The 9th chapter
The 9th Chapter of 12.
Does it feel like the 9th Chapter??
I think this year went more like, Chapter 1, Chapter 2 then Chapters 3 - 8 (March - August) aghhhhhhh and now at Chapter 9, some sort of normality. A lot has happened, while nothing has happened. It's been horrendous for some and we've all learned to adapt and change. The shop has adapted and changed. Our customers are adapting and changing. This brought about various changes to our opening and closing time as mentioned yesterday and are below.
On Sundays from 10am to 2pm the wall fridge wil be open with all your usual favourites but also a selection of roasts, prepared in a recyclable roasting tray for your convenience and steak, chops etc on our compostable trays, all in our wall cabinet. The counter cabinet will not be open on Sundays.
One thing that came back into our house during lockdown was the return of the traditional Sunday Roast and much to the kids delighted a Sunday dessert. Sundays had been filled with matches and getting organised for work that we lost the Sunday Roast. Last Sunday I did a lovely Roast beef but I had loads left over. My lads love beef but won't really eat it in a sandwich so I made this recipe below while I was cooking the roast and allowed it to cool just to be reheated the next day with the meat added in. It was a real winner and handy to have organised as things start to get busy again. I seriously encourage you to give it a try. Without adding the meat it would feed any vegetarian in your house too.
Moroccan-style stew for roasted meat
Serves 8
Ingredients:
olive oil
15g butter
2 onions, finely chopped
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
1 tin of chickpeas (400g), drained and rinsed
1 tin of tomatoes (400g), chopped
¼ tsp freshly ground black pepper
1 tsp ground turmeric
½ tsp ground ginger
1 tsp ground cinnamon
juice of 1 lemon (or lime)
450ml vegetable or chicken stock (plus more if needed)
1 tsp salt (or to taste)
1 tsp paprika
¼-½ tsp cayenne pepper
leftover roast lamb (or chicken or beef)
I had none of these below and just left them out - still yum!!
(1 large bunch of fresh coriander or parsley, finely chopped (or a mixture of both - reserve some for serving)
2 tsp mint, dried or a couple of sprigs of fresh mint)
Heat the butter and oil mixture in a large saucepan. Add the onion and gently fry for at least 10 minutes until beginning to soften and take on some colour. Add the garlic and give it a good stir.
Add the drained chickpeas and chopped tomatoes. Stir.
Add the pepper, turmeric, ginger, cinnamon and the lemon juice (but not the salt).
Add the stock and a ½ teaspoon of salt. Bring to the boil and then simmer for about 20 to 30 minutes, until the liquid has reduced but not dried out completely. Top up with more liquid if necessary.
Add the paprika and cayenne now.
At this point I turned off the hob and let it cool. Just for convenience, add the diced cold meat (lamb, beef or chicken).
The next evening, take your dish out of the fridge and let it heat slowly. Boil your rice while you're doing this.
(If you are using these add the chopped coriander and parsley, 1 teaspoon of dried mint)
Check the seasoning, adding more salt and pepper if necessary.
Sprinkle over with chopped herbs.
Tip: Add additional vegetables such as red peppers or cooked potatoes or even some of the left over veg from your Sunday Roast dinner. Just the last few minutes before the end so they don't go to mush.
I hope you get to try this it was delicious. So change can bring challenges but also opportunity. I have always been change adverse. I think this time has help build some resilience in me, in my children and all around us. Love this Socrates quote - "The secret of Change is to focus all your energy not on fighting the old, but building on the new." I like this and I keep reminding myself of it when I'm frustrated about something I can no longer do they way I used to. I was, like most anxious about the going back to school. Teachers are professionals who focus on the child so their wellbeing was never in question. I spoke to the kids a little bit but not too much before they went back, keeping it positive and trying to encourage that not all change is bad. I'll leave ye with the words that my second youngest said when I collected him from school day one. " Mam, it's a bit different but it's even better".
Enjoy,
The Butchers' Wife.
New Times Below.
| Days | Opening and closing time |
| Monday
Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday |
8 am – 7pm |
| Saturdays | 8am – 6pm |
| Sundays | 10am – 2pm |
Jemmas Chilli con Carne
Super Tasty Chilli con Carne
This delicious classic dish can be a real family favourite so I hope you enjoy it. Packed with immune boosting onions and garlic, iron rich beef and kidney beans to help keep your fibre intake optimal, this dinner ticks lots of boxes on the health front. This recipe serves approx. 4 adult size portions but I say double it, and get 4 extra portions in the freezer to get you through the predicted cold spell in the coming weeks! You can make this either on your hob or slow-cooker. Serve with some avocado slices and steamed rice.
• 1 tbsp olive oil/steamed coconut oil (no coconut taste)
• 2 large red onions, finely sliced
• 4 cloves of crushed garlic
• 2 tbsp mild chilli powder – reduce to 1tbsp if the kiddies don’t like the heat!
• 2 tsp ground cumin
• 2 tsp dried oregano
• 1kg minced beef
• 400g tin of chopped tomatoes/plum tomatoes
• 3 x 400g tins of red kidney beans, rinsed in a sieve
• 2 beef stock cubes
• 200mls of water
• 2 large red peppers, chopped
• 10 sundried tomatoes – optional but they do give amazing flavour
1. Heat your oven to 150C/fan 130C/gas 3. Heat the oil, preferably in a large lidded casserole dish, and fry the onions until soft. Add the garlic, spices and oregano and cook for 1 min, then gradually add the mince, stirring well until browned. Stir in the tomatoes, water and then crumble in the stock cubes and mix.
2. Cover and simmer gently for 30 mins, stirring occasionally. Stir in the peppers and sundried tomatoes, then cook for a further 30 mins. Then stir in the beans and simmer gently for 3-5 minutes, until the beans have warmed through.
3. If you want to use a slow cooker, fry your onions in a pan for 8 mins, then add your garlic, spices and oregano and cook for a minute. Tip all of the ingredients into your slow cooker, crumble in the stock cubes and mix well to break up the minced beef. Cook on Low for 8 hours, then serve.
The love affair with the slow cooker continues. Since I've gone back to full time work I'm just in awe of how people get dinner on the table day in day out. This is where the reliance on the slow cooker comes from. I'm an early riser. Is it from the farm alarm from years ago or is it from being a mother of four? I don't know. My family are all insomniacs so it's possibly just that. Throw in the worry wart gene and sleep alludes me. So getting up early is generally not a problem unless I've just gone asleep. Anyway, it's something I'm trying to improve. So to fire food into the slow cooker early morning is easy for me. But for those who think they don't have time to do it in the morning, I promise you, what would take you half the evening, only takes five or ten minutes in the morning. Love it. So try this. You'll also love the smell when you get home and can light the fire while the rice is cooking. The cold is coming... Enjoy, the butchers wife xx
Back to school
Back to school.
Rose of Tralee
Is there anything like the Rose of Tralee on the box, to say back to school? I always had a love/ hate relationship with the Rose of Tralee festival. On one side, I was allowed stay up late and look at all the lovely dresses but on the other, the anxiety about school would be mounting and a sense of imminent doom. This year we have a Waterford Rose winner which is great. Congratulations to Kirsten Mate Maher and I hope she has a great year.
What time is it?
Alas, back to school. I hate talking about it, I hate thinking about it, and I hate actually doing something about it. Organising back to school. Hate Hate Hate. It screams of homework, rushing dinner, rushing to activities, it screams of rushing, just rushing. It also highlights my bad, bad timekeeping. I am not a good time keeper. I try to keep good time but I always fall short about five minutes. Which, I have learned from my friend who is always on time, is actually ten minutes, because you should be five minutes early. But I always think I could just get another little thing done, a counter cleared off, a wash on, veg chopped for later or just make a latte to go even though I’ve been swigging from one since I got up. And then I’ll usually end up driving stressed, guilty and saying very mean things to myself in the head. This year I will be better….
Organisation Skills
I normally organise for the following year before they finish school in June – get the uniforms sorted, pay the book rental scheme, cleanout schoolbags and put away etc. Please do not think that I am in any way organised. I AM NOT. AT ALL. But I think I might have alluded to the fact that I hate thinking about back to school. Therefore, in order to allow me to just get up on the morning of back to school and without thinking about it prior to this, the above is what I normally do. Not this year though, because the weather was so amazing prior to the school holidays that we went from school to swim most days. I even thought about taking the children out of school (Shhh….don’t tell my school attendance officer brother).
Angry
So this year I found myself in a queue for the secondary school books during the summer. By the time I got to the counter I was in fowl form. The poor student, working for the summer, trying to earn a few quid for college or pints or both, was being very patient with me. I eventually had to explain to him that I’m normally quite a pleasant person but I find spending lots of money and I mean lots (more of that later) on something that the person receiving them isn’t best pleased about receiving, is just a tad frustrating. Well, you see where I’m going.
Voluntary contributions
What is the story with the cost of school books? Our eldest started secondary school last year with books alone costing nearly €500, not to mention uniform, administration costs, art and the ‘voluntary contribution’. I actually thought naively that that was that for three years. But no. The Irish League of Credit Unions say the average spend per year on a primary school child is €999 and a secondary school child is €1379. OMG! In our primary school, I pay, before summer starts, a fee per child for book rental and supplies. I do not buy books. This covers it all. It’s really good compared to others schools that you have to buy books and pay for all the rest. But with secondary school it’s absolutely madness. I can’t help but wonder, is someone ensuring that big school publishers thrive. Does history change? Geography? Maths? Why not do the book rental scheme in all schools??? Surely, better than filling the world with first editions, second, third editions that books are reused or perhaps the use of iPad – although how would you know your darling teenager is not snap chatting instead of studying? That point needs more thought. With the school book business being upwards of €55 million, the government supplement the cost of books in DEIS schools but parents are mostly picking up the bill. This is, 25 years after a report into the cost of schools books was carried out and school rental scheme was the main recommendation. Besides that, someday a school or the department of education will be sued over damaged backs of teenagers carrying enormous books. Oh Lord, why am I even giving out? If nothing has been done after 25 years and as we’re apparently now out of recession (really?) the appetite for change will not be as ferocious.
Anyway – enough of that, you’ve heard it all before. So here’s some advice from the butchers wife on how to beat those back to school pitfalls.
1. Set your alarm 20 minutes earlier. This will work, possibly, day one or could back fire and you think you’ve all the time in the world that you loll around checking emails, what’s app and Facebook and you actually tear in the school gate even later than last year and still have to put up your daughters hair so she might not get the dreaded head lice. So you stand outside the car, while the priomhóide is giving assembly in the chlós, pulling the head off your daughter, with tears rolling down her face, but technically she is present for assembly so yay, win.
2. Prep school lunches the night before so you can ensure your darlings will have a healthy nutritious lunch every day.
What actually happens? Monday Tuesday and maybe even Wednesday the lunch boxes contain all if not most of the food groups – protein, dairy, fruit, vegetables and carbs. Thursday’s lunch includes cheese strings, three biscuits and a jam sandwich and Friday’s lunch box is a petrol station breakfast roll and a fruit winder (its fruit isn’t it??).
3. Label everything. This actually does help in locating the third school jumper that has been lost and it’s not even Halloween. You dread asking the teacher if they’ve come across said jumper, in fear they send you to the lost and found box in the store room that smells of, what I can only be described as, old gym gear at best or, at worst, something Gordon Ramsey finds in a fridge of a closing down road side restaurant in Iowa.
4. Lay out clothes the night before therefore saves time in the morning. Again possibly on a Sunday Monday and Tuesday evening I might remember to do this but by Thursday and Friday morning the children head off to school looking like something out of a Charles Dickens novel.
5. Prepare healthy mid-week dinners in advance. Involve the children in this task so they are more invested in their food.
Reality of this is, you were too unorganised to do this at the weekend and therefore you start from scratch and if you attempt to involve the children, the kitchen ends up like a scene from a war movie (more than when you started). The dog won’t even look at the dinner never mind attempting to eat it and you end up cooking pasta.
6. Ensure the children have a consistent bedtime routine. Yay, I do manage consistency here. I consistently ask the children to step away from the TV, then I consistently ask them to wash their face, hands and teeth. They might do one of these and then I consistently ask them to get into bed. I consistently try and read them a relaxing bedtime story without the consistent argument who gets to lie beside me and I consistently end up giving up and closing the book and vowing that tomorrow night will be better.
So there you go, some back to school advice to get you through the first few weeks but one must at least try. For those of you with a little one just starting, be it your first, or your last, I have the ABBA song, ‘Slipping through my fingers’, in my head. The late great Gerry Ryan played this song on the first of September every year – school bag in hand, she leaves home in the early morning, waving goodbye with an absent minded smile……
Makes me cry every year.
PS here’s a recipe that was loved in our house using this weeks special offer so it might help with the back to school economies...
The Butchers Wife xx
Chicken and Chorizo
1 tbsp. olive oil
300g chorizo cut into cubes.
10 chicken pieces
salt and fresh grounded black pepper
2 small onions, chopped
8 cloves of garlic
300g basmati rice
200mls white wine
1 litre of chicken/vegetable stock
2 tbsp. of chopped flat leaf parsley.
Methods
Put olive oil into casserole dish on a medium heat. And add the chorizo. Stir fry for 3-4 minutes until it releases the lovely tasty oils and remove the chorizo but leave the oil in the dish.
Season the chicken pieces with salt and pepper and add to the casserole dish and cook for 6-8 minutes turning to make sure it’s browned all over.
Then stir in the onions and garlic and fry for about 5 minutes or until the onions are soft and slightly browned.
Add the rice and pour in the wine, then bring to a simmer and cook for about 3-4 minutes reducing slightly.
Pour in the stock and bring to boil, and then reduce the heat, season with salt and pepper, cover with a lid and cook for 15-20 minutes until the rice is tender and all the liquid is absorbed. Stir in the chorizo, parsley and serve.
#Tips from the butchers wife.
This was a big big hit in my house!! Delicious – if you’ve drank all the wine replace it with extra stock instead. But don’t worry all the alcohol is cooked off anyway. Serve with a salad or some vegetables.
Goodbye summer, Hello Autumn - September 2017
Is September really nearly over?? It's flying. I still feel caught in the whirlwind and I'm not talking about the weather. Our eldest little one started in Secondary School this year and the transition is just huge. She's adapted to her new start just brilliantly. So many different classrooms, so many teachers to get your head around and not to mention THE LOCKER. This is the most exciting thing about secondary school. I think, perhaps, they might watch too many American sitcoms but the locker is certainly where it's at!!
We also challenged ourselves to the tree top walk in Castlecomer Discovery Park and by we I mean the children. The third step of a ladder is three steps too high for me. The older you get the more you loose your nerve and it is to my shame that the children overcame their nerves and flew around the course, while mammy looked on with pride with my two feet secure on solid ground.
Back to school brings back to activities, piano, swimming, rugby etc. In and out of the car like yoyos but it's a choice and I'm glad they all have interests. It does leave structured opportunities to go for walks while we wait. Lovely time to chat and catch up on the news of the day. We also had a great project on Sligo and therefore we had to do some research on Countess Markievicz. I love history and talking about how things were and how far we've come. Go on the girls..
September 2017 also brought THAT MATCH. What a brilliant game. Déise abú!! Great sense of pride in our county or in other words I loves me county boi!! And then Puddles turned 1 - Puddles arrived at Christmas - and brought plenty of puddles with her. She's a little Jack Russell who absolutely torments the life out of Bear our collie labrador mix. So Puddles had to get a cake and we got a doddie cake from the Bushy Tailed Baker - a special dog cake. I kid you not. The dogs were trilled and the children got a great kick out of it.
So there you are. September nearly behind us. I love the crisp and cold weather of this time of year. Long walks wrapped up. Yummy comfort food and thoughts of lighting the fire. Bring it on...
Enjoy,
The Butchers Wife xx