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

WE HAD a terrific day last Saturday as the winners of the Slow Food Grandmothers Day Irish Examiner Competition — six grandchildren, four grannies and a couple of mums — arrived to enjoy their prize, a day at the Ballymaloe Cookery School and Gardens.

WE HAD a terrific day last Saturday as the winners of the Slow Food Grandmothers Day Irish Examiner Competition — six grandchildren, four grannies and a couple of mums — arrived to enjoy their prize, a day at the Ballymaloe Cookery School and Gardens.

THE Ballymaloe Cookery School operates throughout the year with everything from one day, two and half day and week-long courses as well as three, three month certificate courses every year.

ALL Slow Food events have an educational element as well as a hedonistic one. So when we gathered in Lismore recently we started our evening at Michael McGrath butcher’s shop on Main Street. We were all anxious to learn from this man whose skills have come down through four generations – his father, grandfather and great-grandfather.

NOW that I am a grandmother with seven precious grandchildren, I am more aware of the importance of passing on some life skills to the next generation. They all live within 15 minutes of us so we are fortunate to see them almost every day.

IRELAND’S largest Slow Food festival got under way last night and is set to welcome celebrity chefs, politicians, food experts and thousands of visitors to the south-east in the coming days.

Cookery Classes at Snugboro 2008: Rory O’Connell teaches intensive one-day classes at his home near Ballycotton, Co Cork. Private classes or workshops for groups or individuals can be organised! — rory@rgoconnell.com; tel: 086-8516917.

WE recently celebrated the festive foods of easter with a Slow Food event at the cookery school. A few weeks before the event, we had put some eggs in an incubator.

THE CONTROVERSY over Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO) was re-ignited recently in Ireland.

EAST CORK Slow Food Convivium was established in August 2002 and its latest event was a Slow Food dinner at Café Paradiso in Cork on August 21.