Articles

Bread and our national loaf is a subject which continues to exercise me. I’m totally in despair at the quality of our squishy sliced bread and deeply concerned about the effects on our health and waistline, many not least the Bakers Association of Ireland would disagree with me and I certainly hope they are right. I myself can’t seem to find out what exactly is in the bread, an enormously important staple for many people. Flour, yeast, salt, water, so far so good, but what else to speed up the process and produce a loaf at this price.
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What will we be eating in 2017? Well for most of us it will probably be more of the same but my top tip for what it’s worth is to eat a wide variety of real food and no food products – real food is not the same as food products. We need lots of biodiversity to feed and nourish our gut biome – the health of our gut flora has a phenomenal impact on both our mental and physical health.
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Darina has been inundated with a whole new crop of cookbooks published just in time for Christmas - something to tempt aspiring, experimental and accomplished cooks
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This month Darina talks about "an extraordinary fortnight of random events dreamed up by a small committee of super charged individuals" at the annual Taste of West Cork festival
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It's not as easy as it sounds to give visitors 'a real taste of our Irish produce' - but Darina has the answer to this common problem
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This month Darina introduces Felicity Cloake’s unusual book, The A-Z of Eating. A for almond, B for blue cheese, C for caramel, D for dumplings, E for eggs, F for fat and so on. The chapters of Felicity Cloake's book, The A-Z of Eating are all themed around Felicity's favourite ingredients.
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This month Darina recounts a Co Cork food tour undertaken with a group of international students who are attending a Gastro Boot Camp at Ballymaloe Cookery School this summer
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Well, the Kerrygold Ballymaloe Literary Festival of Food and Wine is over for another year - it was great put my feet up for the first time in several days. It was quite an event with thousands of people converging on East Cork for the weekend.
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This month Darina talks about this year's Kerrygold Ballymaloe Lifest LitFest (20-22 May 2016)
Things are really hotting up here at Litfest HQ, plans are romping ahead and bookings are pouring in for events at this year’s Kerrygold Ballymaloe Literary Festival of Food and Wine which Condé Nast Traveller has described as one of the top 10 'Best Festivals in the World'.
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This month Darina revels in the traditional food that the spring always reminds us of, thanks partly to the focus of St Patrick’s Day, and enjoys a new book written by an American city girl who took to life in rural Ireland like a duck to water - and wasted no time in becoming a household name …
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