Archive for February, 2006
WBW – World’s Best Wife
Posted on February 28, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Family, Food.
- Cream
- Stewed Apple
- Chocolate Sauce using O’Conaill’s Chocolate
- Lemon Juice
= Pancakes!
The woman is beyond compare.
1 Comment
RTE Radio Show Downloads
Posted on February 27, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Entertainment, Food.
I’m not a radio person so I tend to miss a wealth of interesting programmes, particularly in the evenings. I have only just found out about Winter Food on RTE1 presented by Cork’s own Clodagh McKenna. I was very happy to see that recordings of the show (and archives) were available. Unfortunately there are a few problems, but I have solutions to some of them:
[1] The shows are in Real Player rm format rather than MP3. Luckily my MP3 player is Real Audio on a Palm so it isn’t actually a problem for me.
[2] There is no RSS feed for this programme. RTE actually do have RSS feeds for their top level stuff like the news but not fine-grained to enable me to subscribe to updates on Winter Food.
In fact, what the hell is stopping them from going the whole hog and embracing podcasting properly and making all of their programming available via something like Podcast Alley? Today FM do it for Gift Grub on iTunes but obviously we don’t want anything which makes people install that dire software on their PCs. They should have a look over at The Restaurant Guys in New Jersey – a food programme on a commercial radio station (WCTC) that is fully setup for MP3 downloads to anyone worldwide.
Does anyone know what RTE’s intentions are in this area as a publicly funded broadcaster? It would take minimal capital investment to set this up. I know I’d spend a lot more time listening to RTE programmes if I could dictate when I get to listen to their output on the move.
[3] You can’t actually download the files for later listening, you have to listen to them in realtime on your computer. This is the same stupid limitation set by BBC radio which I found a solution for when I wanted to grab the H2G2 broadcasts from last year. Follow my instructions over at this post (mainly to do with setting up MPlayer), find out when the programme you want was broadcast e.g. February 18th and then download it using MPlayer using a command line in a DOS prompt like the following:
mplayer -dumpfile winterfood20060218.ra -dumpstream rtsp://streaming2.rte.ie/2006/0218/18022006rte-winterfood.rm
Unfortunately this downloads in realtime so it’ll take the full half hour to grab but when it is done you’ll have a Real Audio file to use to your hearts content.
If you need MP3 then you’ll have to grab LAME from here and copy it to the same dir as MPlayer. Then execute the following two commands:
mplayer winterfood20060218.ra -ao pcm -ao pcm:file=winterfood20060218.wav
lame -f winterfood20060218.wav winterfood20060218.mp3
Note that the mplayer step above takes up crazy amounts of disk space (3 meg real audio file becoming a multi-gig wav file) and you may run out if you have a small hard drive.
Of course, what would be far better would be a little script which ran once a week and grabbed the latest episode for you and converted it if needed. I’m gonna have a bit of spare time in the next few weeks so I may hack some travesty of a script together and make it available here.
The above instructions apply to any of the RTE programmes which they make available for later listening. You do have to figure out the “path” to the file which you do as follows: right-click on the “listen to this show” link, save it to your desktop, open the smil file in notepad and find the rstp path in that file and use it in place of the rstp link in the command line above. Hardly slick.
[tags]RTE, Winter Food, Clodagh McKenna, MP3, Real Audio, mplayer, Podcasting, BBC, LAME[/tags]
3 Comments
Murphy’s Awesome Ice-Cream now blogging
Posted on February 27, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Blogging, Food, Ireland.
Kieran from Murphy’s Ice Cream in Dingle posted a comment to this blog last week and let me know that they now have a blog of their own. I’ll probably have to give Catherine a sedative when I tell her that they have a chocolate sauce recipe on it already.
Murphy’s Coffee/Ice-Cream shop was the highlight of our walkabout in Killarney last Autumn. Fab coffee and stunning ice-cream. I just went with a simple double scoop of something fruity and Catherine went for one of their more complex creations. She nearly did a Meg Ryan on it as she worked her way through it. I think it may almost be a case of Comic Book Man from the Simpsons “Best Ice Cream….Ever”. Thinking way back, I’ve a feeling we had some scoops in their Dingle shop maybe 10 years ago? Were they open then? The fact that it still sticks in my mind tells you something about their ice-cream.
I’m thrilled that they are blogging because I am not just married to an ice-cream fanatic but I also recently bought her an ice-cream maker and I think she’ll have the motor burnt out in a month. I just got the cheapy (£25) Kenwood IM-250 from Amazon (I’m sure you can get it in many department stores in Ireland). I didn’t want to spend too much in case it turned out to be too much hassle to use one. But it turns out to be very straightforward. So far we have had a few fruity frozen yoghurts and a proper custard based chocolate one. I think Catherine may have found her niche. Christmas may involve the purchase of one of the huge self-cooling machines.
Interestingly, I think that owning an ice-cream maker will cause us to buy more ice-cream rather than less as we try out flavours and compare textures. I highly recommend that you read Kieran’s blog, post lots of comments, tell him all your ice-cream fantasies and most important of all – seek out their ice-cream!
I’m really looking forward to reading more of his thoughts and to buying more of their fantastic produce in Urru in Bandon.
UPDATE 1: I’ve obviously lost a lot of brain cells over the years, Murphy’s only opened in 2000 so I must have been somewhere else in Dingle back in the 90’s.
[tags]Murphy’s Ice-Cream, Dingle, An Daingean, Killarney, Urru[/tags]
6 Comments
The Hackney Hardman is back
Posted on February 23, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Entertainment.
It’s been a long wait but the man who put the AMS is Amstrad is back on our screens, hurrah! And what a bag of spanners he has collected for this series;
How about the bipolar woman who cried during the first firing cos Sir Alan was mean to the girls? Quite possibly the most annoying woman on British TV after one short episode, so I assume he’ll keep her.
Or Syed who told us that he has a “gameplan” and wants to play mind games but so far seems to have all the cunning of the most cunning plan in cunningland by Baldrick. He is another keeper like Paul last year. No hope of winning but should be good for a weekly laugh.
Or poor Ben who had all the charisma of a corpse and got fired last night after his ass whooping by the women.
I cannot wait for the next 11 epsiodes. TV gold I tell ya.
[tags]The Apprentice, Sir Alan Sugar, BBC2[/tags]
2 Comments
Dillon’s of Timoleague – Good food, bad value
Posted on February 19, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Restaurants, Reviews.
Dillon’s
Food style/ethnicity: Modern Irish
Chain: N/A
Price: 30 – 40 (Euro)
Location:
Main Street
Timoleague Co Cork
Ireland
Kind Auntie Fiona took care of our angels on Friday night so Catherine and I could trot down to Timoleague for a bite to eat. Dillon’s gets a strange mini-review in the 2004 edition of Georgina Campbell. It isn’t really clear whether they think much of it. Dillon’s describe themselves as a cafe bar which can mean a wide range of things.
We popped our head in the door to see a normal bar with beer taps but no-one sitting at it and then a bunch of tables with people eating. It was pretty much full at 8pm which is a good sign. Decor is sort of shabby chic with a mix of table and chair types. I loved the look of the bar itself. Nice friendly welcome and we kicked off with two G&T’s.
I started off with duck spring rolls and Catherine had crab cakes. We also ordered a bottle of red Bordeaux at €23 which was excellent and extremely good value. My spring rolls were lovely and came with an unknown but very tasty dipping sauce. Catherine thought her crab cakes were only fine. But both plates were ruined by having a pile of diced generic salad which clearly came from a vac-packed bag and some big lumps of unripe tomato. Nasty and unnecessary. I’d have preferred either nothing or maybe some undressed coleslaw or something seasonal.
The mains were far far better. I had two wee quail which were fab and came with a good sauce. Catherine had the duck which seemed to be a popular choice at other tables too and she thought it was great. Both came with generic microwaved/steamed veg side plate. I’m thinking of starting a campaign to have this banned in restaurants instead of smoking. Nothing wrong with it, nothing right, why bother? Why not add some flavour and make it part of the meal?
Desserts were both superb. I had blueberry creme brulee which was awesome and Catherine had a plate-lickingtastic ice-cream thingy with cherries, nuts and chocolate sauce. Coffees were good too.
Then came the bill: €113! Bloody hell. That is so out of whack with the level of the food, it just is not funny. At maybe €85 I would have left happy but €113 is a similar price to a meal we had in Les Gourmandises which is one of the best restaurants in Munster.
But the place was full of locals and had sounded full the previous night when Catherine had booked, so what do they care what I think. If people are willing to pay way over the odds for mid-range food then let them. But at those prices, I don’t think we’ll be rushing back.
[tags]Dillon’s, Timoleague, Les Gourmandises[/tags]
No Comments
Mr Krabbs goes to Bandon
Posted on February 19, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Cooking, Cork, Food.
Only two months later I get around to blogging our Spider Crab adventure from a few weeks before Christmas. We got a massive one for a few euro in Antcar in Union Hall. At this stage Oisín is totally cool with crustaceans, poor Sibéal was a bit shocked when I arrived back to the car with it.
He stayed in the cooler whilst we did the Skibbereen Winter Wonderland. It wasn’t _quite_ Disney but the kids had a howl.
Sophie Grigson laments the lack of interest in spider crab meat in the British Isles and recommends it highly. However she describes the preparation of it as “approaching tedious”. To quote Bill: “Baby, you ain’t kiddin”. Over an hour with pliers and a hammer (yes, from my tool box, yes, washed of all WD-40) to extract a tiny mound of meat.
I did a lovely crab salad and a pseudo dressed crab thingy. Both of them were lip-smackingly good and the meat was really tasty. But I am never, ever prepping one again.
[tags] Antcar, Union Hall, Skibbereen, Winter Wonderland, Spider Crab, Spongebob, Sophie Grigson[/tags]
2 Comments
For everything else
Posted on February 19, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Humour.
As I’ve never understood American football, I obviously don’t watch the Superbowl. But this means I only just found out about the Mastercard ad that was on during it. I’m sure Patty and Selma would have swooned through the whole thing.
Richard Dean Anderson is still the man!
[tags]Mastercard, MacGyver, Superbowl, Diggnation, Richard Dean Anderson[/tags]
No Comments
Benny’s Brilliant Web SMS Applet
Posted on February 17, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Cork, Ireland, Technology.
Ben has just launched a very simple looking but really useful utility over at Freewebtexts. It is a front end to Vodafone Ireland’s web-text facility (other vendors coming) . If you have ever used Voda’s site, you’ll know that it was clearly designed by someone who hates people and wouldn’t know a standard if it came up and head-butted them (web mail that doesn’t work behind many corporate firewalls. What century is this?).
Ben’s applet is a paragon of simple effective functionality. Check it out and let him know what you think. He’ll be adding functionality to it on a regular basis. And no, he doesn’t want people telling him to re-write it as an Ajax app using ROR.
[tags]Freewebtexts, Vodafone, applet[/tags]
6 Comments
Both Drinkin’ and Bloggin’ in it
Posted on February 16, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Drink, Ireland.
Guinness has a blog. All the skinny at gapingvoid.
Looks like a pretty decent attempt at a corporate blog. They have a posting about great Guinness ads. One thing I’ve always hated about their web-site is that if you want to see their genius US ads instead of their dire “meaningful” Irish ones, you have to pretend to be in the US when signing in on the home page. Boys, dump the swimming across the Atlantic crap and give us “Brilliant!” over here please.
[tags]Guinness[/tags]
No Comments
DS – not such a toy after all
Posted on February 16, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Gadgets, Technology.
I think I like Oscar’s Nintendo DS more than he does. He got Karts for christmas and I was blown away by how easy it was to set up with my wireless router so that I could play against other people on the web. Obviously I always come last.
But one of the hinges on the DS broke recently. Looks like a design flaw to me (considering the new DS Lite has a much meatier hinge). Glue would not work. I spent hours searching for replacement parts. Finally, I found a guy on eBay in Pennsylvania who sold replacement cases and would ship to Ireland. $24 plus shipping and a week or so later, I had the case. Then I discovered I needed a special screwdriver to open it. This time Lik-Sang came to the rescue and for a few Euro I got the screwdriver in the post less than a week later.
Last night we took apart the old one, moved all the bits over to the new case and were shocked to find that it worked! Fiddley as f**k but a damn sight cheaper than buying a new one.
But it got me thinking about the DS. It has two ARM CPUs and the main one has about the same welly as a Palm Tungsten T. It has two screens, one of which is touch senstitive and it has Wi-Fi. Would it not strike Nintendo to offer a web-browser as a plug-in cartridge? Or an MP3 player or a multitude of things other than games which would make use of all its features? I know it is outside of their comfort zone and they don’t want to make the mistakes that Nokia made with the N-Gage. But still, it is a PDA in all but software. I fell asleep with that thought in my mind.
Anyway, I start checking blogs this morning and what do I find? Opera are releasing a browser for the DS!! Fan-bloody-tastic. Obviously, I ‘ll be keeping that cartridge for myself and not letting Oscar anywhere near it. I can’t wait to browse the web at a wireless hot-spot in an airport using a kids toy.
And Nintendo are going to release a digital TV receiver for it too. Not so awesome for us as we are now about 8 years behind on getting digital terrestrial tv in Ireland but would be tres cool for Freeview viewers in the UK.
PSP my bum.
[tags]Nintendo DS, DS Parts, DS Karts, Opera, Wi-Fi, PSP, Lik-Sang[/tags]
2 Comments
Sausage Semi-Success Satisfies
Posted on February 13, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Cooking, Food, Politics.
And so on to attempt number three. This time I followed the advice of Podchef Neal and others regarding keeping everything as cold as possible when trying to mince the pork. So I stood outside for half an hour.
More usefully, I put the mincer attachment in the freezer for the day and used meat which had barely defrosted. Lo and behold, the meat flew through the mincer. I was using the coarsest holeage (I’m tired, I have no idea what the right term is for that) and so had to run the meat through again. Even tho I had re-cooled eveything (I lay in a bath of ice water for 10 minutes), it must not have been enough because the second run had a bit of jammage (feel free to use that new word in conversation). But still far far better than before.
I went with a very simple flavouring of a hint of parsley, sage, thyme and oregano all fresh from the cat wee area at the front of the house, a good blast of white pepper and some salt. I probably didn’t use enough bread crumbs. This time I went with hog casings which are the bigger ones. The fillage was a bit fiddly but went fine and the linkage was a disaster with the resulting sossies ranging from 1 inch to 6 inches (or 0.25cm to 3cm on a female ruler).
The hangage went fine overnight and I cooked them up the following morning. During frying I realised my biggest mistake – overfillage of the sausages. The meat started pushing out through the ends of the casings and after ten minutes I must have had over a centimetre of liquid in the pan.
It was therefore no surprise that they were very dry again and the texture was too dense due to the lack of bread crumbs. But they tasted really great, as good as shop bought in my humble estimation. I had them with a lovely organic egg from Tesco and some very succulent Danish rashers from the same source.
I highly recommend that you temporarily buy these tasty offerings from Denmark, at least whilst Riots R Us are having this week’s riot on the topic of cartoons. Next week’s riot will be back to the usual topic of why America is the great satan and will be protesting NBC’s cancellation of “Jihad Idol”.
Actually, it might be a good idea to stock up on bacon in general. At the rate our dear president is offering to swap our rights for improved business in the Middle East, she’ll probably have got the eating of pork banned in Ireland by the end of her trip.
Three attempts at sausage making and still not perfect. A lesser man would give up and just buy Denny. But then I’ve been cooking steaks for 20 years and I still get that wrong on a regular basis. I think the next attempt will focus on keeping them juicy. One question I still have on filler is whether the 20% or so that is recommended is by weight or volume. It’d surely take a whole hell of a lot of breadcrumbs to make up 20%?
[tags]sausages, Kenwood Chef, Danish Bacon, Mary McAleese, The Irish People, The Life of Brian[/tags]
5 Comments
Burger King – Geniuses or Mentalists?
Posted on February 10, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Food, Humour.
It is my perplexed pleasure to present:
[tags] Burger King, Whopperettes[/tags]
2 Comments
The first blog by Irish smokers…..of food?
Posted on February 9, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Cork, Food, Wordpress.
In what I hope is the first of many by high-quality food producers in Ireland, Ummera Smoked Products have launched their own blog. You can find it over at ummera.wordpress.com.
Anthony seems really enthusiastic about using technology to enable him to do business more efficiently and I hope my (ahem) multitude of readers encourage him to keep blogging regularly by providing him with constant feedback. The big news on their blog is the new packaging/labelling which is a major improvement and really catches the eye on the shelf. Their products are available in most good foodie outlets, particularly in Cork, so check out the new labels and let him know what you think.
There is also mention on the blog of the new Farmers Market in Kinsale which I’ll have to check out (even tho Earl from “My Name is Earl” now makes me feel like a girl dressed in pink).
Unfortunately, the main person trying to set up a similar market in Bandon died recently. Hopefully someone else involved in food in the area (Clodagh? Padraigín?) will take up the torch. I’d be more than willing to help but my lack of local contacts and the fact that I don’t work in the business means there would be no point in me trying to kick it off.
But in any case, I’m really thrilled that Anthony has leaped into the world of blogging and is at the vanguard of the next generation of food marketing in Ireland. The fact that he is using wordpress.com developed mainly by Donncha from Cork, is just a bonus!
[tags] Ummera, Wordpress.com, Irish Food, Kinsale, Farmers Market[/tags]
6 Comments
CoComment – Dubious at first, now a big fan
Posted on February 9, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Blogging, Technology, Wordpress.
The ability to search and find information in blog comments has been identified by many “in the know” as one of the bigger challenges in blogland in 2006. But I have a simpler problem – tracking replies to my comments on other peoples blogs. Those who use Wordpress and the “Subscribe to Comments” plug-in like me allow commenters to get e-mails when replies are posted. Unfortunately, we are in the minority.
The other day, CoComment was launched to great buzz. Initially I was dubious – why would I go to yet another web-site to find out about replies to things I have written on someones blog? But I was in a hard-of-thinking mode. These guys provide an RSS Feed of replies to your comments.
For non-techies reading this, it means that you have a pseudo-blog which you track in your blog reader (Thunderbird, Bloglines, Rojo etc) and which consists an aggregation of other peoples replies to your comments on yet other peoples blogs.
Once I realised this, I signed up, and now I just click a button in my browser every time I have written a comment. I can then completely forget about what I have written until someone replies and it appears as a new item in my blog reader. Most excellent. This means they can store all of these comments, which means comments will effectively become searchable. Are they going to offer this themselves or wire into Technorati or even Google?
It is invitation-only right now but there are plenty of nice people handing out those invites so it should be easy enough to get sorted.
[tags]coComment, Subscribe-to-Comments[/tags]
2 Comments
That’s Valentine’s Day Sorted
Posted on February 8, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Cooking, Food.
Snickers Pie – The unhealthiest recipe ever from Woz. All 1250 calories per slice of it.
Technorati Tags: Slashfood, Recipes, Valentine’s Day
2 Comments
Well it beats Kilternan hands down for sure
Posted on February 8, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Humour.
Think we could get one of these in Bandon?
Hmm, indoor ski-slope or completed bypass road? It’s a tough call for Cork County Council.
1 Comment
This week we’ll be mostly buying Lego and Carlsberg
Posted on February 6, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Personal, Politics.
And maybe some of their bacon for a change.
No Comments
Cully & Sully Fish Pie
Posted on February 5, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Food, Reviews.
Whatever I wrote about their Chicken and Leek pie – ditto! Cheesy, Spuddy, Creamy, Fishy, Yummy.
Technorati Tags: Cully & Sully
No Comments
Dinosaur or Giraffe?
Posted on February 5, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Family.
Serious argument in our house this dinner-time. Fionn’s toy, is it a Dinosaur or a Giraffe? Let the people decide:
Technorati Tags: Toys, Dinosaur, Giraffe
6 Comments
The IT Crowd – Oh no no no no no
Posted on February 5, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Humour, Reviews.
If I told you that the title of the programme should have the letters “Sh” at the start, you’d probably think I wasn’t very funny. Well that’s how funny “The IT Crowd” is. I wanted to give up after ten minutes but lasted to the end for the same reason people rubber-neck car crashes.
My six year old son reads me funnier knock-knock jokes from his “My first book of knock-knock jokes” than Graham Linehan came up with for this embarassment of a comedy. I watched some of the set-ups with my jaw on the floor “he is not seriously going to do the ‘person talking into the telephone that isn’t connected’ routine is he?” – oh god he just did. Not only that but five minutes later “no, no way, he cannot now be following this with the ‘person typing on the computer that isn’t plugged in’ routine, can he”, you betcha!
The acting is pretty dreadful but not as bad as the writing. We have the annoying mucker from “The Clinic” hamming it up and desperately over-acting in an attempt to make the thing funny. And we have someone else trying to do his version of a variety of “Fast Show” characters. They even attempted some slap-stick humour. At this point I nearly switched over to a documentary on the hibernation habits of the Greenland lesser spotted egret. I can see this show getting punted to 11pm very very quickly.
They also roped Chris Morris into a small role on it. But that’s hardly surprising as he hasn’t been in anything remotely funny since Brass Eye (Jam or Nathan Barley anyone? No I didn’t think so). I nearly forgot to mention the canned laughter. Oh dear god, the canned laughter. Imagine the laughter track from worst 1970’s sitcom possible but now imagine it with a deaf and blind person deciding when to insert the laughter. Who did they use for this? “Discount Eddie’s Quick Lube and Sound Studio”?
This is not a rant from a techie who cringed about the RTFM t-shirt or the ZX81 reference in the programme. This is a rant from someone who loves great TV comedy. Graham Linehan was responsible for one classic TV series – “Father Ted”, one good TV Series – “Black Books” and a pair of awful ones – “Big Train”, “Paris”. Did they just throw a bunch of money at him to make “The IT Crowd” and he sent this in for a bet? Maybe doing his own version of “The Producers”? Or maybe he was the writer in “Father Ted” who, when they could have come up with something witty to say in many of the scenes, said, “nah, let’s just insert a few feck, drink, girls, lines instead”.
When the US is giving us fabulous comedy writing in “Curb Your Enthusiasm”, “Arrested Development”, “My Name is Earl” and even a great re-write in the American “Office” (‘Blue-Collar, White-Collar, I’m collar-blind’. Genius!), is this really the best that Channel 4 can drag out of the swamp?
Technorati Tags: The IT Crowd, Graham Linehan, Father Ted, Black Books, Paris, Channel 4, Chris Morris, Curb Your Enthusiasm
