Articles

It's hard to fathom, but it's already August and the seed-sowing year is almost over – this month is the last opportunity to sow seeds and marks the end of seven months of fairly intense seed sowing activity that started way back in the dreary days of February
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The trend towards people growing their own food has sprung from a desire to eat healthily, says Darina, and she has some interesting seasonal recipes to tickle your taste buds
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This month Marilyn Bright talks to Diarmaid Murphy of The Fish Kitchen, Bantry, where “Keep it fresh and keep it simple” is the byword
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Ireland's answer to the famed Jersey Royal early potato from the Channel Islands, Comber Earlies are this island's flagship potato and one of only a small handful of products here to have the right to use the blue and yellow EU PGI ('Protected Geographical Indication') logo
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We've gone crazy for seaweed in recent times, says Darina, and now she's really woken up to phenomenal variety of sea vegetables around our coast. We were always big fans (and still are) of carrageen moss and dillisk, but that was pretty much the limit of my knowledge of seaweeds up to relatively recently.
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Given Ireland’s lush grass and strong dairy tradition, it is not surprising that a lot of dairy farmers have diversified into ice cream production in recent years, and we are now fortunate to have quite a wide choice of high quality, small production ice creams - although distribution tends to be limited to their local area.
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NO-BAKE BAKING Easy Oven-free Cakes & Treats by Sharon Hearne-Smith with Photography by Donal Skehan (Quercus, £16.99 Hardback).

Although this is her own first book, food stylist Sharon Hearne-Smith's name will be well known to aficionados who read the credits on the major TV food shows and ogle the gorgeous food shots that she sets up for magazine features and cookery books by many of Britain and Ireland's most famous chefs.
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Euro-Toques chef Martin Dwyer, is much missed in Ireland since he and his wife Sile sold their eponymous restaurant in Waterford and moved to France. They now live in the Languedoc, where they take guests - and feed them very well.
This month Martin recalls a major career change over four decades ago - and the lady who unwittingly played a key role in events at the time
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I know that sometimes I can be guilty of hyperbole, but recently I visited a garden that I think could transform Ireland. One of the recipients of a community food growing grant from AIB via the GIY Get Ireland Growing Fund last year was the Headlands Community Garden.
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For years I’ve been banging on about the shortage of good Irish-made non-alcoholic drinks - and, specifically, a quality commercially produced elderflower cordial that would be available all year round like the imported ones.
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