Category: Education
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A foodie's guide to Kerry
Heading to the Kingdom this summer? Eva Schmid of Kerry’s Ard na Sidhe hotel has put together this really delightful and useful infographic on Kerry’s food festivals, cafes and tea rooms, cooking courses, farmers markets and food stores. The Kenmare Food Carnival has been and gone, but there’s plenty more places left to visit, including…
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Snobbery against cheap food: How doing the right thing is a stick to beat the poor
Cheap eats. German discounters. Euro value shops. Big supermarkets. Iceland. We’ve often lambasted here for being excessively focused on the cheap. Or told that it’s immoral to not buy organic. Or that we should only eat Fairtrade or totally ethical produce. Or that decent humans buy from small, local producers at farmer’s markets, choosing fresh…
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Ethical food shopping: Oxfam’s “Behind the Brands” campaign
Shopping is an ethical minefield. Does buying the odd bunch of Fairtrade bananas make a real difference? Is eating meat wrecking the planet? Should we only be eating organic fruit and vegetables? And who can afford all of this? The amount of competing viewpoints confuses consumers even further. It’s no wonder that most people are a…
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Wild mushroom hunting, Co. Wicklow, September 29 & October 6
I’ve always been fascinated by mushrooms. They were the first food I ever gagged at; the very thought of eating them, in soup or whole, makes my throat close over. But I also have a profound respect for the kingdom of fungi: without them, nothing could ever decompose, and nothing new could grow, us included.…
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Grandma knew best…
Note that it is international Grandmother’s Day on April 25th, and for the second year running Slow Food Ireland will be celebrating in earnest. How? By celebrating those precious skills that might otherwise be lost: think, baking cakes, sewing seeds and catching fish. Grandparents, Slow Food Ireland remind us, are the “guardians of inherited wisdom,”…
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Gather round the table (or TV)
“Since the beginning of time, food has always meant the gathering of the clan, loved ones chopping, stirring, kneading together, and that second most intimate of acts, feeding each other, for food is not so much about cooking as it is about love and sharing.” Loving the recent addition to Huffington Post, the HuffPost Food…
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Watching Jamie with bated breath
I’ve seen a sneak preview of Jamie’s Food Revolution in the US (watch the trailer here) and already I am fascinated and horrified in equal parts. I think Jamie is fantastic, you can see that he really cares about what children are eating. He takes Huntington in West Virginia as his starting point for a ‘seed…
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Cookery Lessons
I’m not a natural cook at all. I usually have to follow a recipe with the exception of a few staple dishes that I have been cooking for years. I’m good at baking but I think that’s because it’s all about measurements and I tend to treat cooking like a science. My husband has the…
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Jacob Eats! It’s a Miracle
My wonderful, almost eight-year-old little nephew Jacob is the fussiest eater I’ve ever met. Or at least he was, until a few weeks ago, when his preferred diet consisted almost of sweets, potato waffles, spaghetti, sausages, and cleverly mashed up root vegetables. His parents tried everything but to no avail. Last year, I took him…
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Food Education in Schools: The Organic Centre
Leitrim has become a mecca for people looking to live a more sustainable life, and The Organic Centre has played a huge part. Situated at Rossinver, Co. Leitrim, it provides information, education and training about organic growing and sustainable living. The Organic Centre also runs courses in counties Wicklow and Clare. The centre runs a…