Christmas dinner, tins of sweets, lots of cheese, Christmas TV, shiny wrapped presents, boxes of crisps and biscuits, the post-meal walk: it’s that time of year again. I’ll be going to my parents for Christmas dinner as usual, and as usual I’ll spend the day topping up the hot ports and arguing over TV by [...]

Plenty of enticing offers this Christmas week at SuperValu, including: Ham fillets (2-4kg) – half price Selected fruit and vegetables including brussels sprouts (750g), parsnips (950g) and pineapple – all just 50c each Pierre Darcy’s champagne (75cl) – half price – now €19.99 SuperValu for the Christmas ham? What’s the meat like there? Offers are [...]

The Guardian Food and Mouth Blog has the most rigorous article on roast potatoes that I’ve seen anywhere: they try four different recipes with three different varieties of potatoes, resulting in twelve different types of roast potato.  You really have to respect that level of commitment to spuds. They try recipes by Delia Smith, Nigella [...]

By Jean McGuire On a recent visit to Monaghan, we had the pleasure of being taken to The Squealing Pig, known locally as “The Pig”, for a meal. It’s not a very impressive establishment from the outside and indeed not much better from inside. Had it not been recommended to us for good quality food [...]

Like many people, I’ll be looking to buy a few bottles of sweet, sweet booze for Christmas.  I only need to pick up a few for gifts and for the house, and don’t have a large enough order to warrant a trip to the North.  While doing some shopping in Dublin city yesterday I was [...]