General Chat Thread II

FX Buckley is better for steaks by a good bit, based on one visit to Hawksmoor Dublin (and two in London) and multiple visits to FXBs (various locations around town).

Here were my thoughts about the visit - and a few posts after are a few other users. Short version: Hawksmoor great for cocktails, atmosphere and sides. Merely good for the steaks (which is why I go to a steakhouse). FXB a good bit better for steaks (and also have very good cocktails and sides, though the cocktails in Hawksmoor were better).

Went to Hawksmoor yesterday for the Tayto & toastie special. Possibly the best sambo in Dublin.

Dame St. Well, I suppose College Green. Former National Bank.

I have had the smallest bit of kitchen progress in my renovation from hell that I've moaned about on here for, oh, two years.

A whole two of the wall cabinets are now properly, permanently installed in their final locations; and have shelves and doors. This is an 80x100 and a 40x100 so quite a lot of space.

A third 60x100 is going to be mounted Immenently, possibly tomorrow or Thursday. The rails to mount the rest of the upper cabinets is in, but I need to do surgery to all of them to handle the extractor, and it hasn't arrived yet.

I no longer need to have crockery/cutlery/implements/pantry items on two open book cases; with the third cupboard there I'll be able to dig out - replace, mostly - the advanced pantry stuff and actually make interesting curries and so on again.

To 'celebrate' I also bought the cheapest kitchen table IKEA have to put the portable induction hob on and give a bit more space to chop veg on - I'd been using the kitchen table.

Busy weekend so!

Yep! Kind of wish I'd taken Tuesday off too now...

My short ribs 😋

Didn't manage to get a good pic of the finished-finished product, but this was just before the meat was pulled.

Made stock earlier. Asked my partner to keep an eye on it and let it simmer down a little.

... Yeah.

Ouch.

Ah cmon you cant do that to us!!

My wife was involved in art studios in Cork city some years ago. I don't know how it started but they got to know some direct provision residents. They invited them in to use the little kitchen in the studio to prepare their own food. People were invited to share the food and donations covered the cost of food.

I think in a lot of cases, it's not decent food people miss, it's the ability to cook their own food and share it with friends.

In fairness and with respect to the intention behind the idea, I'd say the last thing people in DP want to be fed is even more cheap crap, even if cooked by people who know what they're doing. By far the biggest issue that people in DP have with the food arrangements, from my reading, is not being able to prepare, cook and share food from their own cultures, especially around special occasions, holidays etc.

Had been getting my sister, who shops in Tesco, to keep me the Tesco square spice/herb jars as she finished them - ended up with a decent pile of them.

This evenings boredom aversion tast was decanting everything I had in odd shape or bigger/awkward spice jars in to them this evening. Loads of correct lids/labels; but label printed the name to stick over the lid on stuff that I only had a "wrong" bottle for.

Now have a consistent size/shape/height to put all the jars in to easy to take out trays; put the refill bags I get from Eurasia away somewhere in the dark and avoid having to figure out by smell/colour what is in the random decade old IKEA spice jars (Ihardig mostly, also a white ceramic one with a wood and rubber lid) with lids that randomly decide not to seal. And there's a significant space saving - the square jars hold more for their footprint and getting rid of the IKEA giants has given me space for many more in the same space.

Also, the Tesco jars don't try to have sprinklers on them meaning they have a fairly sane opening that doesn't get clogged up and refuse to seal like Lidl/Aldi spice jars do.