Happy St Patrick's Day

In honour of At. Patrick's Day I thought I would post some photos we took of the Temple Bar district in Dublin.

Temple Bar (Irish: Barra an Teampaill) is an area on the south bank of the River Liffey in central Dublin, Ireland. Unlike the areas surrounding it, Temple Bar has preserved its medieval street pattern, with many narrow cobbled streets. It is promoted as "Dublin's cultural quarter" and has a lively nightlife that is popular with tourists.

The area is bounded by the Liffey to the north, Dame Street to the south, Westmoreland Street to the east and Fishamble Street to the west. It probably got its name from the Temple family, who lived in the area in the 17th century; Sir William Temple, provost of Trinity College Dublin in 1609, had his house and gardens here. However it got its name, the earliest historical reference to the name Temple Bar is on a 1673 map.


Fishamble Street in Temple Bar was the location of the first performance of Handel's Messiah on 13 April 1742. An annual performance of theMessiah is held on the same date at the same location. The republican revolutionary group, the Society of the United Irishmen, was formed at a meeting in a tavern in Eustace Street in 1791.


During the 19th century, the area slowly declined in popularity, and in the 20th century, it suffered from urban decay, with many derelict buildings. Its unfashionability probably saved it from Dublin's property developers, who destroyed much of the city's historic architecture during the 1960s.


The area is the location of many Irish cultural institutions, including the Irish Photography Centre (incorporating the Dublin Institute of Photography, the National Photographic Archives and the Gallery of Photography), the Ark Children's Cultural Centre, the Irish Film Institute, incorporating the Irish Film Archive, the Temple Bar Music Centre, the Arthouse Multimedia Centre, Temple Bar Gallery and Studio, the Project Arts Centre, the Gaiety School of Acting, IBaT College (City Centre), as well as the Irish Stock Exchange and the Central Bank of Ireland.

Friday Favorite Finds - Recipes

Please link up to a post containing your list of recipes to try -- do not link up individual recipes please, save those for other linkys.  Be sure to leave a link back here to Finding Joy in my Kitchen.

Orange cranberry yogurt cake

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Tiropitas - cheese pies

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Guinness chocolate beer mug cakes

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Adult Irish oatmeal cookies

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Irish cream cake


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Guinness and Dubliner cheese soup


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Crispy popovers with dark chocolate Irish cream sauce

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It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

It's Monday! What are you reading? is hosted by Sheila at  Book Journey. For this meme, bloggers post what they finished last week, what they're currently reading, and what they plan to start this week. 

FINISHED THIS WEEK:

Synopsis here.

Blah, did not enjoy this book at all, I skimmed through it so I could finish it. There wasn't a single character that I liked. Other than the twelve year old Ellen and the office manager Meera no one else had any common sense. They were all a bunch of whiny grownups expecting life to be a bed of roses. Just too much like a soap opera to me, an American one at that!


Not a good week so far, I abandoned the next book on page 121.

I tried, I really did to like this book. I enjoyed the trips back and forth between the generations but the main characters were the most insipid women that I had to give up. I seriously couldn't have cared less what the mystery was surrounding family.

She finds out on her 21st birthday (her father felt he had to tell her, why??) that her loving, adoring family is not her biological family. Her father had found her as a very small child and raised her in a wonderful home with great parents and adoring little sisters.
So she breaks up with her perfect fiancee who also adores her, settles for an idiot of a husband, has a  daughter, who turns into a horrible mother who in turn raises another dysfuntional child and so on.

Synopsis here.

I didn't love this book, it was ok (a really bad reading week for me). The title doesn't really reflect the story as it is more about family relationships than about learning to "fit in" in England in the 1970s. 

It is written from a small girl's view so things are explained from her point of view in very simple language. I did love all the food references. 

I also enjoyed learning more about life in Iran under the Shah and then what happened when the extremists took over. 

From the book jacket:

The night the first snow falls, a young boy wakes to find his mother gone. He walks through the silent house, but finds only wet footprints on the stairs. In the garden looms a solitary figure: a snowman bathed in cold moonlight, its black eyes glaring up at the bedroom windows. Round its neck is his mother's pink scarf.

Inspector Harry Hole is convinced there is a link between the disappearance and a menacing letter he received some months earlier. As Harry and his team delve into unsolved case files, they discover that an alarming number of wives and mothers have gone missing over the years. When a second woman disappears, Harry's suspicions are confirmed: he is a pawn in a deadly game.

For the first time in his career Harry finds himself confronted with a serial killer operating on his turf, a killer who will drive him to the brink of insanity.

I have started this book several times and gotten sidetracked. As a result of my dismal attempts to read something good this week I decided to finish this. I want to reduce the number of hard books in the house as we both use e-readers for a lot of our reading especially when we travel.

So I finished it, liked it but wasn't blown away by the author being touted as "the next Stieg Larsson". 

It was hard going at the beginning and Harry reminded me of Henning Mankell's Kurt Wallender and the murder mystery plot was fairly typical of the genre. However I did get quite involved and didn't want to put it down until I knew the outcome. There are quite a few twists and turns to the plot which keep you interested.  I  do think it was too long and there are some pretty obvious false turns that were not necessary.

STARTED THIS WEEK:

As I mentioned above I am working my way through the books in the house in hard copy.

From the book jacket:

In the depths of winter, a killer stalks the city streets. His victims are two young women, both found with twenty-four inexplicable puncture wounds, both drowned in their own blood. The crime scenes offer no clues, the media is reaching fever pitch, and the police are running out of options. There is only one man who can help them, and he doesn't want to be found. 
Deeply traumatised by The Snowman investigation, which threatened the lives of those he holds most dear, Inspector Harry Hole has lost himself in the squalor of Hong Kong's opium dens. But with his father seriously ill in hospital, Harry reluctantly agrees to return to Oslo. He has no intention of working on the case, but his instinct takes over when a third victim is found brutally murdered in a city park. 

2012 books read:
The Coast Road - John Brady
Still Midnight - Denise Mina
The Bulgari Connection - Fay Weldon
Good Bait - John Harvey
The Heretic's Treasure - Scott Mariani 
Dead I Well May Be - Adrian McKinty
The Devil's Elixir - Raymond Khoury 
A Darker Domain - Val McDermid
The Impossible Dead - Ian Rankin 
GB84 - David Peace 
The Emperor's Tomb - Steve Berry
Stonehenge Legacy - Sam Christer
Inquisition - Alfredo Colitto ABANDONED!

The Troubled Man - Henning Mankell

Nineteen Seventy-Four - David Peace

Faithful Place - Tana French

Dead Like You - Peter James

Brother and Sister - Joanna Trollope

The Forgotten Garden - Kate Morton ABANDONED

A Beginner's Guide to Acting English -Shappi Khorsandi

The Snowman - Jo Nesbo

Verona Italy

May 2004 - Verona Italy


These are the most popular tourist attractions in Verona. Juliet's house can be found at Via Cappello, 23. However, while the Capulet family did once live in Verona, it is doubtful that they ever lived in the house now designated to them. There is a statue of Juliet in the courtyard and the house has been restored in line with the famous play. Romeo's house can be found on Arche Scaligere, 4 and this is believed to be the actual house where the Montagues lived.

This is rather a tacky place to visit as people are allowed to write love notes and stick them onto the walls with chewing gum. However it was an amusing diversion on our day out in Verona.

All those words written by lovers

North Carolina

To participate in the Saturday Snapshot meme post a photo that you (or a friend or family member) have taken then leave a direct link to your post in the Mister Linky below. Photos can be old or new, and be of any subject as long as they are clean and appropriate for all eyes to see. How much detail you give in the caption is entirely up to you. Please don’t post random photos that you find online.


Last spring we were in Myrtle Beach NC and went to Barefoot Landing to the Alligator Adventure which is home to over 800 alligators that range in size from eight-inch infants to 15-foot adults that weigh 500 to 1,000 pounds.















Lunch Time

Friday Finds - Recipes

Please link up to a post containing your list of recipes to try -- do not link up individual recipes please, save those for other linkys.  Be sure to leave a link back here to Finding Joy in my Kitchen.


Bailey's chocolate caramel Irish cupcakes

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Stuffed French toast with fruit

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Whole wheat honey goat cheese biscuits


Nutella swirl quick bread


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It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

It's Monday! What are you reading? is hosted by Sheila at  Book Journey. For this meme, bloggers post what they finished last week, what they're currently reading, and what they plan to start this week. 

Finished this week:

You can read the book jacket details over here.

I thoroughly  enjoyed this book. I am biased as it takes place in working class Dublin and the colourful dialect kept me entertained. 

I have read Tana French's previous two books and loved those as well.

Frank Mackey investigates the disappearance of his first love twenty years ago whom he believed she had dumped him and ran away to England. The whole narrative is laced with Frank's memories of Rosie and their teenage romance.  

This an emotionally charged story about love, longing and dysfunctional families that definitely raises the bar in the mystery genre.

Finally finished this week:

Synopsis here.

I hadn't read Peter James before, this is his sixth in the Roy Grace series but they each stand on their own.

I thought the insights into what rape does to its victims both emotionally and mentally to be disturbing and poignant.
It was also chilling and yet amusing to read about the inner mind of the character with Aspergers.

This book certainly keeps you hopping jumping from Then to Now in each alternating chapter. Grace is a compassionate police officer and a compelling character. I will likely read more of Peter James.

Started this week:

From the book jacket:

Nathalie and David have been good and dutiful children to their parents, and now, grown-up, with their own families, they are still close to one another. Brother and sister. Except that they aren't — brother and sister that is. They were both adopted when their loving parents found that they couldn't have children themselves, and up until now it's never mattered. But suddenly Nathalie discovers a deep need to trace her birth parents and is insisting that David makes the same journey. And through this, both learn one of the hardest lessons of all: that sometimes the answers to who we are and where we come from can be more difficult than the questions.

Also started this week:

From the book jacket:

In the tradition of Nancy Mitford's The Pursuit of Love and Gerald Durrell's My Family and Other Animals, comes a story of a young narrator in the midst of her eccentric family. But rather than landed gentry or bohemian travelers, it's a mad extended Iran clan who flee Tehran to 1980s Britain after the fall the Shah. Five year old Shappi and her beloved brother Peyvand arrive with their parents in Londonswings in the park, school plays, kiss-chase, and terrorists. 

2012 books read:
The Coast Road - John Brady
Still Midnight - Denise Mina
The Bulgari Connection - Fay Weldon
Good Bait - John Harvey
The Heretic's Treasure - Scott Mariani 
Dead I Well May Be - Adrian McKinty
The Devil's Elixir - Raymond Khoury 
A Darker Domain - Val McDermid
The Impossible Dead - Ian Rankin 
GB84 - David Peace 
The Emperor's Tomb - Steve Berry 
Stonehenge Legacy - Sam Christer
Inquisition - Alfredo Colitto ABANDONED!

The Troubled Man - Henning Mankell

Nineteen Seventy-Four - David Peace

Faithful Place - Tana French

Dead Like You - Peter James