Lots of Chanel bags, not enough value for money.

Taste of Dublin yesterday enjoyed sunny weather and there’s no doubt that the event is in a lovely setting, yet the whole thing still manages to score on the low side. While it’s always an enjoyable outing for socialising, I ask myself every year if it really works as a food event. Because of its nature as a standy-up, browse around with a paper plate in one hand affair, it’s limitations lie in precisely that – it has a hurried feel and the best of Dublin’s restaurants simply can’t be serving the dishes they do well at those kind of volumes from tiny kitchens at the rear of trade stands.

The Friday lunchtime session was predictably enough, very busy with lots of carefully styled outfits and ladies in towering stilettos sinking into the grass. After a wander around, Francesca and I headed to Town Bar and Grill where I had their beef cannelloni with beef, sun dried tomatoes, pesto and rocket. I’m very fond of Town Bar and Grill but I found this dish a little on the plain side and the pasta slightly toughened. Francesca’s king prawn with saffron orzo pasta was a little more successful but at 8 florins (the currency used at the event which is basically 8 euros) this is fairly expensive for a tiny plate of food.

From the Dylan hotel we had three oysters for 7 florins, or 7 euro, which is also quite steep. They were neither plump or flavoursome but served with a little shot of bloody mary which was really nicely mixed. We watched Gino d'Acampo do his thing in the demonstration tent for a bit – lots of slick patter about Italian men and Irish ladies and there’s no doubt he’s a good showman, and kind of cute in a bizarre way. It must have been the bloody mary.

If you’re very interested in new food producers and artisan products, this is not the place to be. What producers are there do a good job, but there is very little of that produce available to buy. We came away with some cheese, beautiful chocolate from the girls at Pandora Bell and pudding from Kelly’s in Cork. I would love to see more artisan food on sale and more of a focus on small producers - many of the larger display tents are taken by big brands such as Knorr, Tropicana and Dubliner cheese. If I really fancied a free shot of Tropicana I could go to my nearest Tesco and talk to the nice lady with the promotions stall at the end of aisle 21.

Iveagh gardens is a lovely park and I think the setting is the strongest thing about the event. By all accounts “Taste of Dublin” must be working for many people as it continues to thrive here (there are “Taste of ...” festivals now in 13 countries all over the world) but for me it always leaves me thinking they could do so much more with it. Entrance tickets are €25 and you have to ask yourself what real value for money is there when the restaurants are selling fairly average dishes at far from average prices. The fact that you have to spend florins hides the fact that some of the dishes are really overpriced because you're not handing over euro. Without the florin tokens, perhaps people would be reluctant to spend so much at the event. It'll continue to be a social occasion and people will probably continue to go, just remember to leave your ambitions for good food or value for money to one side.

Racing loves Eating

Racing is a game of two halves in Ireland - you're either in a corporate box being fed caviar from a silver platter or down in the enclosure trying to manage a steak sandwich that tries to slither away from you and gallop up the track. It's a sad fact that racecourses are not known for their spectacular food. As Philip says, racing is about backing horses, pints of Guinness and a Crunchie on the way out the back gates from the women with the prams of chocolate.

So I'm happy to report a very clever tie in between two things we manage to produce really well in Ireland - racehorses and food. It's something that should have been done years ago, particularly as racing draws many people who are not just there for the horses, but want other experiences and diversions at the racecourse throughout the day. With this in mind, it's great to see that this year's Irish Derby will have a food village from Good Food Ireland with artisan foods produced by their members available at the racecourse on Derby weekend - June 25th to 27th. It'll provide some real quality, Irish sourced food to ordinary punters at the racecourse and allow some food browsing in the down time between races. Last night the event was launched at the K Club with a selection of the food producers doing their thing, who will also be serving food at the Curragh.

Wowsers, the food was incredible. As press launches go, this is the kind of one you actually want to be at - surf and turf from Millstreet Venison, mini burgers with sweet caramelized onions from Country Choice, Sandra Higgin's delicious roasted free range chicken from down the road in Carbury, Cooleeney's goats cheese, Rossmore farmhouse icecream which had a real creaminess and sultle flavour and Tom O'Connell's sherry trifle in a glass pot which looked and tasted beautiful. There were more food producers there then I could get round to tasting, the full selection is on Good Food Ireland's website. Margaret Jeffares did a fabulous job putting the event together and I hope the Good Food Ireland village will become a fixture at the Derby, or even other Curragh meetings as it can only make the festival even better. Well done to all and looking forward to some good racing, and eating.

More photos of the night available on my facebook page

So impressed with this cider, big shout out to David

I love cider but find most of what's on the market so sweet it's like drinking flat 7-up. Not that there isn't a place for flat 7-up; if you're seven years old, or severely hung over.


In hot weather (let's hope it's not over) it's one of those drinks I really tend to fancy - perfect beer garden stuff, only to after one mouthful experience the inevitable "Bejaysus this is horrible" and ditch it after half a glass.

So I'm delighted to discover a decent Irish cider - happened upon by accident in the crafts beer tent at Bloom - which is a great addition - after all why not feature the small producers instead of the usual multinationals' sad warm pints of colourless stuff. Double L is made by David Llewellyn in Lusk - it's a great story; he started out working for another apple grower but began growing apples for himself and now has a range of juices, cider vinegar and even Irish wine. And he's only been in the business nine years.

He has so much demand for his produce that he buys in other apples from around the country. The Double L cider we picked up from him is really fabulous; it has that cloudy colouring and slightly tart taste that is so resonant of the rural ciders in Northern France which people make in their own back gardens and pass around to each other in milk bottles with cloth stuffed in the top. It also has none of that horrible sweetness of most commercial ciders, and it's fermented without the sugars, water and artificial colourings and flavours typical in mass produced cider.

He's a really nice fella as well and I really wish him the best with this. He told us his juices and vinegars are available in Superquinn and the cider is available in Stonybatter and at his farm in Lusk. Other new food hits for me at Bloom were Coolea cheese from Cork and Bad Boy Sauces from the fabulous Caribbean ladies, they are a taste knockout. Bring on the summer weather, and more cider x

Sun, food and envy

This is why you should never go to see proper gardens; they make you cringe at how absolutely rubbish your own is in comparison. Philip and I just spent some very enjoyable, but painful hours at Bloom today in the walled garden saying things like - "Okay, we're doing something badly wrong. Why are these chives so big? Look at the size of that cabbage!" and finally "I think it's time to leave this area now".

I'd love to meet the person in charge of that garden; it's a miracle of huge healthy vegetables, pure unfettered growth, zero weeds and not a slug pellet in sight.

Traumatic as it was, the walled garden was one of my highlights as it shows the possibilities of creating a food garden that is really beautiful. Okay their's is scarily immaculate, but it's strength lay in how the arrangement of all the vegetables made it so pretty, with sweet pea canes and herbs dividing the sections of large veg, pleached trees in a row down the centre and all bordered by lavender and box hedging; really beautiful. It was a hot sunny day so it was lovely to chill out sitting on the grass, picnicing on a duck confit and salmon quiche from the artisan food exhibition and wandering around the stands in no particular hurry.

I liked the show gardens and again there was a big focus on growing your own; hens in a urban context, bee hives etc. We went into the Federation of Irish Beekeepers tent and spent a long time looking at a section of a working hive surrounded in glass with the drones slaving away just beneath your fingertips. It's kind of mesmerising to watch, Philip even started to talk about bee hives again. Umm. I'm kind of saying nothing. Half of me is utterly thrilled with the idea, half of me is terrified in a 1970s B movie kind of way. On the positive side, my grandfather was a great bee keeper and I remember the delicious honey dripped onto to soda bread at his house, but steady on... we are still having the keeping pigs debate, with no particular result. I worked on a film once with Tamworth pigs as part of the cast. What started off being cute turned into a gang of red-haired unmanageable terrors. Still, they taste great.

Bloom is definitely recommended this year, the indoor plants exhibition has something for everyone, lots of retail stands, a good selection of stuff for kids; we particularly liked the playground made of straw and natural materials and the baby fell in love with the goat on the Agri-Aware stand and had to be dragged away kicking and screaming. Bord Bia have done a very strong job on the organisation side; lots of stewards for the carparking, everything very well signposted, scheduled etc. For parents it's an easy event to visit; plenty of room for buggies and lots of places to sit down in a quiet spot. I caught one of the talks on flower arranging but missed Donal Skehan in the afternoon as the cookery tent was out the door - a good sign though. Two more days left, go go go x

Saying you use chemicals in your garden is like admitting you fancy Simon Cowell

I'm off to Bloom in the Phoenix Park over the next few days, am greatly looking forward to the "Nude Gardener" Shawna Lee Coronado (what a great angle) telling us how to live a greener life...... or maybe I'm not, as I just put napalm strength slug pellets around my vegetable patch. Yes, it's as bad as admitting you fancy Simon Cowell but hey my name is Suzanne Campbell and I use chemicals in my veg garden. And if that's not enough, my dad who is plantsman extraordinaire came around here yesterday, looked at our appallingly sad crop of veg and barked at me "that soil is rubbish, throw a load of nitrogen on it!".

Thinking of using NPK (nitrogen potassium, potash) which is the makeup of most fertilisers, makes me shiver as NPK is the main culprit for wreaking soil's ability to reform itself and is the trouble with intensive farming of any kind - you use enough of it and the soil just dies. However, weigh this up against having no veg at all this year and I relented. So with a withering heart I poured out a cap full of Miraclegrow into each watering can and gave everything a good dose of it. I reckon my plans for a little stall of organic veg at the end of the lane have hit the wall. Damn it anyway, the plants do look better today though, particularly the two surviving courgettes plants which looked like dead snails, are now standing upright and looking for more.

The tomato plants are still tiny for this time of year so I've subcontracted about twenty of the tomato plants still in small pots to my neighbour who has put them in a sunny spot and promises to water them. Delighted. Since coming back from France the one good thing to ease the depression is the good weather, and hopefully watching some of my food crop actually come on a bit- roll on more sunshine. Really looking forward to seeing the edible garden at Bloom as it's always nice to see new ideas and it gives you the confidence to try growing new stuff. Looking at some of the garden drawings on their website is really whetting my appetite, the two photos above are from last years event. I'm really interested to see the garden titled "Victus Ortus.... "..employing basic bio diversity and permaculture techniques this garden strives to achieve a balance between our desire for ‘outdoor living’ and our necessary attempts at being in touch with natural systems and traditional gardening methods". Oh god, maybe not. Can you be expelled from Bloom for using chemicals?

Besides the gardens they have all sorts of plant exhibits, food stalls, talks, cookery demonstrations with experts like Darina Allen and the fabulous Peter Ward. It runs until Bank Holiday Monday evening and kids go free so it's definitely worth taking a look at if you're around Dublin.

So selfish of the ash cloud to disappear just when you need it

Tomorrow morning we've an hours drive to Nice, then a flight home. I can't moan about it though; we've had two weeks of non-stop sun, delicious lunches in hilltop villages and I've got finally got the baby eating tomatoes. Which is just as well, as we have about 70 plants started at home and if they all come to fruition our place will be like The Day of the Triffids.

Last year our tomato plants were in shock with the crap weather and they only grew fruit very late in the summer. Things were looking bad; miserable green fruit that was beginning to rot on the branches. After pulling long faces and pointing out the approaching catastrophe, Philip stepped in and saved the day; making a fantastic chutney from the green tomatoes which we still have preserved in jars. It has a lovely bitter sweetness that is fabulous with a cheese board or splattered on top of toast.

Eating local dishes here has pushed plenty of ideas my way which I'll try out at home; artichokes with aioli (aioli - egg yolks, garlic, olive oil, lemon juice, sea salt), roasted peppers with capers (all on a big tray in the oven until they soften together), plenty of caprese salad and a delicious casserole fruits de mer which I ate at a lovely place the other day - essentially a fish pie but with a lightness and freshness that is typical of the fish from Marseille.

When we had friends to stay we bought some faux filet (sirloin) at the village butchers, threw it on the barbeque with some rosemary and thyme from the garden, accompanied by a big salad and plenty of local rosé. It's easy to do really simple dishes because the quality of food here is so high. I could cry at leaving but it's okay - next week I'm winning the Wednesday night lotto and will be back here permanently.

"Brides wedding at Cana ruined - interfering guest from Nazareth blamed"

There was a lot about the Wedding at Cana which indicated good planning until a pesky guest from Nazareth arrived on the scene. What the bridezilla's family knew well was, as with all successful evenings, the best wine should be served first. Similar to most weddings, those in charge of the wine at Cana knew that after a few hours solid drinking you can easily give your guests engine coolant and it will go down a treat.

And this isn't a joke; engine coolant has been known to replace alcohol among those fond of a tipple in the colder regions of Russia. It's attractions are such that bears in Canada regularly tear apart snow mobiles in night time suburbs in order to get at the engine coolant, suck it down and slope off down the road with their big arses wobbling from side to side.

Here in Provence as with any trip in a wine growing region it's part of one's duty to drink all manner of wines, engine coolant or not. The local wine - Cotes de Provence isn't the most thrilling of what France produces but as with any appellation there are highs, lows and most of it lies somewhere in the middle. The reds tend to be the poorest of their wines and it's the rosés which are the largest share of the output, in fact half of the rosé wines in France are produced in Provence. Here in the house most of what we are drinking are the rosés, and even the average to cheaply priced bottles are really nice wines, especially in summer.

Yesterday we drove to a local winery near La Motte and, sampled some of their labour. The soil around here is limestone based, really red in colour and the grapes they are using are Cinsault, Grenache, Mourvèdre, Syrah and Tibouren. When we walked around the vineyard we could see the grapes are at this stage in the season, tiny dots the size of a pin head. The vines are generations old, pruned back year after year for what looks like very few green stems of new growth that appear each season. After a ramble around looking at vines, and the chicken enclosure on the farm which had all kinds of geese, dosing sows and about seven roosters happily sharing their intimate space, we went back to the estate offices to sample some wines. I ditched the reds and went for the whites and rosés - (drinking in the middle of the afternoon is a bad idea as it is); they were crisply flavoured with fruity notes and of course, as with buying any French wine from a vineyard, ridiculously good value. A case of their middle of the range rosé worked out at 3 euro a bottle.

Cote de Provence doesn't tend to be widely available in Ireland which is a pity, because at the cheaper end of the scale the wines have a nice rustic feel, and wouldn't break the bank, despite the ridiculous prices we have to pay at home because of excise duty. It's a shame that what dominates the market in Ireland are cheaply produced Australian and Chilean chardonnays which are in many instances, artifically "oak aged" with chemicals and cloy in the back of your throat with a noxious hit. Regretably French and European wines of much higher quality just can't survive in Ireland because they are produced at a marginally higher cost then New World wines but are wildly nicer in taste, more environmentally friendly and not shipped half way round the world. It's when you come to France that again you realise, most of what's on the shelves of your local Spar is in fact engine coolant.

Rhythm is a Dancer owes me

Though we all fancied Julian but secretly wanted to be George, poor Anne in The Famous Five didn't have much of a role to play except for a fabulous line in hairbands and her oft-repeated sentence about how food always tasted better outside. Or maybe it was George who said it. Hairbands, gingerbeer, Timmy the dog, whoever... They were right.

I'm in Provence at the moment and here it's all about eating and in fact, doing everything outside. The weather is hot, the markets stalls are laden with food and I'm working my way through some of the region's classic recipes. Provence is a place I return to again and again. After college years spent slaving in restaurants in Antibes and being groped by Calibria's mafia along to Rhythm is a Dancer in atrocius Juan Les Pins Nightclubs, Provence owes me. Big time.

And so I come back again and again. I sit in the sun, I moan about sunburn, I eat and I cook. I even got married here, and tried to pay off the local gendarmes for trying to close down the party at nine the next morning. Provence owes me but I owe it so much more. Its produce is simple and local, it's throw-it-in-the-pan cooking; have a glass of wine, talk with friends while it's happening and a great meal appears from nothing, simply because the ingredients are fresh and local, and the classic combinations of olive oil, basil, rosemary and thyme are things you can rarely get wrong.

Ratatouille is one of the regions best known easy, wholesome dishes and something I cook a lot at home. It's so simple; courgettes, aubergines, peppers, onions, tomatoes, herbes de Provence, and anything else you fancy; slow cooked (if you can get your hands on a flat earthenware Provencal dish pictured above it makes it even better), bung it in the oven for a few hours and eat eat eat. Frying off the courgettes and aubergines first helps the cooking time but anything that will look after itself in an oven is always a favourite of mine. It's a plain, rustic but great tasting dish, and it goes with everything from some grilled mackerel (following a marinade of lemon, garlic and flat leaf parsley), a piece of barbequed beef, or on it's own accompanied by some crusty bread or rice.

Another local dish that's a really easy supper to do at home in Ireland is goat's cheese; (a slice from a roll of goats cheese or an individual small round piece) grilled on a slice of baguette. This is a dish that takes 5 minutes to prepare, but is really lifted by a simple sauce of cherry tomatoes cooked with olive oil and seasoning in a saucepan with a few bits of local ham, salami or whatever you have thrown in. Spoon the sauce into the centre of the plate, on top of it place the grilled slice of baguette with its slightly melted goats cheese, a few leafs of basil and a splash of olive oil. The combination of the tartness in the goats cheese with the sweetness of the tomatoes is mouth watering. It also looks fabulous, a far more impressive dish then the time it takes to prepare.

The Provencal house I am staying in is laden with serious cookery books; Julia Child, Elizabeth David - they're all here. What I especially love about Elizabeth David was her fantastic attitude to life and her cooking reflected this. She used food as a way into understanding how the French lived, and explored different regions of France, and recorded their cooking in a time when women didn't travel alone to small villages chatting to mountainy men about how they killed their lambs. She was a pioneer and being in Provence brings so much of her writing alive. How lovely to be in such a vibrant food culture where cooking is simple, fun, social, and the whole place has pride in its local food without making it fussy. There are so many people doing good things in Ireland with food to put it on the right path again, it's just lovely to sometimes be in a place where it all feels so much easier. And lets face it, the sunshine helps. x

Spring Lamb from farm to fork

From Farm to Fork: Sweetbank Farm, Wicklow
The Irish Times 15/5/2010





WORDS: SUZANNE CAMPBELL
PHOTOGRAPHY: ALAN BETSON

To stressed out city folk, organic farming may seem like an idyllic occupation, but as Co Wicklow farmer Debbie Johnston explains, it's not all home-baked pies and eco-glamour.

ON A SPRING day, when the white cuddly lambs are frolicking in the fields, you could be forgiven for thinking that farming is one of the nicest occupations on the planet. At Debbie and David Johnston’s farm in Newcastle, Co Wicklow, the scene is perfect. From cut-stone farm buildings, the couple go about their work, managing 90 head of cattle, a summer fruit farm and their biggest enterprise – more than 100 organic certified ewes. But though it may seem a bucolic idyll, the Johnstons have just finished lambing, and they have a more realistic take on things.

“Lambing!” says Debbie. “The BBC did a week of television shows on it and we were just laughing watching it. For us it’s hard work, we’re exhausted now that we’ve got to the end of it.” Their ewes began lambing in mid-February. “My husband, David, does all the work. To be honest, I’m really the support crew. He goes in and out of the sheds all night and makes sure that every ewe is doing okay. You could leave them on their own but he doesn’t take that risk.”
And it can be a risky business. Debbie showed me two adorable orphaned lambs whose mothers had died. “It does happen, you do everything you can to avoid it but every farm will have a couple this time of year.” These two are well-loved characters, climbing up the fence to see us, or more accurately, to see if there’s any chance of a feed. It’s no surprise that the antics of an orphaned lamb are a current YouTube sensation.

But having cute livestock doesn’t necessarily pay the bills. Over the past year many farmers have been weeping into their mugs of tea as milk prices fell to below the cost of production, and beef and grain incomes weren’t much better. Then winter set in, which we’re only just emerging from. “In a normal year you expect your grass to be growing by St Patrick’s Day,” Debbie says. “This year was like nothing we’d seen before. We had no grass, we had to use up stocks of feed and spent days breaking ice on water troughs, sliding around the yard and praying for the weather to change.”

Luckily, spring seems to have finally arrived and it’s with spring lamb that the Johnstons have carved out a niche business for themselves. They sell direct to customers who come to their farm to pick up a box containing a whole or half lamb during the months May to October. “We did many things over the years to diversify. The land had been in David’s family for four generations but he saw the writing on the wall in terms of farm incomes dropping and knew we could no longer rely on producing the same thing year after year.”

The Johnstons’ first innovation was growing summer fruits, something they are still involved in. They opened a farm shop which they ran successfully for 10 years. “It was really lovely but we found most of our customers were coming to the coffee shop and not really buying our produce. The reality is you have to be selling what you grow, and when we costed the time and effort to run the shop, we called it a day.”

At the moment, a mix of beef, summer fruits and organic lamb is working well. “You always have to be thinking on your feet with farming, and what we do is to offer top quality, grass-fed lamb at a really attractive price. Our product is up to 30 per cent cheaper than the supermarkets and selling direct is a way of controlling what we produce, all the way to the customer. We are not waiting for market fluctuations or depending on someone else to set the price.”
Debbie keeps a close eye on the business end of the farm and the minute something stops making money, “that’s when you change your strategy. It’s hard when there’s such a drive to make food cheaper, but cheap imported food is a false economy for all of us. After all, farming and food employ 300,000 people in Ireland.”

What keeps her doing what she’s doing when margins are so tight? “Sometimes you really wonder why you keep going,” she says with a laugh. “But I do really love it and I still get attached to the livestock, I even get a bit sad when animals are loaded into the trailer.”
Nevertheless, attachment to their lambs doesn’t stop her giving me her top cooking tips. “Keep it simple,” she advises. “The flavour is there, so you don’t need much seasoning. I like to butterfly the leg, stick in some sprigs of rosemary and roast it on the barbecue. Or if you’ve a few people coming, use the loin of the lamb, tie in some herbs and cloves of garlic, pop it into the oven and serve with some new potatoes.” Cute or not, now I want to start cooking.
The Johnstons’ lamb is available from their farm at Tiglin, Newcastle, Co Wicklow. A half lamb is €85 and a full lamb is €190. A half lamb cut to customers’ requirements is roughly the size of an average freezer shelf.
See sweetbankfarm.com; tel: 086-1730497

FROM FARM TO TABLE
Ring of Kerry Quality Lamb is a group of 27 farmers who sell their lambs direct. All lambs are matured for a minimum of seven days and cut to the customer’s specification. ringofkerryqualitylamb.ie.

Fieldstown Farm in North Co Dublin delivers half or whole lambs, butchered to your specific requirements, to addresses in the greater Dublin area (whole lamb minimum for delivery). Customers from further afield can collect their order. irishfood.ie.

Lambdirect.ie is a group of eight farmers from Mayo who farm, butcher and sell their own mountain and lowland lamb. They offer cuts packed in sealed trays ready for the oven or freezer. This summer they plan to offer a barbecue pack. Free local delivery once a week in their van. Contact: Ray Cawley, Shanvallyard, Tourmakeady, Co Mayo.

Doolin Farm Direct supplies local limestone-reared lamb direct to the consumer through box schemes, on-line orders and farmers’ markets. Contact Alan Nagle, tel: 086-4014132, doolinfarmdirect@gmail.com.

Comeragh Mountain Lamb in Waterford offer boxes of lamb; a full lamb includes legs, shoulders, cutlets, loin and gigot chops, and mince. Recipes included with every delivery. comeraghmountainlamb.ie.

I so want to go to this...

Those of you who watch too much food porn may have been following "Jimmys Farm" on Channel Four over the past few years. The series centred on Jimmy Doherty (a foodie friend of Jamie Oliver's) who started up a rare-breed pig business and followed his inevitable ups and downs. He's a nice, easy-to-watch bloke whose subsequent BBC series on the reality of farming in the UK was pretty bloody brilliant.


This year his farm is hosting a whopping music and food festival - Harvest At Jimmy's. It'll take place on his lovely farm in Suffolk on the weekend of 11th/12th of September this year. The thinking is that as food and music have long been a match made in heaven and its harvest time, its an end of summer celebration of both. There's a focus on sustainable, local food, cooking demonstrations from the inevitable celeb chefs, and some pretty good bands.

Food attractions - Hugh Fearnly-Whittingstall's River Cottage Canteen. A Farmhouse Kitchen Stage featuring The Hairy Bikers, Valentine Warner, Tom Parker-Bowles, Mark Hix and also Jo Wood's pop up restaurant Mrs. Paisleys Lashings. Also Mexican street food from Thomasina Miers - (loved Thomasina in her Wild Gourmets series - particularly her Chloe accessorised by shotgun look).

Music - The Zutons, Futureheads, Newton Faulkner, Kate Rusby, Jo Whiley etc

The more details released about this festival the more I want to go. It's the weekend after Electric Picnic (Roxy Music... swoon) so I'll have to start looking for coins down the back of the sofa. If it's an enormous success and turns into a regular festival, my heart goes out to Jimmy's wife who seemed to spend two years of her life in a portacabin with Jack Russells sitting on bits of paper trying to sort invoices for the pig business. I just hope they have a bit more help organising the festival. In fact, knowing the popularity of festivals it's obvious route is to turn into a mega Live Nation type event like Glastonbury. Hope not.

www.harvestatjimmys.com

Overtired and undersexed? Eat your way to a healthier brain

Finding women who suffer from high stress levels, fatigue and anxiety in our financially perilous, over-tweeted world isn’t too difficult. In fact it describes just about every high achieving person I know.

But having busy lives can place our bodies are in a perpetual state of fight or flight. This continuous flow of stimulating hormones confuses our adrenal system and harms our ability to regulate stress, concentrate on work, limit food cravings and fight infections.

So if you’re feeling perpetually worried, dizzy or lack energy, you could be suffering from adrenal fatigue.

The syndrome has become a big talking point in the US; it’s a new name for what basically occurs when our bodies are riddled with high levels of the hormone cortisol. Excess cortisol lingers in the body if it is not used.

If we spend much of our day rushing through tasks, worrying about work, childcare, or that handbag which sent our credit card over the edge, we’re putting our brains and our bodies under real pressure. It’s common at the moment to find many people, particularly women, stressed during the day and then lying awake at night worrying their problems.

So if you’re suffering from severe tiredness and can’t work out what the problem is, a saliva test carried out by your doctor could reveal problems in your cortisol levels. Rest and changes in diet are the chief method of getting things back to normal.

To re-boot your system, remember that helping the flow of hormones that make you feel better isn’t as hard as it may seem. Dopamine and serotonin are produced by exercise and also by contact with other people who make you feel happy – a night out with the girls for example, is rewarding for your brain. However, alcohol doesn’t greatly help our brains repair themselves, neither does caffeine. Remember that if you have a coffee at 3pm you will still have 150 mg of caffeine in your system by night time, telling your adrenal glands to pump out “wake up” hormones.

If you’re at work and desperately need a pick me up, avoid sweet stuff or refined carbohydrates, they’ll make your blood sugar levels spike which puts stress on the adrenal glands, and eat breakfast within an hour of getting up to restore blood sugar levels from what was depleted at night.

Taking a vitamin B complex supplement helps adrenal function. Studies have also shown that 50 to 200 milligrams of ginseng a day can rebalance cortisol in one to two months. Fish oils, found in salmon or tuna are a natural antidepressant and great for brain function, and fruits of different colours contain antioxidants which help repair the body. So for a cheap energy boost to replace that latte at your desk, eat an apple. Adrenal fatigue may be the new take on “burnout”, but sometimes the old fashioned methods of repairing ourselves really are the best.

Suzanne Campbell

This article was published in The Gloss magazine, May 6th

What a load of pollacks

The fishy story gains more ground, yes the pun potential is outrageous, check out my full article in the Indo...

http://www.independent.ie/lifestyle/food-drink/what-a-load-of-pollacks-2166542.html

The Susan Boyles of the Sea finally have their moment

Did a report on RTE radio’s Countrywide programme last weekend on factory farming and the labelling of Irish and non-Irish food. It’s such a tricky area. Basically we all want to know our food is safe and that it’s produced under decent standards. And if we’re really interested in food, we also want to know where it’s coming from. Organic free range chicken sold at an Irish farmers market versus Chinese mega chicken unit with 50,000 birds. Which would you choose?

The problem is that Country of Origin labelling does not exist in the EU, although this may be soon about to change. In EU speak there is currently a “re-cast” of labelling laws taking place, which may bring in Country of Providence onto the label. This is a great development and means that we can get a bit more clarity as opposed to the present fog of imports and misnamed product. It's particularly relevant with chicken as four million chicken fillets are imported into this country every week, mainly from Thailand and Brazil. In fact at food service level in Ireland - which is restaurants, work canteens, sandwich bars and garages (don’t dare to pretend you don’t garage graze), imported chicken accounts for 95% of what is sold. Apparently we're mad for chicken, but we probably wouldn't be that mad about it if we knew where much of it is coming from.

It was good timing that we discussed food labelling on the programme as two days before, UCD released the shocking results of tests they did on fish sold in Ireland – showing that 25% of the fish they bought (from fish mongers, supermarkets and fish and chip shops) was not what it said on the label. Most of the chicanery here is going on with cod. It seems that currently in Ireland there is everything under the sun being passed off as cod. Things you never heard of; the Susan Boyles of the fish world – Pollack, Saithe, Greater Argentine – are finally having their moment. Pollack, okay that's not so bad, but Greater Argentine? Is that something to do with The Falklands? I spoke to Professor Alan Reilly from the Food Safety Authority of Ireland whose sorry task it is to investigate this matter. He reminded me that food adulteration, or in this case, food substitution is one of the oldest tricks in the book, it's been going on since we began to trade food, or to be more correct, trade rotten meat with the edges cut off to some poor sucker. The FSAI are going to have a lot of digging to do on this one so watch this space. The hilarious thing is, no one noticed that what they were eating wasn't cod. Doesn't say a lot for us consumers does it?

The Country Cooking of Ireland - dig in

Thought I'd show the lovely image from the front cover of Colman Andrews book, it makes you want to dig in and start cooking right away.
He really has done a great job, really getting to grips with the essence of Irish food. The cooking collated here is the type of stuff that reminds me of my nana's kitchen, especially with his focus on the traditional staples such as soda breads which has almost spurred me into taking them on again. Any attempts I have made in the past have yielded brick-like disappointments, and even when I got the consistency right, the taste just wasn't there.

I think my soda bread standards have been ruined by memories of being a little girl and getting out of bed on cold wet mornings in my nana's house in Donegal to find slabs of warm soda bread dripping in butter on the table. Oooooh how good it tasted! I would eat my soda bread, and perhaps if I was motivated, spread it with some honey from the hives outside. I remember every detail of the scene; the blue and white crockery, the milk jug with rose blossom and the Sacred Heart looking dolefully down from the wall. As I ate my soda bread the mist would clear in the field that lay on a hill overlooking the garden, and the cattle would began to graze again and enjoy some early sun on their backs.

My nana baked bread every morning of her life, in a range oven, fired by burning peat from the strip of bog that they cut every year. The smells of that time will never leave my head, nor my nana’s cooking which was about using the food she grew yourself and whatever few bits she could buy on top of that with the household money she made from keeping poultry and selling eggs. She was a typical Irish woman of her time and learned to cobble together great cooking in often very austere times. But there was always plenty of butter. Like rural France, butter is the make or break ingredient when your foodstuffs are limited.
Again, really wonderful publication from Andrews and great to see Peter Ward involved in setting him on the right road in his exploration of Irish food. He couldn't have a better guide x

Donovan's family butchers

Just a shout out to a new food business in Enniskerry, County Wicklow - it's always heartening to see a supermarket alternative arrive in any town and this butchers is a great little shop and unexpectedly, very very good value for money.

The Donovan family have a well known shop in Rathgar and have won a slew of food awards. Their Enniskerry outpost is packaged meats rather than a carcasses hanging behind the counter type of butchers (there are less and less of these which is regretable).

When they opened recently I had a good poke about and asked loads of pesky questions which probably marked me down as worst customer ever. Nevertheless my research paid off as

I thought they had really good value for money on good quality burgers, lovely puddings and bacon. And every morsel was eaten, believe you me. The black pudding in particular is the lovely old style product - not the current vogueish pudding which has more barley in it than pig's blood. It also does Italian style breads from a bakery on the Northside and plenty of deli type stuff; pestos, salamis etc.

Together withh the greengrocers across the road, people in the area could get most of their food shopping done with little effort and support local businesses rather than the multiples. This is the type of thing we need to be supporting, and regrettably it’s the type of shop that is disappearing fast from so many Irish towns. Bray has virtually no food shops left, perhaps two butchers remain in the entire town, Greystones has gone the opposite way and become very food centred - there is Cavistons, Butlers Pantry, the Happy Pear veg shop and loads of other really good food outlets and cafes. It really is a model for how small Irish towns can keep footfall and offer an attractive food retail experience.

Enniskerry has another farm kitchen shop about to open, two coffee shops and another food business at the bottom of the town which I have yet to check out. I know that in villages such as this, particularly when they are within spitting distance of two monolith Avoca Handweavers, retail can have real problems competing, especially in the foodstuffs or gifts area. I hope these businesses do well and we’ll be keeping an eye on their progress, sourcing of Irish goods and hopefully good value for money.

Battery farmed cows, itsa comin.....

Oh God, even reading about it is making me feel slightly uncomfortable, and this is from someone who got through Jonathon Safran Foers Eating Animals pretty much unscathed. Yes it’s Britain’s first factory dairy farm – or rather, proposed dairy farm.

The plan is to open a facility which will house 8,100 cows in sheds year-round at Nocton in Lincolnshire. It’s battery chicken farming, only with cows. The usual suspects have come out against it - Compassion in World Farming calls the plan disastrous, the Soil Association says it is “beyond reason”; over 70 MPs have signed a motion condemning it, while the Facebook group Oppose The UK’s Biggest Factory Farm had 3,500 members last time I looked. However the UKs farming minister is supporting the project and many think the £40 million facility will go ahead, bringing badly needed employment to the area.

Essentially, factory farms aren’t good for animals or for anyone who eats meat (see post on the above book coming soon). Even if they are treated thoroughly humanely, I don’t like the sound of cows living a warehouse all year. Bovines are programmed to graze and despite the fact that grazing is about getting food, being out in a field filling their gob with grass is basically their central activity. That’s why horses who are stabled for too long with box walk, wind suck, eat the walls etc, because they are being confined away from what they are programmed to do. Being outdoors in a grazing situation is essential to what a cow is.

And before I get called a hairy toe vegan, while I believe in the happiness of livestock, I also believe in eating them. I want anything I eat to have lived a half decent life and be killed humanely. That’s the contract that human beings have with animals, or correction, should have. Most of the problems surrounding the welfare of farm animals actually lie with us the consumer. If we want cheap food, food will be produced under conditions that are less than ethical. Not only this, but human health which is at the end of that chain will eventually suffer from lower standards and cheaper production methods applied to everything we eat. Look at what came out of the pig farms in La Gloria Mexico. We really don’t want this to be our food future, trust me.
The row over the Lincolnshire farm is set to continue, watch this space...

Food porn, Dahl style

I still can't make my mind up about this one - the BBC's food show starring ex-model Sophie Dahl. Made by Jamie Oliver's Fresh One Productions, the series will no doubt be hugely popular but in many ways it’s a bit of an oddity; I spent most of the first few shows frowning at the TV wondering when Sophie was going to quit flouncing around antique shops and actually start cooking.

You get the sense BBC are looking for a sexy Nigella replacement; plenty of finger sucking and close ups of eyelashes. The similarities are obviously not lost on Dahl either - speaking to Andrew Marr on BBC One, she was forced to dismiss suggestions by the broadcaster that she was “irritated” by the comparison with Nigella and the desire for it to be seen as a “catfight”.Like Nigella, Dahl is not a trained cook or chef – these kind of programmes make me feel really sorry for the professionals who’ve spent long apprenticeships in steaming kitchens, do they watch these series with their fingers half covering their eyes? Is it horrendous or liberating to see someone fry fish who can’t obviously handle a pan with any kind of skill? Does it want to make them leave cooking altogether and become a runway model?

The fact that untrained food fans have their own programmes is in one way liberating and opens up what can be an intimidating set of skills to a wider group of people. However, how much of the Sophie Dahl series is actually about food remains to be seen. In essence it’s about a very pretty girl faffing around a very pretty kitchen spouting a lot of literary references - they seem to interrupt the cooking a lot of the time. The dishes she prepared were simple and attractively themed along the lines of self indulgence - halibut, dirty martinis, chocolate mousse, that sort of thing.

It was entertaining to a degree and while I give out about celebrity-led broadcasting, I still watch the stuff. Hey I’m a divil for food porn, whatever about the quality of the programme. In fact anything on telly remotely connected to food and farming.... I’m on it. I even watch One Man and His Dog for Gods sake.Good luck with it Sophie, just make sure you spend more time in make-up than in the kitchen x

Welcome to my blog

It's a funny thing starting a blog. You feel like the 13 year old version of yourself throwing your diary open to the whole school with the inevitable cringetastic terror and possible beatings that may result. For many years I was resistant to blogs, but it's like that bottle of Barolo in the wine rack, eventually you cave.

Following our book "Basketcase; What's happening to Irish Food?" I feel it's important to continue the debate and bring together many strands about Irish food and the countryside that currently don't exist in the same place. The blog will also provide links to my food and farming journalism. There will be food of all colours and all quality featured here, from Supermacs to Guilbauds to Tesco's tikka masala. We'll also have information on Kevin Thorntons hair, a fungus that looks like Britney Spears and a non-leathal method of stopping pheasants waking you up at four in the morning. We'll also laugh at efforts at growing your own, and the do's and don'ts of feeding small children (no Grey Goose Vodka).

I hope the site will function as a place to keep up with what's new and good in Ireland; the upcoming stars whether it be new cheeses, new restaurants, shops, markets, farm shops, cakes, courgettes and cafes.... where you can find them and where the best deals are. I hope that those who read the blog will contribute on what they're loving or hating putting into their gob, and where they're finding great quality and value. Basketcase loves the countryside. We need more countryside issues on the web! After all food grows out of the ground, or is born from an egg in a vast chicken unit. We need to be real about food, how important it is to this country and how good we are at producing it. Rural Ireland seems to be shrinking in importance, but if we continue to produce quality food, and futhermore, actully buy the stuff, we can keep rural Ireland vibrant and very much alive.

Farming may be a dirty word, but so are lots of other fun words. So if you keep your own pigs, potter about with herbs, love your pets, fall off horses or dip your Manolos into mud occasionally, this is the place for you. Hope you enjoy it. Blogging is strange, embarrassing, narcissistic and why is there no spell check? At least my labrador might condescend to read this. She is a useless guard dog but fabulous on her laptop. Till next time x