The Big News... and the Pantry Challenge...

The Big News…

I have been sitting on this for a while now, and I can barely contain myself any longer.

I am moving to Ireland.

Not someday. Not maybe. Not “we’ve been talking about it.” Actually, truly, really moving. The Irishman is already there — settled into Tullamore, in the heart of the Irish midlands — and work starts on Cedar House this Monday. Our house. On the canal. In Ireland.

I still can’t quite believe I get to write that sentence.

For those of you who have been here from the beginning, you know that Feeding the Irishman started in my San Francisco kitchen, cooking for the Irishman, figuring out how to feed someone who has opinions about potatoes. (Strong ones. Correct ones, as it turns out.) What began as stories about food became something bigger, something about home, about the life you build one meal at a time.

And now that life is being packed into boxes and shipped across the Atlantic.

While the Irishman gets Cedar House ready for myself and of course Miles the Cat aka Goppolini, and I count down the days until I land in Tullamore, I am still here in San Francisco, in this kitchen I have loved for so long and I have set myself a challenge.

The Pantry Challenge

No grocery runs except for fresh produce and proteins. Everything else, every tin, every jar, every bag of lentils and bottle of fish sauce and optimistic purchase of something I absolutely was going to use has to go. I am cooking my way out of this kitchen and into the next one.

I’ll be posting a lot over the coming weeks. The pantry meals. The packing. The chaos. The feelings, because there are a lot of those too. And then, once I land in Tullamore, the real adventure begins. Cedar House, the garden, the canal, the people, the food, the green. So much green.

Thank you for being here for this new chapter. It’s going to be a good one.

Yes, there are potatoes.

Laura xxoxox