As many of you know, we're taking two weeks off from jobs and business to recharge our batteries and catch up with our sleep. We chose our favourite place in Ireland: West Cork. We've been visiting the West Cork area for quite a few years, but it was until last year that we trully did a foodie tour of the place. It was absolutely fabulous as with the help of the local twitterati, we found foodie spots everywhere! We had amazing food, met with other food bloggers, visited food producers, went to country fairs and foodie events and we loved every minute of it. We found the trip deeply invigorating and inspirational, so this year, we came with a similar vibe. 

We rented one of the many holiday cottages around the Glengarriff area. The house has a small but functional kitchen with an electric hob, an oven with grill, a fridge and a microwave. This allows us to go food hunting during the day and come to the cottage to cook a meal if we feel like it. It's the perfect arrangement, above all as we are only about 4 minute drive from Manning's Emporium, which is one of my favourite food shops in Ireland. I love the friendly service, the knowledgable staff and their fabulous cheese & cured meat counter; truly heavenly.

Armed with a food guide and our smart phones, we've been driving through little villages and mid size towns for the last few days. We started our trip with a visit to our friends in Old Farm in County Tippereary, where we went mushroom foraging and enjoyed some fabulous food with them. We then gently drove to a tiny town called Kildorerry in County Cork, where we stopped for a delicious lunch & tea with the lovely Caroline Hennessey from Bibliocook and her family. We had packed our DVD player, but left all our DVDs behind, thankfully Caroline has a fabulous DVD collection herself, so we got a loan of a few TV series and some great movies, which we will use in quiet nights and rainy days. 

Eventually, we made it to Glengarriff on the Bank Holiday Monday and we've been treasure hunting for the last four days: buying food, eating out, cooking and hunting for food props and kitchen gadgets (both vices of mine). So far I have bought six victorian dinner plates, a beautiful bowl, a white enamel plate, a crepe pan, a cake tin, a 1960's book on Mexico, an antique plate, a triffel bowl and a new raincoat, which I desperately needed.  We have eaten fabulous food, mainly seafood as it is so fresh here and we have been at three local markets and several antique shops. 

Internet reception is close to non-existant here, so I'm taking loads of pictures, but posting very little, but will have a lovely collection of photographs when I'm back in Dublin. In the meantime, here are a few I took so far.  Till then...

I thought long and hard about this posting... stared at the blank page for a long time. I've been wanting to tell you all for weeks about this, but I couldn't. I've been bursting with excitment for a month and I had to keep it under wraps. This was a real killer for me, but we had agreed to wait till it was all official and that was that! The last week was torture, but now that it's all done and official, I simply don't know how to go about to tell you! So, I'm going to spit it out plain and simple:

My Mexican Shop Ltd.

is open for business!

A month ago, shortly after returning from my summer in Mexico and totally out of the blue, the lovely people from Almacen Latino asked us if we were interested in buying the Mexican Food side of their business as they wanted to concentrate their efforts on their Argentinian side and felt they couldn't give the Mexican side the attention and loving care it required. So after recovering from the shock, the other half and I sat down and had a few scary nights weighing the options.

Food has been a passion of mine for the last decade and sharing the joys of cooking authentic Mexican food (and non of that 'Tex-Mex' nonsense that often misrepresents Mexican cuisine) was the reason why I ended up writing my blog. So all of a sudden, I could find a way to do what I love (in a round about way) and get some money out of it (or so we hope!).

So we took the plunge and said yes; today we signed the contract and it is pretty official now: I am a business owner! We have tons of plans for the new business. We have changed the name; we are developing a new and improved website and a logo to go with it and we will get a proper business e-mail address. We will expand the items on offer, we will be stocking what I call 'perfect matches', which are some of the many wonderful Irish produce that I've been using for a long time in my Mexican cooking and we will be offering the Mexican classics such as 'chipotle chilis', 'corn masa-harina', tinned and bottled salsas, authentic corn tortillas ready made, Mexican drinking chocolate (no offence Butlers drinking chocolate, but you don't stand a chance!), 'mole' pastes, dried chilis and many, more!

So I hope you bear with us for the next two or three months while we sort out all of this. The existing website will work as usual until we have the new website up and running so you'll still be able to get the items there as normal. It's a big step, a scary one as well; my heart in pounding, my head is spinning and I hear a voice screaming inside my head saying 'BUT WE'RE IN A RECESSION YOU FOOL!!' - and I get frighten and panicky, and I start losing sleep... and in those terribly lonely, just before dawn hours I ask myself - what if it doesn't work?! what if no one wants to buy anything of me? what if I make a fool of myself? WHAT IF I FAIL?!...

And then I remember why I'm doing this, and the excitment of it all, and the wonderful people, bloggers, foodies, producers, friends, family, total strangers that have come to me over the years and say: "So you are from Mexico, aren't you? I love Mexican Food!'.