Barbacoa is one of those very few dishes that brings me food related memories of my dad. As a typical Mexican man of a certain vintage, dad is very traditional in his views of labour division at home: the man provides, the woman stays at home. A man in his early 70s, he was brought up in a traditional Mexican home, and like many men of his generation, he expected his four daughters to be well versed in the home arts... and yet, so unlike many of his peers, he always urged us to be able to look after ourselves and to see the world before we settled in: 'marriage isn't a sure thing -he would always say- you gotta be able to provide for yourself in case something goes wrong'.

He, himself, never sets a foot in the kitchen, which is considered my mam's territory. He expects to be fed three meals a day every day of the week, except Sundays, when he must 'provide' breakfast for the family. Ever since I can remember, dad would get up early on Sundays, get dressed and go and buy a kilo or two of Barbacoa to feed breakfast to the entire family. As he has gotten older, his grandchildren phone to see if he's up and if he's getting taquitos de barbacoa so they can come for breakfast too! He would pride himself of knowing where to get the tastiest Barbacoa in town.

Barbacoa is a beef or Lamb meat that is slowly steamed with herbs overnight in massive galvanised bins and served hot in warm, freshly made corn tortillas, topped with fresh chopped onion and coriander and a spoonful of a good salsa. A good barbacoa seller would know that apart from good meat, you also need a good salsa, so they would experiment with different salsa recipes to give their barbacoa the edge! You're given your meat, a bag with the chopped onion & coriander and a couple of bags of salsa. If the salsa is really good, they will sell you extra portions at a hefty price. Traditional Barbacoa is cooked in pits or holes in the ground that have been lined with maguey plants or banana leaves and it is slowly smoked-steamed over a couple of days. It's called 'barbacoa de pozo' (hole barbacoa). The most tender meat, and the most expensive barbacoa, is made of tongue and if you have a lay in and get there after 10 a.m. there will be no good barbacoa left! So dad's job in providing us with barbacoa is very important for those of us who like good barbacoa, but also enjoy a little extra sleep on Sundays!

When I moved to Ireland, I yearned for barbacoa. My grandpa Pedro (dad's dad) was at some point in his life a butcher, so mam was able to dig out a recipe for barbacoa for me. I'm not about to dig a hole in my garden to make traditional barbacoa, so I make mine in the slow cooker (or crock pot), this is my adaptation of the traditional recipe. In my favour however, I must say that all my Mexican friends who have tried it said it tastes as good as any you'd buy in Mexico, so enjoy!

Note: meat cooked like this reduces a lot, so if you buy 2 kilos of meat, you might end up with only 1.5 kilos of barbacoa or less. It freezes really well, so you can freeze portions and just defrost when you feel like making tacos of this and there is a couple of dishes with leftovers of barbacoa that you can make, like this barbacoa in red salsa.

I believe in Karma. I believe that for every good or bad deed we undertake in life, there are ten of those thrown back at us. If you do good, good will come your way, and as silly as this may sound, karma has ruled most of my behaviour since I was a young girl. The past few weeks have really showed me how true Karma is. It all began with the thought that Alan and I were burning the candle both ends: full time jobs, a business to run, blogs, friends, family, household chores... we were constantly on the go and very, very tired. We decided to take a break and spend some time unwinding. We picked beautiful West Cork for this. We stationed ourselves in the little village of Glengarriff, as it is a nice central point in the region with loads of holiday homes to rent. The plan was: loads of resting, sleeping, reading, eating and taking long walks. It was one of the best holidays I've ever taken.

None of it would have been possible without a few foodies and bloggers who helped us along the way. First of all, Bill & Sharon Gunter from Gunternation, these two amazing people offered to mind the shop's stall at the market while we were away, we didn't even have to ask and they did a super job! Then it was my brother in law Sean, who minded the on-line business end of things while we were eating cheese and sleeping till ten. Our friend Kate Packwood, from The Wild Flour Bakery provided us with plenty of goodies for the trip, including some of her outstanding brownies and what I have renamed as 'volcano cakes' with passion fruit glazing on top. Thank you all for being so great!

When we set off on this mini-food adventure, we started by stopping at our friend's farm in Tipperary, Old Farm, and we were fed delicious pork burgers and stayed overnight in their wonderful company. The following day, refreshed after a good night sleep and with an amazing breakfast behind us, we drove as far as Michelstown in Co. Cork, to stop at another blogger's home, Caroline Hennessey from Bibliocook. We had the chance to chat, drink loads of tea and sampled Caroline's amazing brownies made with Eight Degrees Beer, which is owned by her kiwi husband and a friend.

By the time we made it to Glengarriff, it was two days after the start of the holiday. The drive to it was incredibly relaxing and the back of the car was full of goodies picked at all our stops. Twitter made our hoiday so much better too; we got tons of recommendations from several foodie twitter friends. We made it to the Good Things Cafe in Durus, to The Fish Kitchen in Bantry, to the Copper Kettle in Castletownbere; also to Mannings Food Emporium in Ballylickey, the Bakery in Ke nmeare and to Lorge's Chocolates in Bonane. All found thanks to foodie friends in the area. We cooked several dinners at the house and went out and had a few too... it was just a delightful time!

So let's get back to Karma. Halfway into the holiday, we got a text from Caroline to see if we could help her with a demo at the Lissard Festival. We of course said yes, how could we not do it when so many others had helped us throught the holidays?! We thought, it's foodie Karma! We had the most amazing time handing out beer, assisting in the cooking of the brownies and just browsing around the place and watching all the other food demos on the day. It was our time to send some good karma around: Sharon and Bill had helped us, we were going to help Caroline and, as good deeds ripple, when we were back in Dublin after two amazing weeks off, I got a phone call from The Theatre of Food to see if I'd like to take part in a couple of demos at the Tall Ships Festival in Dublin and Electric Picnic in Stradbally. It's all good karma making its way back to us! I don't want to make anybody jealous, but go to my facebook page to see a few of the pictures we took of food while in West Cork, which in my humble opinion is, food heaven capital of Ireland. If you haven't been, put it on your list, it's beautiful!