Marion Roeleveld of Killeen Farmhouse Cheese was named the Supreme Champion at the biennial Cáis Irish Cheese Awards presented in Cork recently.

One recent evening, towards the tail end of his annual Christmas sojourn in West Cork, The Menu purchased a little ‘dote’ of his favourite of all cheeses, Milleens, to enjoy by the fire with a fine vino, still intent on staving off the return to reality for another few days. 

Of all the fine foodstuffs produced on this green isle, The Menu finds it hard to look past our splendid farmhouse cheeses and so was delighted to see the Irish Cheese Awards finally afforded an occasion worthy of acknowledging that particular sector’s contribution to Irish food at a most splendid night at Ballymaloe. 

Nessa Robins has finally got round to putting her popular blog, Nessa’s Family Kitchen, onto the printed page in a new book, Apron Strings (New Island Cookery), a mixum-gatherum of recipes, household tips, party and picnic ideas and cockle-warming tales of family and friends and her efforts to feed ’em all. With this former nurse also furnishing a list of natural food-based home remedies, it’s the class of tome a body could wind up consulting from the crack of dawn to the dead of night. www.apronstrings.ie

FARMHOUSE cheese producers took centre stage at the Irish Cheese awards at the SHOP exhibition in the RDS in Dublin.