Articles

Cultivated since ancient times, the best-known citrus fruits are the oranges, lemons, grapefruit, limes and tangerines. Citrus plants hybridise easily and kumquats are among the many related fruits. The trees and shrubby plants are sensitive to cold but can be grown here fairly successfully in tubs if they are given protection in winter.
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After taking a couple of weeks off in January for holidays, I am back on the farm preparing for Spring calving. February 1st marks the official start to calving at Castlefarm. We will have 90 cows calving down, the majority within an 8 week period. This means keeping a close watch on the expectant mothers and making sure that every calf born drinks a feed of milk within an hour of being born.
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Continuing a new series that’s all about craft brews, our expert columnist and food blogger KRISTIN JENSEN introduces a Beer of the Month that might go down a treat on Valentine’s Day: Chocolate Milk Stout from Galway Bay Brewery
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This month Lucy Madden’s ever-questioning eye lands on the thorny subject of Diets…some timely observations, just as we’re all trying to address the perennial problem of the tightening winter waistband...
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The number of cookery books published each year is mind boggling, but there is a depressing sameness about most of them. Perhaps it is a reflection on the relative ease with which a book can be published since the digital revolution, that so many of them are unoriginal and do little more than re-package a predictable collection of all-too-familiar recipes. Happily, this handsome hardback from one of Northern Ireland’s best known chefs, Noel McMeel, bucks the trend.
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We begin the new year with a brand new series in which we find out what makes the best of our young fishmongers stand out from the crowd. This month, Marilyn Bright talks to George Stephens of The Fish Market in Mullingar, Co Westmeath, and discovers a number of very good reasons for his success.
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'Free-from' foods have never been more in demand than now and the term covers everything from specific exclusion of additives such as the infamous E numbers or just keeping it simple, and cooking with fresh, natural ingredients (a wise policy) to the more complicated issue of dealing with particular health problems.
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This month Darina takes a very long journey to the far north of Sweden - and it's rewarded with a very big treat
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You'll have to read About the Author to work out who Jonathan Mite is, as this wacky little book is actually by 'scribe and oysterman' (and, as it happens, marine biologist) Alex Blackwell and his 'editor and oyster gourmand' wife Daria, who live in Co Mayo and produced and sold oysters in Ireland and abroad for many years.
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I’ve tried hard to resist the charms of kale over the years, but finally, perhaps inevitably, I have succumbed. I’ve become somewhat of a kale nut. Kale suffers somewhat from a reputation problem.
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