Will this chilly weather ever end? Anyhow let’s cheer ourselves up with a big pot of bubbling stew. These recipes certainly won’t break the bank and will provide a wonderful meal for family and friends. The trick is to seek out your local family butcher and start to ask questions. Get to know the joints [...]

During these recessionary times we’re racking our brains to come up with thrifty ways of having fun and improving our quality of life without breaking the bank. Every year when we plan our course schedule for Ballymaloe Cookery School we come up with some new ideas. One of my favourites this year is ‘Grow your [...]

Close to a hundred people crammed into our local village hall recently for the inaugural meeting of GIY (Grow it Yourself) Shanagarry, East Cork.
The organisers had hoped for 25 - maybe 30 people but by 8 o’clock the original meeting room was bulging at the seams so we had to decamp down the stairs to [...]

I’m continually surprised by how thrown waiting staff in many restaurants seem to be if one asks about the provenance of the food. They immediately seem to go on the defensive and it can take three or four attempts to find out the source of a piece of meat, fish or cheese.
A recent attempt to [...]