Posted on Jul 24, 2009 in Food Events | 0 comments

The Wine Geese: Part Three

The third part of The Wine Geese radio documentary is on Lyric FM tomorrow morning at 8.30am. In this show, Tomas Clancy meets the far-seeing Francis Mahoney, devotee of Pinot Noir and the man who pioneered it in California 35 years ago. You can read more about Mahoney here and the programme will be online...
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Posted on Jul 24, 2009 in Bake, Grow | 2 comments

Blackcurrant Almond Cake

Blackcurrant Almond Cake
When I was small, picking blackcurrants was a big job. My Nana had several large, old bushes in the orchard under her apple trees. Every year, little fingers were pressed into service to strip the bushes of their black bounty so that she could make, or supervise the making, of the pots and pots of...
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Posted on Jul 23, 2009 in Grow | 2 comments

Playing gooseberry

Playing gooseberry
Seventeen gooseberries does not a summer make. I have a pair of bushes that were planted out next to the blackcurrant bushes last summer – one that should produce green berries, the other red. But this year, between the two of them, I could only hunt down a total of seventeen gooseberries. I think...
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Posted on Jul 22, 2009 in Food Events, Grow | 0 comments

How does your garden grow…organically?

How does your garden grow…organically?
Last summer, when we had the Mallow Farmers’ Market running outside Urru, we saw a lot of Patrick Frankel, a local organic vegetable grower. When he started coming to the market he had just started producing vegetables on his family farm near Doneraile and customers were delighted with the early fruit...
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Posted on Jul 14, 2009 in Food for Friends | 0 comments

Strawberries for not so sunny days: Strawberry and Peach Sundae

Strawberries for not so sunny days: Strawberry and Peach Sundae
Here’s a desert that’s perfect eaten outside in the late evening sunshine – or to cheer up a rainy day. There’s no real need for quantities as the amounts depend on how many people you are trying to make the strawberries stretch between, how big the glasses are and how greedy your...
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Posted on Jul 13, 2009 in Food Events | 4 comments

Wine online

If – like me! – you didn’t make it up early enough to catch The Wine Geese, the first part of the series is online here (I can’t seem to find it on the Lyric podcasts page) and there’s more information about the documentary on the Lyric FM website...
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Posted on Jul 10, 2009 in Food Events | 0 comments

The Wine Geese on RTÉ Lyric FM

The Wine Geese on RTÉ Lyric FM
Soundsdoable, the independent production company behind Foodtalk, the documentary series that I presented for Newstalk earlier this year, has a new series starting on RTÉ Lyric FM this Saturday. The Wine Geese is presented by Sunday Business Post wine correspondent Tomas Clancy and it looks at the role of...
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Posted on Jul 9, 2009 in Do | 1 comment

Loitering in the Lakes

Loitering in the Lakes
Five days in the Lake District didn’t give me as many opportunities to try local food as I would have liked but I did manage to eat vicariously after picking up Jane Grigson‘s authoritative English Food in a second hand book shop in Cockermouth. Reading it with the help of an English map helped...
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Posted on Jul 2, 2009 in Food Events | 0 comments

Mallow Food Festival 2009

For two years now we’ve had sunshine – during some very dodgy summers! – for the Mallow Food Festival and hopefully this year will make three in a row. At the last festival myself and the Mallow Girl had a great laugh manning the Urru stall and now, despite the fact that Urru Mallow is...
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Posted on Jul 1, 2009 in Food for Friends | 8 comments

Summer days at the lighthouse: Lighthouse Ling

Summer days at the lighthouse: Lighthouse Ling
Driving to Galley Head Lighthouse is a bit like a magical mystery tour. Although easy to see from a variety of locations along the West Cork coast, the lighthouse – like an ever-receeding mirage – seems to disappear from sight the closer you get. Eventually, however, after driving constantly...
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