The Menu: Getting kids growing - and a lactating cookie for breastfeeding mums

Plus - food-writers' faves, and a look at Easter-weekend breaks for families

Sat, 01 Apr, 2023 - 02:00

Joe McNamee

Getting kids growing

The Menu never makes any apologies for promoting the work of Waterford-based GIY International, one of Ireland’s most progressive food organisations, and is especially delighted to draw attention to their new Let’s Grow initiative in tandem with sponsors SuperValu, enabling 50,000 primary school children to learn how to grow food at school.

Not-for-profit social enterprise GIY has begun a three-year partnership with SuperValu which will provide schools with the wherewithal to start growing their own vegetables and the knowledge on how to do so.

The growing season begins with seeds sprouting on each classroom windowsill and over the course of the plant’s life, the young pupils will not only learn how to grow but come to understand how food is produced and ends up on the table, with research showing children who grow vegetables, eat more vegetables.

Each ‘SuperValu Let’s GROW’ classroom pack includes seeds for cress, peas, salad leaves, pumpkins, and sunflowers, as well as 32 compostable pots, 32 magic compost discs, and an expert GIY resource booklet with growing guides, lessons, and activities created by GIY, and lots of classroom goodies.

Irish Food Writing Awards unveil a new award category: writing on Irish Seafood, sponsored by Union Hall-based Glenmar Ltd

Celebrating food writers

The Irish Food Writing Awards have been a boon for Irish food writers, offering a hugely important platform for talented professionals — especially the full-time food writers — who are underpaid in comparison to other professions operating on a similar level and who very invariably remain in the game driven by vocational zeal rather than the commercial gains.

So The Menu is happy to highlight a new award, this time for journalists writing about Irish seafood, which has been for quite some time, one of the most important ‘conversations’ in Irish food.

The industry and the marine resources it targets have both been under attack for many years and solutions are not easily arrived at. This new award champions those who write about Irish fish and those among the 16,000 employed in coastal and rural areas who work to put it on Irish — and many European and global — plates, and the award is fittingly sponsored by Glenmar Seafood, based in the little West Cork fishing village of Union Hall but a powerful international player on the European and world stage. Entries open on April 1.

www.irishfoodwritingawards.ie

Staycation nation

If you’re like The Menu, still engaged in the coalface of child herding and at your wit’s end as to how you’ll negotiate the next two school-free weeks, then perhaps there may be some last-minute opportunities to head off on a short-term ‘staycation’. The Cork International Hotel has teamed up with Leahy’s Open Farm in Cork for a special Easter Family package, with a two-night stay including family passes to the East Cork tourist attraction as well as Easter-themed activities at the hotel, including Easter egg hunts, bunny visits, crafts, and bunny bowling.

The package includes a family room, breakfast, and early bird dinner for the family on one evening with a kids menu, and one Easter chocolate-themed afternoon tea. The hotel also offers a playroom, cinema, gym, and beauty salon, and the hotel, very commendably, is an ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder) aware hotel offering sunflower lanyards to wear and sensory toys/activities.

www.corkinternationalairporthotel.com/offer/easter-family-offer/

Four-star Ferrycarrig Hotel, in Wexford, enjoys a pretty perch on the edge of the River Slaney with all 102 rooms offering a view. It offers two- or three-night family stays in an ensuite room with breakfast each morning and full access to the leisure centre, pool, baby room, and outdoor playground, and a family pass to the Irish National Heritage Park.

Ferrycarrig Adventure partners have combined with the hotel to offer additional bespoke adventure activities, including surfing, stand-up paddling, sand-duning, archery, horse-riding, zip-lining and more.

www.ferrycarrighotel.ie

Hotel Kilkenny’s Easter break packages include free dining for children with one-, two- or three-night packages for a family of four with two children under 12 staying free, with full B&B, one evening dinner in Pure Bar, use of the health and fitness club and pool and the kids clubs, including family swimming facilities and play areas.

Again a partnership with local activity providers and cultural sites is available on reduced rates at www.adventureescapes.ie through the hotel. And, of course, you are also talking about time spent in wonderful Kilkenny, a very fine place indeed in which to put on the nosebag.

www.hotelkilkenny.ie

Rua’s ‘Lactating Cookie’, for breastfeeding mums

TODAY’S SPECIAL

A couple of weeks ago, The Menu made mention of Rua’s ‘Lactating Cookie’, reasoning, after perusal of the ingredients list (including oats, linseed/golden flaxseed, brewer’s yeast, gluten-free flour blend, dark chocolate) that it seemed a perfectly sound snack for any breas feeding mum. Despite having to sport the equivalent of a maternity smock to accommodate his great ‘hallmark-of-professional-commitment’,

The Menu is not actually lactating himself, but always likes to submit any foodstuff mentioned to the ultimate taste test, so set about sampling a mixed box of Rua proprietor Alice Tevlin’s vegan goodies.

All proved most tasty, including two cookies, raspberry chocolate chip and salted double chocolate & pistachio, and some very decent hazelnut brownies, but in the heel of the hunt, it was the lactating cook that most floated his boat, its relative flavour restraint in comparison to the other sweeter offerings, its nutty, malty notes and the ever so slightly bitter cocoa of the dark chocolate combining with a just-right toothsome texture, all making for a dangerously more-ish biscuit with a sound nutritional base.