Christmas cheer

The people from Barbour index sent us the following christmas advice:

Guidance
Have a Merry Green Christmas
Christmas is a time for overeating, overspending and overindulging. However it can also be a time when small changes could make a big difference for the environment. As always the Barbour team are here with some handy tips to make your festivities that little bit greener:
when doing your Christmas shopping make sure you re-use carrier bags
use environmentally friendly LED lights in your home on your Christmas tree
make sure you use rechargeable batteries in all the new Christmas gifts
recycle your Christmas tree
recycle your wrapping paper
recycle your Christmas cards
recycle packaging from gifts
where possible, buy locally produced food to cut down on travelling.
The Scottish Environment Minister, Michael Russell, has stated that it will only take a few small steps to make a huge difference this Christmas. For example he stated that rechargeable batteries have up to 28 times less impact on climate change then disposable ones which are often sent to landfill.
Discarded Christmas trees can also be turned into wood chip, feeding other trees, he noted.
Christmas should be a happy time for us all, please take some time to consider our environment too.

Our Christmas opening hours

Cathal Brugha Street's Library opening hours after Christmas...
Monday 5th January-
Thursday 8th January - 9am-9pm

Friday 9th January - 9am - 5pm
Saturday 10th December - 10am - 5pm

And normal term-time opening thereafter.
All times are subject to staff availability.

are you ready to order there....thanks a million

surly service, service with a sneer. how come there is so much of it around in ireland. Some of these people have to work hard to get it so bad. Tonight the Service industry, including the tourism and hospitality sectors, is the subject of the Prime time investigates special presented by Conor Pope. Starts at 9:30 RTE1.

There was also a related article about bad service and the effects it has on a company's business in last saturdays Irish Times

The Duck Has Landed

Heston's book is now in the library (see post below)

Mathematical gastronomy

On the one hand we're being told to be patriotic and shop in ireland, while on the other, Peter Robinson (NI's 1st minister) is tempting us North and congratulating the irish government on road improvements between dublin to newry. And it's hard to resist when you compare prices like this. - Heston Blumenthal he of Fat Duck (and previous blog postings here and here) fame will be in Harvey Nics, Dundrum on 12th dec. You can have lunch with the man for 180euros. They will be selling his book for 130euros - slighly cheaper than the price it is retailing for in a large dublin bookshop - 138euros. However its Recommended Retail Price (RRP) North of the border is £100stg. At current exchange that's 117euros. If you buy it on amazon it costs only £60stg = 70.70euros. So where would you buy it?

It's currently on order for the library and then of course you can look at it for free. You can also hear Heston for free on RTE Ryan Tubridy show on the friday morning before heading off to Dundrum

2 prestigious events hosted by the DIT School of Culinary Arts to get your teeth into next week. On monday 24th, "Teaching to Taste" a chefs workshop & demo on Tasting & Organoleptics (stimulation of the 5 senses you fool). As well as contributions from within the faculty outside speakers include Ross Lewis of Chapter One, Arun Kapil (Green Saffron) and Euro-toques Chefs Graham Neville. It's free and starts at 3. When you've recovered from that on the thursday it's the 4th DIT Irish Distillers Pernod Ricard Cocktail Competition. Discover more to creative drinks mixing than a Lesson st. sleaze club at 2am on a sunday morning. This is a chance for cocktail waiters and aspiring stirers and shakers to try out new recipes and benefit from the experience and knowledge of fellow colleagues and competitors. Blenders at the ready at 10am. Mine's a Gibson

Culinary History Collection

With the help of some of the Culinary Arts lecturers, Mairtin Mac Con Iomaire and Pat Zaidan amongst others, we are planning on building up a special collection of books and possibly at a later stage artifacts on Culinary History. It's still very much in its infancy with just over 60 titles in the collection at present but already it includes some rare gems and early 1st editions. Highlights:

an 1861 ed. of "Modern cookery for private families" by Eliza Action, "A woman's work is never done" George Vicaires' "Bibliographie Gastronomique" Alexandre Dumas (he of Count of Monte Cristo fame) on food , A copy of "Fancy ices" with the most magnificent cover illustration of a polar bear carrying a tray of sorbets.

My favourite at present is "The good housewife's jewel" by Thomas Dawson which will instruct you how to boil larks, plovers or purtenance, how to bake red deer, hares or porpoises (make sure to take off the skin), how to force a pig, smother a coney or bray gold. Also, and where would any houswife be without these, remedies for tissick, strangurie, for all manner of scabs, for sinews that be broken in two and even a fennel drink "for to make one slender"

The road less travelled

one of the magazines (what librarians call journals or periodicals ) that our Library subscribes to is Conde Nast Traveller - a glossy dream on porno-travel coffee table flicker featuring hideaways in the Maldives and hidden gems in Shangri-La. Great fun altogether. In the latest issue there is a lovely anecdote to all this over indulgence in a piece written by Alain de Botton (author of The art of travel) asking us to consider instead...holiday in Heathrow (not just overnight delay i suppose with baggage in Amsterdam) with optional trips to hangers and warehouses meeting baggage handlers, catering staff etc. Treat it he says like visiting a far flung remote civilisation and village. Or what about the Pylon route (as opposed to the Pilgrim route i suppose) following the line of pylons that bring London its electricity from Dungeness. Or an architectural tour of bridges and service stations on the M1. Just don't forget the sun cream.

PS in this same issue are the 2008 readers' travel awards. over 000's of nominations in many categories. The only mention that Ireland gets is at no.20 of favourite countries. Full results in Traveller in the library