Award-winning blog of Irish food writer and broadcaster Caroline Hennessy.
Events at O’Brien’s Chop House in Lismore are very well done. Long tables with lots of random strangers (who turn out to be anything but after a few minutes talking), food served family style in large dishes, beer and wine on the tables for self service: it’s all very relaxed, terribly well organised and enormous fun. That’s why the Husband and I leaped at the last minute chance to go along to a Beer and Curry Feast there last Friday.
Vicky Beresford was the winner of the Bibliocook/Barry’s Tea competition with her recipe for Barry’s Tea Very Berry Tiramisu. Congratulations Vicky and hope you enjoy your tea hamper. Special mention has to go to Aline Lambert. Her recipe was for a Taboulé Salad which, when she was stuck for fresh leaves one day, was perfect when made with Barry’s peppermint tea
This year’s Savour Kilkenny Food Festival will take place from Friday 22 to Sunday 25 October and the organisers are currently looking for interested food businesses to get involved. There will be a large open-air market over the weekend on the newly developed Parade Plaza, just by Kilkenny Castle, as well as a tented food village and central marquee for workshops, demonstrations, competitions and events.
Don’t forget, the competition for a €200 cooking class voucher from Bord Bia ends today at 6pm. To be in the running, just send your favourite Irish blueberry recipe to cook@bibliocook.com.Read more: Competition Time! Irish blueberries and cookery classesBlueberry time at Derryvilla Blueberry Farm
To celebrate the start of the Irish blueberry season, Bord Bia have very kindly offered a competition prize of a €200 voucher for cooking lessons at a cookery school of your choice.To be in with a chance to win this brilliant prize, just email me at
As a child growing up in Ireland during the 1970s and 1980s, blueberries were a rare, exotic fruit, only read about in the books of Laura Ingalls Wilder or Roald Dahl. Years later, my first encounter with a blueberry was in a muffin but, alas, it was one of those ever-lasting, plastic-wrapped ones and the purple coloured spot in the muffin bore little resemblance to the real thing.
Being located in Cork as we are, Barry’s tea is the cuppa of choice around the cottage so when the people in Barry‘s contacted me about running a competition, I thought that fellow tea-loving food bloggers might be interested, especially when they heard what it entails.
Between Little Missy, my work as a freelance journalist and the Husband setting up his own business, it’s not so easy to get away these days. As a result, any time we do head off, there’s as much food packed into the time as possible!Last weekend we waved Little Missy off on her holidays to Nana and Grandad’s house just before Saturday lunchtime. All free and easy then (it’s amazing how easy it is to pack for two instead of two + a small one), we threw bag and baggage into the car and hit off to Limerick in time to have a quick look at the newly covered Milk Market, grab a bag of Pónaire coffee and fly past the The Green Apron‘s stall to buy some of her get-out-of-the-bed-to-eat-it-by-the-spoonful raspberry chocolate conserve (as tasted on the Food Blogger Country Outing), a jar of wholegrain whiskey mustard and some yummy onion confit.
