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The Country Cooking of Ireland I was given this heavy tome by the publishers to review and months later I’m finally getting my thoughts down. Whilst it is a fantastic collection of recipes and information that all Irish cooks should own, I fear that along with Darina’s Forgotten Skills of Cooking, we are looking at our past. The author Colman Andrews is a very well known food-writer and co-founder of the famed Saveur magazine in the US. This may look like a coffee-table staple but it is genuinely jammed with lots of recipes that could easily have been lost forever. It’s clear reading the book that Colman is not claiming to be an expert in Irish food since he defers to many of the Irish greats like Darina and profiles some of our Irish food heroes like Anthony down...

Girl reading a book on Winston Churchill on the Underground in London. Related PostsNo related posts...

Pork & Sons I was given this lovely book for Christmas 2008 and finally finished it last month. What initially appears to be a coffee-table resident turned out to be one of the best books on food I’ve ever read. The title says it all. This is a book about pork. Every single bit of the pig gets a mention and use. The author, Stéphane Reynaud is the grandson of a village butcher from the Ardeche plateau in France. He runs a restaurant near Paris that specialises in Pork. I want to eat there! The recipes themselves are fantastic but so too are the notes, anecdotes and pictures and people. This is a book centered on the relationship between a community and its food. The way it is sectioned up is unusual but it works. The “chapters” are as follows: Pig-killing...

This is an unusual book made up of a collection of 18 discourses on individual ingredients which were originally distributed as a newsletter. It was first published in 1992 and I was given this 2004 edition by my sister. Initial impressions of the book are extremely positive; the writing is of very high quality and the opening treatise on salt catches the imagination. From then on however it seems to alternate between wonderfully interesting chapters and workmanlike almost Wikipedia-style dry listing of facts about certain foods. Very much in the “did you know” school of writing. The good episodes are very very good with those on Country Ham, Eggs and Coffee being my particular favourites. He finishes on the coffee one and it is the highlight of the book. I really...

A Commonwealth of Thieves, by Thomas Keneally A reasonable introduction to the (colonial) history of Australia, that promises just a little more than it delivers. I wish I had been educated in Australia. 220 years of history, mostly confined to New South Wales. That's something that even a dunce like me could get his head around. None of this Irish bronze-age nonsense. Thomas Keneally, author of Schindler's Ark and native son of Sydney, describes the founding of Australia in his particular way: though the eyes of the people who were there. He threads the strands of dozens of individuals' lives around the historical facts of the time, and writes with a flourish that is almost of the time he describes. If I could, I would have given the book 3.5 stars,...

Would you be willing to donate time you already spent, to help give people more time to live?This is international breast cancer month. It's why I actually started putting up the pink images here. At the time I joked about what would be done with Bowel Cancer Awareness month. Bowel cancer does not have any glamour to it. We are talking about a part of the body which we tend not to thing about until something goes wrong. Two things occured this week and it sparked an idea. One where I'll need your help.I listened to the Podcast Sisters creating a book by re-using your blog (I'm paraphrasing). And I came across Chris Anderson talking about Blogging Heroes: Interviews with 30 of the World's Top Bloggers by Mike Banks.Bank's book is a series of interviews with bloggers. Sales are presumably...

I Am A Strange Loop, by Douglas Hofstadter Read this review to see why reading I Am A Strange Loop will change the way you read this review (to see why reading I Am A Strange Loop will change the way to read this review (to see...)) The CPU of my laptop is humming away as I type these words (well, the fan is humming, so I guess the CPU is busy too). It knows nothing of the download that I am making from the organic processor in my skull, but then again how could it? It's just a computer it only understands integer arithmetic, and cannot even begin to comprehend the stream of English that I am typing, undoing, retyping, as I try to find the best combination of words to allow you, the reader, to extract the same meaning from this text as I am trying to inject into it....

The Nasty Bits by Anthony Bourdain A fine collection of articles he has written over the past few years on all things food and restaurant related. A great food writer. This book has been on my ever growing pile of unread books for a long time. I finally took it on a flight to San Fran so I could make a dent in it. The format is perfect for picking up intermittently since each piece is from a magazine or other publication. The range of articles is wonderful, ranging from “Woody Harrelson: Culinary Muse” about that cretin and the raw food movement to “Food and Loathing in Las Vegas” where he and the great Micheal Ruhlman do the frankly bizarre Vegas food scene. Passion screams from every paragraph that he writes along with a sense of...

Nigella Express After the Christmas debacle I didn’t think Nigella Lawson could sink any lower. I was wrong. I decided last Christmas that I was never again watching or buying anything that Nigella Lawson did after her horrendous TV series. The fake family scenes recorded during the summer were just ridiculous. But I’m a sucker for punishment and just finished watching an episode of her new series which is all about cooking quickly, a theme which has been done a thousand times. Oh how I wish I’d watched the rest of “Crisis At Jimmy’s Farm” instead.  There is just one word to describe this series - “fake”. From the getting out of bed to the frankly objectionable scenes with her poor children, nothing about it is real....

“If I Did...

The Tipping Point This book is seven years old but still a zinger. Read it on plane to Amsterdam and back. Loved every page. Malcolm Gladwell’s book really rocketed him into worldwide fame. Everything he has done since has been eagerly awaited. I only got around to reading The Tipping Point on Thursday and I’m glad I finally did. The basic idea behind the book is that there are identifiable conditions and actions which cause something to become wildly popular or successful - things that become epidemics (in the wider sense of the word). He describes each of these and then backs them up with a continuous stream of convincing examples. Some of the examples given include the enormous sudden reduction in crime in New York in the late 90’s, the...

A page turner that starts with a bang, but becomes a whimper. Review of product: "Cell" by Stephen King - novel Rated as 2/5 on Apr 03 2007 by Will Knott I’ll admit that having worked in mobile telecoms, the idea of a cell phone turning people in to ghouls or zombies in a 28 Days Later (and soon 28 Weeks Later) way seemed an interesting way to create a panic. If something happens, you’l call the emergency services. If something happens on the street, you’l use your mobile phone… and become one of the infected. Silly of course, but an interesting idea.In the 1970’s the defining moment of the disaster movie was the moment things went wrong, usually at the 20 minute mark after you get to know the main players in the disaster.In this book the main character, a...

Worldchanging, the really good enviro-blog has a new book out. They want people to Amazon bomb the book so that it becomes the best selling book that day on Amazon. As a result of a No. 1 listing on Amazon a lot more doors and shelves of bookstores will open for them. Funny how this publishing lark works. There’s no real cheating in this. Just a way of concentrating purchases to be over one day instead of a week or two. If this helps get the word out then I’m all for it. Bonus link. Kevin Kelly’s guide to selling your books on Amazon. amazon blogs bombing book environment ireland irish irishblogs...

Deviant Art member +cweeks has put together a book entitled Street Photography for the Purist from the photographs of several DA members. It also includes forwards and commentary from those people and looks like a great read. It’s a 160 page tome, downloadable as a PDF and weighing in at just over 10MB. I’ve skimmed through the first 60 or so pages but I’ll have a closer look at it later. There are some stunning b/w street shots in the book, from the very old to the young, and even a demonstration of how one photographer shoots, possibly the only colour shots in the book. I haven’t done much street photography in the past few weeks but I’m itching to try again, and to work in black and white too. Did I say it was free? Yes I did! What’s stopping you...

Kathy writes that many users are stuck using P mode, or the automatic mode of their favourite tools simply because they don’t know how, or don’t know why they’d like to use those extra features. I link to this usability article here because she used camera terminology to describe how a user approaches a complex application. Even if you’re not interested in the usability of stuff, and web apps in particular, then reading this article may inspire you to learn about why you haven’t used the A, S, or M modes on your fancy, expensive camera. If you’re still interested, then read Understanding Exposure: How to Shoot Great Photographs with a Film or Digital Camera by Bryan Peterson. It’s my favourite book on photography and it will change the way you use...

They thought they new each other but on a journey to find new business, they found themselves. You need to read the abovet in the voice of that guy that does all the voiceovers of all those movie trailers. I actually tried to photoshop up a Thelma and Louise movie poster with the lads faces but the bloody photo editing application died on me. Also I’m useless at anything creative. Getting to the point though: Rick Segal and Shel Israel are going on a world trip of a sort and want to meet up with people and businesses along the way. Rick wants to go looking at investment opportunities and Shel wants to research his next book. Doc Searls gives a good summary. David Weinberger gives a nod to road movie summaries too. I think this could be a good opportunity for Irish business...

Thanks for the book whoever sent it to me. Interesting choice. The sad fact is that I’ll probably enjoy reading this book on regulation. As an aside, anyone else think the cover is slightly Goatse-esque? Technorati Tags: advocacy amazon blogs book broadband ireland irelandoffline irishblogs...