The sandwich I get from uni almost makes the 2 hour trip to get there worth it.

A fresh crusty ciabatta with a tiny bit of butter, smoked salmon, 2 slices of bree cheese, a few finely sliced cucumbers, all topped up with some creme fraiche. Can't beat that!

In the last week the family has been stretching itself beyond its usual culinary comfort zone. This week alone we had beef lasagne (prepared under the 1hr mark), beef and spinach cannelloni, and yesterday a Mexican tortilla wrap dinner. Just reading this paragraph almost makes me want to hide away from the scales.

I cooked my fair share of tortilla wraps when I was still living in the dot, but I always found it a bit tricky getting them served all warm in time. What mommy S and aunty S did yesterday was a nice do-it-yourself idea. They prepared a couple of bowls with different tortilla fillings like minced beef, home made guacamole, tomatoes, sweetcorn, onions, sour cream and green peppers, and everybody prepared his own tortilla. It was also interesting seeing a pizza-tortilla mashup by our resident Italian. Poor J had some stones roaming around his body, we're not entirely sure whether they were in his kidneys as he claimed or in his mind.

In November the housies promised to try and push for a Slovak home made dinner, cooked by a Slovak. Whether they'll manage to get that has yet to be seen though.

Last Saturday we had a bit of a house party, formally to celebrate J's birthday, but really to have some good craic. I spent most of Saturday preparing food, assisted by my dearest house mates :) This was what we had on the menu (for my future reference):-

Main Dishes

• Goulash
• Rice salad (green peppers, eggs, sweetcorn, tomatoes, capers, salad cream)
• Potato salad (potatoes, parsley, salad cream)
• Vegetable Kebabs (Articoke hearts, feta cheese, olives, cheery tomato, peppers and cucumber)
• Spicy sausages and garlic bread (backups that weren't needed)

• Pistachios, Cashew nuts, Walnuts
• Cheese Platter (5 types of cheese Mexican, Brie, Blue Cheese, Cheddar, Mount [something])
• Tesco cheese crackers (They suck! Get Carr's next time)
• Dips and Breadsticks
• Nachos and spicy tomato dip
• Crisps
• Popcorn

• Coconut marshmallow balls (very popular)
• Fruit Salad (pineapple, grapes, cherries, strawberries, apples, oranges, banana, pears)

The party wasn't much of a wild house party. It was more of a sit down and eat sort of party, very much like the family parties back home. The food was good, which was the most important thing in the end. The idea of preparing goulash (Slovak mother-in-law-to-be recipe) , even in the middle of the Irish summer (= dottian winter), was a good one. It was a pity that M wasn't there to join (and cook some of his masterpiece dishes), since he just left for a holiday in Italy.

More pictures of the party here

P.S. Food ideas for next time - suggestions welcome.

• Stuffed Olives
• Brusketta
• Stuffed Mushrooms
• Broad Beans
• Couscous salad

In this article Adam Leith Gollner takes a look at some dishes that can make the big jump to mainstream cuisine, a bit like sushi did 20 years ago. Amongst the dishes mentioned are Korean bibimbap, mongolian hot pot and pupusas.

Lifehackery has a list of 50 helpful tips for the kitchen. This list would make Chuck Palahniuk proud with the list of hacks on how to use common things to solve problems (think survivor). These are some examples:-

• If you aren’t sure how fresh your eggs are, place them in about four inches of water. Eggs that stay on the bottom are fresh. If only one end tips up, the egg is less fresh and should be used soon. If it floats, it’s past the fresh stage.
• To clean an electric kettle with calcium buildup on the heating element, boil a mixture of half white vinegar and half water, then empty.
• If you happen to over-salt a pot of soup, just drop in a peeled potato. The potato will absorb the excess salt.
• Remove tea or coffee stains from your fine china by mixing up a paste of baking soda, lemon juice, and cream of tartar. Rub it over the stains and they’ll come off easily.
• The substance in onions that causes your eyes to water is located in the root cluster of the onion. Cut this part out in a cone shape, with the largest part of the cone around the exterior root section.

Some people who are going to read the title of this post are going to smirk and probably think I'm being ironic. I'm known to slag my mum's cooking, sometimes rightly so, but this time I'm serious. I like this simple dish that my mum used to cook during the week, usually when we'd have more than two cabbages in the fridge. I tried to look up the recipe on the internet but didn't find anything similar to it, so I phone home instead and asked mum how to cook it. (Funny how the first instinct was to look it up on the internet instead of asking mum directly).

The ingredients are very simple:-

• 1 cabbage
• 4 streaks of bacon
• 3 garlic cloves
• 2 beaten eggs (like a little boy I disobeyed and used 3, but mum was right 2 is the maximum you should use)
• salt

1. Cut the cabbage in 4 large pieces and boil it for about 30 minutes
2. Drain the cabbage properly and chop it into about 1 inch squares
3. Cut the bacon into medium sized squares and the garlic into large pieces
4. Heat some oil in a pot and add the garlic and bacon for about 2 minutes
5. Add the cabbage and stir
6. Add some salt. Note that cabbage tends to be sweet so you might want to add some more salt then usual.
7. Add the beaten eggs and stir thoroughly
8. Cook on medium heat for about 20/25 minutes stirring occasionally
9. Serve with fresh bread

After waiting all through the summer for some weather, yesterday we capitalised on the stretch of nice weather there's in Dublin (by nice I mean, not raining) and went for a BBQ. I tried out some new stuff on the bbq. Garlic bread wrapped in foil, jacket potatoes stuffed with bacon and cheddar cheese, chicken coated with olive oil, Worcester sauce, garlic, some thyme and mustard seeds, a healthy piece of steak marinated with bbq sauce , onions, garlic, meat spices, loads of pepper and olive oil. The highlight for the folks at the table were the jacket potatoes stuffed with bacon. They were up to Slovak and Polish standards – a friend of ours got two new friends with her.

I was in one of those boisterous very explicit moods. Was good fun. At least we’re making getting our return for investment on the bbq set after not being able to use it throughout all the summer.

On a slightly different note, I got a (return) ticket for Luxembourg for November.