I’m drawn to some great half price offers in Dunnes this week – but not on food. Finish Dishwasher tablets are down from €16.99 to €8.49, while a big giant value pack of Bold Two in One is down from €25.99 to €12.99. When it comes to household items such washing powder and dishwasher tablets, [...]

In today’s Pricewatch, Conor Pope discusses the growth of own-brand products in Irish supermarkets, and points the way towards thousands of euro in annual savings. An interesting and useful article.

I might be missing something here. Over the past few years, luxury expensive food shop Donnybrook Fair has been popping up all over wealthy Dublin suburbs. Most recently, they’ve appeared up in Stillorgan shopping centre, right beside Tesco (on a side note, I wonder what Stillorgan’s anchor tenant thinks of its new neighbour). It doesn’t seem [...]

Yawning spaces opened up in the fridge. Lonely potatoes and tomatoes felt conspicuously exposed in the presses. There was a freezer full of long-forgotten sauces. Meanwhile, an excess of herbs, spices, and assorted condiments shrugged their shoulders, unsure how they could help. But I was determined to eat what I had. With a visit to [...]

The hummus expired on January 15. The rashers are a week out of date. The milk should have been thrown out four days ago. And I’m very shortly going to eat an M&S chocolate pudding with a use-by date of January 19. Since implementing this new year resolution, I’m fine. I haven’t been sick, nor [...]

My beautiful new goddaughter Abbie is, unsurprisingly, a time-consuming little critter. I hit the shops to buy the kiddo a little present, but then I remembered some wise words from Jean: new parents don’t get time to eat. These tiny people, cute as they are, demand a lot of attention. When my sister had her [...]

I’ll start by saying that I very rarely, if ever, opt for Tesco Value or St. Bernard products. I’ve suppressed the gag reflex when served a shiny roast St. Bernard chicken; shivered as I imagine its horrific life in a tight, dirty place with the walls closing in; and clamped my facial muscles as I [...]

I’m a born and bred southside boy, but no stranger to the mean streets of Dublin north. Back in the 70′s and early 80′s – when, like today, money was a scarce commodity – my dad made a weekly trek through ten feet of snow, volcanoes, solar flares, heatwaves, and floods to pick up fruit [...]

I know for many, the idea of growing your own is just too damn daunting but there are certain vegetables and herbs that just won’t fail – I promise. Mint is unbelievable. It is a weed and it will grow anywhere and all year round. It’s such a sturdy plant that if you’re not careful [...]

Pasta and rice are notoriously hard to measure. At some stage, most of us end up with too much and it gets thrown in the bin. You might as well flush it down them toilet. The internet is littered with useful pasta measuring tools, while you can also buy pasta measures in kitchen equipment shops [...]