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.

THERE’S a butcher shop on Moxon Street, in London, called The Ginger Pig.

I LOVE the sound of seagulls calling, squalling, squabbling and chasing each other for fun or a wriggly fish — it reminds me of holidays in Tramore as a child, ice-cream cones, sand buckets, little fishing nets, and picnics by the Metal Man.

TWO terrific cookbooks written by two crazily busy mums came my way this week.

This weekend I’m heading to Sandbrook in Co Carlow to celebrate International Slow Food Grandmother’s Day.

MY NEW book Irish Traditional Cooking was launched in New York over St Patrick’s Weekend.