For many people St.Patrick’s Day is a day of drinking, gaudy parades, lurid green leprechauns and shamrock shakes. There are a lot of great things about Ireland and very little of these are ever celebrated on our national feast day. Last weekend I had the opportunity to spend some time in a beautiful unspoiled part of Ireland, on Inchydoney Island in West Cork. It got me thinking a lot about Ireland and made me appreciate some of our real hidden treasures. Continue Reading…
There are some kitchen tools that I just can’t seem to live without. I only ever notice this when I go to someone else’s kitchen, and I start ransacking their drawers desperately looking for the right type of tool. I guess the more you cook, the more you appreciate good utensils. In my time, I have bought lots of crappy cookware, only to throw them in a bin few months later, with a shake of my head -I should have known better. I have finally learned, it really is better to buy the right utensils rather than any old thing. So here are are a few of my tried and tested tools, that I just can’t seem to function without. Continue Reading…
It all started with a brown piece of LEGO®. To me it looked like a shiny cube of delicious milk chocolate. Wouldn’t it be great if it actually was chocolate? The cream coloured pieces could be sweet white chocolate and the glossy black pieces a rich dark chocolate. If only that were possible, I thought. Well, with the help of some magic blue stuff, I made my chocolate LEGO® dream come true. It was pretty simple to make them too. Continue Reading…
I love pancakes so much. I get very excited every year on Pancake Tuesday and say to myself ‘I should make pancakes more often’ and then of course I forget and another year passes and I haven’t made any pancakes. I love the art of pancake making though, swishing the batter into the hot pan, moving your arms about to coat every last bit of the pan. Not to mention the amazing smell of pancakes cooking. I adore the way they turn a beautiful mottled golden brown. And of course the best bit, the art of flipping the pancake. Not that it always turns out right, sometimes I have use my hands to fix it up. I’m lucky to be blessed with asbestos hands and no amount of heat seems to affect my fingers. My Mum was a master at pancake making and I loved watching her make delicious thin and crispy pancakes, the thinner the better. Continue Reading…
I don’t know about you, but I kind of think girls get a lot of spoiling on Valentines Day and the men are sometimes a bit left out. So ladies, this is one for the men. This is the perfect brunch to spoil the man in your life and earn you lots of brownie points. The creamy hollandaise, buttery spinach and delicious smoked salmon is sure to get his heart racing. It is a bit decadent and takes a bit of time to make, but Valentines is only once a year. Continue Reading…
Love Heart sweets were one of my favourite treats as a child. We used to swap them in the playground and used to feel very adult and grown-up, exchanging our secret messages. Some of the messages on the sweets, like ‘Gee Whizz’ and ‘Cutie Pie’ weren’t exactly part of our young Irish lexicon, so they felt all the more exotic to us. They also tasted yummy and fizzy and gave us that sugar high that we craved as kids. I ate a Love Heart sweet recently and couldn’t get over how sweet it was. I guess I’ve grown up, and my tastes have changed. Messages have changed too on the newer Love Heart sweets and you are more likely to see Text me and Email me instead of Gee Whizz. It’s funny to see how these old fashioned sweets are keeping up with the times. Continue Reading…
You can find some of my favorite gluten-free recipes in my eBook available from Amazon.
I'm Vicky and Stasty is my simple and tasty food recipe blog. I love to cook and I love to talk about food, so this blog is really my ramblings and thoughts about cooking and eating. Some of the recipes are my own and some are ones that I found on the net or picked up from my favorite cookbooks. I cook everything in our little kitchen in beautiful Washington. I am aided and abetted by my I.T guru/tantrum-trouble-shooter/editor and chief-taster otherwise known as the OH or Nelius.