This week was all about preparation. Himself was celebrating a milestone birthday and had invited about 70 of his closest family members and friends to mark this momentous occasion with him.

Meal Plan for Week of 04/11/2024 – 10/11/2024

Monday – 04/11/2024

PREPARATION

The party is planned to start at 8pm so I am not planning to feed 70 people (or even the half that are likely to turn up) but as Himself has ordered a keg from Brew Crew definitely soakage will be required.

We don’t have enough plates or cutlery anyway for a party even a quarter that size.

I had decided therefore to begin the preparation on Monday with 2 delicious traditional Irish brown soda loaves from an ICA recipe that I picked up in a free booklet with The Irish Times many years ago. Always be checking those recipe booklets: I know that those recipes are often very well tested!

However after a week off the previous week and a boozy weekend away, I had a lot of catching up to do, got home later from work than planned and just wasn’t in the baking mood. So I postpone until Tuesday.

We still have to eat but will be dragging a lot of prepared meals from the freezer, the first being these tempting sounding treats. Anyone who listens to her podcast would know that my cousin Bea would be horrified.

• Curry from freezer – actually a delicious recipe for Slow Cooker Chicken Tikka Masala from Taming Twins. Though I would normally avoid recipes that use prepped curry paste due to all the added salt, she acknowledges that this recipe “sits firmly between the two camps of ‘a jar will do’ and ‘this dish takes many careful hours and rare ingredients to perfect’.” Deliciousness on a school night? Yes please!
• Naan from freezer: again on a weekday Himself would usually make from scratch but Dunnes have just added these to their range and they are delicious.

Tuesday – 05/11/2024

DINNER

• Five-bean chilli – a quick and easy veggie option and then I get back on track with my party prep. Normally I have dinner with my parents on a Tuesday on my way home from work but Mum completely understands when I explain I am getting a headstart on the preparation. <sarcasm>She is also a very organised person. </sarcasm>

Preparation

Walnut and treacle brown bread

Serving Size:

12

Time:

1hr 50 mins

Difficulty:

Easy

Ingredients

• 350g wholemeal flour
• 50g plain flour
• 1 level teaspoon bread soda aka baking SODA aka bicarbonate of soda
  1 pinch salt
• 50g porridge oats
• 2 large eggs
• 1 dessertspoon sunflower oil
• 500ml buttermilk
• 2 large dessertspoons treacle
• 75g chopped walnuts (optional)

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 170oC/gas mark 3.
2. Grease and line a 900g loaf tin (this is a fairly standard size.)
3. Put the flours, sieved bread soda, salt and porridge oats into a large mixing bowl and mix them well.
4. In a separate bowl, beat the eggs together with the oil and add to the dry mixture.
   Next, mix in the buttermilk and mix until it reaches a ‘sloppy’ consistency.
5. Finally, add the treacle and chopped walnuts.
6. Pour into a 900g loaf tin and smooth the top of the bread with a wet spoon. Sprinkle some seeds or porridge oats on top of the bread and bake in the oven for one hour.
7. After the hour has lapsed, remove the bread from the tin and return to the oven to bake for a further 20 minutes.
8. Remove from the oven and allow the bread to cool down.
9. The baked bread freezes well so consider making more than one!
   Recipe Credit: Edward Hayden

Wednesday – 06/11/2024

PREPARATION

So I have decided to make these mini-quiches (more later on these.) Now obviously I know I can buy any kind of pastry but at €4.25 for 640g it also makes delicious sense to make 1kg for about the same price. Well about the same price because I had to stop in Spar to buy the butter and it cost nearly a fiver. Doh.

I’ve been making this rough puff pastry for a few years and if you follow the instructions you can too! With Christmas on the horizon, it makes DELICIOUS mince pies. Enjoy!

• Mary Ellen McTeague’s rough Puff Pastry

DINNER

• Bolognese from freezer based on Rachel Allen’s recipe in Home Cooking

Thursday – 07/11/2024

Chicken & chorizo stew from freezer again from Taming Twins. I’m not crazy about this because the chorizo doesn’t have the nice texture it gets when you fry it off (as seen in this delicious bean and chorizo stew from 2006). It’s what the writer calls a “dump” recipe, where you dump all the frozen ingredients from a freezer bag into your slow cooker meaning you can prep at the weekend and pull out in the morning, slow cook and go. The whole idea is one and done so I get it. What you gain in speed, you deffo lose in flavour.

As we were tucking in, there was a ring at the doorbell.

Friday – 08/11/2024

Dinner

• Pizza as always. Thanks hun! (Although I did make Detroit Style Pizza a few months back after nerding out on this article from Serious Eats and then visiting Doom Slice in Dublin. I will write about this on another occasion.)

Preparation

Okay now things were serious. We were in day-before-territory. We had to pick up the keg and glasses from BrewCrew and I wanted to do a trawl of a few charity shops to get some extra glassware. We also needed to get a few more snacky bits from the shops and also some non-Guinness drinks (beer and non-alcoholic beverages.) I had also decided we would offer everybody a Dark and Stormy cocktail when they arrived so I needed as much ginger beer as I could find (just enough) and dark rum. If you would like to try this yourself at home, I recommend Bundaberg Ginger beer, although Fever Tree is okay too, and Kraken Dark rum. Delicious.

We also are very fancy in these parts and have a Sheridan’s CHeesemonger in our local Dunnes so I picked up some nice cheese, crackers and other charcuterie.

But things didn’t go as planned. Even though we had both taken the day off, Himself got dragged back into work. I kinda hung around to see if he could get out of it so everything was knocked off schedule.

I did make it to Oxfam Home on Francis St. where I picked up a gaggle of glasses, some really cute dessert plates and a couple of serving platters. Not necessarily cheaper but at least reused! Everything into the dishwasher when I got home.

• Ligurian Focaccia Himself made this, a tried and tested favourite here at home, to which he added roasted red peppers (jarred!) and blue cheese and another with serrano ham and black olives. Cut up into squares and served on a wooden board, this was a big hit.
  • While he had the oven on he also made a batch of Rachel Allen’s Nutty Granola again from Home Cooking. Not for the party but essential for breakfast!
• Easy 5-Ingredient Mini Quiche Cups – another big hit but I was horrified to discover, as I yoinked it out to start baking, that my mini muffin tray was only 12 holes not 24. So I had to make six batches instead of the planned three.
  I used my Rough Puff from the fridge (very well rested!), cutting numerous circles with this mad device that I “borrowed” from my parents’ kitchen many years ago. Basically it has two metal half moons back to back on a spindle which has a handle attached. You roll it across your pastry and it creates numerous circles. Perfect for mass production like this. I rolled out all the discs and rested them while each batch was baking.
• Grilled Chicken Caesar Lettuce Wraps these were also delicious. Not an obvious finger food but I liked the idea of including something a little healthier and green. Mostly I was getting them into their marinade.

Saturday – 09/11/2024

PREPARATION

All the Nippers pitched in prepping the house. The weather was forecast to be unseasonably balmy until 1am so we set up the bar in a gazebo on the patio which worked out perfectly.

We put the returned Nipper 1.0 to work chopping crudités and slicing limes (for the dark and stormys) and lemons.

We bought ice in the local Tesco which we used to fill our super camping coolbox and filled it up with soft drink, bottled beer, some white wine and prosecco. Big thanks to everyone who brought drinks too!

Of course, I had to bake and decorate a cake. Mum had agreed to bring her delicious coffee and walnut tray bake and I had planned to make cinchy but delicious toffee squares with a lemon drizzle icing. Himself loves these delicious banana nut brownies from Darina Allen’s cook book but as I was attempting to go cutlery and crockery free I knew they would be too squidgy. So instead I made two round cakes of this Banana Chocolate Cake and added chopped hazelnuts. I filled it with a praline ganache and decorated with a plain ganache (for fear it would look like an actual pile of shit.) It turned out very well and delicious.

I took zero photographs. I am definitely taking some of my learnings from this experience and will be applying them to my own future significant birthday celebrations…

Sunday – 10/11/2024

Dinner was supposed to be Lasagne with Bolognese from the freeezer but ended up being a mixemgatherem of whatever was leftover mainly chicken caesar salad on brown bread, crackers and cheese and Nipper 3.0’s Halloween haul. I was VERY tired. Forgive me.