Save your Veg

Food waste has been in the news a lot lately. Tesco say that over two thirds of their bagged salad is often thrown out. I'm not sure why, but bagged salad in general seems to go off really fast. In days gone by when I occasionally bought it, very often it was slimy by the time I had got it home. It's not even nice so not sure why I ever bought it.

Over the years I have discovered a few secrets to storing vegetables.

Fruit is another story. It really doesn't keep well especially in summer. But don't ever put bananas in a fruit bowl with other fruit unless you want them to help ripen something. They emit ethylene gas which ripens fruit or over ripens it. A cool room is best for a fruit bowl even in winter.




Salad and Spinach
For both, if pick I my own or buy it in the farmers' market, I've found the secret is to wash it immediately and then shake it well. Transfer to a clean plastic bag and store in the vegetable drawer in your fridge. It keeps really well this way for a least a week.

Tomatoes
Tomatoes keep better at fridge temperature but taste a lot better stored at room temperature. I actually keep them on a sunny window sill. If they get soft just use them in a tomato sauce for pasta or pizza.

Cucumber

Pickled cucumber

Cucumbers need to be stored in a loose plastic bag (remove the clingy plastic) in the salad compartment for a few days but then tend to go mushy. The best way to preserve them (and they taste a lot better I think) is to pickle them.











Root Vegetables (carrots, turnip, swede, celeriac, etc)
For root vegetables remove from plastic and place in paper bags. Store in a cool, dark place in a cardboard box in a garage/shed if you have one. All root veg keep much much better if you buy them unwashed. I have kept carrots for weeks like this and the flavour is incredible. I also never buy them in summer when they are out of season.

Potatoes
As above. Never store in fridge or in plastic. Must be stored out of direct light.

Celery and Brassicas (cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, romanesque)
They keeps best in a plastic bag in the vegetable compartment. In fact they tend to keep well for the longest of all, probably because they are used to the damp and the cold in our climate. They will also keep really well in a cool, dark garage if your fridge is full (especially in winter).

Allium
Onions and garlic need to be kept somewhere dry and dark preferably. Do not store in fridge. A cool cupboard or a cardboard box in your garage or shed is best. The exception to this are scallions which really have to be stored in fridge in loose plastic (not cling film).

Chillies
Get a needle and thread and thread the chillies through the stalk. Hang them somewhere dry in your kitchen. I hang them under a shelf. This way if you don't get to use them fast enough they will dry naturally.

Mediterranean Vegetables
As in peppers, courgette and aubergine, they need to be stored in the vegetable compartment in paper bags. If you leave them in plastic they go slimy.

Mushrooms
Keep best in paper bags. Remove from plastic. Can be kept in the hard plastic tub they come in but with the cling film removed.


A good plan is to check your vegetables weekly, and for anything that is going a bit wrinkly, use in a soup. You can use even use lettuce and cucumber in soup.

Anything that is beyond redemption can be composted. And even if you don't have a garden you can make compost for herb or flowering containers. 


See no need to waste. Do you agree or disagree?

Foodborn

A River Divides Them

I was told to take the "lake road" because of the views. I drove along and thought to myself, "what is she on about?" Until I climbed a hill, rounded a bend and there stretched the most stunning view of Lough Derg it made me gasp. I would have caused an accident if I had stopped to take a picture. But no camera could have done it justice anyway.

Where Loug Derg flows into The Shannon, on one side you have Killaloe, Co. Clare, cross the bridge over the river and you are in Ballina, Co. Tipperary.

Both are equally picturesque. We were spending the weekend on the boat and the marina is well-maintained and well-equipped for boaters. The towns well-equipped to feed, water (okay wine) and entertain you.

The marina

I am ashamed to say I knew little of the rich history of Killaloe. The name means church of St.Lua (an ancient monastic settlement). It was from here that Brian Boru ruled his kingdom of Ireland.

We got up Saturday morning and went for a wander about the town. We came across St. Lua's little church, moved from an island in the middle of the Shannon when it was submerged due to the construction of the power station at Ardnacrusha.

St Lua's

St. Flannan's Cathedral http://cathedral.killaloe.anglican.org/history.html has the most beautiful stained glass and a really old window.

Killaloe is full of lovely little craft and gift shops and a really great cafe where you can browse the bookshelves and sit beside the fire (in winter) or just inhale the wine, charcuterie and cheese on sale in the shop.

One of the gift shops and Ponte Vecchio

And then there is the food.

The Wooden Spoon Cafe has an eye-watering display of cakes, proper cakes, like you'd make at home (albeit much more professionally finished.) The lunch menu is equally good especially the predominantly middle eastern vegetarian specials. It was packed every time we were there. I presumed it was with boaters but no, I was informed it was mostly locals. Lucky locals.

Temptation on display

Falafel in pita with all the trimmings

Choices for evening are every bit as good. The Cherry Tree overlooking the river in a stunning dining room. We had a very good meal here. Brasserie Mark Anderson a few kilometers outside Killaloe but worth the journey. We had some great food here too.

Brasserie Mark Anderson

After eating you can walk across the bridge to the quaint Liam O'Riains in Ballina for music and porter. Or if you prefer wine try the Ponte Vecchio where you can also just have a pizza.

On Sundays the farmers' market is a bustling space with many of the traders from the Milk Market in Limerick present. We were able to cruise right up to it and moor along side.

The small towns along the Shannon have always been better for food than most provincial Irish towns. I remember years ago being able to get ground coffee in a small corner shop in Drumsna, Leitrim. In those days a rare occurrence. They were catering for the large number of French and Germans hiring cruisers.

It's great to see that they are continuing and improving the tradition, despite the loss of so many cruising Europeans.



Tags: Lough Derg The Shannon  Killaloe Co. Clare  Ballina Co. Tipperary  St. Lua St Flannan's Cathedral  Wooden Spoon Cafe  Cherrytree Restaurant  Brasserie Mark Anderson  Ponte Vecchio  Milk Market  Drumsna Co. Leitrim  Food on the Shannon

 

Ploughing Food - The National Ploughing Championships

The 2013 Ploughing Championships have just finished up for another year. Over 700 acres of ploughing demonstrations and competition, agricultural stands and not so agricultural. Something for every one, all 200 000+ of them. The crowds descended on the County Laois fields at Ratheniska, parking in stubble fields and walking or being pulled by a tractor and trailer up to the site.

It was a long day and unless you wanted to drag a rucksack with a picnic, at some point you needed food. The catering areas were numerous and populated predominantly by burger bars. All the usual suspects Rumbles, Gourmet Burger etc. were in evidence. There was fish and chips, burgers and chips, steak sandwiches, flabby pizzas and packet soup kitchens. The smell of grease hung in palls over packed picnic areas, as much littered with bodies as discarded packaging.

The first day I brought a small flask of coffee and some brown bread and blackcurrant jam and ate it in the traffic queue to get into the site. This kept me going until about 4pm but then the hunger pains kicked in. I saw Rumbles in a huge tent. There was a queue but it moved fast. There were a few choices, overcooked slices of beef, shrivelled salmon and half a chicken which looked the most edible.

The food was being doled out by a team of latex-gloved staff grabbing fistfulls of vegetables, chips and potatoes, throwing it onto paper plates that already had had a latex-gloved hand slap the meat of choice on. Hardly appetising.

This plate of food along with a watery cup of tea cost €15.

It was mass catering feeding the masses.

The next day I suddenly got weak around lunchtime. There were long queues at every food vendor. We remembered the lovely smells coming from the meat vendors in the livestock area we had originally walked through and decided to walk back there. There were also long queues here but not as long. There were Irish Hereford, Irish Angus and Irish Limousin burger stands. We choose the Limousin as it had the shortest queue.

We should have known.

The burger patty was grey, flat, chewy and utterly, utterly tasteless. The burger bun a McDonalds chemical formula. A limp piece of Iceberg lettuce and a watery tomato slice came to €5. If this was to showcase Limousin beef it failed on all fronts. In fact I am convinced every stand had stopped off on the way to the show and bought a job lot of supermarket yellow pack burgers.

I remembered a farmer friend telling me all these French/Belgian breeds that Irish farmers have become obsessed with, probably due to the public obsession with lean fat-free meat; produce tasteless meat. He was right. To have flavour, to have succulence, you need fat. But you also should not cook the bejaysus out of meat as per health fascist requirements.

The vast majority of people at these events are probably quite happy to queue up and pay over the odds for a greasy burger but there are those of us who are not.

To my mind a wasted opportunity to showcase food at a huge event showcasing farming. Surely the two should go hand in hand?

This disconnect needs to be joined up.

The consensus among our group was we would not be coming back again in a hurry. I wonder how many of the thousands walking out said the same?

Addendum:
A comment has been passed that I should have tried to find the quality, artisan food sellers. The reasons I didn't are because, firstly, I suffer from hypo-glycemia and when I get the shakes I need to find food fast. This was made extremely difficult with the badly designed layout of the site. The map was also terrible. I assumed it was my "female brain" but my son who most definitely has a male brain pronounced it worse than useless. In addition, when you did eventually find the row the stand was supposedly on, the stand number (on map) was not displayed outside.

Also I have tried all the artisan producers and know their food is good. The purpose of the blog post was to highlight the organisers of an agricultural event (the largest of it's kind in Europe apparently) allowing such a preponderance of mediocre food sellers.