My mum, Jean McGuire, passed through Adare in Co. Limerick last week. She and her sister Diane stopped in The Good Rooms Cafe for a bit of lunch. You can enter our competition to win a two-night break at the beautiful Woodlands Hotel in Adare by clicking here. In the meantime, here’s my mum’s review: [...]

Bored in my sick bed (sniff, poor me, etc etc), I did some price comparisons on Lidl in the Republic of Ireland and Lidl in Northern Ireland. As you’ll see, there isn’t price parity, but the sterling/ euro difference isn’t too severe:

The Daily Spud has an inspiring post up at the moment on paneer cheese: it seems it is not just possible but easy to make exotic Indian cheese at home. She has suggested some very clever variations – add in a cinnamon stick at the boiling stage, or mix in toasted cumin seeds.  Yum!

Specials at Aldi this Thursday include: Ice-cream maker – €29.99 (and if you buy this, check out Kieran Murphy’s great Ice Cream Ireland blog) 7 port USB Hub/ Combination Card Reader – €12.99 42 litre Garden Tub – €5.99 More information here. Meanwhile, this Sunday’s offers at Aldi are all about BBQs and picnics: Lunch [...]

I posted last week about the various ways that Twitter can help you find recipes and food bargains, and the Twittery goodness keeps coming in. Today I read about a Canadian woman who is tweeting entire recipes in her Twitter feed.  For example: “Butterscotch Pudding: mix.5c packed brwnsug/3T cornstrch/dash salt; +1.5c milk/.5c cream. Boil/whisk1m; +2T [...]

M&S are currently running an offer with their ‘Ingredients’ range – if you buy three items from the range, you get a free M&S cookbook.  The ‘Ingredients’ selection comprises loads of store-cupboard basics, like spices, bags of seeds and baking ingredients such as icing sugar.  They’re pretty reasonably priced, and there’s some very cheap items [...]

Some more tips from our lovely readers in Dublin: Ken had some good things to say about the new Marco Pierre White restaurant on Dawson St: Randomly ended up in his new restaurant on Dawson Street last week and thanks to Dine in Dublin week got a 3 course meal, including tea/coffee for under 30 [...]

Some good news amongst the never-ending misery: gas prices are set to fall by 12% and electricity prices by 10% from Friday May 1. Meanwhile, The Irish Times reports that businesses struggling to reduce their costs might be helped by using a new Carbon Management Tool (CMT), available on www.change.ie. The tool enables companies to [...]

There was a small problem with our survey – some readers were unable to fill it out. The problem is fixed now, however, and you can take the survey to enter the Woodlands giveaway.

Wandering around town yesterday, I spotted some great value offers in, of all places, Fresh on Camden St: 1/2 kg minced beef – half price at €2.49 Sirloin steaks – 0.68kg – €5.43 On the other hand, I saw some ridiculously bad value, such as a Turkey and Vegetable Plaits at €5.49. Worst of all, [...]