The main man of the Irish blog scene, Mr Mulley, has just launched some lovely bloggy prizes: Check out these cute Blog Post Of The Month trophies:

It’s a really cool idea, as there is just so much good blogging going on out there.

All you gots to do to nominate your fave post of the month is blog about it and link to here, or fill in this form.

He’s currently accepting nominations for April posts so dig through whatever made you think/giggle last month and nominate away.

Glorious out, isn’t it?

Dublin just thrives in this weather, we love it. Everyone is in good form, there’s a really nice buzz in the air.

Our hood, the Grand Canal Dock area, works really well when it’s nice and sunny; Ocean, where our yummy chicken wings come from, has a great outdoor boozing area and it’s just jammers these past few days.

There are now three restaurants along Hanover Quay - Ely HQ, Milano and Riva, a cute new little place brought to us from the people at The Winding Stair. All the restaurants allow for outdoor seating, so there’s very a cool, laidback Mediterreanan vibe along the waterside; close your eyes and we could be in Barcelona/Paris/San Sebastian/insert as appropriate. (It makes me think of how pissed off I was when McDowell’s wine bar plans got scrapped.)

Also, according to the Tribune, there are more epicurean delights on the way for Grand Canal Dock, among them Real Gourmet Burger (YUM!) and an Asian restaurant.

But, to be honest, I’ve been spending most of this sunny time on our west-facing balcony. When we first moved in, the fact that we weren’t facing the water seemed a bit of a bummer, but coming home to see sunshine streaming across the city (you can see the SIPTU building and the Spire to the right, Dublin Mountains to the left) is really lovely.

I’ve stuck the lounger out, grabbed what’s left of the Sunday papers, and popped Nialler 9’s incredibly awesome Summer Sunburn mixtape on the iPod; that’s it all takes for me to be perfectly blissed out for a good hour or so. That, and maybe a BBQ burger…

And with that, here are some recent BBQ pics.

So. We’re wandering through Arnotts last week in search of a new bin - one whose lid doesn’t come flying off when you hit the foot pedal just a teeny bit harder than expected - and, on our way out, spot these guys.

I have no idea what dance group they were from or why they were there, but they were giving it socks.

A huge, huge amount of my photo learning has happened on the net; in fact I’ve only read a couple of books, nearly everything else - from what lenses to buy to how to fix dodgy white balance - I’ve picked up thanks to very generous and talented bloggers and photographers providing tutorials, tips, links or simply inspiration.

I trawl though lots of very cool stuff at the weekends and have a nice chunky photography bookmarks folder, filled with sites I go back to again and again as well as random interesting photo tid bits.

So, every now again - I’m hoping for it to be weekly, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves - I’m going to hit the blog up with some nice photo links for you to click, and here’s the first lot:

Photojojo direct you to a cool way to pimp your point and shoot

Midas touch: Really interesting piece on the king of touch-ups, Pascal Dangin (288 retouched pics in the March issue of Vogue alone!)

Vote for Gingerpixel in Canon’s The Assigment

An oldie but a goodie: One of my fave photogs, Emily McCall, gives us a photo tour of her beautiful new house (seven photo-filled posts, all gorgeous)

Via Mulley: chalk-outlined shadows on Flickr

Lilli Forbeg has some v cool shots of Mick Pyro and the rest of those crazy kids from Republic of Loose (how did she fit all of them in?!)

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I’ve gotten to snap some very cute kids these past few weeks; above is the very smart and very adorable Casey.

Next up, , lots of my cousins and of other kids from the circus.

This is my cousin Stephen, in a rare, not-pulling-a-funny-face shot:

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Kourtney, also my cousin, looking cute in her show-time make-up:

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Another cousin, Olivia, who is making her Communion in a few weeks:

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Her little brother JJ, looking cool and solemn:

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And finally, the three boys, hanging out and looking disinterested and cool, as only teen boys can:

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The last two are probably my favourite, just because the light had gotten so lovely by then.

I’ll be keeping my fingers, toes, and eyes crossed in the hope that this Saturday might be as gorgeous as the last so that we can head into Temple Bar again for some market-y fun.

It doesn’t matter how many times we’ve already done it in a given month or how many hung-over hens we have to push our way through: The food market @ Meeting House Square always puts me in a good mood. At this stage, we have a well-worn trail: Make our way in around one-ish, and spend a while admiring the pretty, colourful organic fruit (it’s a bit pricey though):

We then toy with the idea of trying something different - mussels maybe? Some cheese perhaps? But no, we inevitably end up standing in front of the Mexican stall ordering an organic chicken fajita (served with a dollop of very authentic frijoles refritos, guacoamole and salsa, hold the cheese and sour cream please), picking up a big bottle of the cloudy, tangy apple juice and plonking ourselves down wherever we can.

Then, maybe some nice coffee, some fresh veggies or herbs for later (hmmm… much later: just realised that organic rocket is still looking at me guiltily in the fridge; and I feel even guiltier now after reading this) and, finally, a few greedy scoops of chocolate-covered hazelnuts and flakey truffle thingies from Chez Emily.

Yum.

Definitely worth a visit. And while you’re there, pick up some of these:

Blokes in their mid-20s are difficult to buy for, especially ones that are working full-time; anything they need/want, they pretty much buy themselves. So that’s how I ended up getting Eoghan a half day chocolate-making course for his birthday. Plus, his tooth is almost as sweet as mine so I figured he would at least enjoy the eating part!

The workshop is run by Fabulous Food Trails, who do loads of cooking days - Japanese Days, Cocktail Evenings and (the next thing on my hit list) Thai Days - in Dublin as well as food trails throughout the country.
This one was headed up by award-winning chocolatier Benoit Lorge. He makes beautiful artisan chocolates in Bonane, Co Kerry, and runs adult and children’s workshops there too, but this was his first time traveling up to Dubin to give one.
Put simply, it was pots and pots of chocolatey fun. Over a cup of hot chocolate (made on the spot) with cinnamon and orange zest, Benoit talked us through chocolate history - from the ancient Aztecs, who, it’s thought, used cocoa beans as currency, through to Columbus who brought it back to Spain’s royals, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella (apparently, they didn’t like it much. It wasn’t until twenty years later, when notorious Spanish conquistador Cortez re-introduced it, this time with sugar and vanilla, that the courts fell head over heels for the stuff, even trying to keep it a secret!).

Benoit then discussed cocoa production today - where most of it comes from, where the good stuff comes from; he even gave us the names and details of chocolate suppliers in Ireland who would probably be willing to sell you small quantities of high quality raw materials like cocoa buttons and cocoa powder.

We then got stuck into some delish chocolate mousse, served with juicy strawberries and a glass of organic Prosecco. Mmmm.

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After that, the fun messy bit got underway - melting chocolate down, tempering it, adding fillings (honey grenache for one and rum for the other), pouring it into moulds. There was lots of messiness, lots of chocolate-stained faces and sticky fingers.

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Benoit is a brilliant chef, really passionate and enthusiastic about what he does - I’ve never met someone so eager for me to eat good chocolate! He points out that even though Ireland has lots of chocolate guzzlers (back in 2006 we had the highest per capita consumption of chocolate in the world and I’m guessing we’re still in the top three), most of us just eat the crap stuff, filled with vegetable oils, milk solids and very few health benefits. He optimistically added that this is very rapidly changing and, thanks to our maturing choccie palate, business for him is booming.

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In between greedily scoffing the chocolate, I managed to take a few pics (you should have seen the state of the poor camera - chocolate finger prints everywhere!):

]]> http://casacaseycourtney.wordpress.com/2008/05/01/mmmm-chocolate/feed/ Nathalie Chocolate making day! Chocolate making day Chocolate making day Chocolate making day Chocolate making day Chocolate making day http://casacaseycourtney.wordpress.com/2008/04/30/up-to-shutter-speed/ http://casacaseycourtney.wordpress.com/2008/04/30/up-to-shutter-speed/#comments Wed, 30 Apr 2008 08:18:22 +0000 Nathalie http://casacaseycourtney.wordpress.com/?p=150

Thanks to the very lovely Annmarie of IBlogFashion for featuring me in Shutter Speed, the first of her series of posts on photogs. I’m well chuffed

Check out her sartorially clued in site here.

Also worth clicking are the photogs and photographers I mentioned - Gingerpixel, Rymus (here as well) and Philip Pankov.

I read two very different articles about two very different women today, and yet was really struck by the similarities in their stories.

First up was New York magazine’s cover story on 52-year old Zoe Cruz, entitled, They fired the most powerful woman on Wall Street.

Next was Vanity Fair’s interview with 15-year old Disney star Miley Cyrus, published alongside those Annie Leibovitz pictures.

Both women were hugely successful in their fields - Cruz brought in billions for Morgan Stanley, she was the ultimate leap-frogging alpha female; Cyrus has made Disney billions through her kids TV show Hannah Montana, and has two multi-platinum records and a sold out 70 date tour, the ultimate teen sensation.
But now, they’re both in the spotlight having been stripped of their crowns. Cruz was tipped as the next CEO of Morgan Stanley, but was fired last November; Miley has done serious damage to her sweetly innocent Disney image thanks to some candid bra-flashing photos and that sultry Vanity Fair shoot.

They have both been described as having made the same mistake: play the game too well and the game eventually plays you.

These women (can I really call a 15-year old a ‘woman’, even if she is a mega star?) were hugely successful and brought in buckets of money but were under constant scrutiny, with people waiting eagerly for them to mess up.

To quote New York magazine’s Joe Hagan:

“If women across Wall Street viewed Cruz’s firing as a blow, there were men at Morgan Stanley who seemed almost gleeful about it. The woman they had nicknamed the “Czarina,” the “Wicked Witch,” and, most famously, “Cruz Missile” was out of the picture. They joked that it was worth the $9 billion loss to have her gone.”

While Bruce Handy at Vanity Fair notes:

“With Lindsay Lohan rehabbed and Britney Spears under psychiatric care, the tabs are looking to Cyrus to flame out, or at least do something mildly outrageous”. (Ironically, it was that very article - in which she says Sex And The City is her favourite show - and its images that has caused the outrage.)

So now they’re both at the centre of scandal, both played by the game, both feeling hurt and double-crossed; Cruz “feels the way the company laid the blame at her feet—the way Mack [her boss] betrayed her—was unjust” while Cyrus told People: “I took part in a photo shoot that was supposed to be ‘artistic’ and now, seeing the photographs and reading the story, I feel so embarrassed.”

I guess what interests me most is not the individual stories themselves, but our appetite for and reaction to them. How do women relate to these women? Do we cheer them on, are we indifferent, do we begrudge the success or feel no identification with this breed of super performers?

They both seemed on top of it, hitting their mark, having it all. And now the industry has chewed them up and spat them out. Is it a reflection on how successful women are seen and treated? How they have to behave if they want to win? We know the stereotypes - teen stars are urged to start sexing it up at a younger age if they want to make the transition to adult stardom; female traders know they need need to be ruthless, blunt, ballsy.

Or are these simply sad stories showing the uglier sides of two cut-throat money-grabbing industries? If so, do similar stories involving men grab our attention quite as well?

I’m all questions now, so I think I’ll go and ponder this one for a while.

Turning 26 mainly. And doing so with little grace or added maturity. We threw a house party to mark the occasion and had to have another one the weekend just gone to get rid of the booze we accumulated the first time around (the first two guests both arrived clutching a shoulder of vodky)- A “well done” in passing to Munster for winning through to the H-Cup Final yesterday.

Also going to the gym a lot in the past week or so. I’d always hoped I could live with the insouciance and devil-may-care dissoluteness of Dylan Moran’s character in Black Books but alas I caved under the weight of my long-suffering system’s warning signs and have attempted to better my body. Firstly, the theory…

Now, the practice…

Still it’s early days yet. The marathon wasn’t run in one day as the saying goes.