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Being located in Cork as we are, Barry's tea is the cuppa of choice around the cottage so when the people in Barry's contacted me about running a competition, I thought that fellow tea-loving food bloggers might be interested, especially when they heard what it entails.

To win a box of Barry's Speciality Blends teas, plus some Barry's merchandise, just come up with a recipe using one of the teas in the Speciality Blends range. There are plenty of choices: camomile, peppermint, green tea, lemon and ginger, cranberry and orange, very berry, South African rootibos or pur-erh. There is more information on the teas, plus a €1money off voucher at www.barrysspeciality.ie

To encourage you all to come up with something fabulous, I'm going to share my latest take on the Ballyvoddy Tea Brack, this version now known as Ballyvoddy Green Tea Brack. Let me know what your favourite tea recipe is by emailing me at cook@bibliocook.com before Wednesday 11 August. Best of luck!

I recently did an interview with www.Bizymoms.com, an American information site for mothers who work from home. You can read the piece here.

...I'd just begun. Happy birthday Little Missy!

And the winner of the 2010 Irish Blog Award in the Food/Drink category is... Good Mood Food! Congratulations to Donal, and to 9 Bean Row, the foodie winner of the Best Newcomer award. You can see the rest of the winners are here. Wonder how many sore heads there are in Galway this morning?!

The list has been radically slimmed down! Good luck to the five worthy finalists in the Best Food/Drink category for this year's Irish Blog Awards, which are taking place this Saturday in Galway. Good to see some of our regular favourites - Ice Cream Ireland, Daily Spud (both previous winners at the Blog Awards) and Good Mood Food - alongside The Beer Nut's comprehensive notes on the best of beers now available and Paul J Kiernan's take on all things wine. May the best blog win!

Best Food/Drink Blog 2010 - Sponsored by Bord Bia

• Ice Cream Ireland
• The Beer Nut
• The Daily Spud
• The Grapes of Sloth
• The Good Mood Food Blog

Before you run out of St Patrick's Day, scoot over to the Daily Spud to view her parade of food, with floats loaded up with all things Irish, including Beef and Guinness, Soda Bread, potatoes, plenty of whiskey and my own Potato Apple Tart. Lots of happy eating there!

In 2006 I wrote an article in reaction to the announcement that US magazine Saveur was about to publish a piece on Ireland as a foodie destination, wondering just what these "mythical gastrotourists" would find if they ventured off the beaten track. The quotes from that piece used in Saturday's Irish Times Magazine article on Colman Andrews' The Country Cooking of Ireland made me revisit it and wonder about what's changed.

Since then, I've moved out of Dublin. While I no longer have such a selection of food on my doorstep, I've also discovered that Avoca isn't the only decent eating port of call for people travelling around the country! While we're still a long way from getting to where you can confidentially walk into any café or pub and be assured of finding a good meal, there has definitely been a change for the better in the last few years. I still do think that the Georgina Campbell and Bridgestone guides make life a lot easier to find good eating opportunities, now joined by Good Food Ireland's touring maps and website.

When I talked to Country Choice's Peter Ward recently, he had lost none of his passion for encouraging producers to sell directly to consumers. He also pointed out that everyone has their own role to play, supporting "the butcher, the baker and the artisan" today rather than bemoaning their loss tomorrow, and realising - especially at the moment - that cheap does not equal value.

Recession aside, the fact remains that people are still willing to pay for good food and a significant amount of them are actively going looking for it, be it in a local café, restaurant or farmers' market. There are a more markets than ever before and a greater range of foods and products available. My weekly shop gets divided between nearby supermarkets (SuperValu, which I like for its focus on local producers, and Aldi, now stocking a selection of Irish produce) and the markets that I frequent, while - like half the rest of the country - trying to grow my own veggies and keep a few hens.

We still have a long way to go, but at least we're on the road.

Congratulations to all those on the long shortlist for this year's Irish Blog Awards, particularly the 25 competing in the best food/drink category. Sadly Bibliocook didn't make it through this year but the list below will give you a good chance to catch up with what is going on in the Irish blogosphere, particularly if you're interested in food!

Best Food/Drink Blog: Longlist 2010 - Sponsored by Bord Bia

• English Mum
• Dispatches from the Deise
• Ice Cream Ireland
• Lily's Blog
• Tea and Wheaten Bread
• The Grapes of Sloth
• The Look and Taste Show
• Robert Francis Wine
• Michael Kelly
• The Daily Spud
• Good Things Come to Those Who Wait (tables) | Well Done Fillet
• The Beer Nut
• Curious Wines
• Not Junk Food
• Bubble Brothers
• Lola-Lu’s Kitchen
• Cheap Eats
• I Can Has Cook?
• The Good Mood Food Blog
• Chilli and Chocolate
• Therese Brady
• Ballymaloe Cookery School
• Italian Foodies
• Val’s Kitchen
• O’Briens Wine, Beer & Spirits Blog

When you have a child, you suddenly have something in common with a lot of other people and I've discovered that this new world of parenthood can be a lot easier to negotiate with friends in a similar position, whether in the real world or online.

One of the sites that I use is called MyKidsTime.ie, which I've found particularly useful when it comes to places to change Little Missy around the country! At the moment the areas they cover include Wexford, Limerick, Galway, Sligo and Dublin and they've just launched a Cork section.

MyKidsTime also covers food, with cookbook reviews from yours truly and articles/recipes from Judy Kavanagh of The Cook Club, all sent out on the monthly newsletter which you can sign up for here.

It's that time of the year again. The Irish Blog Awards longlist has been issued and it's great to see Bibliocook getting a mention in the Best Food/Drink Blog section, again this year sponsored by Bord Bia. Last year's awards took place in the International Airport Hotel in Cork so off I, plus Little Missy bump, toddled for that night's festivities, even if we had to go home a little earlier than the rest of the partygoers!

This year the Blog Awards are taking place on Saturday 27 of March in Galway's Radisson Blu hotel and, judging by the list of nominees, there will be plenty of competition on the night. Here is the list of nominees in my category - there's plenty of old favourites and newcomers to feast your eyes on - and you can see the rest of the categories and nominated blogs here.

Best Food/Drink Blog: Longlist 2010 - Sponsored by Bord Bia

• The Good Mood Food Blog
• Cheap Eats
• The Daily Spud
• I Can Has Cook?
• Good Things Come to Those Who Wait (tables) | Well Done Fillet
• Therese Brady
• Ice Cream Ireland
• foodyblog
• Robert Francis Wine
• The Look and Taste Show
• Curious Wines
• Val’s Kitchen
• Chilli and Chocolate
• Italian Foodies
• Ballymaloe Cookery School
• Blake Creedon’s Wine Cork
• The Grapes of Sloth
• English Mum
• Dispatches from the Deise
• Bubble Brothers
• Michael Kelly
• Ummera
• Bibliocook
• Tea and Wheaten Bread
• The Beer Nut
• The Green Apron
• Lola-Lu’s Kitchen
• O’Briens Wine, Beer & Spirits Blog
• Not Junk Food
• Lily's Blog

I swore I wouldn't get sucked in. Ah, the promises I make to myself!

This whole social networking thing can be like a black hole, whole chunks of the morning - work time for me while Little Missy sleeps - disappearing while I catch up on Kieran Murphy's ice cream tweets and check out A Taste of Ballyhoura Country's Facebook page. But, for a freelance journalist working from a cottage in the middle of nowhere, North Cork, this is as close to an office watercooler as I'm going to get.

So, for those of you interested in a little more interaction, you can also catch up with Bibliocook over on Facebook or Twitter. Maybe see you over there too!

Bibliocook: All About Food | Promote your Page too

Watch Jamie Oliver's passionate speach for TED, an American non profit organisation focusing on spreading good ideas, about the power of food and the importance of teaching children what to cook and how to cook it. Today America, tomorrow - or, perhaps, tonight - Ireland.

...to blue skies and lakeside walks, to fabulous food (we've been truly spoiled by the Husband's Mother!) and rich, dark coffees, to post-swim fish and chips and bowlfuls of fresh, seasonal fruit, to Little Missy figuring out how to pick the fresh peas from a homegrown pod and lazy bach days.

It gets more and more difficult to leave New Zealand each time but at least we're not heading home just yet. Next stop - via a brief stop tonight in Kuala Lumpur - Vietnam! I've heard there's more food to eat over there.

I've always been a fan of porridge. It's one of those things that seems to fit in perfectly with a cold morning at the cottage: a steaming bowlful, topped with some stewed fruit and a dollop of natural yoghurt is just the thing to set myself and Little Missy up for the day. She eats the regular sort, which I grind up with my immersion blender (always useful but now indispensable) before cooking, but I've gotten hooked on Flahavan's Pinhead Oatmeal this winter.

It takes a little longer to cook than the rolled oats but when you're up around 6am, time is not exactly in short supply! I use cook mine with half milk, half water (LM gets expressed breast milk, or a little regular milk, plus water in her ground up oats), pop it on the cooker at a low setting and it cooks away by itself, with a couple of stirs from me between getting showered and dressed.

When I'm with it enough to soak the oats overnight it does shorten the cooking time a little but if I was super-organised what I'd do is cook a whole pot in advance, as recommended in Super Natural Cooking and the New York Times (steel-cut oats in America = pinhead oatmeal in Ireland) and reheat as necessary. And then there are porridge toppings. Stewed pear and allspice are popular here, as are apple and dried apricot compote or poached cinnamon plums, always with natural yoghurt and, for the members of the family with more than two teeth, a sprinkling of toasted nuts or seeds.

Porridge makes the best breakfast, being cheap, nutritious, easy - and local. If you pick up a bag of Flahavan's progress oatlets (I've always loved that progress bit!) you're also picking up a bit of history: the family-run business has been based in Kilmacthomas, Co Waterford, for the last 200 years.

If you're a porridge fan - or like your oatmeal in other dishes - you might be interested in the recently launched Flahavan's All-Ireland Porridge-Making Challenge. They have two categories: one is to make the perfect dish of porridge and the the other is to create a recipe using something from Flahavan's porridge oat range. The closing date is 31 January 2010 so you have all Christmas to come up with a few good ideas. There's more information below and you'll find the full terms and conditions on the Flahavan's website, along with some recipes from Kevin Dundon.

I love good olive oil and I especially love Colletta Olivieri Extra Virgin Olive Oil, which is imported direct from Italy by producer Lino Olivieri. This week he will be taking delivery of the delicious olio nuovo, new season olive oil, from his family's farm in Puglia so if you're looking for a Christmas present for someone who likes their food, then get your hands on this - it's €40 for a 5 litre can or €25 for the 3 litre can and Lino will courier it anywhere in the country for a very reasonable cost.

Our can lives in a cool place behind the kitchen door, easily accessible so that I can regularly decant it into the dark wine bottle that sits, easily accessible, on the counter. The oil being so fresh, it has a lovely peppery kick which is especially noticable when you eat it with fresh bread or drizzle it over garlic-rubbed toast.

You can read more about the oil below or on the Olivieri olive oil website. Lino Olivieri can be contacted by email (lino.olivieri@gmail.com) or mobile (086 8681803).

My cookery demonstration career continues this week on Wednesday 2 December in Knockcarron, Co Limerick (map here). Knockcarron/Knocklong ICA have invited me along and I'll be giving a demonstration called Spice Up Your Life in the Community Centre at 8pm. I'll be making my favourite Butternut Squash and Sweet Potato Soup, a lovely rich Beef and Prune Tagine, finishing with Banana and Cardamom Cake.

This time round - although it may ruin the evening's suspense! - I'm looking forward to using an oven that works consistently. That, and me not accidentally turning it off half ways through the demo...

Coffee and cake - kaffee und kuchen - can you think of a better thing to warm you up on a bracingly cold Berlin afternoon? Over the course of ten days in Germany there were a lot of stops with Little Missy for a variety of sweet treats - and a lot of walking to compensate! Herself, myself and the Husband were staying at an apartment in the Friedrichshain district so, with the Husband gone from early to late on his course, LM and I set off to explore the city together. Mornings she slept then, as soon as she cocked an eye, she was scooped up, wrapped warmly, landed in the pushchair and we took off.

It took me a little while to figure out how to manage the u-bahn with LM so I discovered that walking from the apartment to Alexanderplatz took just over half-an-hour along the historic Karl Marx Allee. Half way there, Café Sybille was always a welcome stop for refreshments plus a side helping of history from its mini-museum on the building of Stalinallee, the Communist-centric former name of Karl Marx Allee. If we got as far as Alexanderplatz before LM needed a stop, the food department on the ground floor in Galeria Kaufhof was another good spot after I figured out how to work their system. Basically, grab a seat in the back corner and find a place to park the pushchair, figure out what you want to eat from the menus on the tables and order from the surrounding counters. For a sugar hit, their cake counter, piled high with lots of delightful sweet things (a tart of caramelised nuts on a biscuity base was a favourite) is particularly good.

Managing a pushchair plus a Little Missy around any city on your own is not the easiest and I did end up walking past plenty of places that looked great but weren't so easily accessible. That said, once I found the u-bahn stations with lifts (all clean and most of which worked), the city was much easy to travel around - praise be for barrier-free travel - so we roamed around the Tiergarten (tip: if you have a baby with you, you get to skip the two-hour queue for getting to the top of the Reichstag building), spent mornings in the Spandauer Vorstadt (grab some bircher muesli at Milchhall Berlin or Blintschiki in Gorki Park) and, in the last few days, discovered the delights of our Friedrichshain district (eating pizza from a woodfired oven at Pizza da Dante, taking away some beautifully decorated treats from Cupcake Berlin or visiting my local 50s milkshake bar at Milkabilly).

As Little Missy goes to sleep these days between 7pm and 8pm (if we're lucky!) there wasn't much chance for evening adventures but, when the Sister came over for a few nights, herself and myself did get a night off to head for dinner with The Shy Chef. But that's a whole other story...

The packing is finally done - it's not easy heading away for ten days with a small baby! - Berlin, here we come (again).

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 me to properly place its regional references so, after a few days, I was getting much better at understanding where dishes like Dartmouth Pie, Cumbrian Tatie Pot and Grasmere Gingerbread came from.

The map was making frequent appearances anyway as we had to navigate our way from the ferry at Holyhead to the north-western part of the Lake District for a wedding. The English Engineer was marrying the English Geologist (friends from the Husband's Cambridge days) on Saturday so our little family of three made the long - it took us 6 hours - drive on Friday afternoon, another of the times when I've been very thankful for being able to breastfeed Little Missy rather than trying to manage bottles while travelling.

The high point, food wise, of our five days was definitely the wedding hog roast. Served in a large marquee pitched in a field belonging to the bride's brother, this feast was far from rustic. Immaculately trained waiting staff were on silver service duty with platters of tender roast pork and crispy crackling, dishes of salad (a colourful heirloom tomato one and a French and dried bean salad) and minty new potatoes. There were seconds for everyone before we finished with slices of a cinnamon-scented Dutch Apple Cake, bowls ofstrawberries to pass around, the whole pudding finished off with streams of rich, yellow cream from the jugs proffered by the waitresses (why do the English pour cream while the Irish whip it?).

Dinner at our table was regularly interrupted by small people making their needs felt as there were four children under 18 months between eight of us. Fortunately the couple who were getting married, with their own 11-month-old to deal with, had set up a chill-out kids' room off the marquee for just this situation. No one could have gone hungry at this wedding with facilities to warm food for the smallies available so close by.

While camping with Little Missy at Dalegarth Campsite on the shores of Buttermere Lake we did get to try some local lamb chops (big enough to count as mutton chops although still lamb-sweet), freshly made Cumberland sausages, Buttermere Ayrshire Ice Cream and, of course, the sugar fix for walkers that is Kendal Mint Cake. Just enough of a taste to encourage me back - at least I have English Food to help me plan our next visit!

Things will be quiet about here next week as the Husband, Little Missy and myself are heading down to West Cork for a few nights. We're staying in one of the Irish Landmark Trust's restored properties on Galley Head, just south of Clonakilty, and I'm hoping to do lots of eating!

I'd love to make it to Durrus to eat at Carmel's Good Things Café, check out the Friday market in Bantry, visit Baltimore for lunch in the Glebe Gardens (and to see what Jean has done with the garden since we were there in February) and eat some more Ardagh Castle goat's cheese.

Any suggestions for food-orientated things to do in the area?

Ever since Louise Sowan of Sowan's Organics put me on to Cork Coffee Roasters I've been a fan. Their full bodied Rebel City Espresso is a fixture in my kitchen and I rarely manage to go past their stall at the Mahon Point Farmer's Market or events like the Mallow Food Festival without getting my hands on a caffeine fix. The Sister is even worse. She is luck enough to live around the corner from the Cork Coffee Roasters café. As a result, weekend phone calls between us are punctuated by her frequent stops at CCR to order yet another cappuccino. Meanwhile - especially since Urru Mallow closed down - I'm stuck in the sticks with nothing to comfort me except my stove top espresso maker.

While I was pregnant with Little Missy I suddenly, to my absolute horror, went right off coffee. I had to turn to hot chocolates (not too much of a problem if it's from Urru or the Ó Conaill Chocolate café but horrible most other places) for my caffeine highs during those months. Cork visits were more likely to involve a trip to French Church Street for a dark cardamom at Ó Conaill Chocolate than a visit to CCR. Fortunately, not long after LM was introduced to the outside world, I was back on the black stuff with a vengeance.

Today's trip to Cork made me realise, once again, how much I love Cork Coffee Roasters. Firstly, there's the coffee which is dark and rich and tastes so good, even when I make it at home. CCR is owned by Master Coffee Roaster John Gowan who, after 20 years in Seattle, returned to his native Cork to specialise in hand-roasted small-batch coffee blends. Not content with producing the best coffee in Cork, John then opened the café on Bridge Street. It's a simple set up - great coffee with a few good things to eat (courtesy of the Natural Foods Bakery) - but there's a relaxed, friendly feeling about the place that adds up to far more than the sum of its parts.

If you're not doing the dive-and-roll quick takeaway coffee, Cork Coffee Roasters is a great place to sit in while watching the world go by. Little Missy gives it the thumbs up too, having had her second breakfast there today, nursing away while myself and the Sister were downing our coffees. There's also a changing table in the bathroom for any nappy emergencies. Now all I need to do is persuade John Gowan to open a CCR outpost in Mallow, Fermoy or Mitchelstown.

Mornings have gotten spicier in recent times, not to mention more chocolaty, as I've been using some of Carluccio's hot chilli oil to fry my breakfast egg (ah, maternity leave: time - Little Missy willing - for a full breakfast!) and grating lots of birthday cacao over. Mouthfuls of intense, savoury yumminess, and plenty of lovely runny egg yoke, courtesy of our ever-productive hens, to mop up with homemade Fennel-Aniseed-Caraway Bread.

I've also had these, like Willie suggests in his book, with beans, using some of the Mexican Beans that I always keep stashed in the freezer. Well worth trying out.

I've just been enjoying the trailer for Julie & Julia, a film based on two books: My Life in France by American chef Julia Child and Julie Powell's laugh-out-loud memoir. Meryl Streep plays a suitably patrician Julia in post-WWII Paris, while the lovely Amy Adams takes on the role of modern day Julie. Check out the trailer below, read my review of Julie Powell's book here and watch out for the film, which should be out in Ireland on 11 September. I just might have to smuggle Little Missy in to the cinema!

After watching all the programmes and getting my hands on the book, the Husband turned up trumps for my birthday with a selection of Willie Harcourt-Cooze's chocolate blocks and bars.

I now have a couple of his 70% Peruvian dark chocolate bars, another pair of the 72% Venezuelan dark chocolate bars and, most especially, two blocks of the 100% pure cacao for cooking with. We've only opened the Peruvian bar so far - a dinky little square box that contains two slabs of fruity, full-flavoured eating chocolate. This isn't chocolate for the fainthearted or those that prefer milk chocolate but, for me, it is heaven in a box!

We spent the weekend trying out the cacao à la Willie: grated over eggs fried in chilli oil, with a spicy tomato mince sauce, on top of scrambled eggs. He recommends that you use the cacao as if it were salt, to accentuate flavour, and the smell of chocolate over meals is getting to be a familiar one. I'll have to try some of the sweet as well as savoury recipes in his cookbook now.

Willie's chocolate isn't very widely available but, for Cork readers, the Husband managed to track it down in the English Market's Chocolate Shop and I've also seen it on sale at the Gubbeen stall which goes around to various markets, including the one in Mahon Point on Thursdays.

For anyone who uses their freezer as much as I do and is always looking for tips to keep it more efficient:
The Minimalist - Freezer Helps Make Cooking Cheaper and Easier - NYTimes.com (registration necessary but worth it for the wealth of food writing available)

My latest baking project - one that even takes longer than the three-day Sourdough Bread-making event! - is almost completed. All going well, the Husband and I hope to welcome a small new inhabitant to the cottage early next month, to join our family of two humans, three hens and one cat (yes, we're back to one again - sadly the road by the cottage claimed Large, our big tom cat earlier this week).

Things may get slightly sporadic around here over the next while as I try to fill the freezer with easily managable meals, stock up the store cupboard and fill the tins with baking that will keep us going for a while. There's not going to be much time for baking with a new baby in the house! Flapjacks, both Honey and Chocolate versions, and Ballyvoddy Tea Bracks are top of the list, baking-wise, while I have a large ham hock (just €2.49 from James Whelan's Butchers in Clonmel and it will feed us for days) just waiting to be turned into freezable pots of soup and several casseroles in mind for the savoury side of things. Anybody got any other suggestions?

Meanwhile, the Husband - inspired by our weekend course at Glebe Gardens - is concentrating on assembling four handsome raised beds so that we can plant up plenty of vegetables to keep ourselves well stocked for the summer. In preparation for planting, the spare room is playing host to several egg-cartons-worth of potatoes being chitted, or sprouted. This year we're going with Maris Peer (I was seduced by its salad-friendly properties) and, unlike other years, we decided not to plant them on St Patrick's Day after last year's crop rotted in the ground when inclement weather hit during the last half of March.

We were able to get the potato seed from Fruit Hill Farm through the North Cork Organic Group, along with a bag of shallots which I'm looking forward to growing. I rarely buy shallots as they are a little expensive but love to cook with them so it makes perfect sense to grow our own, especially if our one remaining cat can can keep the rabbits away. Otherwise, there just might have to be a few more Rabbit Stews!

It's looking like summer has already arrived in North Cork and the hens, although their numbers were reduced to three of the original four after a run in with a fox during the winter, are thoroughly enjoying the sunshine. No matter what weather we've had, they've still managed to produce a steady source (especially after I found their secret stash!) of dark yellow-yoked eggs for baking and cooking, as well as being entertaining company in the garden.

In honour of St Patrick's Day tomorrow, I'll be putting some of those eggs into an Irish Tea Brack or even, if the Husband hasn't finished off all my Sloe Gin, a Ballyvoddy Tea Brack. If you're looking for something Irish to make for St Patrick's Day, I've a recipe for a Beef and Red Wine Pie which, with a little substitution of alcohol, turns very easily into a Beef and Guinness Pie. Or you could always turn your hand to some Brown Soda Bread.

With this kind of weather, it looks like I won't be long in the kitchen as there is plenty of digging to be done to get the garden ready for the new season's planting. Time to join the hens, methinks.

Enjoy your St Patrick's Day!

Maman Poulet, Damien Mulley and Val from Val's Kitchen all popped up on this morning's Tubridy Show on RTÉ Radio One talking about blogs, bloggers and blogging. You can find a link to today's show here and the podcast should be downloadable from here.

For anyone wanting more food blog reading, The London Times published a list of their top 50 food blogs which is well worth spending some time with. It's got lots of old favourites - Chocolate and Zucchini is in there, along with 101 Cookbooks, Chez Pim and David Lebovitz - but there are plenty more to discover. Make sure you check out Dorie Greenspan's baking, interior design in The Kitchn, step by step cooking on The Pioneer Woman Cooks, and amazing food photography from Cannelle et Vanille.

If you're based in or around Cork and interested in growing your own food, take a look at the Cork Food Web. It's been described as "facebook for foodies" and is dedicated to encouraging and facilitating local food production, with a series of groups for members interested in poultry, seed saving, compost, growing vegetables and all things garden related. I missed their seed swap last weekeend but one of the very helpful organisers is going to send me some of the left over seeds, including my favourite pumpkins, as we try to get the garden up and running for 2009. With all the sunshine today, it really feels like a day for getting out and planting.

In a slightly related manner, RTÉ Cork are looking for people in Mahon and Blackpool who would be interested in running an allotment in Cork City. Richard Corrigan is on board for this programme - Corrigan's City Farm - which seems to be going down the Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall route, showing city dwellers that they can grow their own food and also raise chickens and pigs. More information is available from the RTÉ website.

Not having a television, I missed Peter Ward of Nenagh's Country Choice on the Late Late Show but fortunately was able to catch it online here. Peter is a passionate man - passionate about the food he sells, the quality of produce available in Ireland and passionate when talking about how he sees the supermarkets driving farmers away from the land. His idea of a national online farmers' market, linking the producer directly with the consumer, makes a lot of sense, but there will have to be some rethinking about the barriers of regulation first.

There are always going to be supermarkets and people who think that the best value is found there but I prefer to buy my vegetables, dirt and all, direct from the people who grow them - they're not expensive and, being protected by clay, they keep much longer than any scrubbed-shiny supermarket carrot. I can get organic meat from Knockatullera Farm (selling at the Kilavullen Farmers' Market) at the same price - or cheaper - than I would pay in the supermarket for regular meat. But then again, for us meat is a treat, not to be eaten every day, or maybe to be used as a flavouring - Gubbeen chorizo in a tortilla, a few scraps of bacon to give depth to a soup, homemade chicken stock for risotto.

Peter - always a great promoter! - introduces several of his own suppliers, including Tipperary farmer TJ Crowe, Philip Draper of Coolnagrower Organic Produce and talks about Irish cheese, bringing Mossfield and Bay Lough cheeses into studio. Watch Peter on the Late Late here and read a more in-depth report of what he said on Le Craic.

Look at these, just waiting for something nice to be cooked in them! This Le Creuset set has to be one of the coolest wedding presents that you could ever get - very appropriate for this time of the year too. I have to say, though, that there's not going to be any cooking, romantic or otherwise, done around here this weekend as we're off in Baltimore, staying at Rolf's for a couple of nights while doing a two-day gardening course in the Glebe Gardens.

Having visited the gardens while on honeymoon in the area in 2007, I fell in love with their potager-style layout, vegetables, herbs, flowers and fruit all mixed in together. I'm hoping to get lots of inspiration from these two days!

One of my former Ballymaloe classmates, Mike Hanrahan, a great cook and a seriously talented musician (ex Stockton's Wing) was featured in the Irish Times earlier this week. Not only did we get to appreciate his food in the kitchens (and wit in the classroom!), but Sunday nights in the Blackbird was one of the high points of the week, Mike playing at the regular sessions and ensuring that the pub was always packed with students.

Read the piece here, try his food at P. McCormack & Sons bar and restaurant on the Mounttown Road in Dun Laoghaire, and keep updated on his unmissable gigs through mikehanrahan.com.

Check out the Lar Veale's Sour Grapes wine blog for his entertaining entries on matching wine with Irish Blog Awards Food/Wine nominees. This piece has the first 13 blogs nominated and this one finishes off the list. Fortunately, as the Husband and I both went off Malborough Sauvignon Blanc last year (that's what happens when you order too much wedding wine and decide to finish it off for yourself!), Bibliocook gets matched with Pinot Noirs from Central Otago or the Waipara Valley and, in the whites side of things, Riesling, Pinot Gris or Chardonnay. That'll be a bottle of Babich Marlborough Riesling and Pegasus Bay Pinot Noir, please. I wish...

If you're interested in listening back to any of the Foodtalk shows that were broadcast on Newstalk over the last six weeks (no more sending text alerts online - my Sunday nights have suddenly gotten very quiet!), they're now all available as podcasts from the Newstalk website. You can see them all here and full details of the interviewees are below.

• Programme 1 MP3: Livestock - Jacque Barry from Jacques Restaurant, Cork and Fingal Ferguson of the Gubbeen Smokehouse, Schull, West Cork.
• Programme 2 MP3: Seafood - Tony Daly from The Lime Tree, Kenmare, and Paul Kelly, mussel farmer and goldsmith, from Kilmackillogue.
  


• Programme 3 MP3: Spices - Carmel Somers from The Good Things Café, Durrus, Co Cork and Arun Kapil of Green Saffron, Midleton, East Cork.


• Programme 4 MP3: Wild Food - Áine Maguire from Kueppersbusch and Seamus Moran of LoTide Fine Foods, Westport, Co Mayo.


• Programme 5 MP3: Dairy - Aoibheann McNamara, Ard Bia, Galway and Kieran Murphy from Murphy's Ice Cream, Dingle.
  


• Programme 6 MP3: Garden - Henry Stone from The Sha-Roe Bistro, Clonegal, Co Carlow and Ultan Walsh of Gort-Na-Nain Organic Farm, Nohoval, Cork, who grows the veg for (among others) Denis Cotter of Café Paradiso.

If you're heading to the 2009 Irish Blog Awards in Cork, it's well worth your while turning up a little bit earlier for the Ladies' Tea Party, hosted by Sabrina Dent from 4pm at the Cork Airport Hotel. There are only thirty places available at this pre-event event for the lady bloggers of Ireland so, if you're interested, find out more and register at http://www.sabrinadent.com/2009/01/31/ladies-tea-party-and-knitting-circle-2009/ sooner rather than later. Refreshments will be provided by Curious Wines, iFoods.tv and Pinosa Cake.

In Cork today and during my inevitable trip to Ó Conaill's chocolate shop on French Church Street - I used to go for a dark cardamom all the time, now I've moved on to a ginger oil-infused dark chocolate, all the better to fend off the winter chill - I noticed that they have just started stocking Cate McCarthy's giant cookies.

The Cookie Jar is the name of her company and the trademark jars recently arrived on Ó Conaill's counter, packed with American-style cookies made from real ingredients. I met Cate last year at the Terra Madre Farmers' Market in Waterford and sampled quite a few of her delicious wares. Well worth a quick visit when you need your caffeine - or hot chocolate - fix accompanied by something sweet to munch on!

Ó Conaill Chocolate, 16b French Church Street, Cork. 021 4373407
The Cookie Jar, Graigue, Poulmucka, Clonmel, Co. Tipperary. 052 35448 www.thecookiejar.ie

I've always loved old cast-iron kitchen ranges. My Grandad would always put the porridge on overnight in the warming oven of the old, age-darkened Aga at Oldcastletown. By morning it would be cooked creamy, although with such a thick skin that I couldn't stomach it. As a child I was a very picky eater. The Aga - it ran on solid fuel - also made the best toast. Grandad would supervise the making of this treat on a cold winter's evening as we came in hungry from school. There were two methods: the first was simply to place a thickly sliced piece of bread from the local shop directly onto the base of the hot oven where it turned brown in a matter of minutes. And then there were the evenings when we were allowed to get out the ancient toasting forks, open the front of the firebox and toast on the flame. Those were the times that Grandad's work- and age-toughened hands came into their own, holding the bread close enough so it toasted properly. Our softer little paws - and faces! - weren't quite up to enduring the heat.

Slatered with real butter and layered with homemade jam, chosen with care from the jam cupboard upstairs (blackcurrant normally, occasionally gooseberry and, on rare occasions, a jar of plum jam), it was a feast to be savoured. That old Aga was the heart of the house, the constantly-stoked workhorse that heated the water, the radiators and the enormous hotpress overhead, cooked everything from joints of meat to roasting tins full of apple tart and made the kitchen the place where everybody spent their time. It was kept going year-round - my memories of the small antique electic cooker in the corner actually ever being used are few and far between.

When we extended the kitchen in Brookville, my childhood home, I remember the excitment of getting our own Rayburn installed in the new space. I pored over the cookbook that came with that cooker and worked my way through many of the recipes, being especially enamoured of the warming oven for raising dough when I started making my own bread. My mother still cooks at home on an oil-fired Rayburn, which is much easier to manage than the old Aga. It doesn't quite have the same feeling, though.

Now, grown up and with a house - ok, a cottage - of my own, a range has long been on the list of would-like-to-haves. A phone call from my Rathkeale Aunt before Christmas changed all that: she had a friend who was throwing out her Stanley and would we like it? The offer serendipitusly coincided with our next project - we're in the middle of designing an extension to the cottage and this is the first time that we will actually have a place to put a range. After deciding that the extension will be now fashioned around a cooker, the Husband, my Dad and the Little Brother headed off to Rathkeale with a trailer and collected our new (second hand) Stanley, to sit in storage at my parents' house until we get its home built. I'm going to have to try making that porridge for myself...

Sunday sees the last in the Foodtalk series with Garden being the theme of the final show. We travelled to Clonegal, Co Carlow to meet with Henry Stone of the Sha-Roe Bistro and then to Nohoval in Cork to talk to Ultan Walsh of Gort-Na-Nain Vegetarian Guesthouse and Organic Farm.

I stayed at Gort-Na-Nain back in May and was only too delighted to have an excuse to return and talk to Ultan at length about the vegetables that he grows (Denis Cotter of Café Paradiso is a big fan too - check out his last book, Wild Garlic, Gooseberries...and Me). There wasn't so much going on in the polytunnels at that stage in the year but I did get to admire Ultan's magnificant crop of Crown Prince squash, all sitting around on benches in one of his polytunnels, just seasoning in the dry before they get stored. I had a close encounter with them on New Year's Eve as well, when I was sitting next to a display of Crown Prince in the window of Café Paradiso. What else could I pick for my main course other than a squash gratin, which came with walnut and gingered kale, lemon-cumin cream and star anise-braised salsify.

The Sunday that we had lunch at the Sha-Roe Bistro proved to me that sometimes it's worth travelling a distance for food, although driving 2½ hours for a meal isn't something I wish to make a habit out of. In this case, however, it was more than justified. The Husband and I arrived first so we had plenty of time to relax beforehand in the elegant reception area and toast ourselves at the roaring fire. We were joined by the Producer, his father and girlfriend for a delicious lunch, made all the more memorable by the fact that we were seated at the chef's table, right next to the kitchen so we could watch Henry as he cooked. Every mouthful was a pleasure, with tastings being swapped around the table - nobody's dinner was safe! After much testing, we figured that the ultimate dinner would be the Wild Pheasant and Apple Burger (the Husband's choice), followed by the meltingly tender Slow Roasted Pork Belly (my lucky pick) but the desert would be a toss up. I had the Fig Tart Tatin, which came with Toffee Ice Cream, but there were lots of other tempting options. A leisurely, hospitable three course Sunday lunch is just €34.

You can catch me talking to Ultan and Henry on Foodtalk: Garden on Newstalk 106-108fm at 7.30am tomorrow, Saturday 24 January, and Sunday 25 January at 9.30pm or listen online here: Foodtalk on Newstalk - Garden.mp3

I've been nominated for an Irish Blog Award in the Best Food/Drink Blog category, along with another 26 - count 'em! - Irish food, wine and beer bloggers. The entire category list below so take a good look around, there's plenty of interesting reading out there. The full list of this year's Irish Blog Awards Nominations is now online here. Well done to the organisers - they've done a fabulous job putting it all together. This Awards are taking place closer to home for me this year, in the design-tastic Cork International Airport Hotel on 21 February.

Best Food/Drink Blog - Sponsored by Bord Bia
Ruth's Kitchen Experiments: justaddeggs.blogspot.com
Well Done Fillet: welldonefillet.blogspot.com
Sour Grapes: sourgrapes.ie
Italian Foodies: italianfoodies.wordpress.com
Forkncork: forkncork.com

Cheapeats.ie: cheapeats.ie
Ifoods.tv: ifoods.tv/blog
Food Culture West Cork: foodculturewestcork.wordpress.com
Food And Drink: foodanddrinkireland.blogspot.com
Bubble Brothers: bubblebrothers.com/blog

Ice Cream Ireland: icecreamireland.com
The Good Mood Food Blog: thegoodmoodfoodblog.com
The Daily Spud: thedailyspud.com
Curious: The Curious Wines Wine Blog: curiouswines.ie/blog

A Food Journey In Korea: macs-foodkorea.blogspot.com
Olliesplace: olivermoore.blogspot.com
Little Bird Eats...: littlebirdeats.wordpress.com
Cookzors: cookzors.com
Messy-chef » Recipes And Reviews: messy-chef.com/blog

Robert Francis Wine Review: robertfranciswine.ie/wordpress
The Other Black Stuff: www.theotherblackstuff.ie
Tast.ie: The Spicendipity Irish Food Blog: tast.ie
Bibliocook: All About Food: bibliocook.com
Lidl Treats: lidltreats.com

Eater's Regret: eatersregret.wordpress.com
Cully And Sully: cullyandsully.ie
Val's Kitchen: valskitchen.com

Trying to upgrade Bibliocook at the moment and, like last year, there's been a lot of frustration and pulling my hair out over long nights at the computer. Fortunately the Techie and her Husband have stepped in to help out so I hope to be back in the land of the useable blog very soon. Wish us luck!

Just discovered that Foodtalk: Spices is available to listen to as a podcast from the Newstalk podcasts page – Foodtalk on Newstalk is at the top of the page so you can't miss it! Check out Conor's Bandon Blog for useful information on listening and subscribing online.

On Newstalk 106-108fm tonight at 9.30pm the third of my radio shows on food – Foodtalk: Spices – will be broadcast. This was one of the real wild cards of the series. Most of the other categories were easy to figure out: Livestock was a given, as was Dairy and Seafood. Being interested in foraging and gardening since childhood, and doing plenty of that at the cottage, Wild and Garden were also easy areas to work in, but Spices was an area that just came out of the blue.

Then I focused in on Carmel Somers of The Good Things Café in Durrus and Arun Kapil of Green Saffron and everything just fell into place. Carmel does amazing things with good quality Irish produce like lamb, turnip and cabbage, matching them with imaginative spice combinations, while Arun imports the absolute best of spices direct from India and has woken Irish people up to the possibilities of such really, really fresh flavours. See what you think tonight.

I was thrilled to hear the first Foodtalk on Christmas Day at 1.30pm, just as we were basting the turkey, making gravy and chopping vegetables for dinner.That programme - very topically - was on Livestock, focusing on Irish pork. Jacque Barry (Jacques Restaurant) talked about her love of good quality ingredients and food eaten with family while Fingal Ferguson of the Gubbeen Smokehouse explained how the cycle works on the Gubbeen farm in West Cork - the pasture is eaten by the cows who produce the milk for the cheese, the whey of which is fed to the pigs who are turned into the best pork, sausages, salami and chorizo by Fingal.

The next show, on Seafood, will be broadcast on Newstalk 106-108fm tomorrow, New Year's Day, at 4.30pm and features mussel farmer and goldsmith Paul Kelly from Kilmackillogue and Tony Daly from The Lime Tree in Kenmare. We've also got the scheduled times for the rest of the series so I'll post them below.

Foodtalk on Newstalk

+ Programme 2: "Seafood" (New Year's Day, 4.30pm)
Kevin Thornton and Caroline Hennessy share their pleasure in eating seafood.
Guests: Tony Daly from The Lime Tree, Kenmare, and Paul Kelly, mussel farmer and goldsmith, from Kilmackillogue

+ Programme 3: "Spices" (Saturday 3 January, 7.30am and Sunday 4 January, 9.30pm)
Kevin Thornton and Caroline Hennessy marvel at the power of spices.
Guests: Carmel Somers from The Good Things Café, Durrus, Co Cork and Arun Kapil of Green Saffron, Midleton, East Cork

+ Programme 4: "Wild Food" (Saturday 10 January, 7.30am and Sunday 11 January, 9.30pm)
Kevin Thornton and Caroline Hennessy gather up an armload of free, wild food.
Guests: Áine Maguire from Kueppersbusch and Seamus Moran of LoTide Fine Foods, Westport, Co Mayo

+ Programme 5: "Dairy" (Saturday 17 January, 7.30am and Sunday 18 January, 9.30pm)
Kevin Thornton and Caroline Hennessy explore all things creamy.
Guests: Aoibheann McNamara, Ard Bia, Galway and Kieran Murphy from Murphy's Ice Cream, Dingle

+ Programme 6: "Garden" (Saturday 24 January, 7.30am and Sunday 25 January, 9.30pm)
Kevin Thornton and Caroline Hennessy marvel at the good things a garden has to offer, and wonders how many more of us will now start to grow our own.
Guests: Henry Stone from The Sha-Roe Bistro, Clonegal, Co Carlow and Ultan Walsh of Gort-Na-Nain Organic Farm, Nohoval, Cork, who grows the veg for (among others) Denis Cotter of Café Paradiso.

Don't forget to tune in to my first Foodtalk programme on Newstalk 106-108 fm which will be broadcast today at 1.30pm. Happy Christmas!

It was a sad day in work today as URRU Mallow closed its doors after just over two years of trading.

Although I've only been there part-time – initially I worked a four day week, recently I've been down to three days – it's played a big part in my life for the last twelve months. I'm really going to miss the easy access to such a great range of Irish artisan products, our ever-entertaining customers, my fantastic colleagues and inspirational boss.

Fortunately the original URRU in Bandon is still thriving - I'm going to have to start taking myself down there to continue getting my fix of quality coffee...

Fruity, peppery, herby...and oh so fresh! The latest batch of Colletta Olivieri Extra Virgin Olive Oil has just arrived and it's irresistible. It is imported to Ireland by Lino Olivieri, whose family grow the olives down in Puglia, Southern Italy and also run the much-recommended Agriturismo Colletta Antonetta. Lino is the partner of my friend The Connoisseur so I've been hearing about his home, those olive trees and that oil for several years now.

Last year I got the chance to get my hands on my first five-litre tin of the olive oil and I got so used to using it for cooking, dressing salads and on bread that it ran out much too quickly. The major problem with using such a fantastic product is that you get spoilt and it's very difficult to go back to using just any old olive oil. If you're looking for a Christmas present for someone who loves their food – or just for yourself – then contact Lino (details on the website here) or head to the Dublin Food Co Op this Saturday to grab a few tins. The best olive oil in Ireland? Taste and see...

Only got a chance to look at yesterday's Irish Times today and found Marie-Claire Digby's article on foodie websites and food bloggers, which mentions some of my favourite Irish sites including greatfood.ie, icecreamireland.com, quirkykitchen.blogspot.com, englishmum.com - and Bibliocook.com!

The Good Things Café in Durrus is holding a pre-Christmas Open Day next Sunday, 14 December, from 12 noon to 4pm. Its chef-owner, Carmel Somers, was one of the people that I interviewed for Foodtalk on Newstalk. We spent an afternoon talking about the time she first tasted limes in boarding school, heading off to Paris to work in kitchens there, cooking for Jane Grigson in London and how she uses spices with readily available Irish ingredients like turnip and cabbage.

She is paired in the Spices programme with Arun Kapil of Green Saffron, which will be broadcast on Sunday 11 January. The cafe is in a gorgeous location, out on the Sheep's Head Peninsula in West Cork, so it's well worth a visit. There's more information below.

How could anyone resist bringing boxes and boxes of these home? I was just about to leave the supermarket (when travelling, I treat foreign supermarkets like museums - as a way of seeing into another culture - plus, there's always chocolate) when I saw a display of these and I couldn't resist grabbing a stack of them. Other than that, and several slabs of chocolate, I was rather restrained this time round.

Arriving on a Sunday meant that I was kept away from the farmers' markets and, although the Christmas Markets were very atmospheric - especially after a glass of warm cherry beer - I was content to look rather than buy. We walked our legs off, covering miles and miles cris-crossing the city each day. But, as the Husband said, the more you walk the more you can eat and what with the cold and the exercise we needed few excuses for regular refreshment stops. There were lots of opportunities mapped into the day for checking out the Swartzbier in a variety of locations (can you tell that the Husband had time to plan for the trip?!) but it wasn't much of a sacrifice as there was plenty of good food available, especially in the brewpubs.

Visit Brewbaker, next to Bellevue S-bahn station (official German site here), for what the Husband called kick-arse Swartzbier as well as well-flavoured pumpkin lager - we had spent the early afternoon waiting for it to open at the nearby Valmontone restaurant so didn't get to sample their much-recommended food. Make sure you're around Brauhaus Lemke, which is very near Alexanderplatz, at lunchtime for an all-you-can eat (of very decent food) buffet for €6.80. The Husband was in heaven, especially when their Original turned out to be a very good accompaniment to lunch. Must try focusing on German wines next time!

On Monday night we launched Foodtalk on Newstalk at Thornton's Restaurant on Stephen's Green. It was great to see so many of the people that I interviewed on my trips around the country there – Fingal Ferguson came armed with cheese and lots of other Gubbeen goodies, Green Saffron's Arun Kapil had plenty of spices to smell and taste (just put me near his fennel seeds and watch them disappear!), while the Murphy's Ice Cream boys - Kieran and Sean - turned up with a selection of ice cream snowmen which had us oohing and ahhing in delight before we dug in and promptly demolished them.

All over now, just the broadcasts to look forward to, starting on Christmas Day at 1.30pm. I know the Husband and I will be back at Pruntus with all my family for Christmas so it's going to be a real traditional gather 'round the wireless while in the midst of Christmas dinner preparation at the Hennessy household! Don't forget to tune in...

It started with a phone call in the early summer. The brothers behind Soundsdoable wanted to know if I was interested in working with them on a series of radio documentaries about food. I didn't need to be asked twice. It was the start of an intense and fascinating time - journeys around Ireland in all kinds of inclement Irish summer weather to interview a variety of producers and chefs and the chance to record with chef (and fellow blogger) Kevin Thornton.

Now all the hard work has paid off and we are good to go, the series - Foodtalk on Newstalk - kicking off on Christmas Day on Newstalk 106-108 fm. Hope you get to listen!

Foodtalk on Newstalk

Program 1: "Livestock" (Christmas Day, 1.30pm)
Kevin Thornton and Caroline Hennessy hunt down some fine meats and discuss Kevin's project to rear Irish Kobe beef.
Guests: Jacque Barry from Jacques Restaurant, Cork and Fingal Ferguson of the Gubbeen Smokehouse, Schull, West Cork

+ Program 2: "Seafood" (New Year's Day, 4.30pm)
Kevin Thornton and Caroline Hennessy share their pleasure in eating seafood.
Guests: Tony Daly from The Lime Tree, Kenmare, and Paul Kelly, mussel farmer and goldsmith, from Kilmackillogue

+ Programme 3: "Spices" (11th Jan)
Kevin Thornton and Caroline Hennessy marvel at the power of spices.
Guests: Carmel Somers from The Good Things Café, Durrus, Co Cork and Arun Kapil of Green Saffron, Midleton, East Cork

+ Program 4: "Wild Food" (18th Jan)
Kevin Thornton and Caroline Hennessy gather up an armload of free, wild food.
Guests: Áine Maguire from Kueppersbusch and Seamus Moran of LoTide Fine Foods, Westport, Co Mayo

+ Program 5: "Dairy" (25th Jan)
Kevin Thornton and Caroline Hennessy explore all things creamy.
Guests: Aoibheann McNamara, Ard Bia, Galway and Kieran Murphy from Murphy's Ice Cream, Dingle

+ Programme 6: "Garden" (1st Feb)
Kevin Thornton and Caroline Hennessy marvel at the good things a garden has to offer, and wonders how many more of us will now start to grow our own.
Guests: Henry Stone from The Sha-Roe Bistro, Clonegal, Co Carlow and Ultan Walsh of Gort-Na-Nain Organic Farm, Nohoval, Cork, who grows the veg for (among others) Denis Cotter of Café Paradiso.

A typo made its way into my piece on The Old Convent published in today's Irish Times Christmas Supplement so I would just like to clarify that The Old Convent offers two nights B&B and one eight-course dinner for two people for just €450.

For more details check their website or contact them directly (Tel: 052 65565 Email: info@theoldconvent.ie).

Aer Lingus permitting, we're off to Berlin for two nights early – very early – on Sunday morning. Ever since I was at the Prix Europa in 2006 I've been wanting to revisit the city, but with a little more leisure to appreciate it. This time round I've plans for lavish amounts of kaffe und kuchen and have been reading up on Berlin street food although I can't say that descriptions of the traditional Currywurst are exactly appetising!

The Husband is on a mission to try as many beers as possible – all in the interests of research, naturally, as his first batch of homebrew went down so well – and think he's already plotted several brewery visits into our two days. I think we're going to be there during Christmas Market season so I'm looking forward to plenty of Lebkuchen, Glühwein and roasted chestnuts. Ooh, I'm starting to feel all Christmasy already...

If you're in Dublin on Thursday 4 December, check out the Greatfood.ie/Dublin Cookery School Christmas Food and Wine Fair from 6pm to 9pm at the Dublin Cookery School, which is just off Carysfort Avenue in Blackrock, Co Dublin.

Dublin Cookery School owner Lynda Booth will host the evening, which includes a sushi demonstration from Seiya Nakano, an Australian wine tasting with the entertaining John McDonnell of Wine Australia Ireland and an opportunity to get your hands on some food-orientated Christmas presents at a special discount of 10%. Don't miss the chance to pick up some of Greatfood.ie's award-winning Wild Cranberry & Apple chutney – there's every chance that you'll have it eaten long before Christmas! Tickets are just €10 and they are available to buy in advance from www.greatfood2buy.com.

Next Wednesday, 19 November, if you're around Cork you should head directly to Fenn's Quay Restaurant, which is hosting a Bubble Brothers Cahors wine tasting dinner. Jean-Raymond Clarenc of Clos Triguedina will be there to talk guests through tastings of about six of his wines, matched with food from chef Kevin Crowley. And the price? A very reasonable €50 per person. You can call the restaurant directly (021 4279527) or check out the Bubble Brothers blog for more details. They're also running a competition to win a free dinner and there's more information on that here.

Just heard that Jo'Burger in Rathmines – the place that undoubtedly serves the best burger in Dublin and the place of our last meal before we forsook the capital for country life – has been named most popular restaurant by The Dubliner in a public poll. As I write, this year's The Dubliner 100 Best Restaurants guide is being launched in the Westbury Hotel, with Dylan McGrath of Mint chosen favourite chef by his peers. Other favourites in the People's Choice Award are Bentley's (avoid the Aviator Lounge at all costs), Café Bar Deli, Chapter One, L'Gueuleton, La Maison des Gourmets, Saba (great noodles), Town Bar and Grill, The Unicorn and the ever-fabulous Winding Stair.

Greatfood.ie have just relaunched a much-expanded discussion board, with a dedicated area for bloggers to list their own blogs at www.greatfood.ie/forum. While you're there, check out Clodagh McKenna's cute aprons (although much too cute for a cottage kitchen!) and take a look at the selection of cookery courses on offer throughout Ireland.

Nigel Slater, my favourite cookery writer, wrote a piece on squash and marrows in Sunday's Observer and, seeing as I'm probably not the only one to have lots of squash to use, I thought it might come in useful. You'll find it here. Speaking of squash, check out 101 Cookbooks for a version of Denis Cotter's recipe for Borlotti Bean Mole with Roast Winter Squash.

The Tannery cookery school has just opened and Paul Flynn has lots of tempting courses on offer, including his Irish Adventure With Food demonstrations and practical classes focusing on winter food like turnips, kale, parsnips and slow cooked beef. I recently borrowed his cookbook from the Clonmel-based cousin and am thoroughly enjoying it – if his classes are as accessible as his writing then he's on to a winner.

Just came across this article on 20 Cheap Eats throughout Ireland in the Sunday Tribune which mentions lots of my favourite places, including Gruel, the Farmgate Café, Ard Bia, Cornucopia, the Cake Café – and there's another 15 to try out.

I've written here before about my experience of building an outdoor wood-fired oven on a workshop held at Mallow Racecourse during the summer. My own oven is still not, ahem, built (or even started) but Hendrik Lepel, ovencraftsman extraordinaire, is holding another workshop in Nohoval over the weekend of the 15 and 16 November. More details below.

If you're around Dublin on Sunday 14 December, Slow Food Dublin are planning a pre-Christmas, open air roast at Meeting House Square in Temple Bar with chestnut-stuffed roast pig on a spit, mulled wine, hot cider and live music. They will also have a number of stalls from food producers around the square and are looking for any new producers in the Dublin area to contact them if interested in participating. More information below.

Tuesday was not a nice day. As I drove down to Kilmackillogue pier in Kerry in the morning, the rain rarely stopped beating against the windscreen as the wipers battled to give me a view of the road. It was not the perfect day to go out on a boat yet that's exactly where I was heading, off harvesting mussels with Paul Kelly, who is a part-time mussel farmer as well a gold and silversmith. On a brief stop in Kenmare – Jam was calling for morning tea – I took a moment to admire Paul's rings, which combine gold, silver and both precious and semi- precious stones, in the window of his shop, before hitting the wet road again for the extra half-hour drive to Kilmackillogue.

There were a few fishermen already out on the sheltered pier, well-clad in bright yellow oilskins and debating the state of the markets as they readied their shrimp pots. Paul layered up his waterproofs – I just had my NZ raincoat which is generally very useful, but not in this kind of weather. It just took a few minutes on the small boat, zooming out to Paul's mussel farm, before I was wet through. At least the top half of me was someway dry but I've never regretted my lack of waterproof leggings so much before. At least the water was calm and I was somewhat sheltered from the worst of the rain by standing behind Paul as he steered the boat into the bay.

We went way out, through rows of buoys, rafted together, marking where the mussel-growing ropes are located. When we reached Paul's farm, he reached under a buoy and pulled up one of the ropes. It's still early in the season but it was loaded with full sized mussels, which he easily pulled off by hand, along with hundreds of little crabs and starfish and lots of random bit of seaweed. Mussel fishing in Kilmackillogue is done very simply: if you hang the rope, they will come. Tiny seed mussels attach themselves to the rope and grow there, in seawater that is six fathoms deep. They then look after themselves, staying open underwater, feeding constantly until they are large enough to be harvested.

With a brief stop at a sorting table on a raft near to shore to get rid of the smaller mussels and associated debris, we returned to the pier, me wet to the skin and starting to freeze. Paul exports the majority of his mussels to France, saving a few for local restaurants including The Lime Tree in Kenmare, where I first tasted them. He landed a large sack of the mussels we had collected in the boot of my car, warning me that they might be a little salty as they were still full of seawater. I nodded, teeth chattering, as I planned huge bowls of Steamed Mussels for supper, Mussel Soups and Seafood Stews, Paella or maybe some Mussels with Garlic Breadcrumbs...

Later that night, after I had distributed bags of mussels to my mother, aunt and half the neighbourhood, the Husband and I sat down to a feed of Mussels Steamed with Garlic and White Wine. Paul was right – the liquor released was saltier than I am used to – but it didn't spoil our appetite as we relished the chance to eat the plump, juicy morsels to our heart's content. I steamed the remainder, picked the mussels from the shells and froze them to eat another day – despite our best efforts, we're just not able to eat more than a couple of kilos at a time! I don't think I've ever had the opportunity to eat mussels so fresh and delicious.

Any excuse is a good one to visit Dingle and when it involves a Food Festival and an invitation to participate in the judging of the inaugural National Irish Food Awards, also known as Blas na hÉireann, how could anyone resist? Certainly not me and Saturday found my tastebuds at the ready to sample some of the enormous variety of foods entered into a series of blind tastings. Without the context of packaging and placement, it was a real opportunity to see what was out there on the Irish market. And it wasn't all, ahem, work. I also got to meet fellow bloggers Val and Ollie, catch up with my former teacher Rory O'Connell, wander around the variety of food stalls scattered around the town, eat a first class meal at seafood restaurant Out of The Blue have several afternoon affogatos and sample a variety of the Mexican flavours on offer at Murphy's Ice Cream (the Guacamole was a very surprising hit.)

Amongst the winners are a lot of old favourites like Benoit Lorge's chocolates (his Rum Bitter won Silver in the chocolate category), Green Saffron's Rogan Josh spice blend (frequently used in this house), The Apple Farm's refreshing and classy Sparkling Apple Juice, East of Boston's Tantalising Toffee Sauce, David Llewellyn's intense Balsamic Cider Vinegar, Just Food's organic soups (as served in URRU) and breads from both the Blazing Salads Bread Company, a stalwart of my Dublin life, and the traditional Barron's Bakery in Cappoquin. All the results of this year's awards are below and are on the Blas na hÉireann website: congratulations to all the winners!

Who would have thought that garlicy guacamole ice cream could possibly equal gorgeousness?

Sadly URRU missed out at last night's Good Food Ireland Awards – we were nominated in the Top Regional Member category for the south of the country, along with The Blue Geranium Café at Hosfords Garden Centre, Café Paradiso, The Farmgate, Hayfield Manor Hotel, QC's Seafood Bar & Restaurant, The Poacher's Inn, The Tannery and the eventual winner – The Cliff House Hotel in Ardmore.

Still, there was more than enough good food, wine and company to keep us entertained in the Shelbourne Hotel and I got to catch up some old friends, including Anthony from Ummera Smokehouse – his award-winning organic gravadlax was on the menu, alongside Geraldine Bass' (Old Millbank Smokehouse) rich smoked salmon pâté – and Louise from Sowan's Organics, with her new spelt brownies. More information on the nominees and winners, highlighted in bold, below.

It's into the West for me this weekend as I'm heading out the door on Friday after work in URRU and straight down to Kerry with the Husband for this year's Dingle Food Festival. It all kicks off that night with a launch at the Dingle Bay Hotel from 10pm. If you're about on Saturday and Sunday there are a series of cookery demonstrations, taste trails (watch out for the Mexican Fiesta at Murphy's Ice Cream!) and farmers' markets throughout the town. And don't forget – at 5pm on Sunday the inaugural Blas na hÉireann/National Irish Food Awards ceremony will take place at Benner’s Hotel. Now, just got to make sure that my accomodation is sorted out!

Have you ever been to Dingle? Despite the best of intentions over the years – and the Husband visiting there regularly since he moved to Ireland – it's taken me quite a while to get round to visiting. But, when there's a pot of Murphys' Ice Cream at the end of the trip, how can you resist?

The sun shone for our drive there as we toasted pleasantly in the car, admiring the strand at Inch and the fact that we could see right across Dingle Bay. Scenary looks much more pleasant in sunlight, somehow. The tourists that wandered around the town had an air – not often seen this summer – of satisfaction, of being perfectly happy to briefly visit a few shops before getting back to the wilds and views, unlike last week's bedraggled lost-looking wanderers in Kenmare. And everywhere you walked there was someone eating ice cream. Ice cream in cones, ice cream in small blue tubs, groups of people standing outside Murphys' Ice Cream shop, swapping tastes of their chosen scoops, old couples walking on the sea front, making sure they didn't lose any last drops of their ice cream and ice cream all over babies' faces.

So, you make your way to the distinctively blue and white shop for your own ice cream – but which one? Will you go for an old-school classic like Vanilla or Chocolate, something with a bit more texture – Honeycomb, Cookies and Cream, perhaps? - or will you have to go straight for the latest unusual flavour that's arrived behind the counter: Guinness and Chocolate, anyone? Maybe the best way of deciding is to try them all – and then there's the small matter of figuring out which coffee or hot chocolate to drink, whether you actually need to buy a slice of one of the delectable cakes on offer and how many different bars of Valrhona chocolate you need to take home with you when you reluctantly leave. Whole days can be lost here.

Kieran Murphy – for the man who makes the ice cream is always the best judge of how to eat it – persuaded me, not with too much difficulty, into trying an Affogato al Caffè. A shot of espresso over a scoop of chocolate whiskey ice cream: can you think of a better way of getting a caffine hit? It's a sophisticated take on an ice cream float, just for grown-ups, as long as the kids don't see it while you're gobbling. And then a little later, to finish, it's time for an Extreme Hot Chocolate. Kieran told me it was very healthy, not at all heavy, made with cocoa, and served wth a dollop of cream on the top to balance it all out. Try it – and then see if you can leave without the Ghirardelli cocoa that they use to make it. See? I'm a sucker. And Kieran is a bad influence. One large 1lb tub of the cocoa – after all they do have a Chocolate Frosting and a Brownies recipe on the back – and a box of 70% chocolate (for cooking with, I swear!) and I finally tear myself away. But I'll be back – after tasting a few of Mexican ideas in production for the Dingle Food Festival I'm not sure I could stay away.

A short trip to Kenmare earlier this week unearthed plenty of good food. Dinner at the Lime Tree was worth waiting for, as we arrived late, stepping into the lively, convivial atmosphere of the restaurant from a cold, damp night. There was plenty to choose from on the menu but my eye didn't go too far and I gladly devoured a dish of the sweetest Kilmackillogue mussels, steamed open in a in a lemon, garlic, ginger and corriander broth. Tempted though I was by the Kerry lamb on offer, I stuck with the seafood and enjoyed the monkfish instead. A portion of well-flavoured pea and chorizo risotto surrounded medallions of the fish, in a rosemary butter sauce, topped with long, curly parsnip crisps. There wasn't a lot left on the plate by the time the friendly waiting staff came to clear and I didn't even get to touch the, for me, superfluous side dishes of vegetables and potatoes. After all that, desert didn't even get a look in and I finished with a pot of peppermint tea.

Next morning, after breakfast, I took a quick trot into town to check out the farmers' market. The stall holders seemed to be busy, despite another rotten day and lots more rain. I just had enough time to pick up a bottle of olive oil from Toby's Olive Stall, along with a couple of purple-streaked heads of French garlic. Ever since the garlic that I brought home from France ran out, I've been desperately trying to find French, or at least European, garlic but most of the bulbs on offer seem to be sad old imports from China so I was delighted to come across garlic in Kenmare. I also grabbed some 2008 Wild Beara Honey and a chunk of honeycomb from a laid-back Californian who had all the time in the world to tell me about his wares. Unfortunately, I didn't have quite as much time to spend there – this time – so I had to grab the honey and go!

After a trip to Kilmackillogue pier, I ended back in Kenmare before heading home. Anxious to grab a bite to eat, I went into Jam and got a bowl of their Carrot and Ginger Soup. In the wrong hands this could have been disastrous but who ever was in the kitchen had a sure hand with the spicing and the soup was delicious, the perfect antidote for the miserable day outside. On my way out I couldn't resist one of the Chocolate and Nut Flapjacks – it's a self-service counter so you are totally tempted by a range of cakes and slices ever before you get to see what's on offer in the savoury side of things. I resisted initially but I was no sooner back in the car than half the Flapjack disappeared.

On my brief wander around town, I also liked the look of the Kenmare Food Company – great coffee smells and lovely books to browse through in the back – the mixture of fine wines, greeting cards, newspapers and quality chocolates in Vanilla Grape and the range of foods available at Truffle Pig. Plenty to investigate next time!

It's food festival season at the moment in North Cork with Mitchelstown holding its own festival this weekend, kicking off with a gala evening with Clodagh McKenna at the Firgrove Hotel tonight. You can see the menu below – it's got fantastic Clonmore Goat's Cheese from Tom Biggane, Nano Nagle organic eggs and apples, Araglin trout and David Lee’s honey, fresh from the bees that spent the early summer buzzing around our cottage garden. There's also a market taking place on Sunday from 12pm at the Mitchelstown Business Park.

While the morning may have been clear and cool, with early arrivals dressed in fleeces and jeans, by lunchtime at the Terra Madre Farmers' Market in Waterford it was strappy frocks and sandals all the way as the crowds took to the streets in the sunshine. Stalls stretched up and down John Roberts Square, taking off into the side streets when they ran out of room. We arrived early, as the stallholders were setting up, and went in search of coffee but to no avail. Where are Cork Coffee Roasters when you need them?!

Desperate, I grabbed a cup of instant from the Coolanowle Organics stall, while the Husband decided that his breakfast was to be one of their large organic sausages in a roll. I didn't get to see much of that before it – and he – disappeared. He headed to the beach to enjoy the sunshine while I wandered around, bumping into Ballymaloe classmates and fellow foodies. I grabbed a handful of sweet, ripe cherry tomatoes from Rupert Hugh-Jones's Ballycotton Organics stall, before hitting pay-dirt at the eye-catching Cookie Jar stall nearby. American by birth and now based near Clonmel, Cate McCarthy makes the kind of homemade cookies that kids adore. Giant, five-inch Chocolate Chip, Oatmeal Raisin (my choice!) or Monster Cookies were sitting temptingly in the jars on the table, alongside her Boston Brownies and slices of New York Style Cheesecake. An enthuastic Richard Auler was handing out samples of his meaty organic beefburgers, made on the Ladybird Organic Farm near Cahir, Co Tipperary, along with plenty of information on the value of organic growing and their dry-aged Angus beef.

I headed straight to the well-stocked Gubbeen stall to pick up food for a market supper at home – a slice of chicken and lemon terrine, Gubbeen cheese crackers, chunks of Gubbeen cheese and chorizo – along with a chunk of smoked ham for the freezer and a catering pack of their streaky bacon, ready for chopping up into lardons to flavour autumnal soups and stews. I also stopped at the Ardsallagh stall to pick up one of Jane Murphy's pepper-coated soft goat's cheese from her colourful selection.

I missed out on the blaas – a white, floury bap that is a unique Waterford speciality – at Barron's Bakery but managed to get my fix at the Irish Country Markets marquee in Jenkins Lane Car Park, where they were serving brunch in a blaa, complete with rocket (important to get the greens in there) rasher, sausage, black pudding, fried egg and relish. A quick stop at the well-laden Malone Fruit Farm table to grab a bottle of their homemade blackcurrant cordial and it was time to go. The Husband was back from the beach, people were settling down around the big screen in the square to watch the match and I couldn't carry or eat much more food!

More reports of the weekend, including reports from the conference and workshops, will be online at the Terra Madre website.

For anyone interested in food, particularly Slow Food, it cannot have escaped your attention that Terra Madre Ireland will take place this week in Waterford.

It all kicks off on Thursday, with a National Organic Food Conference, then on Friday there are a series of workshops – from Irish Food Production: Post EU Quota, WTO and Peak Oil to GMOs and Food Tourism, Edible School Gardens, Food Miles and Routes to Market for Local Producers. You can have your say in advance on the discussion forum. This is the really serious business of the weekend as the information from these workshops will then be fed back to both Trevor Sargent, Minister of State for Food and Horticulture, and his counterpart in Northern Ireland, Farming Minister Michelle Gildernew.

On the lighter side of things, cookery demonstrations from Irish chefs have been scheduled for Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Being a huge fan of Café Paradiso, I'd definitely be at the Denis Cotter demo given half a chance. I've also been enjoying An Irish Adventure With Food so would love to go along to see Paul Flynn (of The Tannery) cooking with pork (both on Friday). My former teacher, Rachel Allen, is also participating, cooking for an Autumn Dinner Party on Saturday morning. Clodagh McKenna, Eunice Power (Powersfield House), Neven Maguire, Sheila Kelly (Bord Bía), Nick Price (Nick's Warehouse in Belfast) and Richard Corrigan are the other chefs taking part. There are also a selection of different food tours, taking in East Cork, Carlow, Kilkenny, Waterford, Tipperary and Wexford on Saturday morning (the itineraries are all here) – I'm sure the Husband, with his new-found interest in brewing, would love the opportunity to join the Carlow tour and see around the Carlow Brewing Company!

Of course, all this is taking place – and I'm going to be working in Mallow. Only one person from URRU can attend and my boss definitely has first dibs. I'm heading off to Waterford after work on Saturday, however, so I can be there bright and early for the mother of all Farmers' Markets, which will take place on John Roberts Square from 11am to 3pm.

There is more information below from Slow Food Ireland on Terra Madre Ireland and the website is at terramadreireland.com

RTÉ Cork had one of the stands at the Mallow Food Festival, handing out flyers and application forms for a new Irish food show called Recipe for Success. During the six-part series, home cooks will compete to see their recipe go into supermarket production. Could be interesting! You can see the flyer here and more information, along with an application form, is available on the RTÉ website.

Glorious sunshine, lots of people (especially before the match kicked off) and stalls well-laden with a large variety of good food meant success all the way for yesterday's Mallow Food Festival. URRU had a stall there so the Mallow Girl and I were kept busy, filling and selling pottles (note use of Kiwi term!) of URRU nibbles – paper cups filled with slices of Gubbeen chorizo, salami, chunks of their extra mature and oak smoked Gubbeen cheese, topped with a Gubbeen cheese biscuits. We were also selling a selection of afternoon cakes – lemon drizzle, flourless chocolate and almond and carrot loaf cakes – from Richard Graham-Leigh who, with his wife, Jane, supplies URRU with all variety of tarts, café bars, cookies and cakes. All of the cakes were pre-wrapped, fortunately, as the wasps were also attending in force and the Natural Foods Bakery next to us were inundated by black and yellow-striped fans of their sweet offerings.

Being so busy – hence no photos! – I didn't get much of a chance to look around until much of the food was gone but at least I managed a coffee from John Gowan's Cork Coffee Roasters, a selection of apple juices, crisp crunchy eating apples and chunky cookers from Philip across at the Little Irish Apple Company, and a few seed-laden pitta breads from the Natural Foods Bakery. Fellow organisers Essink and Lucey Butchers looked to be doing a great trade in lunches, cakes and vegetables, Arun was kept very busy at the Green Saffron stand and our usual Mallow Farmers' Market traders were happily selling out of their smoked fish, cheese, pots of herbs and organic vegetables. It was great to meet Elke from the Dine and Wine Club and fortunately she called by to say hello at a time when we had a little lull so I had a few minutes to talk to her.

Now, back to normal life in URRU!

Willie Healy, owner of URRU Mallow and one of the organisers of the Mallow Food Festival, was on RTÉ Radio 1's Mooney Show today, talking about the festival, farmers' markets and local food. You can listen to it here – it's the programme from Wednesday 27 August – and Willie is 46 minutes, 50 seconds in to the recording.

The pressure is on – only four days to go to this year's Mallow Food Festival – and we're hoping for sunshine! Last year, it was a glorious day, apparently, amidst the damp gloom that was the summer of 2007 (not very different at all from summer 2008) and the kids are due back to school so the weather is bound to perk up. The event takes place on the main street in Mallow on this Sunday, 31 August, from 12pm to 3.30pm and it's looking like we're getting at least 50 stalls to take place this year. Unfortunately, the fact that URRU will have a stall this year means that my purchasing power will be necessarily limited so I'll have to send the Husband and the Cambridge Couple off on many buying trips. Now, we'll just have to keep our fingers crossed for good weather...

I'm the Sourdough aficionado, using natural yeasts to raise my bread. Now – and it's been brewing for a while (pun very definitely intended) – the Husband is just after taking delivery of his own yeasts as he prepares to embark on a long-discussed, thought-over and well-researched foray into the world of making beer at home.

After we were both spoiled for choice with microbrewery beers in NZ, it's become more and more difficult to drink the rubbish that you can find on tap in most Irish pubs (with an honorary exception for Beamish, of course, and both the Franciscan Well Brewery and Bierhaus in Cork). So, this could be a whole new world. And, finally, there's some good reason for the dozens of empty beer bottles stored in the spare room!

If you're in the Mallow vicinity tomorrow, Saturday 23 August, call in to URRU as Arun Kapil of Green Saffron will be in store between 11am and 3pm, talking about his range of fresh, intensely flavoured spice blends and Indian ingredients, offering plenty of tips and tricks for making the most of them.

After we especially enjoyed the Lamb Rogan Josh at his Ballyvolane banquet, I very kindly (not at all thinking of myself!) gave the Husband the Rogan Josh blend as one of his birthday presents. The sachet scented the rest of the presents and wafted spice around the kitchen until he eventually gave in and cooked it for the night the International Aid Worker came to visit. It was fabulous and there might even be a repeat performance next weekend when a couple of the English Engineers come to visit. The Garam Masala, rose petals and all, is also fantastic and comes with a recipe for Arun's very morish Garam Masala Cookies that was tried out to great effect this week by my German Colleague.

Don't forget – while Arun is talking about spices in store, we also have the Mallow Farmers' Market taking place in the courtyard outside URRU from 10.30am to 1pm.

When the Husband and I stayed at Gort-Na-Nain in May, I admired Ultan and Lucy's recently built outdoor wood-fired oven. A sturdy stone-clad structure that they can use to bake pizza and bread, it sits in a magnificent location, on the then-sunny patio outside their kitchen, looking across the hills to the sparkling blue sea. My interest piqued, they put me in contact with the builder, Henrik Lepel, and I asked him to keep me updated about any future breadoven building workshops.

On one of my rare weekends that actually incorporated both Saturday and Sunday (two so far, this year!) Henrik happened to be holding a workshop at the Mallow Racecourse, building an oven for the Garden Fair. So, with visions of savoury pizzas and fresh-baked breads dancing in my head, I promptly signed up. Alas, torrential rain on the Saturday put an end to that day's workshop but Henrik persevered and the following day saw a small group of be-wellied participants gather to build under a tarpaulin at the racecourse. Despite even more rain, that evening we had completed all three layers over the wet newspaper-covered domed sand mould that Henrik had shaped the previous day. The following week it was successfully used to cook the most delicious pizzas at the Garden Festival – I was working in town but several of my customers gave me great reports on how well the oven was working.

Henrik's next workshop will be taking place at Kealkil, near Bantry in West Cork over the weekend of 23-24 of August, is limited to eight participants and is priced at €120 per person, including lunch. For more information and for bookings, contact Henrik at 086 8838400 or email kirdnehl@hotmail.com. As for me, I still have good intentions and am on a search for some subsoil to build my own oven. I just need someone to do some digging for me!

You can see some pictures of one of the first breadovens that Henrik built on Irish Allotments.

Despite all the recent rain and bad weather, the range of vegetables available at the Mallow Farmers' Market continues to expand. As well as his fantastic salad leaves, which I eat for lunch every day, Morris from Gairdín Eden has been selling huge bunches of rhubarb and carrots. I also picked up some parsnips this week, along with a jar of West Cork Eden Honey – perfect for Honey Flapjacks, if I can save some back from the Husband and his toast!

My favourite thing to do with the smallest, sweetest carrots after I get them home on Saturday evening is to take them all off the bunch, scrub them well and eat them for dinner with a big bowl of homemade hummus. With a good chunk of one of Gudrun Shinnick's cheeses - herbed St Bridget, aged St Gall, spicy Cais Dubh - or some of the other cheeses that she sells on her stall (the soft Knockalara sheep's cheese has been very popular around here) it's a perfectly easy supper to eat outside in the sunshine (if and when that happens).

We've been waiting for the organic vegetables from Patrick Frankel, a new producer in Donneraile, and they started arriving in the last few weeks. On Saturday, his stall was manned by a helpful French girl, selling herbs, spring onions, yellow and green courgettes, an assortment of tomatoes, new potatoes, peas and, much to my delight, mangetout. When I shop for vegetables and fruit, I try to buy as locally as possible – first Ireland, then Europe, then I don't bother. Despite me inadvertently leaving the mangetout in work over the weekend, they've already made it into a large tub of Nigella's Sesame Peanut Noodles as well as a Potato Salad with Chorizo and Mangetout. The only thing I missed this week was one of my market staples, the smoked trout from Geraldine Bass of Old Millbank Smokehouse. I use it in warm and cold salads with pasta, potatoes or couscous, in risottos and oven bakes, panfried with spiced garlic butter and mashed into fish pâté. I just might have to take a trip to Friday evening's Killavullen Farmers' Market at the Nano Nagle Centre and see if she's there.

The next Mallow Farmers' Market will take place in the courtyard outside URRU from 10.30am to 1pm on Saturday 23 August.

After writing about Irish success in the Great Taste Awards last week (I was also delighted to hear that my favourite Ummera smoked chicken took a Gold award), I was interested to receive this press release (see below) about the just-launched Irish Food Awards.

Awards will be given in a total of 17 categories, including preserves/conserves, breads, chocolate, ice cream, seafood and cheeses. To be eligible, all foods entered must be commercially available in at least three outlets and be made in either Northern or Southern Ireland by companies registered in this country. The awards will take place at the Dingle Peninsula Food and Wine Festival, on the weekend of 3rd to 5th October – another good excuse to head into Kerry for a couple of days! More information is available in the press release below and at www.irishfoodawards.com.

Congratulations to Greatfood.ie, who won three gongs at the recent Great Taste Awards in London with their chutneys and relishes. These awards are considered to be the Oscars of the foodie world, with 2021 producers entering almost 4800 products this year to be judged in a wide variety of categories.

The products – Hot Red Pepper Jam, Walnut and Fig Preserve, Wild Cranberry and Apple Relish – are made with Monaghan-based En-Place Foods, who also picked up an award for their for their Castleleslie Balsamic and Apple Reduction (haven't tasted this – yet – but you have to try their Sherry and Fig Balsamic Reduction drizzled on roast duck or trickled over a warm goat's cheese salad).

I'm a particular fan of the Wild Cranberry and Apple Relish, several jars of which we devoured around Christmas while on a black pudding bender. A special pack of the award-winning preserves are available as a special pack from Greatfood2buy.com and, while you're there, you can also pick up a bottle of the Balsamic and Apple Reduction. Make sure you check out my favourite Argan oil and their dinky little tins of spices as well.

For me, few trips abroad are complete without some kind of local food or kitchen accessory purchase, although flying does tend to put the skids on most shopping. Getting the ferry to France this year meant that life was very much easier when looking at things to bring home. The Husband went over with the intention of picking up some equipment for his nascent home-brewing career, giving me a chance to look round kitchen equipment with an eye to actually being able to bring something home. Mr Bricolage proved to be the perfect place for us both. He picked up a 40 liter plastic keg and a variety of other beer-making paraphernalia; while I was hemming and hawing over a stoneware vinaigrier, he grabbed it for me and legged it to the cash desk. A vinaigrier is a vinegar maker, an urn-shaped pot with a wide, lidded mouth to slosh in your left-over wine and a little tap to let you pour off the resulting vinegar. Mine also came with the cutest little stool, I presume to allow more air circulation.

There's lots of information out there on the web about making vinegar from wine and the whole mysterious business of a “vinegar mother”. As with sourdough starter, you can buy the mother but I think I might just see what time does to my collection of wine dregs. Some of the best information that I've found is on the Gang of Pour website. I'll let you know how I get on!

If you're a farmers' market fan and in the Clonakilty vicinity next Friday, 8 August, watch out for the launch of the town's market at Spiller's Lane Car Park (by the Credit Union).

The market kicks off at 8.30am and Darina Allen will be doing the official opening honours at 12.30pm. According to the Friends of Clonakilty Market, "the very finest local and seasonal foods will be available, including organic vegetables, fresh fish, locally baked breads, rashers and sausages, olives, dips, sun-dried tomatoes, jams, chutneys, sushi, farmhouse cheeses, freshly brewed coffee and much more..."

While I was away in France, this year's Mallow Food Festival was launched. Last year's Festival was very successful – I've been hearing about it from my customers all year! - and this year it will be taking place on Sunday 31 August. The organisers, who are William Healy (URRU), Claire Ryan (Essink restaurant) and Ian Lucey (Lucey's Butchers), are aiming to make the event even bigger and better, showcasing at least sixty of the leading food producers in the area.

The 2008 Mallow Food Festival will take place on Mallow's main street from 12 noon to 3.30pm on Sunday 31 August. More information is available from William Healy, URRU Culinary Store, Bank Place, Davis Street, Mallow, Co Cork. Tel/Fax: 022 53192

Morning Ireland hype the recession – again – with a focus on the restaurant industry.

Restaurants bitten by credit crunch
Eleanor Burnhill reports that the rapid pace of opening restaurants has slowed

It will be quiet around here this week as I have abandoned the Irish summer for some time soaking up the French sun with the Husband, the Teacher and the Tax Advisor. We have taken ourselves camping in the Vendée and Charente-Maritime regions on the Atlantic Coast for ten days, staying in small campsites and spending plenty of time investigating brioche and pain au chocolate, moules, abricots, glaces and galettes, along with cheese and wine of every description. Time now, perhaps, for another café au lait in the sunshine before we hit the beach. I can't cope with the French keyboard any longer!

If you're in the Mallow area next week, we're hosting a week of Conversations on a Farmers' Market in URRU at 11am each morning. Several of the producers from the Mallow Farmers' Market are going to be talking about how they make their wares - smoked fish and cheese, salad leaves and organic vegetables - and yours truly will also be participating next Wednesday morning (16 July), talking about sourdough bread and how to make your own starter, with my Ballymaloe one as an active example! There's more information below, along with links to a couple of sites that also have information on the Conversations.

Irish Allotments: Forthcoming events at URRU, Mallow
Bridgestone Blog: Do Not Miss This!
Dine & Wine Club Cork: Farmer's Talk

After the excitement of our first - albeit cracked - egg, three out of four of the chickens have been earning their keep. We're still not sure who's holding out, but most mornings, when we go out to the run to feed and water them, there are three eggs waiting in the nesting box. They're small - I'm using two instead of one at the moment - but perfectly formed and, I didn't expect this, have an incredible flavour. It must be all the Ballyvoddy slugs that the girls pick up on their wanders around the garden.

Mornings working from home are enlivened by frequent checks on the foursome as they free-range around our half-acre. We live alongside a busy road so would like to keep them towards the back of the property. That's not what they think as they make their way towards the front of the house where the best of slugs seem to live, judging by their determination to make it there. I've taken to moving the computer to an outside table so that I can keep an eye on them (and on the cat, watching carefully as they scratch about), until they get too naughty and I have to herd them down the length of the garden towards their home. They like to take the scenic route, through some of the less-mowed parts of the garden, and our travels are enlivened by my swearing as they lead me through yet another patch of hidden nettle stalks and my bare ankles suffer.

With a half-dozen eggs arriving in the kitchen every two days, I'm turning to my recipe books for more ideas and Michel Roux's Eggs has already proven itself invaluable. My small cast-iron pan is getting used for regular omelettes and a couple of eggs poached on a bed of spicy lentils was very successful. I'm looking forward to making mayonnaise this week and we've also baked a couple with blue cheese in the heart-shaped ramekins we got from the Sculptor last June. I remember my Nana making Lemon Curd when there were lots of eggs to spare so I'll have to dig out her recipe. Then, with whites left over, there'll have to be a Pavlova some day for tea. Who would have thought that having hens would be so much fun?!

Still trying to figure out this upgrade - paid work keeps getting in the way, unfortunately - but the comments are back working for me, finally, so feel free to let me know what you think about recent posts.

Although clouds threatened, the sun shone continued to shine all day on Sunday at the inaugural Taste of Cork as crowds gathered to eat and drink in the atmospheric surroundings of the Cork City Gaol. What would the former inmates have thought if they looked out the bars of their windows at the thousands of people swaping their florins for delicious satay at Jacobs on the Mall, devouring Flemings' layered foie gras dish, eating seasonal mackerel with a fresh gooseberry sauce from Ballymaloe House, pulling apart the Ivory Tower's Venison Chimichurri with Chocolate and Chilli Sauce and queuing for the popular Fish and Chips with Minted Pea Purée at the Club Brasserie stand? Urru was there with pâtisserie from Richard Graham-Leigh, particularly his rich Chocolate and Raspberry Tentation and an array of fruit tartlets, Jack McCarthy brought a selection of his wares and there were freebie tastings aplenty from a variety of stalls, including plenty of offerings in the chocolate and wine side of things.

I picked up a bag of the aged basmati rice that I had so enjoyed on Thursday from Green Saffron and spent the last of my florins on a few scoops of assorted olives and my favourite butter bean salad from The English Market's Olive Stall. With no parking available near the venue, the free park and ride was a big success, toilets were numerous and clean and extra florins were available at most corners. The people behind the stalls seemed to be enjoying themselves as much as their customers, always a good sign of an event. Now that Taste of Cork can join the successful Dublin event what's next? Taste of Galway? I know a few people in the West that would be delighted with that...

Other bloggers on Taste of Cork:
Conor's Bandon Blog - Taste of Cork a huge success
The LouderVoice Blog - Win a gift hamper for Taste of Cork reviews
The Dine and Wine Club - My Weekend

Update July 3, 2008: There are plenty more mini-reviews and comments on Taste of Cork at LouderVoice - check them out and make your own opinion known.

I've always thought that Mao was a strange name for a café/bar. Imagine a pub called Hitler or a restaurant named after Pol Pot. Or don't. But, if you would like to enter a competition to win a meal for two, courtesy of Bubble Brothers and the introduction of their lip-smackingly good iki beer to Café Mao, wander over to their blog and put your thinking cap on!

Thursday night we spent at a sumptuous banquet of Indian food from Green Saffron in a marquee on the lawn of the elegant Ballyvolane House. We were treated to an assortment of curries made with Green Saffron spice blends, served on fragile-looking yet surprisingly long-lasting leaf plates, and accompanied by Bubble Brothers' wines and bottles of Tiger Beer. Live Indian music soundtracked the evening, punctuated by Green Saffron founder Arun Kapil talking about how the dishes were made and the spices used in each one.

Tables were laden with bowls of cooling Banana Raita, Green Saffron's superb Mango, Date and Jaggery Chatni (Chutney), fresh naan breads and frequently refreshed platters of aged Basmati rice as we ate our way through five curries, from Rogan Josh to Bengali Tiger Prawns, stopping off at Chicken Korma, Chana Masala and Red Lentil Dahl on the way. My favourites were the rich, spicy Lamb Rogan Josh and the warming Dahl - but that was until we came to the sweet ending: scoops of fragrant Karnataka Vanilla bean ice cream and slices of golden Saffron and Apricot Kulfi, served with fantastically morish Garam Masala oatmeal cookies.

As the dusk deepened outside the colourful marquee and conversations started to meander, we finished the evening with spiced, milky Chai Masala, served in small clay cups before we left to search for our cars and started to make our way home. A night of exotic flavours and new friends.

Watch out for - or follow your nose to find - fragrant Green Saffron spice blends at Urru in Mallow and Bandon, Interior Living on MacCurtain Street in Cork, Mahon Point Farmers' Market, Limerick Farmers' Market and in The Artists' Workshops at the Stephen Pearce Gallery, Shanagarry. You can pick up the chai blends at my two favourite Cork cafés - Cork Coffee Roasters on Bridge Street and ó Connail's Chocolates on French Church Street - and, when the Green Saffron site is online again, you'll be able to order direct from Arun.

Update July 2, 2008: Just found out the name of the unexpectedly fantastic pink fizz that we were drinking with our curries. I've had Raboso Rosato Frizzante from the Bubble Brothers a few times but never realised how well it would go with spicy food. And it's a great party drink - what more could you ask for?

If you've been a fan of Deborah's Humble Housewife blog - she's now blogging at taste.ie - check out her new venture at the beautifully designed Spicendipity, which sells a selection of spice mixes, sauces and baking mixes, alongside some gorgeous gift baskets. Press release below...

Craft butcher Jack McCarthy is a passionate man. Make a visit to his shop in the middle of the main street in Kanturk and be prepared to learn all about his wide range of award-winning meat products. On a quick visit to the town to meet up with the Editor earlier today, I called in to pick up some of my favourite North Cork pancetta. We were only in the door two minutes when Jack had us as a willing audience to taste his intensely savoury air-dried beef. Sliced thinly like Italian Bresaola, it melts in the mouth with a silky texture similar to the finest smoked salmon, leaving a lingering flavour of the spices used in the cure. This innovative craft butcher is like a shark, never standing still – for Jack there's always something to learn or try, a new product to work on, an old one to improve.

A wide variety of sausages were just asking to meet a barbeque: I picked up some of the ones that he makes with local Ardrahan cheese for the next sunny evening at home but could easily have bought twice as much again, so intrigued I was with the flavours on offer. The shop is festooned with awards, including the 2005 Gold Great Taste Award for Jack's spiced dry-cured back rashers, which come vacuum-packed in a striking gold foil packet with his trademark bay leaf. The same product also took the prize for Best Irish Speciality Product that year.

As I drove home, I started planning tomorrow night's dinner. If I can track down some Gabriel cheese, I'll make a spiky salad from the garden (the rocket and mustard are flourishing particularly well), dressed simply with lemon juice and decent olive oil, topped with the jewel-coloured slices of air-dried beef and some shavings of the cheese. But there's also rashers to try, the sausages to barbeque and the pancetta to toss with pasta or make into a superlative BLT. Thankfully Kanturk isn't too far away.

Jack McCarthy Meats, Main Street, Kanturk, Co Cork.
Tel: + 353 29 50178
Web: www.jackmccarthy.ie - Speciality hampers are available to order for delivery in Ireland.
Read Anne Kennedy's impassioned feature on Jack McCarthy at Greatfood.ie.
Watch Jack McCarthy on Nationwide.

You may have noticed some random design issues around here recently, as well as messed-up links, comments not working and the like. I'm still trying to figure out my MT upgrade and, of course, my computer hard disc managed to flatline in the middle of all of this. At the moment I'm lucky to be online at all and am working with a disabled hard disk in a parallel Linux world. Some time soon, I hope, services will return to normal.

My Nana always kept hens. As a child, I spent a lot of time at her house - just the other side of the hill from where we now live - and hens were an ever-present, taken-for-granted part of growing up. Previously my Nana, a trained and skilled poultrywoman, had kept flocks of hens for breeding; by the time I came along she just supplied Dwanes, one of the local shops, with fresh eggs for sale at the counter. But there were still jobs for the grandchildren to do. One of the dreaded chores was that of collecting the eggs. Slowly, slowly, slowly, the straw-lined wicker egg basket banging against my Wellington-clad bare legs, I would go through the gate in the far corner of the yard, wander past the haggart with all its fascinating bits of rusty farm machinery, turn right on to the lane the cows ambled along twice a day for milking and, keeping close to the less muddy inside side, come to the old wooden hen house. After taking a deep breath of clean air, I would twist the old bolt across, opening the door into the musty fug of the hens' world and prepare myself for the egg search.

These were very much free-range eggs; the hens spent their days roaming through the nearby grove and surrounding farmyards. Very few of the outdoor escapades of my cousins and I didn't involve encountering some squawking hen in an unlikely place. But there were always a few indoors and they looked very imposing indeed, especially to a little girl who wasn't too much bigger than the basket that she carried. Most of the nesting boxes that lined the hen house were empty that time of the day but there were always a few hens in place to put the heart crossways in you as you pulled back the disintegrating curtains that gave the layers some privacy. Unlike my Mother and aunts, I could never bring myself to root under a hen for eggs, always too afraid that that shar-looking beak would seek to defend its owner from the unwarranted intrusion. I wonder how many eggs I left behind in those days?

On Saturday the Husband picked up four Rhode Island Red, point-of-lay pullets from a hen lady near Kanturk to populate our sturdy and stylish new hen house and run from Fingerprint Wood Products. The crooning and clucking from the girls as they figure out their new surroundings has unlocked a stream of long-forgotten memories. Every time we go into the garden there has to be time spent observing the new arrivals and marvelling at their antics. Even though we are keeping them confined at the moment, they have already managed - even at a remove - to terrorise the local tom cat who was paying visits to our own cat. The cat herself normally follows us around the garden as we work outside; her movements are now more confined as she tries to avoid being seen and commented on by the hens. Last night the Husband and I spent half-an-hour in and out of the run, trying to find a bowl or bucket that our ever-so-slightly dense foursome would recognise as a water receptacle. They walked around - almost into - the various water containers for quite a while but not once while we were there did they actually see what was in them. Figuring that they wouldn't expire from thirst overnight, we eventually left them to it. I think that my Nana would have been very entertained.

Just got an email from Cactus TV (home of Saturday Kitchen and Richard and Judy) looking for people who are interested in learning how to bake and who would like to participate in a new cookery series. It all kicks off in June so they need volunteers in the Cork area ASAP. More info below.

- Do you love cooking but find the art of baking a bit of a mystery?

- Does your bread fail to rise?

- Do your cakes go soggy?

- Maybe you loved baking as a child but have since lost the skill?

Cactus TV are looking for people to learn to bake as part of a new cookery series – so if you’d like to pick up some top tips from a TV chef, are aged between 20-40, are available at weekends in June, and live in or around Cork, then email us with a photo ASAP at bake@cactustv.co.uk telling us your name, address, age, and why you’d love to be part of our baking school.

The perfect birthday? Take a day off work - this is always nicest if done midweek! - and book a night away in Gort-Na-Nain, a vegetarian guesthouse near Nohoval outside Cork city, run by the welcoming Lucy Stewart and Ultan Walsh, vegetable growers and suppliers of vegetables to Café Paradiso, amongst other Cork restaurants. Drive there after work the day before your birthday, picking up the Husband en route, and arrive just in time for your pre-booked three-course dinner. Relax and savour Lucy's fabulous cooking, using fresh-picked vegetables and fruit grown by Ultan, with the other (very entertaining) couple that happen to be staying there that night. Take a long walk to see the sea before tucking yourself into a large, comfortable bed in an bright and spacious room.

Rise early on a sun-drenched morning for cards and presents before wandering downstairs for a lavish breakfast of just picked strawberries, homemade muesli, brown bread, muffins, pots of coffee and, the piece de resistance, homemade chestnut sausages with fried potatoes, egg and spicy chutney. Persuade Ultan to show you around his polytunnels - giving the Husband notions - and admire his neat asparagus beds, the newly-planted apple orchard, rows of salad greens, aubergines, beans, artichokes, tomatillos, peppers and several varieties of tomato plants. Before you leave, check out the chicken run - there are plans afoot to populate the back of the cottage land with a couple of chickens once we actually get round to organising accommodation - and leave, knowing that this visit won't be a one-off.

Proceed on to Kinsale and, after a walk to stimulate appetite, take yourself for a long-anticipated lunch at Fishy Fishy. Despite the Sister's warnings ("Arrive early and be prepared to queue or arrive late and be prepared to queue"), we were whisked to a table immediately (always good to be doing these things midweek) and start to study the menu. We chose a chilli-spiked seafood salad and fish pie, added a couple of glasses of white wine and sat back to observe Kinsale, and our fellow diners, in the sunshine. Orders of clams and mussels arriving at neighbouring tables had me thinking that I should have gone for a different lunch but, when it arrived, there was no disappointment and no leftovers. Finish off with a decent brownie, served with ice cream and too-cold chocolate sauce and some good coffees then proceed directly to Charles Fort for afternoon reading and snoozing in the sun.

En route home, call into the Teacher's house for a cup of tea and to plan this summer's holidays (we're driving to and camping in France with the Teacher and the Tax Advisor) before making it back, eventually, to the cottage for supper in the sun. A perfect birthday? Without a doubt!

One of the things I love about living in an old cottage is the excuse to furnish it in alternative ways. When I lived in New Zealand, I was an habitué of the op shops (charity shops) in Christchurch, always picking up old cake tins or nutcrackers, battered but usable cutlery, my old dining table and an odd assortment of small stools, used about the house as bedside tables, wee seats and useful steps. Space being limited in Ireland, I've avoided my worst NZ excesses, much to the Husband's relief: there was once Words by the side of the street when one of my op shop chairs didn't fit into the car. One thing I do watch out for, however, is old china. No trip to New Zealand is complete without a few items being secreted in the luggage for the journey home; last time I even managed to fit a collection of old fashioned spoons (to match the bone-handled knives and forks that I had picked up at the Bantry market last summer).

As time goes on, my modern matched crockery and cutlery keep getting pushed further and further back in the press, as I use and re-use my favourite supper plates and particular forks. The dishes that would once been used as shallow soup plates make perfect pasta bowls and an assortment of mismatched side plates and saucers work to serve up deserts or sweet treats to have with tea. The photo is of the remaining pieces of a once-numerous set from Arklow Irish Pottery that I picked up recently. With rims of pale daffodil yellow, painted with twisted curlicues of gold, it is the perfect delft to use when eating early summer meals: platefuls and platefuls of steamed and dressed PSB (Purple Sprouting Broccoli - yes, it did turn both P and S, eventually), millet and bulgar salads with roasted vegetables, roasted buckwheat tossed with flageolet beans in a chilli citrus dressing. Everything seems to taste much better when eaten off the perfect plate - especially if that's done outside in the sunshine.

Working on a site upgrade at the moment - please bear with me while I wander around the back end of things and figure out what goes where.

There was great excitement in Urru, Mallow on Wednesday when the first of the Irish-grown strawberries arrived from Rosscarbery amidst glorious sunshine. We stacked boxes of ruddy fruit on the shelves of the fridge, inhaling their fragrance all the while, until it was decided that we needed to open one - just for quality testing, of course. That punnet wasn't long in being devoured, and - before they all disappeared with customers - I grabbed one for myself, to sit in the evening sunshine and eat, all tumbled on great scoops of Murphy's Vanilla Ice Cream. The first real taste of summer.

Just heard from a reader that the café at The Glebe Gardens in Baltimore is well worth a visit. Liz writes:

"Just wanted to let you know of a café I happened upon last weekend. It is the Glebe Café, in Baltimore, West Cork, and it is one to rave about. The produce comes straight from their garden on to the plate and it is just spectacular. The website is www.glebegardens.com. I think they are only open at weekends right now but I think they start a weekly thing in the summer. I had Organic Beef Stew....yummy simple great food, it just excited me so much that I had to tell someone."

Last June, while the new Husband and I were honeymooning in West Cork (along with eight of his family, six English Engineers and an Irish terrier called Bridie) we visited the Glebe Gardens and loved it. Unfortunately the café wasn't opened while we were there - although the Husband did meet the owner of the house and almost secured me a job while talking to him about me doing the course at Ballymaloe - but all the ingredients were present in the garden, just waiting to be used. Great to hear that it's doing well - I'll have to plan a trip back to the West this summer!

Just been checking out the James Beard Foundation Awards nominees and I see that congratulations are in order for Heidi Swanson for her nomination in the Healthy Focus category. Her book - Super Natural Cooking: Five Ways to Incorporate Whole & Natural Ingredients into Your Cooking - is a constant source of ideas and inspiration these days as I try out her ideas and experiment with new ingredients.

Nominated in the Asian Cooking section is Fuchsia Dunlop for Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook - I'm just reading Shark's Fin & Sichuan Pepper, her enthralling memoir of cooking and eating in China. Fuchsia is also up for a Newspaper Feature Writing award, as is David Leite of Leite's Culinaria. Other of my favourite authors up for awards are Mark Bittman aka the New York Times writer that brought No-Knead bread to the world (How to Cook Everything Vegetarian: Simple Meatless Recipes for Great Food), Alice Medrich for Pure Desert (we're big fans of her Chocolate Buckwheat Cookies around here), Anne Willan (The Country Cooking of France), 2005 Savour NZ presenter Patricia Wells (Vegetable Harvest) and - one of the most entertaining food books from last year - Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver (I still have plans to try out her recipe for homemade mozzarella!). The awards will be announced on Sunday 8 June.

Although there has been lots of salad planted in the garden on recent weekends, including mustard greens, rocket and mizuna (at least I'll be able to distinguish between the plants after cramming in Ballymaloe for the salad leaves and herbs exams!), it's going to be a while before any of the leaves are big enough to eat. Then, of course, because our planting in succession routine is not entirely developed - despite best intentions - we'll have another glut to work through. But that's all ahead of us and, until then, I've been growing my own salad on the windowsill.

I bought a small, three-level seed sprouter last summer but it was much too warm in our Dublin flat so my first attempts weren't very successful. Now, on a bright windowsill in my unheated cottage, it's really coming into its own. It's on the window behind the sink which makes it easier to remember to rinse the sprouts twice a day - it's not so good when you forget although the smell will help you remember.

I started off using the seeds that I bought at the same time as the sprouter - broccoli (a bit weedy), fenugreek (spicy addition to salads), mustard (peppery, really good in sandwiches) and red clover, which is all a bit anonymous. Getting more adventurous, I recently moved on to the contents of the store cupboard. Mung beans - the bean sprouts we all know - have been a success, especially in their crunchy and juicy early stages but the quinoa never really grew properly and the wheatberries were much too much like grass to be palatable. I suppose that's why wheatgrass is normally used for producing juice. My absolute favourite - so far - are the sprouted lentils. I've been switching between the simple brown and crunchier Puy lentils, both which are great mixed with the stronger-flavoured mustard and fenugreek sprouts in salads and stuffed into sandwiches, pitta breads and wraps. With this tiny garden, I'm much better with successive planting - hopefully we can make it work better outdoors this year!

If you're interested in reading more, there's some very useful information about sprouting in the recent Guardian Grow-Your-Own Guide and the ever-useful Nigel Slater gives a few ideas about how to use them here.

Woo hoo! Bibliocook got a brief mention in Marie-Claire Digby's Webwatch in the food section of yesterday's Irish Times Magazine. Unless you have a subscription, you can't view it online so here it is (told you it was brief!):

Webwatch
www.bibliocook.com
Read about the culinary adventures of former entertainment journalist turned Ballymaloe-trained cook and food writer, Caroline Hennessy.
Published: Sat 19 April 2008 - The Irish Times - Magazine

Slow Food Cork has an event coming up this Thursday, 17 April, at a new bar called An Crúibín on Union Quay. Before it was revamped and made over, the venue was known as the Lobby Bar, site of many a night of musical madness and commemorated by inimitable Cork musician John Spillane in his nostalgic Magic Nights in the Lobby Bar. Now a tapas bar, An Crúibín will play host to, we are promised, a traditional evening of pigs trotters, tails, ribs and cheek, accompanied by bread from the Arbutus Bakery and pints of Beamish, my stout of choice. The event starts at 8pm, it costs €10 for Slow Food members (€15 for non-members) and bookings can be made at 021 4505819.

Hog roast from Gubbeen was on the menu at the Waterford Food Fair farmers' market in Dungarvan yesterday. Cooking started on Grattan Square at 5.30am so appetites were well-stimulated by the time Fingal Ferguson and his staff started serving blaas stuffed with roast pork to a hungry crowd around 1pm. It wasn't the only food on offer at the market - think Chocolate Brownies from Tara's Cookies, Baldwin's farmhouse ice cream, O'Flynn's Gourmet Sausages that I often pick up in the English Market, apple juice from Killowen Orchard and the Crinnaughtaun Juice Company - but, with waves of pork-infused smoke wafting through the square as it cooked, it was definitely the most spectacular.
When we arrived, as the market opened, I grabbed a half-dozen duck and hen eggs from the Dungarvan and Waterford Irish country markets stall. Buying eggs first thing in the morning may not have been my most intelligent idea but, despite other purchases (hunks of local Knockanore and Knockalara cheeses, jars of Seville Marmalade and Fíor-Mil summer honey, fresh-baked rye and seed bread from the Ormond Café), along with the Sunday newspapers, various scarves and layers that were shed as the day heated up, we still managed to get them home in one piece. That was until they were introduced to some mushrooms and butter in the omelette pan that evening...

There's a video report on the first Mallow Farmers' Market on TG4 - go to Cúrsaí Reatha - Cartlann, scroll down to Nuacht TG4 - 05/04/08 and the piece is third on the Nuacht, 6.38 into the clip.

Waterford Festival of Food - this weekend! 11 to 13 April in Dungarvan, Co Waterford. Food trails, cookery demonstrations and a Sunday farmers' market that I'm planning on visiting. I hope they're going to be serving those delicious soft floury white bread baps, unique to Waterford, called Blaas. No weekend away in Tramore was complete without a breakfast Blaa, stuffed with bacon and omelette...mmmm....

Terra Madre Ireland 2008 - 4 to 7 September, in Waterford City. Slow food workshops, debates, tours and tastings, all based around the theme of sustainable food production. Sign up on the website for a news letter that will keep you up-to-date with all the goings-on.

Some weeks things work, at other times my attempts to fill the tins with sweet treats for work falls flat. This time I have a not very successful variation on Almond Honey Squares from a neat little Woman's Weekly Simple Slices book that the Husband ordered for me recently. I think he's trying to ensure his supply of different nice things to take to work - before I started making these weekly variations, it was a consistent diet of Chocolate Sesame Flapjacks and variations thereof.

Although I didn't really follow the recipe, I have to admit that it was not entirely my fault - this time. I had the honey - but the Husband had stuck a buttery knife, complete with toast crumbs, into the jar (luckily that transgression was balanced by the gift of the book!) - so that was substituted with maple syrup, which I couldn't even taste in the eventual result. One of my recently-purchased packets of flaked almonds went a-missing so instead I used a not-too-bad combination of flaked almonds and toasted pistachios. The eventual result - Nutty Chocolate Squares - didn't go to waste, they had their fans, especially when there was nothing else on offer, but only scored 6/10 from the Polish Colleague. His scale is, apparently based on flapjacks at 10/10. Here is the original recipe - I think this may be one to try again, but with honey this time.

With Irish cheeses and handmade terrines, fresh-shucked oysters, champagne and plenty of spiced beef, the launch of the Taste of Cork festival took place last Thursday in the English Market and it's shaping up to be something well worth checking out.

Although I was rather underwhelmed with my experience at the first Taste of Dublin, the teething problems - portion size, rain shelter, muck underfoot - seem to have been ironed out and, for the event's Cork debut, the organisers have chosen the historic surroundings of the Cork City Gaol (or Jail, depending on where you grew up!) for the weekend of Friday 27 to Sunday 29 June. The restaurant line up includes Jacobs on the Mall, Seamus O'Connell's Ivory Tower, the very familiar Ballymaloe House, and Mallow's representative - Longueville House. We're planning on a family day out - time to book those tickets!

Gradually getting through the Observer Food Monthly - it's like very good chocolate for me, not something to be gobbled down but, rather, to be slowly savoured - and just came across a feature on Bill Hogan and Sean Ferry of the West Cork Natural Cheese Company, makers of the superlative Desmond and Gabriel cheeses. The cheese-making partners have been in conflict with the department of agriculture since 2002, when their cheeses, all made from raw, non-pasteurised milk, were impounded. They eventually won their case - but it was not without much difficulty and hardship. Read the whole story - The revolution will not be pasteurised - here and then take yourself down to your nearest cheesemonger and buy a large slice of Desmond and Gabriel in tribute to a couple of cheesemakers who fought back.

Trish Deseine is a familiar name in the food blogosphere - particularly to anyone who reads Chocolate and Zucchini - and this Ulster-born food writer is also very well known in her adoptive France. Last year's publication of Nobody Does it Better: Why French Home Cooking Is Still the Best in the World, was her first major foray into the English-speaking world - her Boudin Noir aux Deux Pommes (Black Pudding with Apples and Potatoes) is one of those useful ideas that is cooked regularly in my house.

Her debut television series, Trish's Paris Kitchen, starts on RTÉ One tonight at 7.30pm. I don't know if the programme is going to be broadcast online just yet, although 4oD has completely spoiled me for watching TV on the web (thanks Suzy!), but you can catch Trish being interviewed on Corrigan Knows Food from last June and she was also being interviewed on Monday's Today With Pat Kenny - scroll down and click on Shows from the past week on the right hand side.

If you're anywhere in the Mallow area this coming Saturday, 5 April, you can catch the first Mallow Farmers' Market in the wee courtyard outside URRU - the culinary store, deli and café where I work - from 10.30am to 1pm. Stalls that will be there include my favourite Fermoy Natural Cheeses, smoked fish from Geraldine Bass' Old Millbank Smokehouse and herbs from West Cork's Gairdín Eden, which supply the fantastic salad leaves that we sell in URRU. Hopefully the weather will stay fine!

In the "I wish I was still living in Dublin" category, check out the forthcoming evening of Italian food, wine and song organised by Greatfood.ie and the Italian School of Cooking for this Saturday night (29 March). Tickets for that are on sale at Greatfood2buy.com. Independent wine blog Sour Grapes - well worth taking a look at for some decent wine reviews - is organising a wine tasting event at Fallon & Byrne for 15 April. Sign up at Sour Grapes here.

Not having a TV, I've only just heard about Willie's Wonky Chocolate Factory, a Channel 4 series about chocolate entrepreneur Willie Harcourt-Cooze and his dreams of growing, importing and manufacturing high-end chocolate products in England. Although there's no video online, there is a selection of photos from each of the four episodes of the show, the last part of which was shown last night, alongside some of Willie's recipes - I particularly like the Black Beans one. And make sure you don't miss the feature on chocolate ad blasts from the past, including the caramel bunny, the Man from Milk Tray and - of course - "Ambassador! You are spoiling us".

...in which Bibliocook pays a quick visit in the rain to Blackheath Farmers' Market, picking up a log of goat's cheese on the way, has dinner in a rather nice private room at The Punter in Cambridge, eats breakfast in Baker and Spice (while admiring the enormous rectangles of butter and jars of jam for sharing in the middle of the communal table, wondering idly how long it takes before the display is irretrievably destroyed) dashes into The Hummingbird Bakery to take a peep at their cupcakes, walks all the way from Richmond train station to Skye Gyngell's tea house at Petersham Nurseries only to discover - oh tragedy - that it is shut on Mondays, cooks dinner (a gnocchi dish, with Gubbeen cheese and chorizo imported by Caroline, very much adapted from an idea in this month's delicious.) for the London-based Brother and his partner, pays homage - once again - at Books for Cooks and catches up with a former Ballymaloe classmate over dark Americanos, Mushrooms and Goat's Cheese on Brioche and a Chocolate Loaf Cake at the Grocer on Elgin. Phew!

Eoin Purcell of Mercier Press in Cork (the same company, incidentally, that are publishing Kieran Murphy's Ice Cream book) has set about putting together a collection of recipes of traditional Irish family favourites. Everyone is welcome to contribute recipes from their own granny - or granddad! - and Our Grannies' Recipes will be published in October, with €1 from every copy going to Age Action Ireland. You can read more about it and take a look at the first few recipes here.

Congratulations to Lorraine at Italian Foodies - the winner of this year's Best Food/Drink Blog at the Irish Blog Awards! Kieran of Ice Cream Ireland was also a winner, taking the Best Business Blog award. You can read about all the winners on Maman Poulet, herself also a joint winner in the Best News/Current Affairs category. Sounds like a good night was had by all!

Best of luck to all the nominees, particularly those in the Food and Wine category, for this year's Irish Blog Awards! It's all happening tonight at the Alexander Hotel in Dublin but, the fact that this North Cork-based blogger works on Saturdays, combined with a visit from the Brother-Who-Lives-In-London means that I won't be able to make it to this year's event. Looking forward to hearing all about the winners, though!

I was on RTÉ Radio 1's Mooney programme yesterday talking about baking and breadmaking - if you're interested, you can listen here (I'm on after the 4pm news!) and here are some links to recipes that I either mentioned, or intended on mentioning, during the show.

My ever-popular Chocolate Brownies
Choc Chip Cranberry Cookies
Lemon & Pistachio Yoghurt Cake

And, for those breadmakers out there, here is a recipe for a simple Brown Soda Bread and - if you're getting more adventurous! - you could try Mark Bittman's No Knead Bread or even experiment with some Sourdough Bread.

Kevin Thornton's Guerrilla Gourmet evening at the Rock of Cashel is now online here for any fellow television-less fans of the show.

A quote from one of satisfied customer's at Denis Cotter's Guerrilla Gourmet evening, when he cooked a vegetarian meal for adamant beef-eaters at Bandon Mart. Watch the whole programme and access recipes online at the RTÉ Guerrilla Gourmet website - note: the programmes are only available for 21 days after broadcast.

Read a short review of Denis Cotter's beautifully realised Wild Garlic, Gooseberries...and Me here, as well as an older cookbook and Café Paradiso review.

Congratulations to all those who are on the longlist for the Best Food and Wine Blog 2008 - it's great to see so many old favourites there, including Val's Kitchen, Italian Foodies, Ice Cream Ireland, Martin Dwyer, The Humble Housewife and Eat Drink Live. There are also plenty of new blogs, reminding me that it's definitely time to do some work on my blog roll!

Best Food and Wine Blog Longlist 2008

Don't forget Pancake Tuesday tomorrow! I'm looking forward to trying out a new product from Sowan's Organics - two organic pancake mixes, one with unbleached white flour and a spelt variation, which I'm particularly interested in. Both come fortified with organic vanilla, a great addition to savoury dishes - when I'm making Nic's Buttermilk Pancakes, I flavour them with some vanilla extract before adding the crispy bacon and maple syrup. If you have to buy a mix, best stick with something organic but, if you're interested in making your own pancakes, you'll find my standard recipe here with a useful dish for Pancake Tuesday - Ricotta and Spinach Pancake Bake. For more ideas check out Greatfood.ie's pancake special.

Update February 06, 2008
Sowan's Organic Spelt Pancakes were a winner, filling and flavoursome, if a little too sweet for my taste for using with ricotta and spinach, although I still think that they would work well with crispy bacon and maple syrup.

I was recently asked whether baking - particularly bread making - in Ireland is undergoing a recent resurgence or is it on the way out? Are people too busy/too tired to cook, never mind bake, for themselves? Judging by the amount of people that bake and blog about it, it doesn't look like it! What do you think?

Apologies for the loss in transmission for the last while. My hosting company decided to play silly buggers and, as we were in New Zealand on an in impromptu trip to surprise the Husband's grandfather for his 80th birthday, it was a little difficult to sort out. Still, I'm back now and ready to start eating my way through 2008!

Christmas Cake, made by my mother from Granny's recipe - rich, more-ish and, best of all, still around to enjoy with pots of tea.

My aunt's fabulous Plum Pudding, eaten after Christmas dinner with lots of Brandy Butter and oodles of cream.

Black pudding from Hanley's of Mitchelstown, nicely flecked with oatmeal and hot from the pan with some late homegrown apples cut into segments and caramelised.

Greatfood2buy's Wild Cranberry and Apple Chutney, with toasted cheese sandwiches (particularly anything involving blue cheese) and, especially, with the aforementioned black pudding.

An almost disastrous Stephen's Day soup - Ham and Pea this year - which got left on too low a heat during the family's traditional woodland walk so that the peas almost didn't disintegrate in time for lunch. Some rapid simmering and cheeseboard distraction saved the day, however!

Slightly stale Stollen, toasted under the grill until brown and bubbling, buttered and served with mugs of cinnamon hot chocolate in front of the fire.

The traditional family post-Christmas dish: left-over ham and turkey stripped off the bones, heated in a simple Mushroom and White Wine Sauce and dolloped over sourdough toast or steaming heaps of garlicky mash.

Savoury tarts made for visiting family - a seasonal combination of broccoli, Cashel Blue, fresh cranberries, chorizo and caramelised onions snuggled together under a custard blanket.

Little wooden crates of brightly coloured clementines, heaped under the Christmas tree and eaten in great quantities as the antidote to Christmas excess...

Christmas is coming/The goose is getting fat... and it's more than time to have your Christmas lists made and almost completed. This year, between living out of the city and being completely immersed in the Ballymaloe Cookery Course, it's almost crept up on me - and I know that I'm not the only one! Here are a few present ideas for your similarly-food orientated friends.

After the course, I'm interested in a whole new kitchen makeover, complete with gas hob. Seeing as that won't be happening, it's time to take a look at the items that are in the Ballymaloe kitchen stations and see what I can add to my already bulging kitchen cupboards. Top of the list would have to be a simple cast-iron grill pan. Although I have friends that swear by them, I had never used one before but I ended up cooking so many different things this way - fish, steaks, chicken, vegetables - and I have several duck breasts (after the practices for my practical exam!) just waiting to be pan grilled, when I get my own one. QuirkyKitchen.ie is well worth taking a look around for things like this, as well as lots of other kitchen gadgets.

Despite watching various teachers manage to cut themselves on while demonstrating how (not) to use the Japanese mandolin (always a good time to busy yourself with your notes, rather than watch in close-up on the tv monitors!), it's still on my list. I have visions of slicing up cucumbers for pickling next summer, as well as plenty of potato and other root vegetable gratins.

A couple of loose-based tart tins are also something that I intend on picking up at some stage, if they're not in my Christmas stocking. I had a large one in New Zealand, bought from my favourite charity shop for $4, and loved using it. Tarts and quiches always look more spectacular when you can slip them out of the tin before presenting them.

If you - or the person that you're buying for - is based in Dublin, a voucher for the Italian School of Cookery is well worth picking up. You can get vouchers for individual classes of wine, cooking, food and song from just €60 or choose from any of their series of classes for 2008. I thoroughly enjoyed the class that I attended last year and I don't think that I was the only person there that night that made plans to go back at another stage. They're based in Rathmines so call around, especially if you want to take a look at the Italian wines, oils and preserves they also have on sale.

Online, head to Irish-based Greatfood2buy.com where you can put together a gorgeous package with seasonal Wild Cranberry and Apple Relish, a perfect addition to post-Christmas turkey sandwiches, a selection of spices and herbs in dinky little light-proof metal canisters - remember that you'll need nutmeg, cloves and star anise for your Christmas baking - and the intensely flavoured Halen Môn flavoured sea salt. Try a tiny pinch of Halen Môn with Taha'a Vanilla on top of a dark chocolate mousse to give new life to over-fed taste buds. Watch out especially for the beautifully packaged range of Le Tamerici mostarda (a pungent mustard jam, fabulous with cheese) and delicate organic jams. Greatfood2buy.com will deliver anywhere in Ireland, via An Post's Parcel Service, at a flat rate of just €7.95 but order now - last date for ordering Christmas gifts is 18 December.

Still on food, but angling towards the growing side of things, annual marjoram, chervil, sweet geranium, sage, spearmint, dill and fennel are all on my gardening list for 2008. It's also time to renew gift memberships with the Clare-based Irish Seed Savers Association. For €35 you get five varieties of seeds, three varieties of seed potatoes and a great newsletter twice a year. Also good for organic seeds and unusual varieties are Madeline McKeever's Brown Envelope Seeds (we loved the prolific Ushiki Kuri squash from Brown Envelope that we grew this year, the last one is awaiting me in the kitchen as I type) and the Organic Centre in Rossinver, Co Leitrim. Both the Organic Centre and the ISSA do a wide variety of courses, from vegetarian cooking and organic gardening to bee keeping and cheese-making and vouchers are readily available.

Best of all, if you've a little time for baking and cooking, you can make your own selection of biscuits and tasty treats for your friends and family. Nobody will turn down jars of homemade Apple and Sloe Jelly or Tomato Chilli Jam - I'm off to make piles of Choc Chip Cranberry Cookies, Ballymaloe Mincemeat Slice and Shortbread!

Congratulations to Anne Kennedy over on Greatfood.ie who has got her new fine food and ingredient gift shop - Greatfood2buy.com - off the ground in perfect time for Christmas. I know she has been cooking and testing for the Greatfood.ie range of chutneys, preserves and jams - Wild Cranberry and Apple Relish sounds especially good and I think I'll have to pick up a jar of Onion Marmalade with Plums and Port for myself. Living in the countryside, it's not always easy to get your hands on things like puy lentils, verjuice, organic polenta, lavender honey, quality spices or my favourite argan oil but Anne has put together a great selection of products that can be all yours in the click of a button (if you have the use of a handy credit card...) She also has the award-winning Castle Leslie range of balsamic reductions for sale - a bottle of their Balsamic Reduction with Sherry and Fig has gone down a treat in this house, with spoonfuls being tasted at regular intervals. I have great plans to use it on some pan-fried duck breasts, if it ever makes it all the way to the kitchen. Watch out next week for Greatfood.ie's Flavour of Italy range, including fine pasta, mostarda gift sets, Italian dolci and wine.

To celebrate the launch, Greatfood.ie have teamed up with the Italian School of Cooking in Rathmines to run a Christmas Artisan Food Fair on Sunday 9 December from 12 noon to 6pm. Wonder if Marco will be singing again?!

Transition from a full-time journalist's job in Dublin to country-based student life is more than just packing a car, cleaning out the old flat and shifting down to the cottage. Mindless routines - the 45-minute stroll to work, a computer-based eight-hour stint, walking home mentally preparing supper, deciding whether to call into one of my favourite shops on the way (Mortons, Donnybrook Fair, Taste of Italy, Al-Khyrat) - suddenly become more precious as the days speed towards leaving the city. Only one thing to do: sidestep the whole situation by flying off to Girona in Spain the day after the move!

The Husband and I spent three nights in the small Catalonian city earlier this week, time to soak up sun and recover from our eighth move in three years, a breathing space to adjust and look forward to the future. Plus an ever-welcome opportunity to consume copious amounts of tapas, cava, café con leche and rioja while reading stacks of books - Miranda Innes' Getting to Mañana, a memoir of her move to Andalusia set a perfect scene as well as having a good scattering of simple recipes - taking long siestas and general relaxation. Now back home, I've the task of condensing two kitchens, their ingredients and equipment (did I mention that I'm a hoarder?!), into one. It's baking blitz time this weekend - No-Knead Bread, Mexican Beans, Brown Bread, Chocolate Sesame Flapjacks, cakes and cookies - as I try to clear some space in the kitchen. Now, where did my new uniform disappear in the move?

Well, I've taken the plunge. Notice has been given at work. Going away parties (the Baggott Inn's self-serve Guinness taps proved particularly popular!), dinners and drinks have been partaken in. After ten years living in Dublin and five years in Cork city, it's time to return to the country. This weekend, the Husband and I move out of our horrible little Dublin flat and, in less than two weeks, on 17 September, I start the 12-week certificate course at Ballymaloe Cookery School.

It really is going back to school time. For the first time since I left second level, I have a uniform list and had to wander down to O'Connor's Workwear on Capel Street yesterday afternoon to purchase two sets of chefs' rig outs - white jackets, check trousers, the lot. Aprons, engraved knives and wine textbooks have been ordered directly from the school and a trip to Reeds filled my stationary requirements. All equipped, I'm ready to embark on a new phase of life as I take my hobbies - writing about food and cooking - and try to make them into something that I can earn a living from. Wish me luck!

Unless absolutely necessary, I tend to avoid bed and breakfasts. I've stayed in many around Ireland and most experiences are nothing to write about - unless in a negative manner. Last year's May Bank Holiday we were forced into B&B accommodation in Westport by weather unsuitable for camping. After we spent the evening avoiding a particularly racist guest, breakfast was enlivened by talk of the May Day flowers that had been left for our piseog-loving landlady. There was a landlady in Navan who thought we were only staying one night and could only offer us bed, no breakfast, for the second night. The best of the lot, however, has to be the Carlingford B&B where the bedroom was painted blood red - the walls, the ceiling, the skirting board, the bathroom even had a matching red toilet and bath! Most disturbing, I spent the night having nightmares about being trapped in a womb.

The one exception that I've come across in Ireland is a B&B just outside Ballymoney in County Antrim, that myself and the Husband stayed in years ago. We had a large, comfortable room, it was run by friendly but not too nosy proprietors and, best of all, they had alternatives to the usual fry-up breakfast - smoked salmon, pancakes and French toast were all for the eating if you gave notice the night before.

This weekend, en route to a wedding in Scotland, we discovered another wonderful B&B. We flew in to Inverness on Friday and, after searching through Organicholidays.co.uk, decided to spent the night at Shenval B&B. The Husband used to do a lot of walking in Glen Affric and was familiar with the area so, after hiring a car, we proceeded onwards to Drumnadrochit and went to stay with Pierre and Christiane Lebrun. Shenval is a small but comfortable B&B, with just three rooms (we ended up in the twin!) and a shared bathroom. After an afternoon snooze, an essential part of any holiday, we followed Pierre's advice and took walked to Corrimony Cairn, just far enough to encourage enough appetite for dinner.

We sat down to the table with a pair of French birdwatchers, for a simple but substantial feed of Scottish specialities - haggis with clapshot, a mixture of turnip and potatoes, followed by Cranachan (a mixture of whipped cream, whisky, honey, and fresh raspberries topped with toasted oatmeal). With dinner, the four of us shared a bottle of wine which we had brought along, sitting over tea and shortbread afterwards with Pierre and Christiane. A relaxed breakfast the following morning, complete with tattie scone and homemade bread, set us up nicely for the day ahead. As we left to drive to Lossiemouth, Pierre and Christiane stood at the door to wave us off, making the whole experience feel more like a visit to friends than a necessary evil. Dinner, bed and breakfast for two was £70. Money well spent.

Just a reminder that the Festival of World Cultures kicks off tonight in Dún Laoghaire. It is taking place all weekend with lots of free music and plenty of good eating. Slow Food has a stand at the Cool Earth eco-fair in the Town Hall so, if you're interested in learning about SF - and tasting some products from Irish artisan producers! - call in over the weekend.

For anyone who is interested in the relationship between food and farming in Ireland, the annual Euro-toques National Food Forum and Fair - entitled Reconnecting: Farming, Food & Rural Communities - will be taking place at Brooklodge Hotel in Macreddin Village, Co Wicklow on Sunday 2 September. On this year's panel are Minister of State at the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food Trevor Sargent; UK organic movement pioneer and champion Helen Browning; Gerry Scully, the programme manager for Rural Development with Teagasc; Irish Farmers Journal columnist and farmer Peter Young; and Ross Lewis, chef/proprietor of Chapter One Restaurant and Commissioner of Euro-toques Ireland.

Peter Young, together with his wife, Jenny, recently opened Castlefarm Shop, a farm shop in Co Kildare selling organic, homemade and homegrown food. I've been reading about their dairy farm's conversion to organics and the work involved in running a weekly stall at a farmer's market as documented in Jenny's monthly column in Food & Wine Magazine. The farm shop definitely sounds like something to call into if you're around the area - I've added it into the Kildare page of my Bridgestone Irish Food Guide for future reference!

The forum takes place from 11am to 1.30pm and, after a break so that delegates can visit the nearby market, an organic and wild food barbecue will take place at the chapel in the grounds of Brooklodge Hotel. Last year's debate on food tourism in Ireland touched on many interesting points but it was all too short to fully discuss the issues raised. Still, it's an event well worth going to - lots of conversation with opinionated people, new producers to discover in the market and some really wonderful food at the barbeque. The forum, market and barbeque, which includes champagne reception and wines, costs just €45. For more information and bookings contact Ruth Hegarty of Euro-toques Ireland at info@eurotoquesirl.org.

Thanks to Slow Food Dublin for an educational, entertaining and delicious evening at last night's Malaysian food cookery demonstration and dinner. With four trips to visit my family in Malaysia over the past five years, I've enjoyed every opportunity to sample the foods on offer and Mee Goring, Roti Canai, Teh Tarik, Kaya and Murtabak are just a few of the things that I love to eat while travelling there. While there may not have been any Teh Tarik or Roti on offer last night, chefs Rama and Mat Ju cooked up a storm in front of the crowd - yummy Mee Goring, morish Onion Bhajis, a well-flavoured Vegetable Curry, and Dosai - fermented lentil and rice pancakes - with Coconut Chutney. After the demonstration, we feasted on a buffet which also included slow-cooked Beef Rendang, Nasi Lemak or Coconut Rice, and a few savoury additions - crispy ikan billis (dried anchovies), hard boiled eggs, chutney, peanuts and fresh cucumber.

Although the food was very good, eating it in Fallon & Byrne's comfortable upstairs function room meant that the experience lacked a certain roadside charm that only comes from sitting on rickety stools by a food stall somewhere in Malaysia, hot, sweaty and starving, our dusty feet sticking out into the sunshine as we await plastic platefuls of whatever we've ordered, while drinking the refreshing juice from a hacked-open coconut. You'll only get that experience in Malaysia itself but the taste memories that flooded back last night when I ate a combination of Nasi Lemak, ikan billis and egg brought many a Malaysian breakfast to mind.

The next Slow Food get together in the Dublin region is a spit roast feast at The Church in Macreddin Village by Brooklodge Hotel in Wicklow. Local Wicklow foods - Three Wells Farmhouse Ice Cream, organic vegetables and salads from Gold River farm, Old MacDonnell's Farm soft goat's cheese and yoghurts, Sweetbank Farm seasonal fruits - will be served alongside slow spit roasted Wicklow lamb together with mackerel and vegetables cooked on the barbeque. That event takes place on Sunday 22 July and there's more information available at Slow Food Ireland.

West Cork is undoubtedly a fantastic place to spend time in even if, as happened to us on last week's communal honeymoon, it pours for most of the time. We were lucky enough to be staying in a wonderful cottage on Ardagh Castle Goat Farm but, with eight of the Husband's family nearby in Baltimore and another half-dozen English Engineers staying out on the Sheep's Head Peninsula, there wasn't much time to properly appreciate the beautifully restored cottage! We did, however, get a chance to feast on the owner's crumbly, Wensleydale-style Ardagh Castle Goat's Cheese. A picnic hamper of Norfolk food specialities from two of the English Engineers yielded up a tube of Letheringsett Watermill Spelt Biscuits which had enough sweetness to marry happily with the cheese. Ardagh Castle Goat's Cheese is only available locally around Baltimore and at the Saturday farmer's market in Skibbereen but I've managed to export a large chunk of it to North Cork.

A week is a short time, especially when it only stretches from Monday to Saturday so we didn't manage to get round to visit all the places which I had hoped to or, unfortunately, any of the great suggestions from Jenny at Where's the Salt. Although I drove past The Good Things Café several times en route to visit the English Engineers, it wasn't open at the time, although I did take a peek inside at the newly-painted café premises! With so many people around, a dinner at Heir Island Cottage had to be abandoned this time round, although it does give us an excuse for another trip down to that area of the country.

Of the things that we did get round to doing, The Glebe Gardens, on the road into Baltimore, were well worth a visit. We were particularly taken by the potager garden, flowers and vegetables growing in fruitful profusion side-by-side and the Husband loved their polytunnels - especially when the heavens opened and we needed shelter. Their café was also being refurbished (and should be open again for business soon) but we didn't really need afternoon refreshment, after having a long, leisurely and very good lunch at Rolf's Country House, just above the town. Of the pubs in the area, we enjoyed a night at the Tin Pub in Ahakista and a window seat at Bushe's Bar in Baltimore proved to be a comfortable place to watch the rain teaming down.

A trip to Friday's Bantry Market showed just how easy it is to eat locally in West Cork. We stocked up on Gubbeen salami, chorizo and smoked bacon (read more about the Fergusons of Gubbeen here), grabbed some pesto, sundried tomatoes and butter bean salad from the olive stall, some old-fashioned, bone-handled cutlery to eat with, a slice of pâté from Frank Krawczyk of West Cork Salami, and the pièce de résistance, a set of four asparagus plants for a new asparagus bed that the Husband (still getting used to that new name!) kindly rabbit-proofed last weekend. I also caught him browsing through information on polytunnels while at the market - wonder how much longer we'll be without one?!

Weather aside, there's plenty to look at, do and eat in West Cork. For us it was the perfect place to honeymoon, communally or not. Now, to get used to normal life as a married couple...

Life is busy - but, despite a routine that involves week-long neglect and frenzied activity at the weekend, the cottage garden is thriving! The Boyfriend is a member of the Irish Seed Savers Association so we got a few different types of potatoes from them, planting Cara, Ratte and Arran Banner varieties, along with some Roosters that sprouted in the bottom of the cupboard in March. They were all - apart from the Roosters, which is a more floury variety and an accidental planting - chosen deliberately for their blight resistant and waxy properties. So far the blight resistance, together with the blight-spray ministrations of a very helpful neighbour, seems to be working so hopefully there won't be a reprise of the Great Irish Famine in Ballyvoddy (still, there's always rabbit for the eating...)

The Irish Seed Savers were a great source of interesting-sounding plants, as were a very helpful company called Brown Envelope Seeds. On one of the dark, dreary February nights, while travelling back to Dublin on the train, the Boyfriend and I pored over our catalogues, and after many arguments and discussions, picked what we thought was a restrained amount of seeds. With visions of Ushiki Kuri Squash and Babington Leeks dancing in our heads, there was lots of excitement as the packets arrived. And then, between driving up and down the country on Fridays and Sundays, maintaining full-time jobs in Dublin during the week and busy weekends at the cottage, we had to find time to actually plant them.

Sown with the help of the Little Brother over Easter, the seeds turned out to be extraordinarily fertile and we ended up with an enormous amount of seedlings in old cream, yoghurt and vegetable cartons. It took us quite a while but they were eventually planted out in fits and starts over the last month and we now have Magic Rainbow Chard, Niki's Cut and Come Again Kale, rocket, tomatoes, celeriac, (lots of) purple sprouting broccoli and Painted Mountain Sweetcorn all safely behind the rabbit proof fence. Although there have been attempts by the rabbits to infiltrate our wee veggie patch, they've not yet succeeded and hopefully, fingers very much crossed, won't manage at all. Due to the kindness of the aforementioned neighbour who has a very well-maintained vegetable garden, we also have leeks and beans planted, along with some garlic, and edible flowers like marigolds, nasturtiums and sunflowers. Our old damson and apple trees have set well, as have the more or less ignored blackcurrant bushes. Lemon thyme, regular thyme, rosemary, parsley, chives and a little bay tree are all thriving in pots by the back door - near enough for me to actually use the herbs - and plants of black peppermint and lemon verbena are settling into place.

The Boyfriend - who next week will become the Husband! - has already plans for the extension of the veggie patch. Black weed-proof matting has been laid in an adjoining block and - mentally, at least - seeds have been sown for next season. I've been talking to a gardener at Annes Grove Gardens (a place well worth packing a picnic to visit) about getting artichoke plants for next year and there's a list of vegetables that we want to grow stuck on the front of the gardener's encyclopaedia that has become our bible. And it's all so worth it when you go out into the garden, colander in hand, and are able to pick enough rocket and soft herbs for a delicious, home-grown side-salad. It tastes even better when you can sit outside in the sunshine to enjoy it!

It may be quiet around here for the next couple of weeks as we're off to spend some time in the cottage before the Boyfriend's family arrive for next weekend's wedding celebrations. We're honeymooning, en famille, down in Baltimore, West Cork so if anyone has any foodie suggestions for the area, they would be very gratefully received! We're staying at a goat farm and already on the list are Heir Island, The Glebe, Organico and Rolf's Restaurant. I might even have to try out some of Conor's recommendations around Bantry and, in a non-foodie context, there's also Haydn Shaughnessy's art gallery to visit down in Kilbrittain. A week will be much too short!

One of the many interesting things about food blogging is tracing the movement of ideas and recipes around the widespread world of bloggers. Since the first time I read about Mark Bittman's No-Knead Bread - currently on my (very long!) list of recipes to try - in the New York Times it has travelled far and wide. You'll also find Peabody's Cranberry Orange Cookies a-wandering around other people's blogs, as is Donna Hay's Self Frosting Cupcake recipe, which first surfaced on Niki's Baking Sheet and then moved out into the wider world.

The Baker's Edge baking pan is one of those things that's been wandering around the blogging world for the last while. My interest was piqued when it popped up on Chocolate and Zucchini last year. Beautifully photographed, as always, by Clotilde (she also has a savoury recipe here), I loved its curvy snake-like shape and was intrigued with the idea of a baking pan - it was originally designed for brownies - that was designed to distribute heat equally so that there wouldn't be such a difference between edge and centre pieces. And then I promptly forgot about the Baker's Edge - until it started cropping up other blogs. A few months later, I've become the proud owner of what may be the only Baker's Edge in Ireland!

Solidly constructed from non-stick cast-aluminium, it came with a leaflet of recipes (cup measurements only) as well as a dinky little red spatula which helps to smooth cookie dough around the turns in the pan as well as being invaluable when it comes to dividing up brownies and getting them out of the dish. Unfortunately my Baker's Edge has become a victim of our current peripatetic lifestyle. Living in Dublin during the week and the country cottage at weekends means that it, much like my digital camera, always seems to be in the wrong residence when I want to bake! I still don't feel like I've given it a proper try-out but I have been experimenting with David Lebovitz's Friendship Bars, trying to convert the ingredients for Chef Emily's Signature Cookie Bars into metric and playing with a great recipe for Coconut Blondies (which is how I discovered the thermostat for my Dublin oven is screwy) that I got from the Connoisseur.

I'll just warn any potential purchasers that if they, like me, have a fan oven - nothing else seems to exist in Ireland any more, come back NZ cooker, all is forgiven - to be extra careful when cooking in this pan as it is all too easy to overcook things. I'm fiddling around with a few different recipes at the moment and hope to post them soon. In the mean time, you can read about why the Baker's Edge came about and creator Matt Griffin's efforts to bring it into the market, and browse through some recipes here.

If you're in the mood for yellow food, Barbara over at NZ food blog Winos and Foodies has managed to wade her ever-gracious way through a total of 143 - that's no typo, I did say 143! - entries for her A Taste Of Yellow foodie event.

When I first started blogging, while living in New Zealand in 2005, it wasn't long before I discovered Winos and Foodies, one of - as far as I know - the first NZ food blogs and I've been a fan ever since, admiring Barbara's ever-inspiring zest for life, food, Donna Hay, baking and blogging, despite her ongoing battle against cancer.

Barbara's A Taste of Yellow, in support of Lance Armstrong's LIVESTRONG Day, is about raising cancer awareness and it has also become about people sharing their own cancer stories. You'll find her very comprehensive round-up here.

The first time I heard of Peter Gordon - the New Zealand-born, London-based chef of the Providores and Tapa Room - was when the whole Antipodean fusion cookery style was being written about in English newspapers like The Sunday Times during the early 1990s (my newspaper of choice through college although, after discovering Nigel Slater's food section in The Observer, I've never looked back!). While I lived in New Zealand in 2005, he opened a restaurant in Auckland - dine by Peter Gordon - and as a result was all over the NZ newspapers and food magazines. That's how I came across his fantastic and much-made (it's especially good as a Christmas pressie) Tomato and Chilli Jam recipe.

Peter is also a consultant for Air New Zealand, Tourism New Zealand and New Zealand Lamb. Unique Interactive recently got in contact to let me know that, wearing his lamb ambassador hat, Peter will be online for a webchat at www.uniqueinteractive.co.uk/chat on Wednesday 25th April from 2pm to 4pm. Darina Allen is also a fan - he was a guest at the Ballymaloe Cookery School last year.

If you're interested in sustainable food production, all three Slow Food Dublin Convivia are hosting a film screening and debate at The Sugar Club in Dublin on Tuesday 8 May. The films that will be shown are: Fowl, an Irish documentary by Andrew Legge, which examines modern day chicken farming and western people's relationship with food; and The Power of Community - How Cuba Survived Peak Oil, a film about how a country can successfully traverse the reduction and loss of finite fossil fuel resources.

Andrew Legge, director of Fowl, will be in attendance on the night and Davie Philip, Education Manager of Cultivate, the sustainable living and learning centre in Temple Bar, will introduce The Power of Community and lead a discussion afterwards.

The Future of Irish Food: A Film Screening and Debate event will take place at The Sugar Club on Tuesday 8 May 2007 at 7.30pm. Cost: €12 (members) and €15 (non-members). See you there!

There were two interesting food pieces on RTÉ news programmes over the weekend - Jennie O'Sullivan reported on a Slow Food Ireland promotion at a farmers' market in Kinsale on the Six One News and there was also a feature on Morning Ireland about the new farmers' market in Ballymun.

Also, here are a few more new Irish food blogs...

Eat Drink Live: I missed Limerick-based Laura's blog last time round but fortunately Val pointed her out. She is currently running a monthly muffin recipe on the site (check out the fabulous Paddy's Day ones here) and - as a result of her blog - has just started supplying Italian deli La Cucina with muffins, cookies and other assorted sweet stuff.

Italian Foodies: speaking of La Cucina, owners Lorraine and Bru have their own blog at Italian Foodies. Lots of simple Italian recipes, information on Italian foodstuffs and lessons on how to eat like an Italian.

Eat Me Drink Me: Abulafia's inspired experiments with Homecured Bacon and Pork Rillette are well worth reading. Plus she's also a fan of one of my favourite seasonal cookbooks, The Cook and The Gardener by Amanda Hesser.

Quirky Blog: Quirky Kitchen.ie has its own wee blog on the go, with a few recipes - just beware of straying on to the rest of the site which has lots of lovely bakeware, my favourite cast iron pots, all kinds of useful gadgets - and they deliver free in Dublin for orders over €100.

It's moving week so there's not much cooking and baking going on, apart from me making loaves of brown bread to try and use up some of the six - yes, count them, SIX! (and that's not mentioning the few that are down at the cottage, ahem...) - bags of flour that I have sitting on my shelves. The flat that we are moving into in Dublin is much smaller and doesn't have a freezer so for a while there was a mad race to finish up all the frozen foodstuffs at our current place. Then we made a quick trip to DID Electrical so we now have a new under-counter freezer and the pressure is off. It still leaves me scratching my head at some of the things that I have in there though. Who knows why I froze a brioche loaf or what kinds of curry are in all those little plastic containers that I use for lunches? Certainly not the person who should have been labelling them!

The dry food cupboards are also well supplied - too well supplied. My habit of bringing food home every time I go travelling makes every cupboard clear-out a memory trail. There's a little leftover honey and argan oil from Morocco, along with some dukkah that didn't get used up when the weather turned cooler. My baking supplies at the cottage have been supplemented with vanilla bean paste and natural almond extract from our December stop in Norfolk, there's wine from New Zealand and Spain to move, not to mention the other fruits of that trip to Barcelona - membrillo (quince paste), fig and nut cake, several chorizo from the Boqueria food market, assorted chocolates and the most of a kilo of garlic. All week we've been eating soups and Socca, quinoa (very good used instead of bulgar wheat in this salad with Pomegranate Molasses Dressing) and a Chocolate Biscuit Cake with coconut, nuts and wheatgerm (decidedly tasty, despite being made from a ragbag of ingredients). I now have a new cooker and kitchen to break in - once I get everything out of their boxes - but, before that we're off on a long-promised trip to try out the much lauded Old Convent in Clogheen with the cousins and their partners...

If my (cracked and misshapen!) Chocolate and Raspberry Cheesecake has whetted your appetite, check out Peabody's round up of cheesecakes from around the world. There is a grand total of 54 cheesecakes and all votes have to be in by next Saturday, 31 March.

Warning: this is not something to go looking at in the run-up to lunchtime. All the photos of fabulous cheesecake concoctions will definitely have you drooling!

Because I know I won't be able to post from the cottage on St Patrick's Day - we're down for the weekend to get the spuds planted on the traditional day, 17 March, in the Boyfriend's painstakingly rabbit-proofed garden - I'm going to celebrate Paddy's Day with a round-up of new Irish food blogs. If there's anyone else out there, just let me know!

The Humble Housewife - an American Irishwoman, living in Edenderry with her American husband and two daughters, Deborah definitely has her hands full with a couple of blogs but is also thinking of getting back into food catering. Check out her recipes for Sticky Cinnamon Buns, Deborah's Divine Dinner Biscuits and lots of family-friendly dishes.

Organico Bantry - this independent family-run café, shop and bakery in Bantry has a blog, although it takes a little fiddling around to locate it, with lots of great healthy recipes using organic, fairly traded and locally sourced products. Next time I get my hands on some beetroot, I'm going to try out their Organic Beetroot Salad. The last time we had beetroot I pickled it, using a recipe from Darina Allen's Simply Delicious Vegetables, and it was good but it did linger around a little longer than necessary. Anyhow, anything with yoghurt can always get my attention.

Stuff Yer Bake - although based in England, Sarah's is very definitely an Irish blog, with a subtitle like: "The mad ramblings of a Northern Irish foodie". Take a look at her picture of a delectable pork belly, just after an update on cake decorating and before one on her diet, which she illustrates with a picture of and recipe for the River Café's Orange, Almond and Cardamom Cake. Diet? What diet?

Superyacht Chef - Niall Harbison is a private chef on super yachts and there's plenty of video footage of his cooking on board. He's also working on raising money for an orphanage in Africa and you can find more information on that project here.

The Diet Cast - Hayden's blog about eating healthily, with plenty of information and links on growing your own food, sustainable living and food concerns. He has also just announced a competition on fellow site My Diet Friends for anyone interested in writing about sustainably sourced and prepared food. If we ever manage to grow anything in our rabbit-infested garden - or even manage to catch a few of the pests - I'll definitely be up for that.

Val's Kitchen - Val always has fantastic photos on her site - check out her spectacular St Patrick's Day cookies - and I always love to read reviews of local eateries.

And here's also a couple of websites about sustainable living in Ireland that are well worth taking a look at:

The Good Life: Self-Reliance In An Uncertain World

Irish Sally Gardens: living the sustainable dream in rural Ireland

Did I mention that I was a bit dotty with dates recently? I'm raging that I managed to MISS the Irish Blog Awards, thinking that it was on next weekend. It actually took place last night and I only discovered when I did a wander around the Irish blogosphere this morning. Although I'm disappointed that I didn't manage to make it along, it was great to see that some of my favourite bloggers were among the winners. Take a bow Ice Cream Ireland (Best Business Blog, Best Specialist Blog), Conor for Best Blog Post (You may feel a small prick), the lovely ladies at Beaut.ie (Best Design and Best Newcomer) and The Sigla Blog (Best Arts and Culture). Congratulations all!

Fairtrade Fortnight kicked off on Monday this week and, if you're not off chocolate for lent this year, you can indulge and feel suitably virtuous at Amnesty Ireland's launch of their fairly traded and organic bars of chocolate. It takes place tomorrow night, Thursday 1 March, at 7pm in the Freedom Café on 48 Fleet Street in Dublin's Temple Bar and admission is €5 per person. Rumour has it that there'll be a chocolate fountain in situ.

Incidentally, if you're about town and looking for a decently priced, delicious lunch, the Freedom Café is definitely the place to go - and, if you're interested in chocolate supplies for baking, pick up a doorstopper 1kg bar of their Amnesty Fairly Trade Chocolate.

For more information on fair trade and the Fairtrade brand, there was a good article in Sunday's Observer Food Monthly Magazine (I'm only getting through Sunday's papers at this stage in the week!) here and you can also listen to a feature on RTÉ's Morning Ireland.

I'm heading off to Barcelona with the sister for three days in a few weekend's time and I'd love some food suggestions! We've never been there before so this is completely new ground for us both. The Boyfriend has been recommending the "silky" coffee to me, the sister has lists of places to try out (she arrives several days before me) and, my appetite whetted by the Mediterranean Food Company's tapas class and several nights consumption at Dublin's Market Bar, I have every intention of eating my way through as much as possible of everything on offer in Barcelona.

After having very positive experiences with using the Lonely Planet World Food Guides in Thailand, Malaysia and Morocco - handy little books which incorporate information on food history, vocabulary, specialities and recipes in one pocket-sized package - I've ordered one on Spain to add to my collection. Fingers crossed that it arrives in time!

We're staying at a self-catering apartment in the Barceloneta area, which will give us the chance to ramble through the markets, buying fresh produce to prepare at home. What I would really like to do is a cooking class or walking tour of the markets with a local guide. Anyone know where I could find any information on something like this?

...unfortunately Bibliocook didn't manage to make it through to the shortlisted stage of the 2007 Irish Blog Awards. However, some of my favourites did so best of luck to Beaut.ie, Sinéad Gleeson, One Breast Less, Conor O'Neill, The Waiting Game and Ice Cream Ireland on 11 March at the Alexander Hotel. You can see the full list here and a particularly big thank you to all who voted for Bibliocook!

Wow! I'm delighted to see that Bibliocook is on the Best Specialist Blog longlist for this year's Irish Blog Awards. You can read more about the awards goings on here, all the longlists for the various categories are here and - very important this! - you can vote for your favourites here.

The best thing about these kind of longlists is the opportunity to discover lots of different blogs. I've also noticed several old favourites like Beaut.ie, Maguire's Movies, The Sigla Blog, Maman Poulet, Blogorrah, Conor's Bandon Blog, Winds and Breezes and Bubble Brothers. Other food blogs in my category - there are a total of 32 of us so forgive me if I don't post the whole list - are Random Grub and Ice Cream Ireland. I've also come across An Irish Craftworker's Good Life, Siopa Eile and Munster Pubs before but sites like One Breast Less, The Waiting Game and Burma Review also look well worth spending some time with.

Voting for this round will close on 16 February at 5pm and the award ceremony will take place on 3 March in Dublin's Alexander Hotel. Big thanks to Damien and Jason for all their work on this and best of luck to all the nominees!

Although we may be back in Ireland, today we are celebrating Waitangi Day, a national holiday in New Zealand, with that ubiquitous Kiwi desert - the pavlova. After bemoaning the lack of pavlovas in Irish supermarkets, the Boyfriend went off to work this morning laden with boxes of meringue nests, tubs of cream, my hand whisk and a nice pink bowl to assemble a selection of impromptu pavs for his workmates. Bron has an entertaining defence of the NZ claim to the pavlova here, along with many delectable pictures of her own fabulous Waitangi Day creation.

Boiled, Baked & Basted, the brilliant RTÉ Radio 1 programme that I mentioned in October, featuring chefs and cooks talking about their favourite cookbooks, sadly came to an end on 30 December. A simple but effective format - just the voice of the interviewee, interspersed by actors reading from cookbooks that they mentioned - made this essential listening for the cosy Saturday nights that we spent in the cottage. You can listen back to the whole 13-programme series on the all-new redesigned RTÉ.ie website here.

I've just discovered another informal wine course in Dublin. This one is on in The Vaults and starts on Tuesday 13 February at 6.30pm. The sessions are hosted by a Master of Wines from Findlater Grants and run every second Tuesday for four weeks, costing €35 per person per night. More information is online here (they also do a - pricy - cookery course and details for that are here).

Tuesday 13 February
Wines from Australia

Tuesday 27 February
Sauvignon Blanc and Pinot Noir from around the world

Tuesday 13 March
Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon from around the world

Tuesday 27 March
Wines from Italy

I'd be the first to admit that, despite my frequent use and consumption of the fruit of the vine, I don't know much about wine. This is something that I've been meaning to remedy by doing a wine-tasting course but life, somehow, always manages to get in the way. Perhaps a resolution for 2007? I've already missed the first night of the La Cave Wine Tasting Programme but, should I be organised enough, there's plenty more to savour in the coming weeks - must see if I can get there for the evening that features New Zealand Pinot Noir! These events take place in the small French wine bar on South Anne Street from 6.30pm to 8.30pm. Each tasting costs €30, which includes all wines and a light meal of cheese, salami and pâté.

Monday 29 January
Introduction to Wine Varietals: Part 1
Riesling (Germany), Sauvignon Blanc (New Zealand), Chardonnay (France), Viognier (Argentina), Cabernet Sauvignon (USA), Merlot (Chile), Shiraz (Australia), Grenache (France)

Monday 5 February
Introduction to Wine Varietals: Part 2
Pinot Grigio (Italy), Chenin Blanc (South Africa), Torrontes (Argentina), Albarino (Spain), Sangiovese (Italy), Tempranillo (Spain), Malbec (Argentina), Pinot Noir (New Zealand)

Monday 12 February
Introduction to French Wines: Part 1
Loire, Rhone

Monday 19 February
Introduction to French Wines: Part 2
Burgundy, Beaujolais, Alsace

Monday 26 February
Introduction to French Wines: Part 3
Bordeaux, Cahors/Bergerac/Madiran, Jura

Monday 5 March
Introduction to French Wines: Part 4
Champagne/Sparkling, Provence/Languedoc-Roussillon

Monday 12 March
Matching Food and Wine
What works, what doesn't work

For more information and bookings, you can contact La Cave Wine Bar.

New Zealand cafés still continue to surprise and delight me. A moist Spinach Risotto Cake at Reid's Store during a break while driving to Nelson the morning after we arrived, eaten in bright sunshine outside on the decking was my re-introduction to café cooking, NZ style on this trip. There were other days of happy eating. Marinated Lamb on a Puy Lentil Salad with lemon yoghurt dressing at Nelson's Morrison Street Café, with a glass of local sauvignon blanc; a sticky, dried fruit-packed, gluten free Ginger Slice with a long black, milk on the side (my coffee order of choice in NZ) in Muses Café, Motueka, en route to the Boyfriend's family bach in Ngaio Bay; a last Christchurch breakfast of a fresh-baked savoury Spinach and Cream Cheese Muffin followed by an enormous date-studded sweet scone outside Veronica's Café on New Regent Street, soaking up the last rays of sun as we watched the tourist trams going past.

The secret seems to lie with the fresh-baked, often on the premises, scones, muffins and slices, good ingredients - many cafés (try Under the Red Verandah or Vic's Café, both in Christchurch) trumpet their use of free range eggs and local produce - and proprietors and customers who won't accept stale, prepacked goods made at one location and shipped all over the country as is all too often the case in Ireland. One of the few cafés I've found in Ireland that comes close to the NZ ideal is Michelle Darmody's Cake Café (there's a short piece about it here) in Dublin, even down to the mismatched, old fashioned dishes and cups that feature in my favourite Kiwi cafés.

It's often the small things in NZ cafés that make a customer feel cared for - a carafe of water either arriving on your table first thing or readily available; airy toilets which look like they have been cleaned recently; piles of things available to read while you eat, often including Cuisine, Taste and Dish and a couple of cookbooks. It's always reassuring to see café staff interested in food-oriented publications! The only place I've seen something like this in Ireland is in the delectable Café Paradiso in Cork which, funnily enough, is run by a half-Kiwi couple.

There is always an exception, and on this trip it was the Cityside Café in the ground floor International Terminal of Christchurch airport. Pasty rolls were stuffed with an indeterminate green-flecked paste that went under the name of spinach and feta. A stale chocolate muffin topped with an oddly misplaced dab of raspberry jam made me feel right at home, being a good example of the kind of sweet thing on offer in many Irish cafés. My flat white was barely lukewarm and, for a last taste of NZ, it really was a disappointing experience. Next time I'll make sure I bring in my muffins from Muffin Break - a shopping center café chain that manages to get it right, albeit in (usually) horrible surroundings, with decent muffins and lots of gluten-free options. At least their coffee is made with hot milk!

Two weeks in New Zealand and I didn't want to leave. Being on holidays and it being summer, rather than grey and gloomy Irish winter, certainly made things harder, especially as we had such a good time catching up with family and friends on that side of the world. We thoroughly enjoyed the main reason for our trip - the Boyfriend's sister's wedding last Saturday - especially as the reception was held in a recently opened vineyard in Moutere, Woollaston Estates, and I had more than a few chances to sample their 2006 Nelson Sauvignon Blanc!

Special mention must go to the Boyfriend's mother for cheerfully catering, twice daily, for at least eight people. I've taken down plenty of recipes from her notebooks. Now all I need is a little Irish sunshine to give me an excuse to make her Rice and Chickpea Salad or maybe I could get motivated to whip up a batch of her Chocolate Chippies this weekend...

While I didn't manage to bring back as many foodie items as Heidi did from her North Island trip - the Boyfriend had to fit another rabbit trap and a new fishing rod somewhere, after all! - I still managed to squeeze in a pile of cookbooks, a couple of new purchases and a few old ones from my Christchurch kitchen shelves.

Although I picked up Nicola Galloway's Cooking for your Child as a gift for a friend, after spending hours looking through the Boyfriend's mother's copy of these commonsense recipes and advice for friends and family of all ages, methinks I'll have to spend some more quality time with it before passing it on. It is a mine of useful information on catering for people with food allergies and intolerances and, like me, she believes in using real, wholesome butter rather than messing around with those interfered-with spreads and margarines. I also brought home The Great New Zealand Baking Book by Allyson Gofton - the perfect thing to keep at the cottage for wet Saturday afternoon baking sprees and a dear old copy of that Kiwi classic, the Edmond's Cookery Book, a present from the Boyfriend's aunt to keep me entertained after I was knocked down by a courier truck in Auckland two years ago.

Some of the tempting new NZ cookbooks that I found on sale but could not, alas, justify in buying included The Confident Cook by Cuisine writer and Savour New Zealand 2007 Programme Director Lauraine Jacobs; Taking Tea in the Medina, an exploration of Middle Eastern tastes and flavours by Julie Le Clerc and and Joh Bougen; and new collections of old favourites from Kiwi writers Ruth Pretty and Jo Segar (Ruth Pretty's Favourite Recipes and Jo Seagar Cooks). Christelle Le Ru also has a second book out - French Fare is the follow-up to her Simply Irresistible French Desserts and watch out for Passion Chocolat in 2007.

Knowing that the latest edition of Cuisine is waiting at home - I'm on my second subscription now - I avoided that on the magazine racks but, as I return to the stormy Irish winter, I grabbed Taste and the new Julie Le Clerc magazine to fortify myself with descriptions and pictures of summer barbeques and salads, picnics and pool parties. It's not helping though!

We left a damp, wintery Ireland last Friday morning and touched down to blue skies and sunshine in Christchurch, New Zealand, on Wednesday after a three-day stopover in Kuching with my Malaysian family. Sure beats sitting around in Ireland with the post-Christmas blues! While in Kuching we got a chance to feast on our favourite teh tarik, or pulled tea, and roti canai, layered Indian breads that are served with a runny dahl. The next day, the reheated roti are especially delicious when they reappear with kaya, an unctuous coconut spread, not unlike lemon curd. Daily feasts of tropical fruit at my aunt's house included papaya, the hairy-skinned rambutan, several types of banana, mangosteen, sweet ripe pineapple and rich, juicy-to-your-elbows windfall mangos from the neighbour's tree. This time round we avoided the durian, however!

This was my fourth trip to Kuching - the Boyfriend's second - and our laziest. Tired from the first leg of the journey, we just relaxed, read, slept, enjoyed the heat and had some quality time with the family. There was time to snack on my aunt's rich fruit cake, my cousin's sesame-flecked brownies - although we didn't go for too much of the durian cake, after our last experience with that noxious fruit - with meals of homecooked Malay curries contributed by neighbours and my uncle's relatives. Had some good, spicy, although not too hot, Tom Yam, dishes of Mee Goreng (fried noodles), Butter Prawns and Nasi Ayam, but we missed out on Laksa, Satay and Murtabak this time round. We'll have to store up those treats for the next time we return.

Now we're back in the land of numerous types of ginger beer - Bundaberg is still at number one and, we discovered on a brief explore round the city, also available in Singapore - Pegasus Bay Sauvignon Semillon, feijoas, fantastic cafés, the Boyfriend's favourite savoury meat pies, kumara and Ginger Gems...roll on the next couple of weeks!

Number three in an occasional series...

Any foodie can't help but be seduced by Ana Pascal's (Maggie Gyllenhaal, never looking sexier than here, kneading dough in dungarees) passion for cooking in Marc Foster's Stranger than Fiction. You can find a good review here on Confessions of a Film Critic. An anarchist baker, Ana runs a little café, counters laden with tempting-looking cookies and cakes - just like the kind of café that you'd like to have in your own neighbourhood. Not amused by having to be audited by IRS agent Harold Crick (Will Ferrell, playing it straight for once), she nevertheless bakes him fresh chocolate chip cookies, serving them up with a glass of milk and a helping of light-up-the-screen charisma. She also has an amazing speech which, of course, I can't fully remember or find online anywhere, about how she realised in law school that she was meant to be a baker, giving a litany of American cookies, traybakes and brownies that will have you salivating at the cinema. And how does the IRS agent win her heart? With a box of flours - rye, wholegrain - all in little brown paper bags with colour-coded stickers. Anyone stuck for an idea for your favourite foodie this Christmas?

Incidentally, if you're looking for a café in Dublin as nice as Ana's looks in Stranger than Fiction, check out Michelle Darmody's The Cake Café, behind the Daintree paper shop on Camden Street. They've had gorgeous gingerbread houses on the counter lately, just perfect for Christmas, and - like Michelle's other establishment, the Curved Street Café - all the food is deliciously homemade. Well worth a wander.

If you're looking for a Christmas present with a difference, Oxfam Ireland recently launched an online Fair Trade shop at www.oxfamirelandshop.com - they have plenty of foodie gifts, including a selection of Blake's Irish Fairtrade and Organic Chocolate Bars, coffees, teas and a couple of lovely Fair Trade Hampers, along with jewellery, warm throws and wooden toys.

Or, this being the season of goodwill, you could give yourself (or another) a chance of a very special food bloggers prize by making a donation to the third A Menu for Hope fundraising campaign. For every US$10 that you donate - this year the funds raised are for the UN World Food Programme - you get a raffle ticket and a chance to win one of the great prizes from around the world: meals at Tetsuya's in Sydney, L'Atelier de Joël Robuchon in London; dinner in New York with New York Times Wine Critic Eric Asimov or a cup of tea with Harold McGee in San Francisco; books from New Zealand, France and Malaysia; tasty treats from all corners of the world, cook's tools and an substantial selection of wine-orientated gifts.

Check out Chez Pim for an ever-growing list of prizes (and David Lebovitz's blog for a detailed list of the prizes contributed by European bloggers) and go to the donation site for instructions on how to sign up. Winners will be announced on Chez Pim on 15 January 2007.

If anyone's around Dublin for the weekend and at a loose end - although that might be unlikely given the time of the year! - the National Crafts and Design Fair is on at the RDS in Dublin this weekend. The Dublin-based Cousin and I went along last night and discovered plenty of ways of spending our money on arty, crafty bits for Christmas, plus a whole room devoted to a variety of food products, whether you're looking for regato style goat's cheese from Cloon Goat Farm or tubs of soft Springwell Sheep's Cheese, to stock up for Christmas on Filligans' chutneys, mustards and jams (make sure you check out the Irish Peach & Cardamon Chutney), mini caramel waffles from Wicklow Fine Foods and Boozeberries festive-coloured liqueur. At the Simply Swedish stand I was delighted to replace my all-but disappeared Cloudberry jam that Alexandra sent from Sweden for the last round of EBBP.

There are plenty of things to taste - chocolates, cheeses, cakes and cookies, delicious fresh-baked bread from Sowan's Organic Bread Mixes, delicate teas to smell. And, if you're anything like me, you'll come out with your wallet lighter and your arms heavy-laden with presents for other people - and yourself of course!

Last weekend's (unexpectedly extended) stay in England included a trip to the best farm shop I've ever visited, the HFG Farm Shop at Beeston, Norfolk. We were in Norwich visiting the Engineering Couple and my kinswoman, their beloved Irish terrier, Bridie, who, knowing my love of food, brought us there after a morning spent tramping and on the river in their Canadian canoe. Outside the shop were long stems of brussels sprouts and sparkly Christmas wreaths but the real treasure was inside. Tables were piled with home baking - hungry from our morning's activities, Paradise Slices, Flapjacks, Shortbread and Date Slices immediately caught our eye - while groaning shelves of jams, jellies, oils, vinegars and chocolate lined the walls. A freezer was stocked with a multi-coloured selection of loose frozen fruits and baskets of locally grown vegetables were stacked high at the end of the room. The food available was more than tempting and, although I did resist, I still managed to walk out of the shop heavily laden with the aforementioned baking, brown paper bags of spelt and wholewheat flour from Letheringsett Watermill, a warty celeriac, a selection of nobbly Jerusalem artichokes and, because I never can resist something gingery, a bottle of Great Uncle Cornelius' Finest Spiced Ginger Non-Alcoholic Apertif.

Add to this a selection of cookbooks purchased over the weekend - on a very brief trip into Books for Cooks I picked up Paula Wolfert's Couscous and Other Good Food from Morocco, a very welcome copy of volume 7 of their own Books for Cooks cookbooks plus a bottle of owner Eric's own very decent biodynamic wine for our hosts - a pot of vanilla bean paste and bottle of pricy (but very necessary!) natural almond extract from Lakeland Limited and the Boyfriend's long-hunted for and LARGE rabbit trap and it's no wonder that we ended up having to check in a bag or, rather, the rabbit trap box, on the way back, something which caused great amusement at the luggage carousel in Dublin Airport. At least we managed to eat some of the weekend's purchases in situ, especially those from Sunday's farmers' market at the Forum - a rich chocolate pudding from the Old Fashioned Pudding Company (good with ice cream, albeit missing useful microwave instructions), juicy onion bhajis and other well spiced Indian snacks, tastings of moist Caribbean fruitcake, fudge, sausages and cheeses...it's surprising that we didn't roll off the airplane ourselves!

I didn't have much time for shopping on my recent Berlin trip but I did manage to make a selection of purchases around the themes (although I didn't notice this at the time!) of cherries and chocolate, mostly from the fantastic Kollwitzplatz Saturday Market.

In the cherry category we have:

1 x bottle of Griotka cherry liqueur from Prague Airport. Very useful when you arrive at a cold cottage late on Friday nights, especially when sips of the liqueur are alternated with sips of caramelised cinnamon hot chocolate.
1 x bottle of kirschwasser or cherry brandy from Berlin. Still unopened. I'm limiting myself to one bottle of alcoholic cherry drink at a time!
1 x small tin box of Pulmoll cherry sweets, also from Prague Airport.
1 x bar of Nestle Noir Cerise chocolate. Decided to pass this to the family - it then disappeared too quickly for me to test it.
1 x jar of amazing cherry-laden jam from Scandinavia, I think, that I ended up buying after starting a conversation with a Very Persuasive saleswoman in Kollwitzplatz Market.

I recently got a mail from a New York PR company about a Nextbook podcast featuring one of my favourite cookbook writers, Middle Eastern food enthusiast Claudia Roden. Nextbook's interviewer, Hugh Levinson, visited her kitchen in London and talks to her while she prepares Poulet aux Dattes (Chicken with Dates) and Salade de Tomates et Poivrons Grillés (Grilled Tomato and Pepper Salad), both from her last publication, The Book of Jewish Food.

It is a lovely, relaxed interview with Claudia cooking and talking about how she became involved in food writing, her own family's food history and the importance of understanding how food and culture are intertwined. A word of warning though - don't listen to this at work. It will just make you much too hungry! The interview is online here and the same page also has copies of the great-sounding recipes that she cooked while talking to Hugh.

The second episode of Richard Corrigan's show, Corrigan Knows Food, will be on RTÉ One this evening at 7pm. While I think Corrigan can sometimes go a bit overboard (his recent Late Late Show appearance was embarrassing, to say the least) when he's on form, he's an enthusiastic presenter and inspiring cook. Why, however, someone felt the need to shoehorn the man into a badly-fitting magazine format, is a mystery. Anne Kennedy has a good review of the first programme in the series here on Greatfood.ie and you can watch the show online here.

Corrigan also makes an appearance on last night's Questions and Answers, responding to the question "Does Richard Corrigan think he is promoting Irish food and tourism when he criticises Irish food products?". John O'Donoghue, Minister for Arts, Sport & Tourism, brings up the old chestnut of Ireland: The Food Ireland (recently debated at the Euro-toques forum in Brooklodge) and there are also contributions from Kevin Sheridan of Sheridans Cheesemongers as well as a whole heap of good sense talked by a gentleman - whose name I didn't catch - from the Associated Craft Butcher's of Ireland.

Here are a few Irish food sites that I've been spending time on recently...

* Greatfood.ie - I wrote about this site when I first discovered it in April and I've been enjoying it ever since, especially the recipes for spice blends from Orgapod's Nafisa Brennan. Between her ideas and Barbara over at Winos and Foodies talking about her own homemade curry powder, I'm getting inspired!

* The Irish Foodie - "tastes and scribblings" from Hamlet Sweeny in Dun Laoghaire. Check out his rant on the homogenisation of eating-out food in Ireland.

* Where's the Salt? - a Cork perspective on food for families (and Kieran Murphy's superb Chocolate Chip Cookies)

* martindywer.com - lucky Martin is just recently back from Terre Madre 2006 in Turin. Read about his experiences with Antonio Carluccio et al here.

* Though small, it is tasty - after recently becoming the very proud owner of my own damson tree, I was particularly taken with this entry on Damson Gin. Make sure you check out the Caraway Vodka too!

The dates and presenters for Savour New Zealand 2007 have just recently been announced and, as a participant at the 2005 event, I cannot recommend it highly enough for anyone with even the slightest interest in food and wine. It takes place in Christchurch, from Friday 27 to Sunday 29 April 2007, and this year Lauraine Jacobs, Cuisine magazine food editor, is the Programme Director.

Presenters that she has lined up include one of my favourite cookbook writers, Tamasin Day-Lewis; New York cheesemonger extraordinaire, Rob Kaufelt; San Francisco's Nancy Oakes of the acclaimed Boulevard restaurant; Gabriela Llamas, from Madrid's famous cooking school, Juan de Altamiras; and British food writer Tom Parker Bowles, author of the recent Year of Eating Dangerously. As at Savour NZ 2005, the international is well balanced with the local - Martin Aspinwall of the wonderful Canterbury Cheesemongers; South Island Chef of the Year and Best Young Canterbury Chef, Guy Stanaway; Marlborough winemakers Matt Thomson and Patrick Materman; and Australian representatives - Geoff Lindsay, chef/owner of award-winning Melbourne restaurant Pearl and Max Allen, best-selling author and Australia's most published wine writer.

Do be aware, however, that a delegate pass is NZ$685 but this does include eight classes over the weekend, all the food and wine that you can possibly eat and drink during those classes, lunches (just in case you're a bit peckish!), coffee breaks, the opening cocktail party on Friday night and the Great Farewell send off on Sunday. The Boyfriend and I were trying to plan our next trip to NZ to coincide with Savour New Zealand but a family wedding in January has put paid to that. I'll have to try and sign up for 2009!

In Berlin most of this week to present the Other Voices website at the Prix Europa internet competition. A total of 22 sites are nominated for the Exploration award, each of which has to give a half-hour presentation. Our area of the competition is fortunately limited to three days - long, intense and tiring but also incredibly rewarding. It's not often you get the chance to sit down with your professional peers to discuss and share concepts, ideas and inspiration from all over Europe. As for getting to see Berlin, forget it. The most I've experienced so far is through the window of the bus that takes us to Potsdam every morning or from a taxi speeding home through a hushed late-night cityscape. I've a free day on Saturday though - perhaps time to explore some markets, discover Berlin and, of course, have some close encounters with German food, for myself.

Update Sunday 22 October: And the winners were...the team behind the wonderful Fantastic Stories from Denmark. Many congratulations to Sidsel and Ole!

Well, after a few years of searching - plus 2½ never-ending months of frustrating to-ing and fro-ing with mortgage providers, solicitors and auctioneers - the Boyfriend and I have finally managed to take possession of a little country cottage, our Irish bach, in North County Cork. It is a typically small Irish cottage with a pair of small bedrooms upstairs. It could not, by any stretch of the imagination, be described as roomy although the current lack of furniture does make it feel slightly more spacious!

Last Saturday was spent scrubbing and scouring every surface before we spent our first night there so, as you can imagine, very little cooking was done. We brought a couple of Nigella's Dense Chocolate Loaf Cakes down with us (Cee at Kitchen on Clarendon has the recipe online here), for visitors and to encourage the cleaners' morale at low blood-sugar moments. All meals seem to have been eaten at speed as we listed all the things that we had yet to organise. My exploration of my new kitchen was limited to turning on the cooker to heat up some comforting Chicken Noodle Soup that travelled over from my mother's 15-miles-distant kitchen in a borrowed saucepan.

Luckily we bought a table and chairs with the house so, even if there wasn't much time for eating there was something to sit at and on. Even better, we've also acquired a damson tree (and a pot of delicious damson jam from the former owners), a few blackcurrant bushes, three still-fruiting apple trees and a half an acre of overgrown land, already complete with numerous inhabitants of the rabbit variety. Looks like the Boyfriend's dream veggie garden may have to wait until we figure out a way of dealing with the infestation. At the moment, as we will still continue to live and rent in Dublin during the week, it may be a little difficult to figure out how best to rid ourselves of the beasties. Rabbit Stew, anyone?

In yet another of my infrequent series of alerts about Irish food programmes, a new RTÉ Radio 1 show called Boiled, Baked & Basted started on Saturday night. It features chefs talking about the favourite and most inspirational cookbooks in their collection (Bibliochef, perhaps?!) and the first show has Paul Flynn of the acclaimed Tannery Restaurant in Dungarvan talking about books by Marco Pierre White, "scary hero" Elizabeth David, the esteemed list-topping Roast Chicken and Other Stories by Simon Hopkinson and two books that speak directly to my love of Middle Eastern food - The Moro Cookbook by Sam and Sam Clark and Arabesque: A taste of Morocco, Turkey and Lebanon by Claudia Roden. If you, like me, are interested in cookbooks (in my house you'll find piles of cookbooks by the bed, on the dining table, in the living room, and a row to reference on the kitchen counter) you'll find this programme very interesting.

Boiled, Baked & Basted is on RTÉ Radio 1 on Saturday nights at 8.30pm and the Paul Flynn show is also available to listen to online here. Incidentally, Paul Flynn is also the author of two cookbooks himself, An Irish Adventure with Food: The Tannery Cookbook and Second Helpings: Further Irish Adventures with Food, both published by the Cork-based Collins Press.

With the onset of cooler weather, the amount of cooking and baking in my house has increased, if not the recent writing about it. It's no longer torturously hot in our tiny kitchen if the oven is on and, as a result, I've gotten back into baking old reliables like Brown Soda Bread and our favourite Chocolate Flapjacks as well as trying out new recipes for Bill Granger's Coconut Loaf (especially good toasted), Peanut Butter Cookies (very moreish) from current favourite cookbook, Comfort by Michele Cranston and a zesty Lemon Poppy Seed Loaf that I decided to make in homage to the tasty muffins that I usually get in Dún Laoghaire from the California Market Bakery.

Weekend visitors have given me the opportunity to investigate some new vegetarian recipes, especially a Greek Bean and Pepper Stew using some enormous gigantes beans that nearly took over the kitchen after an overnight soaking, and our monthly bookclub is always a good time for thinking up a new soup idea and this time it's a meaty, bulked up version of Harira. I hope to cover all these recipes on the site soon but the webmaster course that I'm doing, a fast-approaching business trip to Berlin and a concurrent house purchase seem to be eating far more time than they should!

My email has been acting up recently so it's taken me a while to realise that I actually have a couple of real messages amongst all the ridiculous spam that crams up my inbox. One of the more interesting mails was from the recently opened and wonderfully named Ya-Ya House of Excellent Teas (see below) which sounds well worth checking out if you're in Christchurch. For those in search of spicy hot chocolate in Dublin, Fallon & Byrne do a too-mild version which is worth trying out but it can't beat the stuff you make at home yourself and sip by the fire on a cold, dark autumn's night...

Hi Caroline,
I'm aware that your post about chocolate & chilli on www.bibliocook.com is now more than a year old, but I recently remembered reading it a long time ago. I remembered reading about someone (you) here in Christchurch being interested in hot chocolates. We just opened Ya-Ya House of Excellent Teas last month in the Poplar Street/Cotters Lane area (just a block away from the mentioned Aji) and hot chocolate with chilli is on our menu as an alternative to tea. We moved here from Europe last year and were desperate in our search for a good hot chocolate. It was impossible to find any place that served a good hot chocolate, so we decided to do it ourselves.
Jo

Whether you're in Dublin or Christchurch, New Zealand this weekend, there are plenty of Slow Food-organised events taking place. The Christchurch branch have their second "how to survive when ship-wrecked" morning by the sea taking place on Saturday 23 September. Led by Slow Food member, amateur botanist, professional fishing guide and enthusiastic forager Peter Langlands, participants will spend the morning gathering seaweeds, shellfish, crustaceans and fish from Canterbury's shoreline at Port Levy. Information on species identification, harvesting and cooking techniques will be combined with some cautionary notes. Car pooling will take place from the CPIT car park at 9:30am. You can email Convivium Leader Bill Bryce for directions and hopefully you'll avoid what happened to me last year - a frustrating hour spent waiting in the wrong CPIT car park!

Also in Christchurch, on Sunday 24 September, The Bicycle Thief restaurant will host a family-style meal cooked by chef Nik Mavromatis to raise money for Nik to attend the Slow Food Terra Madre conference and Salone del Gusto in Turin in October. The dinner will be at 6pm on the Sunday of September 24th and the cost will be $70 per person for five courses, including wine. I've eaten Nik's fantastic food at the café in the Mediterranean Food Company and he was the inspirational teacher for classes I attended there on Tapas and pasta-making. I can tell you where I'd be on Sunday night, were I in New Zealand, especially with a menu like this...

Canapes and cocktails at 6pm, followed by:
Bagna Cauda with witloof, cardoons, baby vegetables and organic rye
bread. Wine - Cracroft Chase Pinot Gris 2005
Trio of shared pasta dishes: Gorgonzola Gnocchi, Buckwheat Pasta with
Salmon Roe and Crème Fraiche, Butternut Pumpkin and Sage Ravioli. Wine - San Silvestre 2003 Barbera D'Alba
Roast Porchetta with Cavolo Nero and Puy Lentils. Wine - Pegasus Bay 2004 Pinot Noir
Masticha-infused Rice Pudding with Rhubarb Compote. Wine - Lombardo Sicilian Moscato NV

On this side of the world, at Sunday's Farmleigh Food Market in Phoenix Park the Irish Raw Cow's Milk Cheese Presidium will launch a new label which will be used by the producers to designate cheese made from high quality raw Irish milk. The cheesemakers will be there to give tastings and talk about their cheese and Kevin Sheridan, one of the co-ordinators of the Presidia, will be giving a talk at 3pm on Irish raw cow's milk cheeses as a part of the Farmleigh culinary month. Kevin, of Sheridan's Cheesemongers, is passionate - some might say evangelical - about good cheese and about Irish raw milk cheese in particular. At a recent Slow Food Dublin evening he talked us through samples of Drumlin, Cooleeney Raw, Mount Callan Cheddar and the stunning Bellingham Blue.

The cheeses which are a part of the Irish Raw Cow's Milk Cheese Presidium are:
- Drumlin made by Silke Cropp in Cavan
- Cooleeney Raw made by Breda Maher in Tipperary
- Mount Callan Cheddar made by Lucy Hayes in Co Clare
- Dilliskus made by Maja Bindler in Dingle, Co Kerry
- Bellingham Blue made by Peter Thomas in Co Louth
- St Gall made by Frank and Gudrun Shinnick in Co Cork
- Durrus made by Jeffa Gill in Co Cork
More information on the Irish Raw Cow's Milk Cheese Presidium is online here and the Cáis (Irish Farmhouse Cheesemakers Association) website is at www.irishcheese.ie

Also watch out, the following weekend, for the Temple Bar Food Market's 10th Birthday Party on Saturday 30 September with talks and demonstrations in Meeting House Square and at the Cultivate Centre at SS Michael & John's Church.

If you're down in West Cork this weekend, or can make your way there, the Taste of West Cork Food Festival started in Skibbereen last night with a dinner which featured local products like Gubeen Bacon, Union Hall Smoked Salmon, Gallan Cream Cheese, Beara Preserves and Ó Conaill Chocolates.

Other events that will take place include a field trip to Gubbeen Farm, guided by cheesemaker extraordinaire Giana Ferguson; Saturday's Mystery Dine Out Night - you buy a ticket and are told where you're having dinner; and the Wild and Organic lunch at Kalbo's Bistro. And, most important of all, don't miss talented young Irish artist Neva Elliott serving tea and cakes at the Archiving Skibbereen Studio in the West Cork Arts Centre!

For some recipes using products from West Cork - marketed under the Fuchisa Brand - get your hands on 2004 Collins Press publication, A Taste of West Cork.

I'm not a fan of RTÉ's Late Late Show but there was a debate about Irish food on last week's programme which you can watch from this page. An aggressive and rambling Richard Corrigan doesn't come off very well but Derek Davis manages to defuse the situation, while still managing to get his points about Irish food - and they're not complimentary - across.

For all those Rachel Allen fans out there - and I know that there are lots of you! - she returns to RTÉ One next week with a new television series called Rachel's Favourite Food at Home. A hardback cookbook to accompany the series is published by HarperCollins and it's difficult to walk into any Irish bookshop at the moment without tripping over a stack of them!

The show starts at 7.30pm on Wednesday 13 September and here's the blurb on the book from the HarperCollins site:

Rachel's Favourite Food at Home draws on international influences, classic regional fare and good old family favourites to provide creative options for every occasion, whether planning a simple family meal, hosting a festive dinner for the entire clan, squeezing in a sneaky romantic meal for two, heading out for a glorious picnic, chilling out on the sofa with your favourite comfort food, or spending time baking muffins with the kids.

I was in the heart of County Wicklow yesterday, listening as the Irish branch of Euro-toques, a European-wide community of cooks and chefs, debated the idea of Ireland as a culinary destination. Held at the lovely Brooklodge Hotel in Macreddin Village, this was Euro-toques Ireland's fifth National Food Forum. Chaired by Peter Ward of Country Choice delicatessen in Nenagh, the panel consisted of Colman Andrews, former editor-in-chief of US food magazine, Saveur; John McKenna, the man behind the Bridgestone Guides; artisan butcher, market trader and sausage-maker extraordinaire Ed Hicks; editor of The Dubliner, Trevor White; and John Mulcahy of Failte Ireland, who provide training and development services for the tourism and hospitality industry.

Far more questions were raised than could be answered or even properly debated over the course of the brief two-and-a-half-hour gathering, including the enormous gulf between perceptions of foodie Ireland and the reality. John McKenna spoke passionately about the facsimile Irish experience currently been offered to guests in hotels and restaurants throughout the country and emphasised the fact that a food culture would only develop as good people do good things individually and at their own pace. The need to encourage Irish people to eat well was also stated by Trevor White, and Ed Hicks encouraged local authorities to demonstrate an intelligent appreciation of guidelines towards the market traders that have such an important role to play in local communities and in enriching visitors' experiences of Ireland.

As the panel discussion ended, only to be continued on an individual basis throughout the afternoon, a food fair was in full swing outside throughout the showers and sunshine with many of the usual suspects - apple juice, cheese, organic vegetables - joined by less familiar Irish blueberries and Boozeberries, nettle preserve from Bluebell Organic Farm and Meadowsweet Apiaries' beeswax and honey lip balm. Although the day ended very pleasantly with a thoroughly enjoyable organic and wild food barbeque in the idyllic grounds of Brooklodge, it now remains to be seen what - if anything - emerges from yesterday's discussions.

Related stories: Choice in the country April 06, 2006

Things have been a bit mad around here lately so I unfortunately haven't been able to participate in last two Hay Hay, It's Donna Day events - Snap Cookies and Brilliant Bruschetta, hosted by Clare at eatstuff.net and Bron Marshall respectively.

Due to a traffic accident, Clare hasn't been able to do the round up so Barbara, the HHIDD instigator, with Bron's help, has put together a round up of the imaginative cookies that emerged from that challenge at Winos and Foodies. Barbara also met Ms Hay in person at the recent Auckland Food Show and you can read all about that on the same post here. The Brilliant Bruschetta roundup is now online and, if you hurry, you can also vote for the winner of the event until 5pm New Zealand Time (5am GMT) on 11 August.

Being the last day at work before a Bank Holiday weekend, Friday was terribly busy - but considerably brightened up by the arrival of my Euro Blogging By Post parcel from Sweden! Once goods inwards got round to delivering it to my desk, I resisted the temptation to open it immediately and tucked it safely under my desk (sneaking looks at it all the time!) until it was home-going time...only to discover that it was too heavy to carry for 30 minutes on a too-warm summer's evening. Luckily, the Boyfriend and I were able to call into the office on Saturday morning before we headed down the country for the weekend. I ended up opening it at home with the Little Sister, who got me out of my digital camera-not-working dilemma by using her phone to take the photo of "Swedish summer treats" illustrating this post.

The first thing that I came across in Alexandra's well-packed box was a bulging tin of Surströmming Fileer marked with a warning! A Swedish delicacy, it apparently smells so much that she strongly recommends that I "open it outside and far away from people...It will leave an unforgettable memory." Seeing as I live surrounded by people in an apartment block in Dublin at the moment, I'm going to have to wait for an appropriate moment to try it. Perhaps I'll wait until a weekend after we move into our country cottage in the middle of nowhere, Co Cork.

Also tucked into Alexandra's box were Matjesfiléer and Loksill, two different kinds of pickled herring - just as well I've started eating fish in the last few years! She tells me that these are eaten with new potatoes or are "delicious in sandwiches." I don't think it will take as much courage to eat these as the Surströmming but, between being at home with my family, travelling and having my Vegetarian Cousin for dinner, they remain in the fridge for the moment.

I couldn't resist opening the jar of Hjortronsylt (cloudberry jam) immediately. I've read lots about these berries - most recently (albeit briefly, despite the name) in Tessa Kiros' Falling Cloudberries - and the jam is delicious, with a flavour somewhat like honeyed apples. They are related to raspberries and, like that fruit's jam, the Hjortronsylt is packed full of crunchy seeds that give it a wonderful texture. Looking for information on them, I came across Pille's nami-nami blog and her recipe for Rye Bread Canapes with Blue Cheese and Cloudberry Jam. First I'll try out Alexandra's suggestion of serving the jam on top of ice cream and then, if there's any left, will use it to top some of the Cashel Blue and Crozier Blue cheeses that Mum packed for me when I was leaving after the weekend.

A bottle of Pippi Longstocking's beloved Sockerdricka (sugar soda), some great Krafthattar - party hats for traditional crawfish parties which are held in August - and a tin-foil wrapped package of sweet and short homemade sugar cookies completed the parcel. Unfortunately, while packing to return to Dublin, our dogs at home got their noses into the box of goodies and ran away with the cookies, leaving behind nothing but a well-licked piece of Swedish tinfoil. I did a search on Alexandra's blog, Catching Points, and discovered Alexandra's recipe for these Sugar Cookies so I'll have to make them for myself and, this time, make sure they're nowhere accessible to a naughty Labrador and terrier combination. I think those cookies would make a great combination with some warmed cloudberry jam and ice cream...hmmm...how far can one jar of cloudberry jam go, I wonder?

Thanks to Alexandra for such a fantastic taste of a Swedish summer and insight into another country's summertime traditions - I'll let you know how I get on with the Surströmming when I muster up enough nerve to finally open the tin! - and also many thanks to Jeanne for doing all the organising and hosting the event. If you're interested, you can track all the other parcels here and even (before 25 August) sign up to international Blogging by Mail at The Happy Sorceress.

One of the (very) many events organised by fellow food bloggers is a series of regular parcel exchanges. Last year in New Zealand I thoroughly enjoyed participating in Blog By Mail 2 and now I've gotten involved in Euro Blogging By Post #5, this round of which is being run by Jeanne over at the London-based Cooksister blog. Jeanne picked "The Taste of Summer" as her theme so I've assembled a parcel along those lines with an emphasis on Irish products.

My digital camera is still flatlining (anyone with any ideas on how to get an Olympus Camedia digital camera C-370 Zoom to realise that it has fresh batteries in its belly please let me know!) so I can't take any photos of the full haul. You'll have to make do with a lovely photo from the Olivado Avocado Oil website instead.

A jar of Homemade Dukkah - an addictive Egyptian blend of spices and nuts, dukkah was everywhere in New Zealand. All the farmers' markets had a stall - sometimes several - which offered samples of dukkah. You dipped a piece of bread into a little dish of olive oil and then into the dukkah before eating. The oil made the crumbly mixture stick to the bread so you got a flavoured mouthful of different textures. It's very morish and was widely available in NZ but I haven't come across it in this angle of the world yet so, with the help of Claudia Roden and her New Book of Middle Eastern Food I made my own. It was difficult but I managed to wrestle enough away to send off to my EBBP partner.
Does it Taste of Summer? Coming from Egypt, how could it taste otherwise? Useful for nibblish picnicing.

Olivado Avocado Oil - We eat the dukkah with Moroccan aragan oil which has a complimentary nutty flavour but it seems to be difficult to find outside Morocco so I picked this avocado oil in homage to where I first discovered dukkah. A glorious green colour, avocado oil tastes - funnily enough! - of rich, nutty avocados. It's considered to be a very healthy oil and is also great as a moisturiser. There are some great uses for avocado oil on the Cuisine magazine website and I was delighted to recently discover NZ's Olivado brand in my local supermarket.
Does it Taste of Summer? Yes, oh yes! Even without dukkah, it is a wonderful dipping oil. Cut some ciabatta or flatbread into chunks, you’re your avocado oil into a plain shallow white or cream bowl to show off the dramatic green colour and dip away. Better than butter for summertime suppers.

Ditty's Irish Oatcakes - the nicest oatcakes I've ever come across are these handmade (they almost look homemade) version from County Armagh company Ditty's Home Bakery. I first tasted them at a Dublin Slow Foods evening devoted to cheese, specifically unpasteurised Irish farmhouse cheeses from Sheridans Cheesemongers, and have bought them many times since.
Does it Taste of Summer? Perfect for picnic-based cheese moments.

Moutarde Verte a L'Estragon - because, even when camping or picnicking, you can't part a girl and her mustard. Particularly when the mustard is such a glorious pale green colour as Edmund Fallot's tarragon-flavoured version. When I saw that it matched the avocado oil, I just couldn't resist getting it!
Does it Taste of Summer? Summer is all about salads and the best salad dressings involve a couple of tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil (De Cecco is my current brand of choice), a couple of teaspoons of balsamic vinegar and a dab of decent mustard. Good with anything from lentils to butterhead lettuce leaves.

Blakes Organic Milk Chocolate with Coconut Filling - both organic and Fairtrade, (as well as being wrapped in recycled paper!) this chocolate is made in Switzerland for Blakes, a new company in Galway, and I'm all for trying out new Irish products. I had to buy another bar for myself to do extra testing.
Does it Taste of Summer? The smell of coconut in food, drink (or even sunscreen) always makes me think of summertime heat. This is a Very Good Thing if you live somewhere that you don't get much in the way of soaring temperatures, although I don't think that's a problem for my EBBP partner.

Bunalun Organic Caramel Wafers - I was introduced to these on a sun-drenched walk in the mountains surrounding Glendalough and they're now a camping staple. Thick sweet caramel sandwiched between crisp wafers from impeccably designed organic producers Bunalun - what's not to like?
Does it Taste of Summer? Take these with you on a summertime walk and tell me!

To finish off my package, I also included a copy of the July edition of Ireland's Food & Wine Magazine with it's glorious chilli-enhanced colourful cover and the Observer Food Magazine's Taste of summer special (Does it Taste of Summer? Yes it does!) - there's a great article on Morgan Freeman's restaurant in Clarksdale, Mississippi although author John Carlin does gush a bit. Some more bubble wrap and a quick trip down to the post office on Tuesday and my foodie package started winging its way to ...? You can track the parcel progress and arrivals at Cooksister.

Update 27 August 2006: You can see a photo of the contents and read about Petula's reactions to my parcel on her blog la cuoca petulante.

Ireland has recently been going through a spell of glorious weather with near-constant sunshine and temperatures in the mid to late 20s and so I've not stepped near the kitchen for the last while. Cooking is mostly out of the question and baking has been abandoned for the moment - very little Brown Soda Bread gets made these days! - as our kitchen is just too small to cope with the heat of the cooker and/or oven. Meals at home are mostly light salad affairs or, given half a chance on these long, warm evenings, consist of picnics eaten while sprawled on the grass in one of our local parks.

Depending on who's out of work first, the Boyfriend or myself pick up the fixings from Hennessy's Food Store, Donnybrook Fair or Morton's of Ranelagh - a substantial bread, like Blazing Salads' organic sourdough, some savoury-sweet olives and semi-sundried tomatoes, a chunk of pungent oozy cheese, thin pliable slices of salami or on-the-bone ham, maybe a scoop of Donnybrook Fair's intensely meaty chicken liver paté, a handful of sweet-scented cherry tomatoes and a few dollops of tapenade, hummus or pesto. For desert, I'm a particular fan of Glenilen Farm's screwtop jars of natural yogurt layered with fruit compote.

We grab our rug, a nicely chilled bottle of wine, some books and the picnic bag - already crammed full of lightweight cutlery and melamine delph - and hotfoot it to either Belgrave Square or Herbert Park to read in the sun while balancing mouthfuls of salami, brie, tomatoes and pesto on top of roughly hacked slices of bread. Food always seems to taste much nicer when eaten outdoors in the sunshine. When the sun starts to drift below the horizon, it's time to pack up and wander homewards, nicely toasted and full of good food. We might bemoan the lack of a garden, patio or balcony to make use of, but there's definitely ways of getting around that!

Ireland has recently been going through a spell of glorious weather with near-constant sunshine and temperatures in the mid to late 20s and so I've not stepped near the kitchen for the last while. Cooking is mostly out of the question and baking has been abandoned for the moment - very little Brown Soda Bread gets made these days! - as our kitchen is just too small to cope with the heat of the cooker and/or oven. Meals at home are mostly light salad affairs or, given half a chance on these long, warm evenings, consist of picnics eaten while sprawled on the grass in one of our local parks.

Depending on who's out of work first, the Boyfriend or myself pick up the fixings from Hennessy's Food Store, Donnybrook Fair or Morton's of Ranelagh - a substantial bread, like Blazing Salads' organic sourdough, some savoury-sweet olives and semi-sundried tomatoes, a chunk of pungent oozy cheese, thin pliable slices of salami or on-the-bone ham, maybe a scoop of Donnybrook Fair's intensely meaty chicken liver paté, a handful of sweet-scented cherry tomatoes and a few dollops of tapenade, hummus or pesto. For desert, I'm a particular fan of Glenilen Farm's screwtop jars of natural yogurt layered with fruit compote.

We grab our rug, a nicely chilled bottle of wine, some books and the picnic bag - already crammed full of lightweight cutlery and melamine delph - and hotfoot it to either Belgrave Square or Herbert Park to read in the sun while balancing mouthfuls of salami, brie, tomatoes and pesto on top of roughly hacked slices of bread. Food always seems to taste much nicer when eaten outdoors in the sunshine. When the sun starts to drift below the horizon, it's time to pack up and wander homewards, nicely toasted and full of good food. We might bemoan the lack of a garden, patio or balcony to make use of in summertime, but there's definitely ways of getting around that!

I'm at two-day Irish music festival Oxegen this weekend, although fortunately - considering the rain and muddy conditions in Punchestown racecourse yesterday - not camping. The less said about food there the better! Normal service will resume next week.

None of the much loved Enid Blyton's Famous Five books that I read as a child were complete without a picnic - ham rolls, hard boiled eggs, slabs of fruit cake, tinned pears and, of course, lashings and lashings of ginger beer. The only kind of ginger drink that I came across in Ireland was ginger ale, ginger beer's much sweeter and less spicy sibling. I wasn't too impressed.

Years later, long after my Famous Five fixation had passed, I came across ginger beer (along with many other ginger products) in New Zealand and I became addicted. I don't normally buy soft drinks but, especially with the long journeys in the South Island, ginger beer was the drink of choice to keep both driver and passenger going. A non-alcoholic drink that is refreshingly tart and not too sweet, there were many brands available but the variety that I most loved was an import from Australia called Bundaberg.

Sold in a distinctive squat brown glass bottle, it had a ring-pull metal top which I never quite got the hang of. Still, that was only a small and easily manageable (get the Boyfriend to open the bottle!) drawback so, when I unexpectedly came across a small display of Bundaberg ginger beer in my local supermarket - tricky top or no - I was delighted. It's the equivalent of discovering a packet of Tayto cheese & onion Irish crisps in your local Christchurch dairy. Now all I need to complete the NZ nostalgia trip is the faded green, leaky, tank-like 22-year-old Honda Accord that we drove throughout NZ...

I have to agree with Ice Cream Ireland's comment on the incongruous presence of Starbucks at last weekend's Taste of Dublin. It's difficult to see what they have to do with food at all and in Dublin in particular. RTÉ 2FM DJ Rick O'Shea also writes of his experiences at A Taste Of Dublin (Or Two, Or Three.... Maybe Dessert Too...) and there's debate over at the forum on Ernie Whalley's forkncork.com. While you're there, it's worth taking a look at the conflicting opinions on Fallon & Byrne.

Friday afternoon was a good time to be at the inaugural Taste of Dublin event as blazing sunshine encouraged a cheerful and good humoured crowd to linger, sample and wander around a Dublin Castle courtyard crowded with stands and stalls. My €35 ticket (I managed to keep the dreaded Ticketmaster booking fees to €2 by buying from the Ticketmaster outlet in Stephen's Green Shopping Centre) entitled me to €20-worth of florins, the festival currency, but the sky was the limit as soon as you set foot inside the event areas. With sample signature dishes priced from €5 to €8, that €20 didn't last long and I've even read of people spending another €70 on top of that. I was well behaved though - after spending my first €20-worth, I just bought €5 extra - and, although portions were less than generous, I would have been hard pressed to find something I really wanted to spend more on. It doesn't have to be a taste of Dublin to be good.

As I had decided to avoid all restaurants that I had previously eaten in, the first of the stands to catch my eye was Gary Rhodes' much hyped (and not yet open) Dublin venture, Rhodes D7. For my first €5 I got a shot glass of tangy White Roasted Cherry Tomato Soup with a salty stick of Olive Bread. Good - but much too tiny. L'Ecrivan's contribution to my afternoon was Natural Smoked Haddock Linguini with Asparagus and Peas, Light Curry Froth (€5). Spaghetti had been substituted for the linguine and the thinner strands of pasta weren't as good at holding the intensely flavoured cream sauce which remained, in lonely puddles, at the bottom of my bowl.

After a few more circuits of the food stalls, I chose La Stampa's Braised Quail with Savoy Cabbage (€6). This was by far the largest portion I got so I took one of the few seats available to give it my fullest concentration. No matter how nice, food always suffers from being eaten while you stand, constantly juggling plates and bags. Although the wooden knife I was given was no match for the meaty portion of quail, there weren't many scraps left by the time I finished. The Town Bar and Grill's Strawberry and Cassis Pavlova with Mascarpone Cream was my summer-appropriate but not-so-grand finale. Although perfectly pleasant, there was little flavour from the promised cassis.

On the wine side of things, there were small samples aplenty with glasses of wine available from €4. The most interesting part of the day for me was meeting the passionate wine importers behind www.spanishwines.ie. Already selling to off-licenses and restaurants in Ireland, they've just launched a website selling these under-represented wines and a glass of their fragrant Guitian Godello (easily recognisable from its smart, art deco-style label) was a perfect drink on such a warm day and, I can only surmise, a great accompaniment to some tapas for a Spanish-style summer's evening with friends.

As a taster of Dublin restaurants, this event was exactly what it said on the tin although I don't know if I would be hurrying off to visit any of the restaurants that I sampled on the day. The Cellar Restaurant's fantastic looking Fish and Chips, served in a cone of paper with a dollop of mushy peas, nearly had me breaking my resolve to avoid familiar restaurants and I had to turn my back to avoid looking at the dishes produced by the much-loved Silk Road Café. Reports from my cousin, the Environmental Scientist, gave top marks to the White Truffle Risotto (also from the Cellar Restaurant) and Roly's Hot Chocolate Pudding. Although she got rained on during the Saturday afternoon session, she wasn't undaunted and already has a plan for 2007: "We'll have to go back next year (with rain gear, regardless of the forecast!) in a group of at least four, get there early, bag a table, stay at it and then get as much as possible from each place and bring it back for everyone to share!"

Although I did enjoy the afternoon's tasting, the most exciting thing was the sheer number - and variety - of people there, swapping tips on the best dishes, stealing forkfuls from each other's plates, sharing tables with strangers, enjoying the sunshine together. If you didn't manage to make it to Taste of Dublin, take Maman Poulet's advice and take the price of the ticket to your local farmers' market for good food and tasting aplenty.

For anyone interested in reading a few more food blogs, there's a great article in last Friday's Guardian. Check out the best of the blogs, including several old favourites - Chocolate and Zucchini, 101 Cookbooks, Is My Blog Burning? and Food Blog S'cool. Well worth a look.

For anyone looking to experience some of the tastes, sounds and aromas of Morocco without having to travel too far, a Moroccan Market will take place next week, from Wednesday 14 to Sunday 18 June in Dublin's Wolfe Tone Park next to the Jervis Centre. Situated in Temple Bar Square last year, apparently the textiles, jewellery, pottery and - most importantly! - food were very popular. It's certainly worth checking out. More information is available on the Temple Bar Cultural Trust website here.

Lonely Planet's World Food Morocco
Does exactly what it says on the tin. Having travelled and eaten our way around Thailand and Malaysia with the respective versions of these small, incredibly useful books, I recently added their Moroccan edition to my collection. Dense with information on everything from food customs to street foods and including recipes for traditional Moroccan dishes like couscous and tagines, they're an invaluable resource while travelling. A mine of fascinating facts on argan oil, which is used to make the nutty breakfast spread called amalou; details of the ubiquitous mint tea and other drinks; regional variations in foodstuffs; and the utensils used in the Moroccan kitchen. A selection of great photos help you to identify ingredients and - Lonely Planet are nothing if not thorough! - it also has a dictionary of culinary terms, a glossary and useful phrases in both Arabic and French. As well as our well-used Malaysia & Singapore and Thailand books, the Lonely Planet World Food series also covers places like Portugal, Vietnam, Ireland (but, to the Boyfriend's disgust, no New Zealand!), Greece and New Orleans. An invaluable travelling companion.

La Cuisine Marocaine by Latifa Bennani-Smirès
I picked up an idiosyncratic English translation of this in Marrakech and - odd syntax and spelling aside - it is a very engaging book. Recipes for rghaïf and beghrir vie for space with details of how to make and shape pâtisserie Marocaine, the small, intensely sweet, rich and fragrant nut-filled pastries that are served with mint tea. There is little in the way of introductory detail about these and many other dishes although the methods are well explained.

The pick of the bunch...

A New Book of Middle Eastern Food by Claudia Roden
The grandmother of them all. This book - a reissue of Claudia's 1972 landmark Book of Middle Eastern Food - is not just about Moroccan food but includes dishes from across the countries of the Middle East, putting them firmly in context, both historically and geographically. Last year I took this book out of the library in Christchurch but, after reading just a few pages, knew that I had to get my own copy as there were so many recipes that I wanted to investigate. The introduction is a culinary history of the Middle East as Claudia tracks the techniques and ingredients that travelled in the wake of conquerors and oftentimes remained in situ long after their empires had disintegrated. Traditional stories, folklore and songs are dotted through the recipes, further enriching the text. There are more than 800 recipes in this book - and that doesn't count the frequent regional and national variations also detailed after the recipes.

The paperback is perfect for holiday reading although 1) it's important to avoid reading it when you're hungry and 2) it did make me long for my own kitchen to try out her recipes. Not as unashamedly greedy as Nigel, Claudia still manages to convey her infectious love for and interest in these dishes as well as her belief that food is all about family and friends. It's a bible for anyone who, like me, loves to cook with the ingredients of the Middle East - cumin and coriander, preserved lemons and lentils, fresh herbs and harissa. An absolutely invaluable book.

And, when you come home:

Get your hands on Greg Malouf's Arabesque for an important A-Z of Middle Eastern ingredients and what to do with them after dragging them from plane to train to automobile. Another book that I haven't read myself but which cropped up several times in my foodie research on Morocco is Couscous and Other Good Food from Morocco by Paula Wolfert. Paula has a website here. New Zealand author Julie Le Clerc also has a wonderfully colourful cookbook called Made in Morocco.

Honey - Moroccan honey is the most un-honey-tasting honey that I've ever eaten. We often had it for breakfast, the rich caramel sweetness drizzled across English muffin-styled Moroccan pancakes called beghrir or the flaky, multi-layered rghaïf. Accompanied with a tall glass of freshly squeezed orange juice and a café crème, it made the perfect start to the day.
Spices - although I've been really happy with my old blend of ras el hanout from Greg Malouf's Moorish, I couldn't resist the chance of picking up some more to compare and contrast it with what I use. I also got turmeric, ground ginger and two types of chilli powder(at least I think that's what piment fort/piment doux means!).
Olives - a kilo of green olives in what the shopkeeper described as "piquante" flavouring and another half kilo of wrinkled sweet black olives. I loved how each meal in Morocco started with a small bowl of these olives and a basket of flatbread as we perused the menu. They never lasted long.
Dates - considering the variety and quality on offer, I was restrained and came home with only a half kilo of the sweet, plump fruit. One dish that kept turning up in the books that I read while travelling there was of a roasted fish, stuffed with almond-filled dates. Must try and keep a few true Moroccan dates to try out that recipe.
Preserved lemons - while picking up the olives and dates in a small shop near the Casablanca train station, minutes before we had to get the train to the airport, I couldn't resist getting a few of these glorious-looking lemons. This, despite the fact that I'd made a jarful from some organic lemons before I left Ireland! Another thing for the compare and contrast experiments, methinks.
Garlic - the small bulbs of garlic available in Morocco are much sweeter than the stuff that you can find on sale in Ireland. I love to use raw garlic but it can be very off-putting if, instead of gently cosying up to the other ingredients, it decides to loudly broadcast its presence. I brought some good quality garlic home from Paris and it lasted me ages so I couldn't resist grabbing a couple of bulbs in Casablanca when I got the chance.

After two weeks of sunshine and heat in Morocco we've returned to an amazingly summery Ireland - perfect for last night's sun-soaked family party to celebrate my Gran's 90th birthday.

Just in the door of our Dublin flat so sour milk has to be thrown out of the fridge, fresh supplies to be bought and the raw clay Berber tagine that we lugged through a couple of taxi trips, two flights, three airports and a pair of train journeys needs to be unpacked, along with assorted spices, dates, olives, tea, honey and god only knows what else from our travel-beaten rucksacks.

And then I'll have time to sit down and write about the meals, tastes and flavours that I've encountered during my time in Morocco!

Bibliocook is on tour! The Boyfriend and I travelled to Casablanca last weekend to meet with a friend - the Australian - and spend a couple of weeks travelling around the country. It's a good opportunity to practise the languages that we've been learning, French for me and Arabic in the Boyfriend's case, as well as doing a thorough investigation of the food and flavours of Morocco. Not to mention continuous stops to feed the BF's addiction to the refreshing, sweet mint tea available on every corner. Unfortunately, the lack of internet cafès in the Sahara and absence of QWERTY keyboards may mean less frequent updates for the moment but I'll remedy that as soon as I get back to Ireland. Now, time for tonight's tagine...

A wee while ago, Sinéad over at Sigla sent me a link to a piece on Irish language podcast blog An tImeall on Cócaireacht agus Filíocht (Cooking and Poetry). My prowess as gaeilge not being what it should be, I had to get a friend to translate it for me - many thanks to the Schoolteacher - and am finally able to appreciate Conn's kind words. There's a link to the page here or, for my non-Irish readers, a couple of paragraphs translated below. Isn't the Irish word for blogging - ag blagadóireacht - absolutely gorgeous? Compliments like these just might be the way to encourage me to improve my Irish.

Watch out for the idiosyncratic food columns by Franz Ferdinand frontman Alex Kapranos in The Guardian newspaper. After tip-off from my workmate about Kapranos being about to publish a collection of the columns, I went searching for them online. They're pieces about the foods that former Glaswegian sous-chef Kapranos encounters while on tour with the band - a burger at Anthony Bourdain's Les Halles, blowfish in Osaka, the best New York donuts, street food in Singapore. Here are a few links to his most recent articles:
05.05.06