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October 17, 2006
A new place to cook
Well, after a few years of searching - plus 2½ never-ending months of frustrating to-ing and fro-ing with mortgage providers, solicitors and auctioneers - the Boyfriend and I have finally managed to take possession of a little country cottage, our Irish bach, in North County Cork. It is a typically small Irish cottage with a pair of small bedrooms upstairs. It could not, by any stretch of the imagination, be described as roomy although the current lack of furniture does make it feel slightly more spacious!
Last Saturday was spent scrubbing and scouring every surface before we spent our first night there so, as you can imagine, very little cooking was done. We brought a couple of Nigella's Dense Chocolate Loaf Cakes down with us (Cee at Kitchen on Clarendon has the recipe online here), for visitors and to encourage the cleaners' morale at low blood-sugar moments. All meals seem to have been eaten at speed as we listed all the things that we had yet to organise. My exploration of my new kitchen was limited to turning on the cooker to heat up some comforting Chicken Noodle Soup that travelled over from my mother's 15-miles-distant kitchen in a borrowed saucepan.
Luckily we bought a table and chairs with the house so, even if there wasn't much time for eating there was something to sit at and on. Even better, we've also acquired a damson tree (and a pot of delicious damson jam from the former owners), a few blackcurrant bushes, three still-fruiting apple trees and a half an acre of overgrown land, already complete with numerous inhabitants of the rabbit variety. Looks like the Boyfriend's dream veggie garden may have to wait until we figure out a way of dealing with the infestation. At the moment, as we will still continue to live and rent in Dublin during the week, it may be a little difficult to figure out how best to rid ourselves of the beasties. Rabbit Stew, anyone?
Posted by Caroline at October 17, 2006 07:35 PM
Comments
Congratulations to you both!!!!!
Posted by: Neva at October 23, 2006 01:19 PM
Congratulations Caroline! It's such an exciting (and exhausting) time, isn't it?
Posted by: plum at October 23, 2006 11:24 PM
Wow, that looks gorgeous! Wishing you & himself many happy, fruitful (sorry) years there.
Posted by: Sinéad at October 24, 2006 06:04 PM
Congratulations, sounds like lotsa of fun ahead!
Posted by: Bron at October 25, 2006 10:30 AM
That is so cute Caroline. Congratulations on the purchase. I think I'd want to move there for the entire week.
Posted by: barbara at October 26, 2006 05:18 AM
Thanks everybody - it really is a dream come true! That weekend - we just had one night in the cottage - was just scrubbing and cleaning. We were so exhausted that it really didn't feel very real. But, just returned to Dublin after an extended four-day weekend there, it's starting to feel very home-like. We're getting the tour down to a fine art for all our visitors, not that it takes too long, given the size of the place...
I also had a good chance to test out the surprisingly good oven over the few days, what with baking batches of Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies and having my Mother, sisters, little brother and Granny over for Sunday lunch. I don't have to do too much cooking, though, with some tasty Irish Tea Brack arriving from my Mother on Friday and my Environmental Scientist cousin turning up with a trayful of yummy Millionaire Squares yesterday. No one needs to go home hungry from the cottage!
Posted by: Caroline at October 30, 2006 10:30 PM
