to a whole different land mass is more challenging than a normal house move? Are you apprehensive? Excited?

3. You are not a friend of the aubergine. What other food loves and hates do you have?

4. Do you have anytips for other book hoarders? How can we save money on shelving space, find our way through the piles of books all over the bedroom floor and deal with our increasing myopia? Do you organise your books alphabetically or by subject, or do they end up shelved haphazardly like mine?

5. Is there a kitchen implement you simply couldn't live without?

Cor. Considering I'm an editor by trade, I'm not very good at cutting my own copy.

Q1 - the perfect meal

Have you ever eaten a perfect meal – one where the food, company and surroundings were just spot on?

Yes, I can think of one and it involves my husband - so anyone of an unromantic disposition should skip to the next blog entry.

Although, at first glance, it’s quite an unlikely one – tapas in Amsterdam. It's a perfect example, I guess, of how circumstance and company can heighten the experience of food.

It was my birthday, about six years ago now when we were still girlfriend/boyfriend, and we’d ended up going away for a long weekend. Lots of wandering around, holding hands, going to museums and finding which tearoom had the best apple cake. (I’m being careful here by not saying ‘café’, which would give the wrong impression.)

The night before, we’d strolled past a tapas bar, which looked cosy and full of people having a good time. Yes, that looked perfect for a birthday celebration. And so it turned out to be, with some extra help from the weather gods.

Because my birthday is in August it had been hot, hot, hot every day and kick-off-the-sheets uncomfortable at night. By the time we’d started off for the tapas bar, the ominous-looking thunderclouds has ripped open - Amsterdam was being hammered with rain and lightening was flickering across the sky.

When we got there, we found that the tapas bar was full (and we cleverly hadn’t bothered booking). But we could sit outside if we wanted to.

Uhuh. Right. Had they looked out of the window?

Don’t worry about that, they said. And promptly put out some awning, a couple of heaters, some rickety chairs and wobbly tables, then took our order.

So I ate tapas and drank wine with my favourite person in the universe, outside in the middle of a thunderstorm on my birthday, trying not to fall off my unstable chair. I don’t know how authentic the food really was and I can barely remember what I ate, but I know that it tasted good. And that the combination of the dramatic setting and the love of my life enhanced the enjoyment of the whole experience many times over.

The funny thing was, we tried to find the place the next time we were in Amsterdam and we couldn’t. Of course, it could have shut down, but we decided to believe that the bar had Terry Pratchett-eque properties and so, like one of the shops in his Discworld books, it could disappear and pop up in new locations around the world to make more people happy. Told you this was a soppy post.

Q2 - goodbye Edinburgh, hello Ireland

You’ve mentioned that you’re moving to Ireland. Are you finding that a move to a whole new land mass is more challenging than a normal house move? Are you apprehensive? Excited?

It's all very exciting and nerve-wracking at the same time. Perhaps this is a good point to provide some background to the big change - something I should have done in my first post, perhaps but I couldn't get my thoughts straight at the time.

Many moons ago, I met my Irish husband-to-be in Edinburgh. And we decided to set up home here, get married, all that kind of boring domestic stuff.

Then work came up for him back in Ireland - about six months before our wedding in Edinburgh last July. So off he went. The idea was that I would join him as soon after the big day as possible, because the work was, er, working out for him. And I can do what I do just about anywhere (fingers crossed), so it made sense for me to move.

Now, it's pretty clear that I'm a little late with the whole moving shebang. This is because I was offered a really good career move job for 10 months... in Edinburgh.

After talking it over with Mr B., I decided to go for it with his full support (he's so fab). It could only help me with finding a job when I finally made the move, I reasoned (we'll find out soon, I guess).

So we got married in July 2006, went on honeymoon to Italy and then came back to our respective countries to get on with work.

What it's meant since then is a lot of pinging back and forth between Dublin and Edinburgh (I know the Ryan Air and Aer Lingus flight times off by heart) and enormous phone bills.

I like to tell people that I keep my husband in a separate country. That may be all very well and good if you've been married for 20 years and can't stand each other. But we're at the beginning of it all and we'd quite like to, you know, see each other every day. It's not an unreasonable expectation, methinks.

Back to the main question... I'm being optimistic (naive?) about the logistics of moving to a different land mass. And I'm hoping that it will be relatively straightforward as the house is ready at the other end, so there's no issue with waiting for people to move out etc that you get with a normal house move. It's probably one of those things where I could tell you afterwards where it went wrong!

So far there haven't been any problems - although that also worries me as it makes me suspect that there's a big spanner just waiting to clog up the works. Like the ferry with all our possessions might sink on the way over. All fingers and toes crossed for a safe passage.

I'm sad to be leaving behind such all my friends and a fantastic city. That's what upsets me most. And I'm not happy about having to look for a new job and all that entails. ('Basically, I'm a people person but I can work on my own... My greatest fault? Oh, that would be my perfectionist streak...blah blah blah.')

But the flip side is that it's a whole new adventure - lots to find out, lots to explore - and I'm really looking forward to that. Did I say something about wanting to spend time with my wonderful husband? That's quite a plus as well.

I'm also unreasonably excited about living in a country where you don't have to hunt down 284ml cartons of buttermilk - you can get it in big tetrapaks and it's right next to the milk on the shop shelf. Hurray!