KITTY TRAVERS loves ice cream. When she was little, her mum found her rummaging in a bin at the circus licking ice cream wrappers, oblivious of the clowns and trapeze.

MY FRIEND Camilla Plum from Copenhagen has been staying with me for the past few days. She lives about 45 minutes outside the city on a beautiful organic farm called Fuglebjerggaard.

GASTRONOMIC science students doing a Masters in marketing now have a list of evocative terms guaranteed to resonate with consumers who are seeking a more authentic wholesome product or eating experience — local artisan handmade, farmhouse, traditional and hand crafted.

SPORTS LOVERS are in a frenzy of excitement at the prospect of a sports fest for the next couple of weeks.

MY EDITOR asked me to write a piece on summer food this week for the Irish Examiner Food Festival. This would normally be so easy, lots of salads, a few sizzling barbecue dishes, homemade ice creams, granitas, jugs of fresh lemonade and big bowls of summer berries.

THE WEATHER is so extraordinarily unpredictable that it’s difficult to know what to cook — should we make a stew or a salad?

THE artisan milk and handmade butter movement is really gathering momentum.

STEVIE PARLE burst onto the London food scene in 2009 with his restaurant Dock Kitchen.

For those of us who are interested in food as its potential for our own health and the health of the nation, one person always stood out, former Minister for Food and Horticulture, Trevor Sargent.

I LOVE vegetables and fresh salads and could certainly live on them without feeling even remotely deprived. Having said that I am totally not a vegetarian — I love good meat and fish. However I am not interested and I certainly don’t feel comfortable eating either meat or fish that has been reared in cramped, inhumane conditions all for the sake of providing cheap food.