Category: General

I had the opportunity to attend the Cookery School in Village at Lyons a few weeks ago. In the interests of full disclosure, I didn’t pay for the course which range from €45-150. Our course, entitled ‘The Perfect Dinner Party with Louise Lennox’ ran from 10am till 4pm and involved us making:

Smoked Salmon Roulade
Mini Rosemary Poppy Seed Brown Scones
Warm Sweet Potato, Red Onion and Cherry Tomato Medley
Fruity Couscous
Wholegrain Mustard Red and White Wine Coleslaw
Honey Roast Duck
Raspberry, White Chocolate and Mascarpone Mousse

Needless to say this was a significant leap for my culinary skills. Luckily I had @cloudsteph by my side who is far more of a cook than I am and we had a really enjoyable day bashing together the courses. Louise was an excellent hands on tutor and I can honestly say that I came out of it with a desire to do more in the kitchen. The setup was really impressive, all food was supplied and we ate what we made for lunch (and brought some of the courses home too). If you’d like to book a similar course, you can see the list here (limited availability as of writing).

I got the opportunity to travel to Ballindrum Farm & B&B in Athy last week with a group of fellow onliners as a guest of Avonmore dairy farmer Vincent Gorman and his wife Mary. The guys at Avonmore were keen to show us exactly how their Peak Fresh brand of milk differs from your supermarket own brand. I hadn’t been on a dairy farm (in my adult life anyway) so it was a nice break away from the city. Upon arrival we were greeted with homemade scones with jam & cream and given an overview of how Avonmore operates their milk business from farm to store.

Vincent explained how he’s been in the dairy farming business since 1990 and milks his cows twice a day, 365 days a year. We were all quite entertained to see the “cows in heat” monitor he has on the wall of the milkery (it monitors their temperature to ensure optimum time for AI). That’s not something I thought I’d ever type. 🙂 Avonmore do 35 checks on the milk from when it’s taken off the farm and Vincent gets an initial read out of various criteria (fat content, protein etc) by text message the morning after each batch leaves. That means that any problems are isolated quickly and dealt with. I really enjoyed the day and the guys seem really passionate about delivering a quality product. The Avonmore Peak Fresh site has more info and they’re also running a design competition with some great prizes over the next few weeks (you can see my entry on the right).