You know you want him... on a plate

You'll hear from me later in the week on what to look for when handing over your hard earned dosh for a Christmas turkey; there are some shocking rip-offs and ropey options out there. But for the moment, here's a list of farms selling direct and small producers of free-range and bronze turkeys this Christmas. Remember, instead of making your usual trawl through the supermarket you can buy turkeys and hams at farm gate, it makes for a lovely trip if you've got kids. And if you're short on time, many farms sell online with delivery. It's good value, cuts out the middleman and I've outlined the options below.

Bronze turkeys are the old fashioned black-coloured bird once common on Irish farms. They take longer to grow - about six months as opposed to the commercial white turkey which matures in a speedy 16 weeks or less. Bronze birds are more tender - I can vouch for this, and generally beat the conventional bird on flavour.

Prices:

The big supermarkets this year will have mass produced white turkeys at about €7 a kilo
Superquinn have an organic bronze at €15.99/kg which is a whopping mark up on the birds below - if you buy them from a farmer they should come in around €9 or €10 a kilo
Tesco, Aldi and Lidl are not yet releasing prices for Christmas turkeys

Free range bronze options:
Ronan Byrne’s farm in Athenry: €9.90/kg; a 12 pound bird will cost about €54 euro http://www.thefriendlyfarmer.blogspot.com/ He's a lovely fella and knows his poultry

David McEvoy in Louth €8.80/kg, order via http://www.fruitandvine.com/ and at Dun Laoghaire and Temple Bar markets

Co. Clare; Phillip Monks, Ballyvaughan www.monksfarm.wordpress.com ph. 086 8735565

Co. Kildare; Gerry McEvoy Sallins, Co.Kildare, about €9/kg http://www.bronzeturkeys.iewicklow/

Co. Louth; McEvoys’ farm Termonfeckin – http://www.termonfeckindelicious.ie/
Co. Fermanagh; http://www.macneanfarm.com/
Co. Offaly; Ger and Paula Lalor, Rhode, http://www.ballybryanturkeys.com/

Co. Roscommon; Brendan Allen http://www.castleminefarm.ie/

Co. Tipperary; TJ Crowe; http://www.crowefarm.ie/
Co. Wicklow; Colin Hadden in Tinahely http://ballyshonogfarm.ie/
Online - James Whelan butchers - will deliver http://www.jameswhelanbutchers.com/

Organic
Organic Bronze turkeys €75 each average weight 12-15 lbs from
Drumeen Farm, Kilkenny and Mary Regan, Wexford available at http://www.organicmeat.ie/

If you're up my direction in Wicklow, you can order local free range turkeys at Michael Keegans new farm shop on the road to Enniskerry Waterfall. He's a lovely fella, a full time farmer and it's great to support a local business if you live in this neck of the woods. He's also supplying hams from Ed Hick and all sorts of other goodies.

For video junkies there's a little video here on Ronan Byrne's website of his 600 strong flock of bronze turkeys making their unique turkey gobble sound and generally out having a great time in the sunny fields. Just don't mention Christmas... www.thefriendlyfarmer.blogspot.com

Happy eating x

Chocolate rabbits, fine food... Say hello to the awards season

There's very few people able to coerce the premier of any country into auctioning a chocolate rabbit but if anyone's up for the job, it's Margaret Jefferes. Margaret is founder of Good Food Ireland - a tourism and food organisation which brings together the best of Ireland's food producers, restaurants, cafes and accomodation. In my work I come across members of Good Food Ireland all the time and it's testament to Margaret that she has gathered those at the top of their game into her organisation. The sublime Merrion Hotel, Cliff House Hotel, Chapter One and food producers like Graham Roberts of Connemara Smokehouse, Glenillen Farm and Cashel Blue cheese are all members of the group. These are people and companies who I've covered in stories because they are doing something different and authentic in food. And when I travel around the country to interview farmers and food producers I always find the Good Food Ireland folk a fantastic, energetic and fun bunch of people. The minute I get out of my car they're there with a warm welcome, an honesty and humour that always makes me really warm to them. Maybe it's because they gain strength from each other in what can be a lonely business - running a food SME in a recession. But whatever the reason, they have huge passion for what they do, and I always end up chatting for hours and more importantly, laughing, a lot.

Earlier this week they held their annual conference and awards in the Shelbourne Hotel Dublin. It was an honour to asked to speak at the conference alongside the likes of Kevin O'Sullivan editor of the Irish Times, Feargal Quinn retail legend, Fred Karlsson Founder of DoneDeal.ie, and Mary Carney winner of MasterChef Ireland. Mary spoke about "Creating Great Taste Memories" and the good and bad memories we all have of Irish food which brought me back to the terrible days of the 1980s microwave lasangne but also my Donegal grandmothers insanely good soda bread. The lunchtime spread of foods from Good Food Ireland was so fantastic it was hard to take in. I think I had about fourteen separate things on my plate at one stage, everything packed with flavour, beautifully cooked and as Irish as it comes. Some of the highlights from the conference talks on the day were from Sile Gorman, Aran McMahon and Peter Ward from Country Choice who all spoke about how difficult it is to make money out of producing or serving good food, but that what keeps them going is the love affair they have with food, and the feedback they get from their customers who come back again and again.

The awards ceremony was later in the evening and it was lovely to see some great Irish businesses like Goatsbridge Trout farm, The Chocolate Garden and Ballyvolane House collect some well deserved silverware. But for me it was a race over to Trinity College for my second appointment of the day - the Bord Bia Food Industry Awards, and yes, I finished the evening pretty well fed. The Bord Bia awards were slightly different as they are aimed at larger food businesses. Huge Irish success stories like Largo crisps won awards alongside Flavahans porridge (a staple in our home), Country Crest, Green Saffron, Jameson Whiskey and a new collaboration between Kerrygold and Cashel Blue which will see the Grubb family's handmade cheese on shelves in the mega marketplace that is the USA. It's fantastic to see this kind of innovation taking place as our big brand leaders like Kerrygold could do a lot to give smaller businesses a leg up in markets where they already have a foothold. And now more then ever, when our food exports are so important in keeping jobs in Ireland is the time to exploit this further. Here's a shaky photo of Minister for Agriculture Simon Coveney speaking at the event; bigging up the export performance of Irish food which is set to hit 9 billion euros by the close of the year. Just so you know, the Bord Bia dinner was St. Tola's Cheese, roast Irish pork and a berry crumble to finish. As usual with Bord Bia's events, it was beautifully done and a really lovely evening. For me it was also a chance to catch up on the gossip with other farming and food journalists and we had a lively night with lots of laughs. Particularly pleasing to me was seeing the "journalist writing tomorrows piece on back of napkin" approach is live and well, as a quick scan around the media table revealed. Having no napkin to hand, my own scribbled notes were made on the back of my speech from earlier in the day. We're nothing but enterprising, us lot.

Let them eat cake.

I used to assume garlic bread was a type of actual bread. Apparently not.

In a surprise move by the Irish Revenue Commissioners, the price of baked goods such as bagels, croissants, garlic bread are set to rise by up to 13% in new Government measures which will make them subject to VAT for the first time. This change in status is because Revenue have now decided that bagels, croissants and the like are not sufficiently "bread-like" to be exempt from VAT.

This has come as a shock not only to consumers but to the baking industry, some of whom only found out about the changes from the Revenue Commissioner's website.

Reaction from Irish food producers today isn't positive to say the least. Alongside jokes that the Germans are now writing our budget (bagels.. ) small bakeries are busy claiming that their products are in fact far more bread-like then the average sliced pan which as it stands, will not receive any price hike in terms of the new VAT regime. To be fair, there are many different types of sliced pan and they vary hugely in quality. Last year while checking out one of the UK's biggest food retail outlets - the new ASDA/Walmart in Swindon, I purchased a loaf of bread for 26p. Two weeks later this loaf had the exact same consistency and taste as the day it was purchased. Value for money? Certainly. Will I be buying it for the kids? Don't think so.

The VAT hike on baked goods comes as yet another blow for what small food manufacturers say is continuing Government disregard for their sector. Con Trass, a food producer in Tipperary points out that the apple juice he makes on his farm is already subject to 21% VAT. Putting this kind of pressure on small food businesses can be crippling and as he points out, is also a barrier to growth "With the top rate of VAT on your foods where is the incentive for farmers to diversify?"

While we won't starve as a result of our bakery tastes priced a little higher, what it will cost is jobs in small food companies, over 400 of whom are supplying specialist goods like these products to a market which is already difficult to operate in. And for consumers, it's yet more money travelling from your wallet into the black hole of an economy on the edge of the train wreak that is the euro. But for now, the question I really want to ask Revenue is "What about the blah?"

If your food has fur, don't eat it. New survey shows 46% of us eat food that's past its sell-by date

Today, survey results released by the Food Safety Authority of Ireland show that nearly half of us eat food that has passed its sell by date. No Biggie, you might say - "sell by" and "best before" dates are tools food manufacturers use to force us to throw out lots of the groceries we buy, in order to fill our trolleys with more.

But what these new figures from the FSAI and Teagasc outline is how as consumers we continually rely on our gut instinct (pardon the pun) to judge if food is safe to eat. The 46% who disregard sell by dates said in the survey that they were happy to eat food as long as it "looks and smells okay". The FSAI think the statistic is "worrying" and shows that Irish consumers are still willing to put their health at risk rather than throw something out.

There's a couple of forces at work here. Firstly, advice from all corners is that we should waste less food and shop and eat smartly. In my case this often means taking mushrooms from the back of the fridge that are probably three days past their best, and chopping them into a tagliatelle with some nice artisan pesto. Like the people surveyed, I judge for myself if these mushrooms will land me on the floor with stomach cramps or in fact, taste rather nice. As they are local, organic, and lets face it expensive mushrooms, the pressure to eat them is even greater. I even have a "I'll eat this dish but not give it to the kids" approach if I feel it presents a risk to tiny stomachs but not to mine. Again this decision making process is based not just on murky science but no science whatseover.

Also in this mix is the particularly Irish psychological pull of hating to waste any kind of foodstuff. "My brother fried up rashers that were three weeks out of date and he was fine" type story is central to upholding this belief and reinforces the notion that "use by" and "sell by" dates should only be loosely applied, at best.

The survey of 1000 consumers also reveals a lack of understanding of what "use by", "sell by" and "best before" terms actually mean. 39% of us will not eat food that has passed its best before date even if it looks and smells fine. But this then contributes to unnecessary food wastage by consumers. We should remember that best before dates are meant to provide a guideline. For example, the bacteria plentiful in cheese age and alter it on a continuous basis, changing its structure and to a point, improving its taste. Its up to us to judge when that cheese tastes at its richest, has gone past its best or presents a danger to us.

I'm regularly cavalier about "use by" dates and from these new figures its clear I'm not alone. From my work on food safety, spoilage bacteria is not the worst thing in the spectrum of threats from what we eat. Much more dangerous and prevalent worldwide are new antibiotic resistant ecolis such as E0104 which killed over fifty people in Europe this year. These unfortunately are not created by food being past its best, but carried on foods as a legacy of our food chain - most ecolis come from human or animal waste, and via an abattoir or factory onto the food we eat. They will make us ill but also carry fatal consequences such as HUS - hemolytic uremic syndrome; a really nasty sidekick of 0104 which in the German outbreak affected almost 30% of the victims who ate contaminated food, far more than in previous ecoli outbreaks.

The FSAI are right to warn consumers about use by dates and improve our understanding of them, but I feel there are bigger threats out there with much more long reaching ramifications. In Holland there have already been measures taken by both agriculture and public health authorities tackling intensive farming, antibiotics and ecoli in the food chain. It's something I hope to explore further on television as current awareness of this problem among consumers is very low, or non-existent. As one Irish academic recently told me, antibiotic resistant ecoli in food is a reality that's "boiling away in the background, we don't even know how big the problem is".

More on this topic again; it's a fast moving area and getting more relevant by the month. But for the moment, happy eating, and if it has green furry stuff on it - best throw it out.

Like beer, pubs, cheese, eating, everything? Check out this little video and a celebration of our wonderful Irish farmhouse cheeses and craft beers

Many years ago as a young producer on Ear to the Ground I set up a story on Ardrahan cheese in Cork and came home with rounds of the most gorgeous soft, richly-flavoured Irish farmhouse cheese. It was all fairly new to me at the time, and in fact in I remember sitting round with a bunch of us in the production office, digging in and generally looking wide-eyed at each other saying - wow this is Really Good... How come we didn't know about this before?
That was over ten years ago and particularly in that period, Irish farmhouse cheeses have grown from a small number of producers to over fifty businesses. These range from what I call the big players - Cashel Blue, Gubbeen etc.. who have their product on cheese boards in top restaurants and who've developed export markets to the smaller, newer entries such as Mary Kelly's Moonshine soft cheeses made in Mullingar.

The last ten years or so have also seen the growth of craft beers in Ireland. Long in the stranglehold of the big international breweries, most Irish pubs or restaurants offered little choice in anything local or alternative to drink. Now we've no excuses - with gorgeous beers from Dungarvan Brewing Company, O'Haras, and Eight Degrees Brewing and fourteen other craft brewers getting into off licenses and pubs, we finally have alternatives that are great tasting products. I adore a decent beer and any chance I get, I pick up some of the new Irish offerings. Yes they are more expensive but they taste fantastic, with real bite and flavour.

Last weekend in Ireland saw a countrywide initiative to bring craft beers and farmhouse cheeses closer to consumers who may not be aware of, or buy this kind of food and drink. Bord Bia, the national food organisation here initiated the Farmhouse Cheese and Craft Beer Weekend with over 30 activities that took place in farms, breweries, restaurants, gastropubs, off-licences and markets across the country involving tastings, pairings and demonstrations.

All these beers and cheeses have individual stories behind them and every time I eat an Irish cheese such as Glebe Brethan (a gorgeous Gruyere type cheese) I think of David Tiernan out milking his cows that morning in all kinds of weather and muck and madness. Because that's the reality of farming; it's tough, often disheartening but also rewarding for people like David when you're making a product as good as his at the end of the day. The picture left is of the cheese room at Ardrahan; a small Irish business but one creating crucial employment in rural areas [I particularly love the St. Bridgets cross on the wall; a big feature of my childhood as my parents came from the wetlands around Lough Erne]
And this is what it's all about; small family businesses and the personalities, places and stories behind them. According to John McKenna, eminent food writer here and editor of Bridgestone Guides - "We are dealing with the most bespoke artisan foods in the world here. Craft beers have the ability to take you into the brewer's highest aspiration; that potent wish to make a drink that evokes their work. They are being treated as the wines of Ireland. The farmhouse cheeses convey the good things of Ireland; pure food; fine milk, and content animals, about sharing and hospitality, and the creativity of a determined individual on a small Irish farm, stamping every cheese with the signature of their personality. It is marvellous to see them being enjoyed and appreciated together"

Check out the video below which will give you a really good picture of what's going on in Irish cheese and beer, and for my many foreign readers, its a pretty good account of what the inside of an Irish pub looks like. Though I suspect, many of you guys know that already hahaaa. Happy eating and drinking x
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1QVWkFQKjo

Fat tax adds 6% to price of cream; supermarket charges 17% more, just for the hell of it. The Denmark fat tax experience

Yes sometimes I moan about supermarkets, but I never thought they could have an active role in mucking up public health policy.

I recently did a report on RTE radio about Denmark's Fat Tax. Instead of the expected trend in consumers purchasing high calorie foods, what I found was that retailers there are using the tax to fatten their bottom line. A price survey of eight supermarkets carried out by weekly Danish newspaper Søndagsavisen with co-operation from the Tax Ministry, revealed that prices on many fatty foods were significantly higher than warranted by the tax’s introduction.

For example, while Skat – the Danish Tax and Customs Administration had calculated that the price of sour cream would increase by 6.6 percent due to the fat tax, the spot check revealed that at supermarket Aldi the price of sour cream was raised by a whopping 17.3 percent.
Aldi was the worst offender in the study, with the supermarket raising prices on 9 of the 10 inspected products by more than what could be accounted for by the new tax. Lidl was also an offender - they had increased the price of sour cream by 15.1 percent more than warranted by the tax. Both of these firms operate in Ireland and in fact are growing their share of the grocery market here.

The Danish Consumer Council’s reaction was “Supermarkets can determine their own prices, so it is not prohibited, but it doesn’t look good.” Yes, it sure doesn't look good. Politicians there have now said that there needs to be a debate on “whether there are ways to protect the consumer.”

In all my analysis of fat taxes and obesity measures around the world I was probably naive to overlook the huge issue of how these taxes are delivered - via the supermarkets. As there is yet no regulation on supermarkets in Ireland, going down a sugar tax or fat tax route could put us in exactly the same postition as the Danes - being fleeced. There are also supermarkets in Denmark who are not charging the new tax and trying to gain competitive advantage. So basically, the public health measures expected from the tax are at the whim of the companies who deliver them.

Later this winter we should have legislation here on a proposed new supermarket ombudsman and the possibility of at last protecting both consumers and food producers. After giving a witness statement at an Oireachtas Committee on this back in 2009 it's getting critical that something finally be done. Successive governments here have shirked their responsibilities on the issue. The Danish example just goes to prove that if you have no legal framework to work with the supermarkets on pricing then you may as well be throwing public health measures down the pan.

If you want to hear my discussion with Pat Kenny on the Danish fat tax dilemma it's on the following link; scroll down to November 1st and you'll see my name and the Fat Tax item.

http://www.rte.ie/radio1/podcast/podcast_patkenny.xml

What's Ireland Eating... that's a good question

Last night our documentary which aired last May was repeated on RTE again. It came out of the book Philip and I wrote about food, and discussions we still have about global food systems, food safety, supermarkets, farming and the quality and price of what goes into our gobs. If you missed it the documentary will be on the RTE player and free to view for the next month or so at the link below;
http://tinyurl.com/6kdww6z

The documentary was made following a television proposal I wrote of Basketcase; What's happening to Irish Food, which was the book Philip Boucher-Hayes and myself co-authored back in 2009 (Philip is an RTE journalist and also my husband). On the left is a picture of us working happily together for the publicity of the book. Just remember I said the word Publicity, although in actual fact we work pretty well together... we'd want to - after one book, one documentary and countless other projects including two children it's simply the way it has to be. Although Philip was rubbish at finishing his section of the book on time - procrastinating brilliantly by putting up Christmas decorations that took two months to complete. At one point we were going to write in the dedication "We hope you enjoy this book, and if you find some of it quite not up to scratch you should see our Christmas decorations - they're fabulous".

We are currently preparing "What's Ireland Eating 2", and hope to start filming in 2012, so I'll keep you posted on the programme and give some hints towards what we're covering, all I can say for the moment is.... chicken. Happy eating folks