This is a lovely bake to try with the kids over the Halloween break. Its a one bowl recipe where they can use their hands to mix the ingredients and shape the cookies. We’ve added juicy organic Irish apple and spice to make a delicious tasting cookie. White chocolate and googly eyeballs are optional, but big glasses of milk are a must!
Baking with kids is a great opportunity to talk about the food we eat. I like to tell my young kids where and how food is grown. We talk about sugar cane and how flour comes from wheat, we talk about bees playing their part to pollinate the plants etc. Apples are grown around the world and in orchards in Ireland too.
Step 1: Preheat the oven 170ºC fan. Line 2 baking trays with parchment paper.
Step 2: Measure the oats, brown sugar, cinnamon or spice mix, baking powder into a mixing bowl, stir to mix.
Step 3: Next add the butter, eggs, honey, and grate the apple straight into the bowl, skin and all. With clean hands give it a good mix – get the kids to do this part!! Shape into a round in the bowl.
Step 4: Scoop or spoon 12 cookie dough balls onto the baking trays. Push down to flatten and keep in a circle if you can. Bake for 25 mins until golden brown.
Step 5: Drizzle with melted chocolate and add eyeballs if its Halloween.
You can have your Pumpkin and Eat it!! Pumpkins are not just for decoration around Halloween they are sweet, earthy and delicious to eat. The skin is edible too, just wash them well and slice into thin wedges. You can make this salad with butternut squash too if you wish, it will be equally delicious.
Salads are not exclusive to the warmer months. We like to serve the pumpkin and roast red onions warm from the oven with shredded kale and crumbled feta. Pomegranate is recommended for colour and pops of sweet and sourness.
Organic ingredients are “Better for you and Better for our Planet”.
Lou 🙂
Ingredients: serves 4
1 small pumpkin, chopped deseeded, sliced into wedges
Step 1: Preheat the oven 180ºC. Prepare the garlic bulb, chop off the top of the bulb to expose the cloves. Put the pumpkin wedges, red onion wedges and garlic bulb on a baking tray. Sprinkle with salt, pepper and a bit of paprika drizzle with oil, rub the veg to coat in the oil and seasoning. Roast veggies for 30 minutes. the garlic may take 10 minutes longer.
Step 2: Add the finely chopped kale to a mixing bowl, drizzle with a small amount of olive oil, season with salt and pepper and massage with your hands to tenderise.
Step 3: To make the dressing add the soft roasted garlic to a small blender along with the tahini, oil, cider vinegar, salt and pepper. Blend until completely smooth. Taste and adjust if needed.
Step 4: Build the salad. Add the kale to a big serving plate, top with the chickpeas, layer on the roast pumpkin, red onion, break over the feta. Roll the pomegranate to loosen the seeds, with a wooden spoon to dislodge the seeds and scatter over the salad. Sprinkle with pumpkin seeds and top with the roast garlic dressing.
Sweet Irish parsnips are plentiful in October. They are a wonderful root vegetable with a distinctive flavour that fills the house when its cooking.
My mother would always serve them mashed with carrots with our Sunday dinner. I don’t remember having them any other way as a child! Now I like to roast, steam or slow cook them to intensify the flavour. Here we’ve swapped the common potato for parsnip in a really tasty rosti. Made even more flavoursome with the punchy apple aioli on the side, you wont regret trying this one.
Lou 🙂
Ingredients: Makes 12 small rosti and a pot of aioli
For the rosti
450g parsnips, peeled and coarsely grated 1 medium white onion, peeled and coarsely grated 1 egg 6 tbsp plain flour pinch salt and pepper
For the apple aioli 2 apples, peeled, cored and cut into chunks 1 garlic clove, peeled and finely grated 1 tbsp cider vinegar 180ml mild olive oil. salt and pepper
Method:
Step 1: Grate the parsnips and onion and put them in a bowl, squeeze out any excess liquid, and season with salt and pepper. Crack in the egg and spoon in the flour. Mix well with your hands.
Step 2: Make the aioli. Cook the apple in a small pot with a splash of water until soft for 5-10 minutes. Set aside to cool. Then add to a small blender along with the grated garlic, cider vinegar, salt and pepper. Blend again and very slowly pour the oil in to emulsify the sauce. Taste it and adjust if needed.
Step 3: Cook the roti. Warm a non stick frying pan on a medium heat, add some oil to coat the pan. Spoon on 3-4 parsnip mounds and gently push down to flatten. cook for a few minutes on either side until golden. Repeat. Fry in a small bit of butter and then serve alongside the delicious aioli.
Organic orange pumpkins are sweet and delicious and marry perfectly with banana, spices and chocolate! While the supermarkets are jammed with ornamental pumpkins, in October, that will be carved and go to waste we think its much better for the planet that we roast them and cook and bake with them as nature intended.
This recipe will give you a delicious bread that isn’t too sweet or spicy its just right. Add butter if you like and tea or pumpkin spiced latte!
Keep cosy with this one.
Lou 🙂
Ingredients: ▪️100g pumpkin puree (*homemade see below) ▪️2 large ripe banana ▪️4 tablespoons neutral oil ▪️2 medium eggs ▪️70ml maple syrup ▪️300g plain flour ▪️2 tsp baking powder ▪️1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda ▪️2 tsp mixed pumpkin spice or ground cinnamon ▪️80g chopped dark chocolate
Method:
*Follow the link to make your own pumpkin puree and pumpkin spice mix-Click here
Step 1: Preheat the oven 160ºc and line a loaf tin with a liner or parchment paper.
Step 2: Mash the bananas well and add them to a mixing bowl along with the pumpkin puree, oil, eggs, maple syrup, mix well.
Step 3: Sieve in the flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda, mixed spice. Stir gently, then add 3/4 of the chopped chocolate. Spoon into the loaf tin. Smooth the batter and sprinkle with the remaining chopped chocolate.
Bake for 35-45 minutes until cooked through. Test with a skewer. Cool and slice.
Glyphosate Aka Roundup; we all have heard the name it is the most ubiquitous herbicide used on the planet, nearly 10 billion kg have been used globally.
It is a probable-carcinogen and it now contaminates most non-organic food stuffs.
Using chemicals to fight nature will never work. In the short term it may give a temporary reprieve from a certain disease or pest, but that pest will come back stronger and more resistant next time. It is in a way a self-perpetuating industry and GMO’s are another extension of this very lucrative business.
Bayer the company that bought out Monsanto (the makers of Roundup) are lobbying heavily for its continued use, it’s a massive money spinner for them, why wouldn’t they? They argue its safe, remember tobacco companies said the same thing about smoking!
But we don’t need this stuff on our food, we don’t need it contaminating our waterways, destroying our biodiversity.
Generally, the application of Roundup is the first step when a conventional farmer sets about reseeding fields, or prior to sowing conventional grain, or in fact for weed control prior to harvest of conventional tillage crops. The application of roundup to grain crops prior to harvest is mind-blowing. This stuff is systemic meaning it gets absorbed into the plant, it stays there, and as the grain goes to be processed to flour it stays there.
As a trained chemist, I feel strongly that these chemicals have no place in our food chain. They hurt our bodies, they hurt our land, and it begets the questions are these chemicals necessary? Is there an alternative path we can thread? A resounding ‘of course there is’ would be our answer.
If you follow us on Instagram check out our most recent video there are plenty of “weeds” growing between our kale plants and yet the kale is amazingly healthy and happy and vibrant. Not only that some of these “weeds” are carry over from our green manure of clover and phacelia from the year pervious. They serve many valuable functions, they allow biodiversity to flourish, nature is diverse it is not a monoculture. They also help prevent leaching of valuable nutrients from the soil, effectively acting as a winter cover crop.
When we first took on my granddad’s land here, it was not in great, shape nutrient levels were low and there was a very challenging dockleaf problem, but over the years through careful management we have reduced the burden of docks, there are still dock leaves growing but they are not a problem now. Total elimination was not necessary.
We feel that there is a viable alternative path we can follow for growing good quality, tasty food without the use of chemicals, we have been at it for 18 years now, we still have a lot to learn but one thing is for sure, we will never ever look to the chemical cabinet for a solution to any of our challenges.
Thanks as always for your support.
Kenneth
PS Don’t forget that our Farm shop is open every Saturday from 10am to 5pm, H91F9C5. Also we have the first amazing savoy cabbage and crown prince pumpkin available from Padraigh Fahy in Beechlawn, plus our own gorgeous bunched carrots, fresh parnsips and leeks, see all the great IRISH organic produce we have here.
Autumn squash soup with lots of roast garlic and warming spices. This is a hug in a bowl and we’ve even added a cheese toastie for extra comfort. You can easily swap the butternut squash for Kuri (pumpkin) squash to make an equally delicious bowl of soup.
Roasting the veg first is key to getting in those extra sweet and caramelised notes and we’ve made the prep part easy by just chopping everything in half and loading it on to the roasting tin. We’ve added some lovely sweet Irish carrots, cherry tomatoes from our tunnels and the best of Irish organic onions.
Step 1: Prepare the veg: Chop the squash in half and scoop out the seeds. Wash and chop the carrots in half, slice the top off the bulb of garlic, peel and half the onions. Wash the tomatoes. Put all the veg on a baking tray.
Step 2: Sprinkle with paprika, cumin, salt and drizzle in oil. Roast in the oven for 40 -50 minutes, test everything is cooked by piercing with a sharp knife.
Step 3: Put all the cooked veg into a powerful blender along with hot stock. Blend and then add to a pot with the coconut milk, gently heat through on the hob and serve.
A delicious way to bake with ripe sweet plums. But please make this with Irish apples too, it would work perfectly! The smell of warm autumn spices in the house is very inviting. My granny would make huge trays of apple and cinnamon crumble for special family occasions and serve them up with stewed plums and jugs of custard, I can still remember the smell from her busy kitchen.
There is real comfort in the food we eat and share. And when the nights draw in its the kitchen table that pulls us together. Its good to remember the hands that sowed the seeds, that watered the soil, picked and harvested the fruit and the hands that made the food.
Good food will always be remembered.
Lou 🙂
Ingredients:
For the crumble topping 50g plain flour 40g soft butter 30g sugar 20g flaked almonds
Preheat the oven 160ºC fan. Line an 8inch cake tin (with loose bottom preferably) and grease with butter.
Step 1: Make the crumble topping. Add the flour, sugar, cinnamon and butter to a small bowl. Rub the butter into the dry ingredients with your fingers until it resembles sand, mix through the flaked almonds, set aside.
Step 2: For the sponge. Put the sugar and butter in a mixing bowl and whisk until smooth, use an electric mixer or regular whisk. Next beat in the eggs one at a time then stir in the sour cream. Sieve in the flour along with the mixed spice and cinnamon. Fold in the ground almonds.
Step 3: Transfer the sponge mix into the cake tin. Top with an even layer of most of the plum slices, keep a few back. Then sprinkle the crumble mix evenly over the plums. Top with the remaining plum slices.
Step 4: Bake for 50 minutes to 1 hour. Until a skewer comes out clean.
First, I want to show you something: Darragh Wynne from the charity Goal Ireland was here a few weeks back and invited me to talk for a video, if you want to learn a little bit more about and see some cool drone footage of our farm (and even catch a glimpse of George and Florence check this video out.
George and Florence are happy pigs, they couldn’t actually have a better life, I really don’t think they could. Not only do they get to roam around nearly 2 acres of old and newly established forests, they have a dry straw lined shed to sleep in and probably best of all they get fed waste organic veg once a day. They are as happy as two pigs in muck could be.
But they fit into this story very well, as they are the last step in our grandly termed food waste reduction strategy, we don’t have a formal document or anything like that, but we do have a belief system around food waste.
So here is a crazy fact, one third of all food produced on the planet is wasted. The area required to produce that food is 16 million km2, which is roughly an area the same size as Russia, which is a very big place.
We all know we need to take urgent steps to reduce our impact on the planet, no surprise there, and as we pass yet another mind boggling climate record with September being the warmest month ever by a long way, that action is critical.
So wouldn’t it be an amazing if we could cut the land used for agriculture by 16 million square kilometers and instead grow forestry? Of course, it would.
But where is all this wasted food coming from? Well, that is where I will tell you the second part of my story, last week we took a delivery of carrots, we weren’t very pleased with these carrots, they were Irish, they were organic, but they were massive, and I mean they were big but we got our heads together and figured out how we could prevent them ending up in the bin.
So, we set about trying to use them to sell them, to make sure we wasted as little as possible. There is one thing I can absolutely guarantee had these carrots landed at the door of a supermarket they would have been rejected, sent back, or wasted.
Herein lies one of our bugbears, supermarkets insisting without remorse on unforgiving specifications and when produce does not meet them refusing to sell it or accept it. We have been there many moons ago, once upon a time having supplied supermarkets. In the growing season we have had this year, produce may come out maybe a little smaller or bigger or twisted or forked and that in our view is the beauty of nature. We wont grade out twisted parsnips, or forked carrots.
Of course, there is still the possibility that produce will not meet our quality requirements, and this is where we do have a very well-defined system and we put a fair amount of effort into it to make it work.
Maciek our quality manager has done amazing work creating his “Rescue boxes” each week these boxes are filled with “Class II” produce. If we can’t use the produce in the rescue boxes our team get it, and if it is unusable it ends up in one of two places, actually one of three places!
It either A. Goes to one of our three compost bays, or B. go to George’s belly or C. goes to Florence’s belly!
(Interesting fact: We have to make two separate piles of food when feeding the pigs because Florence always bullies George and tries to keep all the food for herself!)
So that is the end of the story for this week, just know you are supporting a little business that manages in our own way to keep the food waste mountain from growing at least on our watch and continues to step by small step help build a better food system.
You are making it possible, thank you.
Kenneth
PS Darragh Wynne from the charity Goal Ireland was here a few weeks back and invited me to talk for a video, if you want to learn a little bit more about and see some cool drone footage of our farm (and even catch a glimpse of George and Florence check this video out.
Blushing beautiful beetroot so vibrant and sweet. They are a nutritional powerhouse, good for your heart and blood and gut. We’ve increased the nutrient value by adding some wholesome ingredients to make these delicious dosas. Eat them as they are, add a sandwich filling with roast veggies or eat along side a spiced dahl. My kids called them pink wraps and thats a good description too.
I love to steam all my beets and then use them in various ways like roasting with balmasic vinegar for a salad, slicing to eat in a sandwich, grated to add to chocolate muffins etc.
How do you like to cook with beetroot?
Lou 🙂
PS – it may not be an authentic dosa recipe but it is really tasty all the same.
Step 1: To a powerful blender add all the ingredients apart from the water. Blend the ingredients and add the water a little at a time to make a batter. The consistency of the batter is really important it should be pourable like crepe batter.
Step 2: Heat a frying pan on a medium heat. Drizzle with oil and carefully wipe with kitchen paper to coat the pan.
Step 3: Add a ladle of the batter to the pan, use the back of the ladle to thin out the batter and form a round shape. Cook on a low heat for a few minutes then use a spatula to carefully flip over and cook for a further minute. Repeat.
