Well good morning all. The clocks have gone forward an hour and I was rather late to sleep but it’s still morning and not afternoon. Before I go off and start packing the suitcase I am living out of for the next 6 weeks, I had to come on and say:

It’s my BIRTHDAY. Not my real birthday you understand, but the day my blog turns a big tall 1 year old. This day (and about this time) last year I was sitting in my room deciding what would be the most effective procrastination technique and lo and behold, here we are a year later. And I can say as a procrastination technique it is top notch!

But that is not why I love this blog. When I started this up last year I thought I’d just be blathering about medical stuff, thus my first blog name – Musings of a med student. I was never happy with it. The thing is you can’t really talk about it much except for how much one hates the blasted kidneys (I know just because I said that I’m going to end up on the nephrology team now. I just know it). And my favourite hobby seemed to take it over, that being food, baking, cooking, and the best part – Eating (Caps lock for Eating, oh yeah). And so it became a food blog. One of many many food blogs that have sprung up in the last few years, hurrah for that. I mean, I absolutely love to cook. I love feeding people actually, and most people love to eat so it works out very well. I’ve had my good recipes and bad recipes, and I think my cooking has just come on 1000% since I started this. As well as some exposure to really top class quality food (Bord Bia, Harrys, Salon des Saveurs, I’m looking at you), I can finally be an advocate for something I absolutely adore – my local community. Now local in Ireland is pretty much… well.. Ireland. And thats fine with me. I don’t know if I just notice it more now or something to that effect, but there is this huge push toward local, attainable food, and I think it is absolutely fantastic. As I have said in previous posts, support your local farmers. We do things so well in Ireland, and we have the best of the best in produce, meat, dairy. Why not utilise it? Thus our 20 mile cookalong coming up in June. Take part! I’m really happy to be a part of this movement that supports our fresh, Irish produce.

But the other thing, and the best thing I think, is the food bloggers community. Little did I know, when I feebly announced on my twitter status that I had a blog (I had about 8 followers at the time, 4 of them were spam) and begun to find other Irish food blogs, that things would skyrocket and that I would meet (online and in person) the nicest group of people that you can imagine. We’ve had a number of meetups, small and large, and then bloody massive all the way up in Harrys for Inishfood, and each time I am wowed at how great people are. I’m not going to name names because I will forget someone, and there are loads of people involved now, but I absolutely love all of our chats, in person and on twitter, facebook etc. If it’s not complete hilarity during discussion Jedward on Vincent Browne, it’s discussion about all things food, or sometimes ,just the most trivial things that you just eavesdrop in on on twitter. But as Aoife (Icanhascook) said when the Irish Blog Awards nominations were out – We have the best community, and it is completely true.

If you’re ever thinking about starting up a blog – about anything – do it. You meet the (hands down) loveliest people in the blogging community, and I am absolutely delighted to be a part of it. Let the good times and good food continue!

P.S. If anybody feels like buying me a present, I will happily accept a stand mixer. Or a good food processor.  Or an Aga stove. Y’know, just if you felt like it!