Rogue Umbrellas and A New Recipe

Yesterday was a really typical Irish Summer Day. The day started off with the sun beating down as I walked slowly to work with the hope that if I reduced my pace enough, I might avoid getting there altogether. At work,  I sat at my desk all day watching the people outside in their summer clothes swanning around catching their vitamin D quota. As the day progressed, the light faded and the sky went from cobalt to grey.

As I walked home in my summer dress, teeth chattering, the rain started. At first it was a gentle, spitting rain with some sporadic gale force winds so that I involuntarily attacked people with my umbrella and then got infuriated that they were (obviously) blaming me. I wanted to say ‘Clearly I’m not some maniac who goes around attacking people with my umbrella – do the maths, Wind gusts + umbrella = lack of control, I’m doing my f-ing best here and I’m really quite a considerate person if you get to know me’. (Is that what happened to crazy cat lady from the Simpsons? I think I’m coming around to a better understanding of how you could get to a point of such frustration that you feel the need to throw cats at people while ranting unintelligibly). At a traffic island, an enthusiastic gust of wind turned my umbrella inside out and broke three of the spokes, provoking me to growl loudly to myself amongst the marching-home-from-work-very-fast-so-I-can-get-home-and-sit-down crowd. I was seething. By the time I got home, the rain had become torrential. With utter dismay, I realised that my clothes were still on the washing line and at that stage, they were so soaked that there was absolutely no point in taking them in.

So anyway, as I wandered around the kitchen muttering furiously to myself and shouting at the cat who was doing his best to trip me up in order to score some food, I decided that I needed to have some seriously nice dinner to make up for my epic journey home from work. I had 500g of diced beef in the fridge so I googled ‘diced beef recipes’ which turned up a suggestion of Beef Pastitsada; a traditional Corfu dish of meat in tomato sauce served with pasta. This was my first time ever making this dish and I substituted rice for pasta but feel free to try it with either. You can also use chicken or lamb with this dish, it’s fairly versatile. I must point out here that I used too much tomato and overdid it on the cinnamon so please, read the ingredients properly – use either a cinnamon stick OR a generous pinch of cinnamon powder, not both, otherwise the dish will leave you lost somewhere between dinner and dessert.

Prep time: 15 minutes Cook time: 1 ½ hours

Beef Pastitsada

Ingredients:
250g diced beef
2 medium onions
4 cloves of garlic
1 tin of tomatoes
A LARGE glass of red wine
A splash of balsamic vinegar
4 tablespoons of olive oil
Spices:
1 cinnamon stick or a generous pinch of powdered cinnamon
2 bay leaves
½ teaspoon of cayenne pepper
sea salt & pepper

Parmesan cheese for topping (optional)

Cooking Method:

In a large saucepan, heat 1/3 of the olive oil and add the meat. Fry until the meat is brown on all sides.

Remove meat from the pan and set aside on a plate
Add the rest of the olive oil to the pan and set the cooker to a medium heat.





Add onions and cook until soft

Add garlic and cook for 1-2 minutes

Add the meat back in to the saucepan

Then add all of the spices. Mix well.

Add the LARGE glass of wine and a splash of balsamic vinegar.

Finally, add the tomatoes and stir everything until well blended.

Reduce the heat and leave the pan to simmer for the next hour and a half.

Serve with pasta or rice with some cheese sprinkled on the top.

Enjoy!

Note: Sadly, in all my haste to eat dinner I didn’t manage to take a picture of the end result so I will post one the next time I make this.

A Fine Artist

I was away on holidays in the Canary Islands last week. Being Irish, my friends and I decided to drop in to the local Irish bar called The Claddagh and outstay out welcome. We met a musician called Simon who asked us what we did. Instead listing out our current crappy jobs we told him we were artists. No, Fine Artists more specifically.

My class and I graduated in 2006 with a BA in Fine Art Painting and since then, very few of us have gone down the route of establishing ourselves as practicing artist. Most of us started off in entry level jobs in the service industry or admin and can't seem to find a way out.

How long can you call yourself an artist for when you haven’t really produced work of any significance since graduation? What's the minimum quota? Do you have to sell the work too? Surely a person practicing art who doesn't sell a thing has an expensive hobby rather than a vocation in art. I have sold one piece of work in my entire 'career' as an artist, but produced a number of pieces as gifts for my family and friends. The only time I paint is when someone asks me to.

My sister requested that I paint her a landscape as a gift for her 40th birthday (in January). I drew the outline in February and the painting sits, half finished, in my mother's utility room in my family home. I don't like painting landscapes - my ideal style of painting is expressive and colourful works based on thumbnails of a still life or photograph. I have avoided completing this painting like the plague. Every time I go downstairs, this half finished painting taunts me. An array of excuses line up to be validated:

The dried out palette will take ages to clean. I need new paint brushes. There is a collection of dirty laundry in the way. The light is crap. I can sing along with my music because I’ll be heard by the tenants in the basement flat. There are too many spiders down there. The washing machine disrupts the creative process.. I’m too tired to walk down the steps to the garden. The cat’s in there (my studio is also the cat’s bedroom) and he’s going to expect me to feed him. That really funny episode of Friends is on E4 again.

Simon, the musician sings at the Irish bar every night. Whenever he saw us he would call out, 'oh look, here come the fine artists again. Ba ha ha ha ha.'

Simon, you mock my pain.

Ladies who lunch, dinner and dessert

Had a lovely day out with the sisters and a friend doing a tour of Wicklow and Wexford. Despite the crappy weather and cranky beginnings. Here are some photos of the ladies in a few different locations in the last week.

 A nice wander around the Avoca shop and cafe in Wickow, all wishing we we rich enough to buy things in the shop... A cup of coffee was the only affordable item. So we poshed it up as best we could...

At the Avoca Shop & Café

 

Nom Nom Nom Birthday Dinner followed by...



Not best pleased with this dessert as you can tell from the expression on her face.



Ladies who lunch...in Gorey

Jesus could have fed a few hungry folks with these pastries...

Musings from my armchair

It's all good and well to make the great debate while sitting comfortably amongst your friends in a house, pub or café but on closer examination, how pro active are you really?

I remember recently the Irish Government launched an initiative campaign on how to make Ireland a better place. The idea was that you put forward an idea of improving anything in terms of public operations within the country and there was a serious cash prize for the best one etc.

A few friends and I ended up in a local pub and I asked if anyone had heard of the campaign. We then proceeded to come up with the 'solution' to long term unemployment in Ireland. The idea was that a number of organisations in the public sector could offer a set of 'vacacies' to persons who were on a job seekers allowance to come and earn their money in specialised roles within their organisations. The roles would be voluntary but would allow the person who was unemployed practical experience and better their chances of becoming employed again (in theory). This is a short summary of the plan which I still believe is a very valid idea and as long as it was supported by the government, it would be quite easy to roll out. There might even be extra income for the person who worked voluntarily to 'earn' their allowance from the organisation they work in who (with permission from the Dept of Finance) could subsidise part of their earnings.


Sitting back after this very enthusiastic discussion, we all felt very positive about our idea and had full intention of submitting it to the competition mentioned above. Unfortunately, like many great ideas I've had in the past, this one never received an airing. Perhaps those blessed with the ability to come up with the good ideas need to find themselves a less like-minded person to actually get the ball rolling for turning an idea in to an action.


You can put the lack of motivation down to one of two things - pure laziness or scatty genius. Let's lean favourably towards the latter...