The Menu: Food for the future
Another equally important influence, though less obvious to the general public, has been the Permaculture/Sustainable Horticulture faculty of Kinsale Community College, greatly enhancing the local food and produce scene, and helping to swing the local emphasis from the sybaritic to the sustainable.
The permaculture course was the first such full-time course anywhere in the world when it began in 2005 and, under the aegis of Rob Hopkins, it saw the emergence of the ground-breaking Transition Towns movement with Kinsale becoming the first transition town in the world.
Food for the Future (May 27) is a one-day conference to be hosted by the faculty, focussing on the importance of sustainable agriculture and food security and resilience at all levels, from the personal to the community to the global.
An excellent panel of speakers includes Hopkins himself, via Skype, and Dr Colin Sage, of UCC and the Cork Food Policy Council, while Paul McCormick, a specialist on growing fruit and nut trees talks about growing tree crops in Ireland, something we just don’t do often enough in this country.
The afternoon is given over to group discussions and some interesting workshops and masterclasses while the Green Welly Café and the My Goodness team churn top nosh.
The day ends with an evening of music and entertainment in the College Amphitheatre.
www.facebook.com/FoodfortheFuture
HOT TICKET
Next weekend (May 20-22) sees the return of what is now surely the hottest ticket in Irish food, Ballymaloe Litfest 2016.
The Menu will be hosting Rants, Raves & Ruaile Buaille, in which general public and stars of the festival alike are invited to deliver of themselves of a short rant or rave on a food subject dear to their hearts, all in the confines of the lovely garden tent. Do call in!
Another new innovation at this year’s Litfest is Our Food: What’s the Story?
A rolling day-long programme of short 15-minute talks and presentations taking place on both Saturday and Sunday, thus solving one heartbreaking conundrum of previous Litfests: how to see all your favourites in such a short amount of time, most especially if their longer events are already booked out.
www.litfest.ie
ROUND-UP
The Dublin-based ‘House of Peroni’ festival includes The Italian Feast (May 19, 20, 21, 26 & 27), a private dining event with Luciano Tona and Ross Lewis, joint proprietors of the superb Osteria Lucio while excellent Dublin coffee roasters Cloud Picker host The Art of Espresso (May 21 & 28).
www.thehouseofperoni.com
Limerick Food Group are looking for applications from prospective food vendors and stallholders for a Limerick Street Food event with a very heavy emphasis on the local, all to take place on June 16 (email limkfoodgroup@gmail.com for application forms) while L’Atitude 51’s next Cinecafe showing/tasting is the movie Bottleshock (May 16), the story of the famous ‘Paris Judgement’ and starring the late and recently lamented Alan Rickman.
www.latitude51.ie
TODAY’S SPECIAL
One man’s weed is another man’s wonder and The Menu is especially fond of nettles, particularly, in nettle and potato soup so was always likely to look favourably on Wild About’s Nettle Syrup.
His progeny were mightily impressed with a dash of said syrup in sparkling iced water but The Menu, seeking something further, had the inspired notion of pairing that earthy sweetness with the brackish turf-y flavours of one of his most favourite of the new boutique Irish spirits, Kalak Vodka, adding plenty of crushed ice topped with a squeeze of fresh lime juice for a perfect Irish summer cocktail.
www.wildabout.ie
