November brings us to the moment where we appreciate big bowls of warm food, and Pho fills that spot beautifully. Pho, which is pronounced Fur – not a P in sight, is the national Vietnamese noodle dish. This comforting bowl of slurpy noodles manages to be not only nourishing but […]

The garden is beginning to look a little woolly now that it’s the end of September; the apples and pears are falling from the trees and the courgettes have slowed so much that they have become a valuable commodity again. Even the beans are beginning to be defeated with the […]

I’m a bit of a bean freak and each year we grow a variety of beans in our garden. French beans, borlotti beans, angel beans, coca beans, dwarf beans; most years each of these produces enough beans for us to enjoy but no way overwhelm us, but the runner beans […]

The Azores High brought great excitement and good weather to West Cork in July. For ten days it was like living in the Mediterranean. The beaches were packed and the sea full of people bobbing about, a rare and delightful sight. Families were moving in with plastic bath tubs full […]

How time flies! We have already entered the second half of summer, having passed the longest day, which seems to have come round faster than ever this year. It may be the second half of summer but I’m still prowling around the courgettes plants waiting for them to spring into […]

May was certainly a blow out; the weather meant we didn’t know whether we were coming or going. I was sat here one evening with the sun on one side of the house and rain on the other and my husband said it was just like living in the tropics. […]