Stairway to heaven

Well, not that far should my stone steps go, just up to the veg garden, and I hope nobody will reach heaven through my stairs.

Its work in progress and therefor not safe.
First i need to get rid of roots, than place the stones in a good level and make sure the ground is well prepared until I can use cement.

If you have read my blog carefully in the past you might recognize that this stones are now recycled the second time.

A Sun(ny)day in West Cork

Funny Friday: Future of DIY

Is that the future of DIY ?

Arent the simplest things the best ?

After cooking my potatoes the past 2 years nearly always the same way (first on water, than in pot with butter) I just rediscovered that there is much more, and better ways out there to serve potato's.

Out of the blue, and without having looked at a recipe, i just cut some into small wedges which I than put into some breadcrumbs and curry powder.

Than i just fried them in the pan until nice golden brown, Just delicious, I tell yeah !

Sometimes the simplest things are the best !

The secret skipper

A great skipper is hard to find, and once you have found one, you should keep it secret.
Kind of that way I felt when i have met Tom in Union Hall on the last company fishing trip I organized.
I wouldn't tell anyone who my great skipper is when I was showing pictures about my fishing trip, because i was afraid he will be completely booked out on the weekends so I wont be able to hire him.



He is pretty booked anyway, and the summer is nearly over, so here is my secret, my favorite skipper is Tom. End of September I will organize the last trip for the season, if you want to join in let me know.

Here the Link to Toms website
http://www.jorreejadecharters.ie

Good news from Ireland

Well at least for all German speakers, Harald is back with his blog which is written in German and comes out of the heart of Ireland.

I think i have followed now Harald's posts since nearly 2 years and was kind of shocked when he announced earlier this year to stop with his blog.

Today the good news, my fellow Austrian is back on line and starts again with his blog @ http://irlandlive.com 

Good News ! Harald I have missed you too !

A Sun(ny)day in West Cork

Camping Equiptment

Its interesting, I just compared the offerings from Argos, with the offers Outdoor specialists have, and also checked in town in the local tackle shop.

Well, the result is not surprising Argos is on that Camping Gaz cooker cheaper. 2 Euros.
But than, with Argos i need to collect the item in Cork, i dont get a huge other selection of camping equipment, and also there is no expert to ask.

So i believe I rather shop locally than, or if the local shop doesnt have what i need shop online from a Outdoor specialist.

Funny Friday: Why Superman never would join Facebook

Brilliant that article :-)
Enjoy your Friday !

Fruits, Sophies 5 a day

I am a proud daddy, especially since my 9 month old daughter is so clever, as you can see on this picture, to know that fruits are good for her.
So I want to share with you a recipe how my wife prepares every Sunday Sophie's fruit portions for the week.

Ingredients:

2 Apples

2 Pears

2 Nectarine and/or  a few strawberries:

Peal all fruits and place them in a pot with  bowling water (not much water, just around 9 big spoons) Leave it cook for 10 minutes on middle heat. Then add the semolina, and leave it another 10 minutes.

 

Mix it all, and that’s it, you have some dessert ready for your baby for at least one week!!!

And if there are no more fruits at home, send Daddy out to buy more :-)

Recipe: Marinated Makerel

Catching a lot of fish means also to process it fast, as long its fresh. Best of course is to eat it fresh, but what if you happen to catch a lot ?
freeze it, thats one option
keep it in the fridge for a few days, an other option.

Smoke it to conserve it, done that been there, thats a good method and I will use it again.

But what if it is raining like hell, you really dont want to get out in the garden to smoke your fish, but still want to conserve it for a while ?



Just fry your mackerel and than prepare a special marinate which will conserve your fish for at least a week, and than it adds a super flavor as well to it.

Ingredients:
1 Spoon Peanut Oil
1 Spoon Vinegar
4 Spoon Dark Soy Oil
1 Onion
1 Carrot
1 Spoon Sugar
1 Pepper
1 chili

Its so simple,chop all up, put it in a glass with the oil, fry the fish, add the fish in the glass as shown on the picture, and let it marinate for at least 12 hours, after store in a cool place. Turn it from time to time.
Enjoy

Camping Tips and checklist

I recently went camping and I can tell you, I even forgot the sleepingbag. Thats why I made now following camping checklist for the next trip.

A few more things to note:
If you go with a new tent, or new equipment, make sure you have tested it at home, so that you won’t have surprises on your trip, f.e. a tent you cant put up because something is broken..


Make sure you position your tent as far as possible from the one friend you think he might snore, or have enough to drink with you so you wont care.

If you think it might be raining, it makes sense to have a waterproof tent, to test this use your garden hose to simulate rain, or just put it up a weekend in your garden (that works in Ireland)

Last but not least, have fun going back to nature, bring no electronics (maybe a camera) or other technical stuff (radio,phones) with you.
Camping is for Campers, not for Tech Geeks. Bring along some UNO cards and good friends,
you will have fun, thats for sure !

10 things to do in Clonakilty / West Cork

here my personal top 10 what you should do in West Cork in the Summer:

1 go fishing


2 enjoy music at Scannels

(c) Richie Tyndall

3 Eat great local produces at Costellos

4 Visit the clonakilty market

5 have a walk on the beach

 6 Listen to traditional Music in the an teach beog or Odonnovans Hotel

7 Play Pit and Put in Roscarberry

8 Have a BBQ or eat smoked fish


9 go hunting for a great shot (with your camera)

10 Enjoy time with your loved ones

A Sun(ny)day in West Cork

How did the worm get into the fish ?

Last week I went to a fishing trip with my neighbors. We didn't had a huge catch, but still had fun, and I learned something new.

My neighbor Denis advised me, not to tell my wife before or directly after dinner, so I decided to do it through this blog.

So anybody, who is easily irritated shouldn't read any further, all others, please see this fact I learned about fish.



Denis told me, in every fish is a worm, and I thought he is joking, since earth worms are often used as bait for fishing. No, he said, your fish is still alive inside.
So I asked him to show me. He took the cod we catched earlier this afternoon, we just gutted it, and I was up to cut fillets. At this picture on the right, he is pointing with a fork to the point, where a worm is hidden in the cods belly.

Its a parasite, a round worm which is confines itself to one kind of animal or group of animals, known as the host.


Its not dangerous and would not poison you, normal cooking or freezing for 60 hours under -20 C would kill it. On this picture on the left it was still moving and alive after we removed him from the fish.

Read on this page of the FAO details of the worm if you like, and its also described how it ends up in the cod in the first place.

Enjoy your next fish, with our without extra protein :-)

Funny Friday: That would be a world :-)

:-) Enjoy your weekend !

Supporting Munster

Munster is playing La Rochelle today, so my house is getting decorated a bit in Munster Colors (Red / White) which are also colors which are important for our family.

Coming from Austria, married to a girl from Monaco, living in Munster, its just natural that this colors play a big part in our life.

A great way to decorate in red and white is for example taking some rice, and red food coloring. As shown in this picture, its so easy to mix a few drops of food coloring into the rice.

The result you can use to decorate a plate with a candle on top,as shown in this picture, or if you fancy it cook the rice and serve it for dinner before the game to show your support.

Up the Rebels ! Go Munster ! 

Pollok Time again

T(w)o fish, or not T(w)o fish ?

Difficult and Crazy question. On the picture below of course you see two fish, two Pollock
This kind of fish is not that famous in Ireland, its kind of called the poor mans fish, and cod or mackerel are much more preferred.
To be honest, i like pollock, and i have to learn how to use it propper, not just baked in the oven, but also for fish fingers or fish balls.


So if i catch any more of them soon, i will ask my friend lidia to show me how to make her famous fish balls.
Secretly I still hope to catch more mackerel from off shore fishing, since I want to make some sushi out of it. I will let you know how I get on.

So that means, I definitely have to go to fish.

salt dough prints

What is a better gift than a hand or footprint of your toodler to a good friend or family member.

To prepare it it is so simple, always use 2 parts of flour, and 1 part of salt, use a bit of water to mix up your dough. You can use food colouring if you like to have colored dough.

Than, just get your baby to make a nice inprint, use a toothpick to engrave a name and date, and let it try in your oven on low tempature for a few hours.

After it can be coloured as well with water colours for example. Once you gift it to somebody make sure they store it somewhere where its not exposed to water since this could damage the finnished piece.

Recipe: Semmelknödel

Semmel- who ? Semmel is a Austrian word for a small loaf of white bread. Knödel is a dumplin. So the 1:1 translation means: Breaddumpling.

You might ask, why actually somebody would eat a dumpling made from bread ?

Well, thats easy to answer, if you prepare it good its very tasty, and it goes with many different dishes as a side dish. Also, its made out of tried bread what normally would be thrown away. So its a great way to recycle your tried bread.





Remember the Irish Stew I made a while ago,
well I made it again since my family loves it so much, but this time instead of potatoes to go with the stew I made this tasty Knoedel.

Use about half a barguette tried bread, cut it into little pieces as show in above picture. Add 150 ml luke warm milk, and also choop a onion into small pieces and roast it untill brown in a pan. Add the onion,milk, a bit salt, some fresh parsley or chives to the bread.
(some people also add a egg, I wont)

Mix through it well with your hand, and bring it in form, as shown here on the right, I wrapped it up tightly in foil so no water can enter when you cook it in boiling water for 20 minutes.

Serve it hot with your stew, chilli, or any other dish which got a lot of sauce with it.
Its so tasty, and quiet filling :-)

Soon I will start my Czech cooking experiments so stay tunned.

Frank a reader of my blog was so kind to send me his recipes he did write down was recording lots of traditional Czech dishes he cooked together with a friend. I look forward to that food.

Baking Bread the easy way

To bake your own bread can be sometimes a hassle.
But it shouldnt really be.
right now i work on a plan how I can heat my house most efficient in the winter and at times before I actually start heating with Oil/Wood.

I noticed that when I bake something in the oven, a lot of heat is wasted, but actually it heats the kitchen and the living room to a cosy temperature.


So I figured, baking bread can heat my house and gives it a great smell at the same time.

A good loaf of bread costs you around 2-3 Euro,
a ready mix from Lidl costs 1-2 Euro, and you get 2 loafs of bread out of it.

To make your own bread, you need less than 10 minutes.
Just follow the instructions on the package; In my case 500 gramm mix with 350ml water, mix it 5 minutes, leave it rest for 30 minutes, put it into a form, leave it rest at a warm place again for 45 Minutes. Bake it at 200 C for 60 minutes in a oven. Finnish !

I added a bit of water in the oven, so the outsidce of the bread gets a bit more mois and softer. Serve it like in the restaurant with some Olive Oil and butter. Yummi !

A Sun(ny)day in West Cork

A new series every Saturday showing best shots from WestCork / Ireland

West Corks 3 legged pig

My butcher was right, a baby pig wouldnt have been enough for 20 people and a lot of waste would have been produced, and a 20 kg pig would have left me with too much leftovers.

So, what I put on the BBQ last weekend was a leg of an adult pig, around 5-10kg heavy.

To make sure the pork will be tender I started at 10 am in the morning with making fire, and getting the coal ready.

After 1 hour the fire was at a level that I could but the leg on. It was still pretty hot the fire, so I used gloves to touch the grill and the leg itself.

First I gave it a nice burn on all sides, to ensure the juice stays inside, to seal the meat. After i turned it every 30 Minutes over the grill.
I used about 12 kg of coal, over 6 hours on the BBQ. (Advised are 12 hours for teh ultimate result)
The last 2 hours i covered it up and made sure that the pork gets smoked through well.

I messured with a thermometer the meat from time to time, it should have 170 F or 90 C inside.

I was a bit nervous, since that leg was the only source of meat for the BBQ I organized, so if this would have failed, my guests would have starved a bit. My aupair made a very nice potato salad to go with the pork.

I can proudly say, it was a sucess, the pork was easly to cut, cooking an preparation time was easy, I can recommend anybody for a party that style for BBQs.

I also need to say a word of thanks to Mike, who gave me free advise and a taste of his BBQ seasoning. Check out his Shop or website here in Clon, the best choice for your next company BBQ.

The only Questions which remains, where in West Cork can the poor 3 legged pig now be found ?

Funny Friday: Thats what is really going on at the stockmarket

If you wonder whats up at the stockmarket, that is was going on behind the szenes :-)

Heidi must be joking ?

Heidi the chicken must be joking, or maybe I put to much pressure on her with that article I wrote last week about the huge egg she laid. However, actually on my birthday she suprised me again, with this underperformance you can see on the picture above (right egg)

Well, I think to cover the actual demand of eggs we have with 3 adults and a baby, we need to get 2 more chicken.

Do you want to adopt and name one of our new chickens ?
So far we named them, Heidi, Emer, and Gudrun das Huhn.

Leave a comment here or on facebook with your name suggestion.

hmm Tapas

I was recently in the Clonakilty Winery and when a little hunger overcame me i couldnt resist and so i had some tapas.

It was great, however a a bit a pricy snack, but that way I could really relax, and didnt had to go to one of the burger shops. A Snack with style,
and who doesnt like that once in a while ?

Especially the ham was great, i guess the winery it self doesnt make much profit on that snack, but its great the offer some tio their guests, that and a nice glass of wine, that made my evening :-)

The Germknödel Incident

To be, or not to be a Germknödel, thats the Zwetschken !?

To be fair, I will report from time to time also about my cooking disasters, which happen from time to time. It might take a while to tell this story and I hope you have a good laugh.

If you try it yourself, let me know if you did succeed !

To clarify, we start with the basic recipe, which is not that complicated. Whats a Germknödel ?
Its a Yeast dough dumpling filled with plum relish.
The Ingredients are:
500 g flour
20 g yeast
1 Egg
250 ml milk
70g butter and a bit salt

Mix the ingredients together to a nice dough, than let it rest for 20 minutes, form than this kind of balls, which are filled in the middle with the plum relish.

After leave it rest again in a warm place for 40 Minutes.

Than the grow further, the tricky part is to form them good so the filling stays inside.
After the should be thrown into boiling water for 12 minutes, 6 minutes on each side.

After serve them with vanilla sauce and melted butter.

Here comes the disaster, it seems the water wasn't hot enough or the dough not consistent enough, so the final dumpling tasted like dough, not like it should taste. Also we couldn't find any poppy seeds here in Ireland which should go on top....
My friends and I sitting there trying to eat our cooking result decided to make the best out of it, give all of the dumplings in a form and an other 20 minutes in the oven.
That kind of rescued the cooking night.

However, as you can tell from the pictures it isn't a ideal result, check it out here how they should look like.

Thanks God that day we cooked also the Irish Stew,
which was very tasty and filling :-)

If you try this recipe, let me know how you get on.