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I try my very best to not screw up. I don’t like that sinking feeling of making mistakes. I spent the early part (the first 40 years) of my working life on the service side of business. Having spent my time always trying (and occasionally failing) to meet the needs, wants and even whims of my customers, I have been left with a Pavlovian reaction to my mistakes. I own up, I apologise and I ask what I can do to make it right. So, picture me in the butcher’s wearing my mask, talking through the small gap in the perspex screen and intending to ask for a generous half kilo of venison mince. What arrived was a generous half kilo of veal mince.

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While you and your granny were around in the toilet roll aisle having a punch-up with a tattoo encrusted weightlifter, I was quietly loading up my trolly in the dried goods aisle. Down the far end from the scrum and bloodletting at the pasta, I was at the couscous. There was really no need to stock up as a kilo (2lb) packet costs less than two euro (or $2 for that matter). It can produce enough carbohydrate laden deliciousness to quell the panic in any pandemic fearing hoarder.

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Smoked haddock, goats cheese and spinach ravioli (13 of 15) I want you to think of this ravioli as the culinary equivalent of a Facebook post. Not because I went to the trouble of digging out the fancy plate with the blue edge, the matching napkin and the table cloth in a colour almost exactly that of the Facebook logo. These all give some subtle brand support but, they are not the point. In reality it’s all a bit more psychological. 

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Crab and prawn pasta (18 of 21)I am a pretty well organised person. Too well organised, some might say. Often, I hear the family muttering of OCD as I arrange neat rows of tins in kitchen cupboards. I must have a list when I go shopping. I like to have it in ‘Notes’ on my phone so I can delete the items as I pop them into my trolley. Nothing left in the note means everything I need has been purchased. However, I have a blind spot. A big blind spot. My weeks’ thinking starts on Sunday (my usual blog post cooking day). As a result, I have everything planned for Sunday breakfast, Sunday’s Family Dinner and for evening meals for the early part of the following week. I do the shopping on Saturday morning. I have a dreadful habit of forgetting to get anything for Saturday evening. If I lived alone, this would not be a problem. However, I live with the Wife….

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Mushroom ravioliAnybody who reads this blog regularly will know that vegetarian stuff is a bit of a rarity (usually an accident, in fact). Given that I like to discommode myself occasionally, and to try different things, it seemed reasonable to go veg for a change.  So I got to thinking of salting some cabbage or frying some carrots, or whatever it is you vegetarians get up to when you are working up an appetite. Nothing inspiring came to mind. Eventually, I had a notion that I should try some ravioli. I hadn’t prepared it in a while. I could easily make it a vegetarian dish.

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Prawns, Pesto and Fettuccine (13 of 15)Over the weekend, the Wife persuaded me to take her out to Howth (a tedious drive or a glorious cycle around Dublin Bay from our house), to see what was going on at the Dublin Bay Prawn Festival. Being the obliging person that I am, I got behind the wheel. As much as I got behind the wheel, Howth has got behind this festival and there was a great atmosphere out there. The festival tent had a raft of seafood treats on offer.

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Smoked salmon, goat's cheese and chive ravioli (9 of 14)Any of you enthusiastic cooks or chefs reading this know the feeling. My eldest talked me into driving her to T K Maxx so she could get (I could buy) some clothes. I found myself willingly agreeing. That store always has an eclectic mix of cooking stuff. There are often interesting end-of-line items at a decent price. It’s a great place to find something that will make a difference to the cooking. While eldest daughter worked the rails downstairs, sucking the life out of my current account, I was upstairs, spending the princely sum of €3 on my latest culinary treasure, a ravioli cutter. 

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Italian-meatballsPretty aggressive headline, don’t you think? There are a couple of reasons for this. Reason number one is because that’s what the people around the table told me. Reason number two is that I want some reaction. I am fed up reading recipes for meatballs (and all sorts of other stuff) that just can’t be any good. In my research for this post, I came across one recipe that recommended boiling the meatballs in the sauce for three hours. Fine if you want to fire them out of a canon to sink a ship but not much use if you want to eat them. Get real. 

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Smoked salmon carbonara (1 of 13)I had laid my hands on a nice piece of smoked salmon. That is, I had fallen victim of subtle retailing tactics. I am a sucker when it comes to buying good food. “Something around one and a half kilos?”  Lisa, she of George’s Fish Shop, had suggested to me. Not wanting to look mean or less than masculine, I of course, accented.

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