Menu: Win growing starter kits - and cool music and hot food at Ballydehob Jazz Festival
Yet another lovely brunch/lunch dish from Limerick’s Canteen, this year celebrating its 10th birthday.
There are multiple environmental crises facing the globe — including climate change, biodiversity, health of the oceans and air. And we need to tackle one of the biggest culprits of all, the global system of industrial monoculture that passes for agriculture in too many parts of the world, and in Ireland as much as anywhere else.
The Menu is not alone in believing the future lies in the permaculture model, and WeCreate (May 7) is an introductory workshop in Cloughjordan Ecovillage, aimed at anyone over 16, interested in designing a homestead, or creating a livelihood, business or a sustainable community, using the principles of permaculture and regenerative design.
Paul Williams’ Canteen began as a quirky, young pup, greatly invigorating the local Limerick food offering but over the course of a decade is gradually becoming an iconic institution on Shannonside and after 10 years in business, Williams is expanding the ethical commitment that has always featured large on his plates with the addition of some new initiatives to further enhance Canteen’s impact on the local community.
This has included: installing a micro-bakery, producing organic sourdough breads, baguettes and cakes; planting trees and partnering with Hometree as part of their 1% for the Planet partnership; inviting local artists to contribute to a ‘zine (Canzeen, email submissions to zeen@wearecanteen.com); and increasing Canteen’s commitment to working with local producers and suppliers (including Menu favourite, Doon’s Social Farm.)
Hometree began in 2015 as a small community garden but since then has planted more than 30,000 pioneer trees (Scot’s pine, willow and alder) and last year Canteen raised €2,000 to support their excellent work.
Happy 10th Anniversary to Canteen from The Menu!
An old Menu favourite, GIY, returns with its Energia-backed Get Ireland Growing, now its sixth year, and is looking for communities across the country to sign up, with 300 community growing starter kits worth €42,500, to be distributed across the country.
Covid triggered a great resurgence of interest in getting back to the land and the campaign hopes to capitalise on that, encouraging communities to regenerate local green spaces and further re-ignite community spirit and connection, particularly important for those without access to growing space of their own, emphasising the enormous positive mental impact to be gained from gardening and growing.
- To register to be in with a chance of winning a Community Growing Kit, see getirelandgrowing.ie
There is only one location to visit in West Cork this weekend and that is Ballydehob for the Ballydehob Jazz Festival and along with the top tunes, The Menu will be very keen to visit the Food & Craft Market (May 1) in the Festival Hub in the Ballydehob Community Hall, with stalls offering a range of original artwork, crafts and food, celebrating West Cork producers and growers, along with live music, jazz DJs and Circus acts.
We are forever trumpeting the merits of our dairy and livestock produce and The Menu agrees — for Irish milk, cheese and butter along with Irish beef, lamb and pork (free-range only; The Menu considers industrially raised pork to be a vastly inferior product) are indeed world-class products.
But he holds no truck whatsoever with those who claim that Ireland is not a suitable country for tillage. Until the late 80s, we regularly produced large quantities of excellent milling wheat and only turned our back on same because Irish grain farmers were being priced out of the market by cheap imports.
But what is truly indisputable is that, in Ireland, we produce the finest oats and barley in the world, and that is an internationally held viewpoint. The recent call to increase tillage farming was all about providing further fodder for Irish livestock which The Menu believes is agricultural insanity, neither remotely sustainable and putting the vested interests of a wealthy elite over the good of the nation as a whole. If we grow world-class grains, they should go directly to the top of the food chain, to be served at the tables of the Irish people, and we should be eating far more native-produced oats and barley in our daily diet.
The Menu is always delighted to make new acquaintances with Irish grain growers and ran into Kevin and Jenny Scully and their progeny at his Grub Circus gathering at All Together Now music festival back in 2019 and was more recently delighted to become reacquainted with their very excellent range of homegrown and milled organic oat products, including a gluten-free offering that is proving a boon to several of The Menu’s extended family with gluten-intolerances and even with full-blown coeliac disease.
The Merry Mill oats make for an extremely smooth, creamy flavoursome porridge and The Menu and No 2 Son, great fans of the overnight oats, have been enjoying the MM version of same, including organic gluten-free oats and seeds (chia, sunflower and flax), which they further enhance with fruit and raw Irish honey.
But right now, it’s all about the gluten-free oat pancakes Chez Menu and only this morning, The Menu whipped up a mix and cooked a batch in under five minutes, serving up the nutty, nutritious and quite delicious pancakes straight from the pan with grated Irish apple, chopped roasted hazelnuts, a spoonful of yoghurt and a further drizzle of that fine Brookfield Farm Raw Honey. And, on foot of same, went off out to slay giants or at the very least embrace the day with renewed vigour.
