Archive for March 21st, 2006
Waterfall Farm Shop - Why aren’t there more places like this?
Posted on March 21, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Cork, Food.
We were over in Ovens recently looking at patio “toppings” in Irish Aggregates. On the way back I finally decided to check out Waterfall Farm Shop. I’ve known about it for more than two years and passed it a few times but just never took the extra few minutes to have a look.
The farm also appears to have a food distribution business as they had several branded vans parked in the yard. A few tired old labradors gave the perfect welcome. The shop itself is basically the corner of one of their barns where they store veg for the other side of the business. So it was coats all round.
At this time of year I didn’t expect much apart from root vegetables but they had a good selection of fruit n veg. I’m guessing the banana’s are not grown on the farm. The lady running the place was really friendly and pointed me to a few of her favourites. I grabbed one of those apple juices made near Cahir and some jams that are made on the farm. Then I spotted her relishes. A sweet beetroot pickle looked lovely as did the ratatouille-style chutney.
I picked up a few more bits n bobs like eggs and went back over to her at the register. It turns out that it is her farm and she makes all of the jams and relishes herself. As she was totting up, I grabbed a few beetroot and she gave them to me for nothing!
I then realised I didn’t have any cash and told her I just had to pop out to the car to get money off my wife. Her response? “Shur you can catch me the next time”. Wow. I really thought that world no longer existed in Ireland. A world where trust is the default position and you assume good of people. I was deeply impressed but I also insisted on getting her the money.
I can’t recommend her jams and relishes highly enough. They are all stunningly tasty.
If you live or work anywhere around Ballincollig, Waterfall or Ballinhassig, you should be giving these fine people your business. I’m really looking forward to heading back for the early summer produce.
It is surprising that there are not more places like this in West and Mid-West Cork. Apart from the fantastic farmers stall at Halfway where you can get corn cobs and a ton of other fresh veg for three quarters of the year and the odd place advertising “farm fresh eggs” near Clon, I’m not aware of anywhere else near me. If you know of any, please let me know as I am happy to do a detour (or shortcut as I call them) to give them my business.
[tags]Waterfall, Farm Shop, Halfway[/tags]
9 Comments
What if I suggest a structured recipe format and you critique it?
Posted on March 21, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Blogging, Cooking, StructuredBlogging.
Between this blog and my posting on eGullet regarding the sort of structure people would like to see on recipes in blogs, I received the sum total of zero/null/nada/nialas replies. The world was about as vocal as that time I asked “so do I look good in these speedos?”
In retrospect I should have suggested an initial idea and then asked you all to improve on it. So read on and start entering comments. Critical is good, bitchy is good, offensive is good. Silence is badddddd.
Here are my initial thoughts for “fields” that might be useful in a structured recipe on a blog. My starting point is the RecipeML spec plus fields from Gourmet Recipe Manager and anything else that popped into my head.
From The RecipeML Spec (renamed for clarity):
Title
Measurement System (U.S., Imperial etc)
Creator (Person)
Source (Book Title etc)
Date (Of Creation or Publication)
Rights (Copyright or other)
Summary Description (one liner)
Preparation Time (overall time)
Yield Quantity and Unit (4 pancakes or 5 servings)
Meal Category (Starter etc)
Main Ingredients Category (Pasta etc)
Cuisine Category (Italian etc)
Ingredients (each one a separate “item” rather than block text with count/amount/range/unit broken out too)
Description/Instructions (as free form block text)
Other possibilities:
Picture(s) (either on the blog/site or externally hosted)
Rating (how much you like it yourself!)
Difficulty Level/Experience Required
Notes (e.g. warnings)
Dietary Information (e.g. gluten-free)
Ones from the RecipeML spec which may be overkill:
Equipment
Variations
Recipe broken into parts (pastry vs filling etc)
Subtitle
Version
Breakdown of Preptime into phases
Nutritional Information
[tags]Recipes, RecipeML, Structured Recipes, StructuredBlogging.org[/tags]
7 Comments
Slow Food Cork City Spring Supper and Slow Film
Posted on March 21, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Cork, Entertainment, Food, Ireland, Restaurants.
I found out about this movie/grub combo that is on next Tuesday (28th) on The Slow Food Ireland web-site. Clodagh McKenna describes it as follows:
A showing of the new Irish film ‘Short Order’ in the Kino cinema, Cork at 7pm and following the film a spring supper at Cafe Paradiso at 9.30pm (there will be a half an hour gap so you can have a drink at Reidy’s bar)
Short Order is a new film from Irish director Anthony Byrne. A colourful, tongue-in-cheek surreal musical-comedy, starring Emma de Caunes, Jack Dee, Paul Kaye, John Hurt and Vanessa Redgrave. It’s a magical night in the lives of our protagonists: Short Order Chefs, Masterchefs, Delivery People, working out their philosophies between bites of honest to goodness, onions, garlic, lemon and rum drenched prawns, house special Osso Bucco (featuring the freshly chopped fingers of Bill Dodging Customers). A little bit of life, love and wisdom come together over one night in the culinary underbelly where life is a buffet and everything is short order.
Please note that tickets for the cinema have to be purchased through the kino 021 427 1571 and tickets for the supper through cafe paradiso 021 427 7939. Tickets for the supper are only available for cinema ticket holders and supper tickets are limited. Cost: Film - €8, Supper - €35 (this includes a glass of organic wine)
I booked for myself and Catherine earlier. There was a wee bit of confusion about how/where you book but I think it is like this: The Kino does not accept Credit Card bookings on the phone but if you only want to see the movie then deal with them exclusively.
If you want the movie and the meal, then ring Cafe Paradiso and they will let you pay in advance for both the meal and the tickets. You still have to pop in at some point to get the tickets. When I was booking this afternoon, they had 15 people booked for food out of a max of 35 so get your skates on if you are interested.
[tags]Slow Food Ireland, Slow Food, Kino, Cafe Paradiso, Short Order Movie[/tags]
1 Comment
GoEat.ie - anyone else checked it out?
Posted on March 21, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Food, Reviews.
I discovered goeat.ie recently and have been looking around the site. Overall it seems well designed and they have the usual bunch of reviews and competitions and recipes that you would expect on any food site.
They also have the first ever Irish Video Blogs (according to them). A very neat idea but to be honest the videos are brutal. They look like the sort of thing they used to show in the Savoy Cinema on O’Connell Street years ago before the movie. Long sweeping shots of the restaurant and you are just waiting for them to say “After the feature presentation, why not pop next door to the Khyber Pass Tandoori and experience our range of international Vesta cuisine”.
I looked at their video reviews of both Wagamama and The Mongolian BBQ. They didn’t have a negative word to say about either of them (apart from some gentle dig at Wagamama about it not being a place you “dine”). I think this may be a bigger problem than it first appears. On the home page they have a link for restauranteurs. Is it a case that they are trying to play both sides of the field? If so, they will find it very hard to gain credibility with consumers. They need to tread very carefully there.
But all in all, they deserve support for trying to do a decent foodie portal. Check them out.
One other dig: Don’t advertise web-design expertise when your web-site throws a SQL Server error if people with apostrophes in their names (a huge chunk of the Irish population) enter that name to take part in a competition. Tut tut, I’ll accept that beginners mistake from US web-sites but not from Irish ones.
And because I am in a crabby humor - where are the RSS feeds boys? You can’t do Video Blogs and have ads for iTunes and not have RSS. I know you are worried that you will lose advertising revenue but I am actually open to ads in RSS feeds as long as they are small, unobtrusive and relevant.
[tags]goeat.ie, GoEat, Food Portal, Video Blogs[/tags]
3 Comments
