By Jonathan Kavanagh

Take a stroll around Swords or any local town and one is immediately impressed by the number of restaurants offering fine cuisine from around the globe. We are truly spoiled for choice. In days of yore, dining out has not yet entered our psyche. Our tastebuds go unchallenged. The free-standing kitchen cabinet, complete with drop down work board, contains the basics to quell our hunger and keep us upright. Meat and home-grown vegetables most days of the week. On Fridays, the scent of “fresh” herrings perfumes the air as the fishman roams the district in his Volkswagen pickup truck. On Sundays and special occasions desert: jelly and custard, rice with added raisins boiled to near annihilation, tapioca or semolina are added to the menu. We eat in season; with mushrooms straight from the fields simmered in milk with a generous helping of pepper, blanched new season nettles believed to have health benefits, and blackberries straight from the bush among our favourite treats. A bottle of chicory which tastes like a hybrid of brown sauce and sandpaper is as close as we come to Noel Purcell’s ‘heaven with coffee at eleven’. St Patrick’s Day finds my mother (best described as a chef de rough ‘n’ ready), sporting her green apron, as she unwraps an aesthetically displeasing lump of bacon, she bought in a corner shop. Incidentally, not a health regulation in sight as the shopkeeper cuts cooked and uncooked meat on the same slicer. Bedecked with a sprig of shamrock in the band of his hat, my father brings in the last of head of winter cabbage from the garden. My mother turns up her ‘How many pair of hands do you think I have?’ expression, as she despatches any squatting insects lurking in the cabbage leaves to a watery grave in the sink. His contribution made; my father sits down to read the newspaper. Like many men of his generation, he sees domesticity as a dark art best not tampered with. With well loaded plates, new oil cloth on the table and not a mobile phone in sight, we sit down to celebrate our national holiday in an age of simplicity.