Review-The Irish Countrywomen's Association Cookbook

I will admit here that the previous post on this book originated from the publishers, Gill & Macmillan posting a delicious looking photograph of carrot and pineapple squares and me going hunting to find out about the book http://dublinduchess.blogspot.ie/2012/10/irish-countrywomans-association-cookbook.html

Imagine my delight when a copy came through my door for a full perusal. This is a beautifully produced book with its wholesome cover image of eggs in an attractive holder and milk in a glass pint bottle. Edited by Aoife Carigy, it has some beautiful photography by Joanne Murphy of country houses and shabby chic kitchen agas as well of course of delicious looking food.


The ICA was established in 1910 and is an Irish institution. Despite having produced local cookbooks over the years, this is the first national one to have been compiled. Liz Wall, the National President of the ICA tells us in the introduction that up until the late 1920s, potatoes, cabbages and onions were the only vegetables grown throughout Ireland (imagine!) but that in 1929 the ICA bought and distributed seeds of new vegetables and taught its members how to grow and cook them. The network of country markets set up from 1947 helped home producers find a way to market and sell them.
           Early ICA photo

Today we have the ICA Boot camp on television so the ladies truly still move with the times  as well as having been creators of change in the past.


The book covers recipes of;
Soups, Salads & Starters
Main Meals (with the most delicious photo of Dublin Coddle you'll ever rest your eyes upon!)
On The Side- Veg, Salad, Dips and Preserves
Baking & Sweet Things (don't miss the pretty strawberry sables and the coffee mud cake)

As well as the recipes there are intermittent tip pages; how to cook for a crowd, how to cook within a budget, how to cook potatoes (10 tips!), how to make preserves and how to bake.

With an appendix of historic members of the ICA and what they achieved this book is truly a dedication to the pioneering work that the ICA has done and continues to do today. Well done ladies- we salute you! Publishers: http://www.gillmacmillanbooks.ie/

New Dublin Art Listings-Week 19th October 2012

Dublin and Art- see previous posting for some on-going exhibitions; http://dublinduchess.blogspot.ie/2012/10/dublin-art-listings-of-interest-week.html

Airfix Days Peppercanister Gallery, 3 Herbert St
Themes of "childhood and nostalgia" by Abigail O'Brien. Tues-Fri 10am- 5.30pm, Sat 10am-1pm Until Nov 10


From Pupil to Master Solomon Fine Art, Balfe St
A show of new glass by established and emerging artists. Mon-Fri 10am-5.30pm, Sat 10am-1pm Until Oct 27


Merlin James Kerlin Gallery, Anne's Lane, Sth Anne St
New work by the artist. Mon-Fri 10am-5.45pm, Sat 11am-4.30pm Until Nov 24


Land and Sea and Electrical Impressionism Taylor Galleries, 16 Kildare St
Solo shows by Seán McSweeney and by John Shinnors. Mon-Fri 10.30am- 5.30pm, Sat 11am-3pm Until Oct 27
 

Limitless Inspirational Arts, 7 Herbert St
New works by Solheim Cup and Curtic Cup event artist Lucy Tormey. Mon-Fri 9.30am- 5.30pm Until Nov 9


Kevin McAleenan Sol Art Gallery, 8 Dawson St
Recent works. Until Oct 29 01-6750972


Sinéad Ní Mhaonaigh Kevin Kavanagh, Chancery Lane
Recent paintings. Tues-Fri 10.30am-5.30pm, Sat 11am- 5pm Until Nov 17


Moons, Blooms & Everyday Skies Gallery Zozimus, 56 Francis St
Paintings by Vera Gaffney. Until Oct 31
 

Nowhere Here, Somewhere There Talbot Gallery & Studios
Work by Ciara O'Hara. Tues-Fri 10.30am-5pm, Sat 11am-4pm Until Nov 3


Phase Green on Red Gallery, 26-28 Lombard St
New work by John Graham. Tues-Fri 10am-6pm, Sat 1-4pm Until Nov 17


Root Temple Bar Gallery
Bea McMahon's show includes a lens- based work made at Het Twiske, a Dutch polder landscape. Tues-Sat 11am-6pm Until Nov 24

Book Review: Old Albert by Brian J.Showers

Old Albert, An Epilogue by Brian J.Showers, originally from Wisconsin but living now in Rathmines, Dublin. The beautiful, at first enigmatic book cover of five dead, labelled skylarks is by the illustrator Jason Zerrillo.


This short but engaging book is a history. It is the history that surrounds the house Larkhill in Rathmines. Built in 1842 by Ellis Grimwood, a passionate ornithologist  who corresponded with the young Charles Darwin,it was this passion that brought him to Rathmines, then still a rural out water of Dublin. In late 1843 he was visited by the then young journalist, to become author, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu who reported that Grimwood had become very solitary. In 1844 he abruptly left Larkhill, moving to Howth where he lived until 1902, traveling every morning by chartered boat to study the seabirds on Ireland's Eye. And this was where his dead body was found by picnickers.
 Victorian Howth with a view of Ireland's Eye

Staying in Howth, as an aside almost, Showers tells the tale of a murder in 1852 involving William Burke Kirwan, an anatomical artist living on Merrion Street whose wife's drowned body was found on Ireland's Eye where they had gone for a picnic. But rumours of foul play and the emerging knowledge of Kirwan's double life led to his arrest.

Larkhill was sold in 1845 to the then famous Dublin vintner James Walker for use as storehouse and office. There they found the cages and over a hundred dead birds. His new young wife Eva turned out to be much more popular than her 'know-it-all' husband, which eventually caused him to jealously curtail her social life and confine her to her rooms.. The sensation that followed involving hangings, bloodied bedsheets and missing bodies is worthy of the best murder mystery.


In 1890 the house was bought by the Holy Ghost Fathers to establish a school. Nearly fifty years empty, it was one of the Fathers who was to make a grim discovery in the former aviary. Run as a school then for 25 years, falling pupil numbers closed it. Leased for a short time to Sacred Order of the Mysteries of Thoth, a mystical society keen on the occult, wine and drugs it is here that the unusual history of Larkhill comes to a close.

Really this book is the story of how a friend of Showers gathered together a lifetime's collection of documents relating to Larkhill and handed them over. A pupil himself  at St. Mary's school, as Larkhill was to become and is now, he told of the ghost stories surrounding the school and his own experience of witnessing the effect on a pupil of hiding in the old out-of-bounds aviary building.
The author outside Larkhill as it is today.

With an afterword by Adam Golaski, the publisher of New Genre this is a fascinating little book. It satisfies the historian in you, the sensationalist, the interest in Dublin and just a need for a good story.

Irish Publishers-Appletree Press

Appletree Press is based in the quaint sounding 'The Old Potato Station' in Belfast and is one of the largest publishers in Ireland of gift and guidebooks aimed at the international market. As a result of this they have books published in eight languages including Russian and Japanese.

Three recent publications are Stone by Stone, Keep Her Flying: Ireland's Rally Heroes by Richard Young and John McNally: Boxing's Forgotten Hero by Barry Flynn.



Stone by Stone by Patricia Warke, Bernard Smith & John Savage is really a guide aimed at those restoring or using stone. This is a skill like many others that has been near lost over the last one hundred years resorting in poor care of masonry and use of imported stone over native. An interesting if specialist subject, a book for the artist, craft worker, stone worker or architect. 

















Keep Her Flying- Ireland's Rally Heroes by Richard Young is a petrol-heads dream. With rallying being the most popular Irish motor sport, this book looks at the history of rallying, a fast, exciting and mud-splattering sport carried out on public roads. The stories are told of the main players in this super-octane sport along with many action photographs.

John McNally: Boxing's Forgotten Hero by Barry Flynn  tells the story of one of Ireland's Olympic medal winners who has now been forgotten in the mists of time. This is unusual in a country that doesn't usually fail to honour it's heroes. It is the tale of a Belfast man who escaped the streets to become the first Irishman to win a medal for boxing, a silver in Helsinki in 1952. Maybe after Katie Taylor's success in London this year there will be renewed interest in the history of the sport in Ireland.

This is a selection of the most recently published books by Appletree Press, the second company to feature in this series of articles 'Irish Publishers.'

Women's History Ireland

If you are at all interested in the history of women, and more particularly women's history in Ireland then you will find the collection of articles published in The Irish Times yesterday fascinating.
http://www.irishtimes.com/indepth/votes-for-women/


The authors are a who's who of major writers in the field of Women's Studies and Women's History in Ireland. They include Catriona Crowe, Maria Luddy, Margaret Ward, Rosemary Cullen and Leeann Lane- not forgeting the venerable Mary Robinson. anyone who has studied this field will know they are the royalty of Irish Women's History. Not discounting the unmentioned writers of course.

From the life of the poor in 1911 and Irish Suffragists to Home Rule and the role of Feminism today, every aspect is covered in superb detail, readable for the interested party and not just the academic.
The more familiar names in Women's history like Hanna Sheehy Skeffington are there but also lesser known players in the early fight for women's equal rights. A fascinating area of the country's history it deserves more coverage like this to bring the names into regular knowledge of Irish history along with our other heroes and not as an aside to the wider field.

The Who's who of Contributors to articles
Carmel Quinlan-Genteel Revolutionaries: Anna and Thomas Haslam and the Irish Women’s Movement (2002).
Caitriona Clear-lectures in history, NUI Galway. Has published on nuns in 19th-century Ireland, women in 20th-century Ireland and many other topics.
Leeann Lane-head of humanities, Mater Dei, Dublin. Author of Rosamond Jacob: Third Person Singular (2010).
Rosemary Cullen Owens-lectures on 19th and20th-century feminism in Ireland. Author of  books on female suffrage including Smashing Times: A History of the Irish Women’s Suffrage Movement 1889-1922 (1984).
Margaret Ward-director of Women’s Resource and Development Agency, Belfast. Publications include Unmanageable Revolutionaries: Women and Irish Nationalism (1983) and biographies of Maud Gonne and Hanna Sheehy Skeffington.
Diane Urquhart- Senior lecturer modern Irish history & department head, Institute of Irish Studies,  University of Liverpool. Published widely on Irish women’s political activism in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Maria Luddy- Professor modern Irish history, University of Warwick & chair of history department.
Mary McAuliffe- lectures on women’s and gender history, University College Dublin & is president of Women’s History Association of Ireland
William Murphy -lecturer Irish studies, Mater Dei, Dublin. Published on prewar suffragism and political imprisonment.
Louise Ryan -professor & co-director of social policy research centre, Middlesex University.  Published widely on suffragism, nationalism and migration.
Maryann Gialanella Valiulis-former director of centre for gender and women’s studies at Trinity College Dublin.
Therese Moriarty -labour and women’s historian & committee member of the Irish Labour History Society.
Mary Cullen -former senior lecturer modern history, NUI Maynooth. Publication inthe history of Irish feminism.
Catriona Crowe-head of special projects at the National Archives of Ireland.
Mary Robinson-former president of Ireland &former UN high commissioner for human rights.
Susan McKay -award-winning journalist,author of Northern Protestants: An Unsettled People (2000).
Joyce Padbury-researcher of life and work of Mary Hayden, published articles on her as educator, historian and pioneering feminist.
Margaret Ó hÓgartaigh- author of Kathleen Lynn, Irishwoman, Patriot, Doctor (2006).
Senia Paseta-tutorial fellow modern history, St Hugh’s College, Oxford. Author of Before the Revolution: Nationalism, Social Change and Irelands Catholic Elite, 1879-1922 (1999).

UUUmmm- sconey-liscious!

Right after commenting on the delights of breakfast in Ely and La Maison on Tuesday (see http://dublinduchess.blogspot.ie/2012/10/breakfast-in-dublin-2.html ), Citron Restaurant in the Fitzwilliam hotel put up this scrummy picture on their facebook page;


Well if your mouth isn't watering already at the sight of that jam and cream laden scone then you need your eyes tested! Citron are serving these homemade delights with tea or coffee as elevenses for €5.95. So cross over the green from Grafton Street and take an early break from your shopping, or just go there first and enjoy your tea in the beautiful surroundings of the Fitzwilliam Hotel.
http://www.fitzwilliamhoteldublin.com/index.html

Saba- Pink Ribbon Cocktail

Now doesn't this look delicious! And so pretty too!


It's called the 'Pink Ribbon Cocktail' and it has been created by that lovely restaurant Saba on Clarendon Street Dublin 2, in conjunction with the worthy charity The Marie Keating Foundation for their campaign to raise breast cancer awareness. You will be able to order it until the end of October and for each cocktail sold €1 from the sale (cocktail price €7.95) will be donated to the charity. What better way to donate money.
http://www.sabadublin.com/
http://www.mariekeating.ie/