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Cooking Kale With Other Vegetables

November 1, 2014 by Michele Neylon 1 Comment

I was on the road for several weeks in October. While I enjoyed the trip and I really enjoyed getting to have genuine Mexican food in Mexico City, I missed not being able to cook for myself.

Sure I could have stayed in an AirBnB for some of the time and cooked my own meals, but I wasn’t travelling for pleasure and the schedule for a lot of the trip didn’t really give me much time to do anything – never mind shopping and cooking.

However I am definitely considering different options for some of my future trips in 2015.

Having said that, I’m now back at home most of the time until the New Year. I’ve got a few trips between now and the end of the year, but for the most part I’ll be able to cook for myself for the next two months.

So what have I been cooking since I got back?

Kale.

Not by itself, however, but with other vegetables. I bought some kale in one of the German discount supermarkets last weekend (oddly they always seem to stock it while SuperValu, Dunnes and Tesco don’t) planning to do my kale with anchovies pasta at least once. However plans change and I ended up using kale as the vegetable to go with some meat a couple of evenings this week. While I do like kale it’s a little overpowering by itself, so I prepared it with some other vegetables:

kale
courgette
chilli (only one to give the dish a bit of a “kick”
grated carrot
tomatoes
shallots

It’s a bit dry so you probably will need to add a bit of water to the pan or you’ll get burnt and still raw vegetables. I sort of sauteed them all for a few minutes so the kale reduced a bit and the courgettes were cooked enough, but were still crunchy (soggy = bad)

Served with some meat from my local butcher that was nicely grilled on the George Foreman and a bit of French mustard (a l’ancienne style with the seeds is my personal preference).

End result? Damn tasty!

I also posted a vine of it cooking:

Mexican Food Overload

October 11, 2014 by Michele Neylon 1 Comment

I was in Mexico City last week. While I’ve no idea how many calories were involved over the course of the 5 or 6 days I was in the city, the quality of the food was exceptional.

Here are a few shots to illustrate:

I haven’t been near a weighing scales yet, but I suspect Mexico wasn’t too kind, but if you’re going to misbehave then you might as well enjoy the food while you’re doing so.

Getting My Chilli On

September 20, 2014 by Michele Neylon 3 Comments

I like cooking with chilli. Generally I try to grab a pack of fresh chillis once a week and use them (in moderation) to add a bit of heat and flavour to soups and pasta dishes.

While browsing the other evening I came across an article talking about a specific type of chilli. Aleppo chilli. So I went off in search of places where I could actually buy it and came across this site.

The domain name says it all – chilliesontheweb.co.uk – they specialise in chillies and related products. And their pricing, service and shipping fees are all very good.

So I not only picked up some aleppo chilli crush (pictured above), but I also got chilli drinking chocolate. I like chilli. I like chocolate and when I was in Guatemala earlier this year I got to try hot chocolate with chilli. And I was hooked.

The chilli drinking chocolate on sale comes in a variety of flavours and strengths. So, since I didn’t want to kill myself, I opted for the simplest option 🙂

Unlike the cheaper drinking chocolates sold by the likes of Cadbury, the South Devon chilli farm drinking chocolate is more flakes than powder. I’m still experimenting with quantities, but about 5 or 6 teaspoons of them added to a microwaved mug of milk seems to work.

Since I’m conscious of my “behaviour” I use fat free milk, which is probably not as tasty as “normal” milk, but it’s still very tasty.

Calorie count? I’ve no idea, but if you can’t enjoy good quality and tasty hot chocolate from time to time then there’s not much point!

Exploring Carlow Environs By Bike

August 4, 2014 by Michele Neylon 1 Comment

For the last couple of months I’ve been cycling in and out of work and around the town. The distances I’m covering every week aren’t exactly amazing in terms of burning calories etc.,
So this weekend I decided I’d do a bit more.
The Barrow river flows through Carlow town and the old tow path is accessible on a bike.
It’s not an area that I was familiar with, as I’d never explored it.
The track apparently runs for about 100 km both north and south of Carlow town, so in theory I should be able to go in either direction.
It’s pleasant to be able to cycle away from cars and trucks, though the downside is that the surface isn’t exactly even.

But you do get to see some lovely old locks like this one:

And nice old bridges like this one

I like variety, so I’ll try a slightly different route out and back the next time I head out.

Unfortunately Google maps isn’t too helpful when it comes to the southern part of the track, so I guess I’ll have to find out the “hard” way 🙂

Cheese Meets Beer

July 26, 2014 by Michele Neylon 3 Comments

On a recent shopping expedition I came across an interesting cheese.

It’s an Irish cheese made with beer, or washed with beer from the Little Milk Company.

The official description piqued my interest:

A semi-soft cow’s milk cheese with made by Knockdrinna using Organic milk from the Little Milk Company, and rind-washed in Irish Craft Brews including O’Hara’s Pale Ale from Carlow Brewing Company

Having tried it over the last few days I’m not 100% sure if I like it or not. It’s quite a strong and possibly “acquired” taste. I like strong cheeses in general and love goat’s cheese and every type of blue cheese out there, but this one has an almost overpowering flavour.

You can read more about the cheese’s back story over on the Knockdrinna site – it’s interesting, which is one of the reasons why I like supporting local producers, even if I don’t really like the end product (though that is definitely a matter of personal taste).

Decadence – Spaghetti Neri

July 14, 2014 by Michele Neylon 1 Comment

I took a few days off last week to go on a “semi-holiday” to Lisbon, Portugal.

It was a holiday, so obviously I wasn’t going to be on my best behaviour. However I may have overdone it a little with this. Meet “spaghetti neri” or pure decadence:

It’s chocolate ice cream, chocolate sauce, whipped cream, nuts and probably more stuff.

Incredibly unhealthy, but incredibly tasty 🙂

Tracking Cycling With MapMyRide

July 7, 2014 by Michele Neylon 1 Comment

I used to cycle every day. When I was in school I often cycled to and from the train station and when I was at university in Limerick cycling was the easiest way for me to get in and out of campus. Back then I was clocking up 10 to 15km per day minimum – often more.

Unfortunately I stopped cycling on a regular basis once I moved away from Limerick and didn’t even own a usable bike until recently.

So a few weeks ago I decided to avail of the “cycle to work scheme” that’s being run by the Irish government. Essentially you can get a tax break if you buy a new bicycle via your employer. There’s a cap of EUR1000 for the bike and associated gear, but that’s more than enough unless you want to get some crazy over the top handmade custom bike. I got a bike for about EUR700 with all the bits and pieces I needed.

So now I try to cycle in and out of the office every day and when I need to run an errand I try to use the bike instead of driving.

Of course I’ve been tracking (somewhat erratically) my activity, consumption, weight etc., via a number of devices and apps for the last couple of years. So when I started cycling I needed to find some way of hooking that all in to my existing “system”.

After trying a few different apps I ended up settling on MapMyRide. There are both free and premium versions available, with the premium one giving you you more detailed stats and a breakdown of them. Unless you’re going to be cycling semi-professionally the premium features are probably overkill.

One of the main attractions for me was that the app can “talk” to other systems, so I don’t end up with data in silos and can keep using the other apps and services I’ve been using up until now.

I also like the goal concept ie. challenge yourself to cycle more, longer and faster.

So far it’s made me much more conscious or how much and how little I cycle and how much more I need to do in order to burn more calories.

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