I HAVE just returned from a very wet and windy trip to southern Spain. The weather was so unexpectedly grey that we found ourselves indoors more than we intended. There was an up-side, we used the time to visit some wonderfully aromatic sherry bodegas, if I closed my eyes I felt as if I were sinking into a trifle.

WITH the Spanish Arch just minutes away, it makes sense to continue the Iberian trail, and so in the middle of the Galway International Arts Festival, we rocked up to Cava Bodega. 

THIS intimate, pleasantly claustraphobic restaurant, tucked away almost in a neat fold in the city-centre street’s edifice, is on the Michelin recommended list so the bar is set reasonably high the very moment a booking is made.

It has always been the tradition in our house to eat the first plum pudding on the evening it is made. The grandchildren can hardly contain themselves with excitement — somehow that plum pudding seems the most delicious, it’s our first taste of Christmas. The plum pudding can be made from about mid-November onwards but there is still time yet. Everyone in the family helps to stir so they can all make a wish.