Fruity Fashion

Here are some finished snaps from a shoot (way back) where food met fashion on a fun jewellery shoot. They scream summer....just wish we had the weather now!

Photographer: Cliona O'Flaherty

Jewellery Designer: Alice Moyon from www.aliquoboutique.com

Model: Caoimhe

Fashion Stylist: Jemma Connolly

Food Stylist: Me!

Make-up: Rachel Matthews

Delicious!

Pearl and I have been our usual socialite selves, this time rubbing shoulders with fab foodies at L'ecrivan. The lovely people behind Sacla Sauces & Delicious Magazine were over from the UK and very kindly invited us to lunch as part of a group of food bloggers. What a really nice, feel good afternoon filled with fabulous food and friendly chitter chatter.

Seamus from Delicious told us all about his new magazine Healthy Food Guide and also about his Irish roots. He is indeed 'one of us'! Clare from Sacla filled us in on the amazing Italian family who have been producing the well known Italian sauces for 70 years now. Clare is our 'pesto pioneer' having first introduced it to the UK in 1991. Great claim to fame!

The party then moved onto the Taste of Dublin launch which was sadly rained on by our typical Irish weather. Just when our UK friends were over to visit too! Didn't dampen our spirits though. Here's the only snap I got on the day (having my hands slightly full with baba!)...

Some fab food blogger friends...Aoife, Clare, Moi, Imen & Sheila

Click these links to follow our new BFF over on Twitter! Sacla, Delicious Mag & Healthy Food Guide

A picnic with House & Home Mag

I am thrilled to announce I am now the new food feature writer & stylist for House & Home Magazine. My three page feature gives me a chance to combine my love of food, props & homely top tips. My first feature is all about picnics and is currently out in the May / June issue. Watch out for BBQ's up next in July.

Fab photographer Elisha Clarke took the gorgeous food snaps, Paul Sherwood took my mug shot & Hilary O'Hagan was a great help with the food (particularly as I was a week off my due date & could only waddle about out of breath!). Typically we were challenged by the elements and were actually sliding around in mud & with brollies but that's what picnics are mostly like anyhow don't you think?!

Our Kitchen Hero

You're my hero...swoon...Pearl x

Pearly & I have been keeping up appearances and hanging out in the Westbury Hotel with super heros! We were delighted to be invited to afternoon tea by Donal Skehan, to help celebrate the launch of his fab new cookbook, Kitchen Hero.

Now, Pearly almost didn't get an invite, for fear of her upstaging himself. It was her first official appearance in the company of the coveted food bloggers & so, no doubt Donal feared the cameras & comments may not be directed exclusively at him *tongue firmly in cheek*. But, little does he know, Pearl secretly adores him & has posters of him plastered all over her nursery!

Donal tempts us with his tasty treats.

Anyhow, enough about my little hero & onto the main super hero here. Donal is a total inspiration in catapulting to foodie stardom with infectious enthusiasm. You can see for yourself tomorrow night at 8.30pm on RTE1, when his 13 part series kicks off. We can't wait. In the meantime, we have his book to enjoy cooking from & a resulting big jar of his 'fat boy peanut butter snicker squares' to tuck into. mega yum.

P.S. you too can have afternoon tea in the westbury with the kitchen hero. well, the book anyhow.

This Kit is Closed

Gosh, I've been a bad bad blogger! Luckily for me, it's not because I haven't had any work goings on to tell you about, but quite the opposite. More to the point, due to bumpy (see piccie in previous post) I was getting quite out of breath by the end of every day. I even found it hard to get the remainder of my 20,000 daily allowance of words out. Things must have been bad!

Anyhow, I'm here to tell you I'm now safely 'on the other side'. I'm now a nappy changing, milk machine Mummy to a little girl, Pearl. I'm now a yummy mummy who hangs out in coffee shops having leisurily catch-ups with friends, after long lazy lie-ins with smallie & copious amounts of daily cute kitten cuddles. So much easier than work I must admit (don't speak too soon, touch wood and all that). There's just one small thing to juggle (well, and all her flamin paraphenalia!) rather than several hundred at once. Obviously that's not for long though as I will have to juggle everything together once back from maternity leave.

But for now, yes, maternity leave. (I might just get a chance to reminisce and tell you about what I've been up to over the past months to cause my blogging absence). Will be back soon!

Cover Girl

So I've finally made it. It's every girls dream to be a cover girl and my dream came through this week. Now, admittedly it's not Vogue Magazine as expected but much thanks to Country Living Magazine for featuring me in their current issue and popping me on the cover too. It's a fab mag, read and loved by thousands around the country so I'm more than happy with that!

The lovely Imen McDonnell from I Married an Irish Farmer did a great interview and feature with me. It's mainly about what I do with work and my love of all things food. In fact, the husband kept winding me up about my "everything about food makes me happy" quote. I simply asked him to think what his life would be like if my quote was "everything about food makes me unhappy". Hum. Shut him up.

Also, I have to thank fab photographer Jack Caffrey who took amazing shots as always. I work with Jack on Neven Maguire's food feature shots for the same mag so it made a bit of a change for Jack to get my mush in instead of the food I cook. Anyhow guys, thanks for making a great feature of me...it can't have been easy!

Oh, and it's not a case of who ate all the pies...I'm proudly showing my baby pie off here at about the six month mark.

Check out the recipe for those spiced banana muffins over on my Friendly Cottage blog.

Baking Made Easy

Happy New Year everyone! Hopefully you enjoyed fun & food filled festivities (but are not being too hard on yourself calorie counting now!).

Lorraine Pascale's new cookery show, 'Baking Made Easy' won't be any help to you if you are. The six part series kicked off tonight at 8.30pm on BBC2. It was fantastically filled with lots of deliciously tempting goodies including a savoury fig, mint and pistachio tart, soda bread, parmesan lollipops, blueberry mille feuille and an amazing 'I can't believe you made that cake'. Now, I can save you the calories if you like and tell you that having eaten everything, everything is definitely worth eating!!

I skipped off to London in early last summer for a few weeks to work on the show and ended up staying for five. And boy, was it a long hot summer. We had four ovens on the go with 30 degrees of heat blazing from the sun and of course couldn't open any doors or windows because of noise. Mega Melt. Mega melting chocolate. Mega melting pastry. Mega melting everyone and everything. Thankfully, that didn't show in Lorraine's cool performance!

Here are some behind the scenes snaps...

my very glamorous head quarters in the studio. I could come back from the kitchen to find my desk anywhere, including the garden at one point. on the only rainy day!

some continuity snaps of Lorraine's soda bread bites and the mille feuille pastries.

I can't believe you made that cake!