Ballymaloe

Last night I managed to smash a pavlova on the floor, slip on a carpet and skid across the dining room and a dog grabbed one of my bread rolls and ran away (thankfully this was all in my dreams). My dreams seem to be getting stranger and stranger and with the end in sight. …

I yawned so hard this morning that I thought my head would fall off. Last night in a bid to get all of the last minute wine revision into our system, Sophie, Martha and I blitzed through our notes. Up at the crack of dawn, we pulled on our chef whites, for formality, and heading …

Meringue is definitely not my friend. It’s an evil force that’s determined to drive me off course – maybe, perhaps, probably not. With just two things on my to-do list today, I thought that I’d be ok in terms of time, but like most days I was like a tortoise on a highway. Getting to …

If there were awards for snail-speed enthusiasts, I’d be getting a gold medal. My day was a mixture of being slow and steady and ultimately it wasn’t a good one. Getting up this morning, like most Mondays, was a bit of an effort and heading back into the kitchen with impending exams and more study …

It was a rough start to a Sunday morning. Waking up late to the sound of tweeting birds, I knew that there was only one thing I’d be studying all day: wine. For those who don’t know, we have a flock of white pigeons that live above our Coach House that like to come down …

The diagram just wasn’t sticking – I couldn’t remember any of it. I woke up this morning with information swirling around my head – for some reason I had measurements on the mind and couldn’t get the ratio of salt to water for curing meat out of my brain. Up early with a long list …

I stuck the spoon into my mouth, left it dangling and continued chopping onions. There was a method to this madness! Today officially marked the end of week 10 here at Ballymaloe, and I woke up this morning with the Friday feeling swinging around my insides. I mentioned yesterday that we were demoed pork belly …

The icing sugar began to go brown and then turned a shade of black – like a hawk I gazed into the dark pit of the oven with my fingers crossed behind my chef whites. You’re probably sick of me talking about my tiredness for the past few days but it’s actually become part of …

“This is nature – I get so happy when I see something beautiful like a Brussel sprout” – Trine Hahnemann. Time has been moving very strangely here in Ballymaloe. There are days when hours whizz by and others when time stands still. The past few nights I’ve been waking at crazy hours, and I don’t …

I swirled the wine in my glass and moved my nose towards the aroma. I’ve come a long way from Sauvignon Blanc. With the brightness of day sneaking in the window, I was early for stock duty, which is done every morning by two students. Feeling jittery at the thought of my rather tedious workload, …