These vegan meringues are light and crispy, and serve perfectly alongside some plant-based cream and berries. When making the meringue mixture it is important to whisk it well for about fifteen minutes, before quickly adding the trays to the oven. To help prevent the meringues from cracking, once baked, allow the meringues to rest in the oven for an hour, without opening the oven door. There are plenty of blackberries appearing in the hedgerows at this time of year, which pair nicely with the meringues and cream, but any soft fruit would work well in their place.
Preheat the oven to 120°C/fan 100°C/Gas 1. Line two large baking trays with greaseproof paper.
Drain the tin of chickpeas over a bowl, reserving the chickpeas for another recipe.
Add the chickpea liquid to a mixing bowl. Using an electric whisk, beat the liquid until it becomes frothy. Gradually start to add the sugar, a spoonful at a time, while whisking continuously. Once all the sugar has been added, add the vanilla, and continue to whisk at a high speed for about 15 minutes.
Spoon out blobs of the mixture onto the greaseproof paper-lined trays. Bake in the oven for 2 hours.
Once baked, leave in the oven without opening the door for about an hour, this will help to prevent the meringues from cracking.
Once completely cooled, store in an airtight container in the fridge for 5 days. Serve with cream or yogurt and lots of berries.
Don’t take this the wrong way but I love chemicals.
So much so that I dedicated nearly 15 years of my life to studying and working with them, I worked for years on trying to figure how to make a new antibiotic, imagine life without antibiotics?
Without chemicals our life would be so much different and not for the better. But here is one other thing I learned whilst trying to develop a selective drug, a drug that would not have any side effects, and it was this: A 100% selective drug was impossible. Impossible as all chemicals taken into the body interact with different receptors in different ways and have side effects. This silver bullet is the holy grail of pharmaceutical research and is still some way off.
Have you heard of polyphenols? If you are interested in your health, you will certainly have heard this term. They are powerful antioxidants found in plants and may have a very positive effect on our health. More on these later.
So, in the super controlled environment of pharmaceutical development a drug that does not have side effects is impossible to produce. So, who in their right mind decided that we should take toxic chemicals and start spraying them indiscriminately on our food?
In the conventional food world now, we have farmers spraying nonselective chemicals on our food to kill insects and other plants. These chemicals kill both the target (ie the aphid) but also other insects flying around, devasting biodiversity.
Then there is the issue of these chemical being that toxic that they harm life, what do they do to us when we consume them on our food? Nothing good for sure, and there is plenty of literature out there on the damage they do.
So, let’s keep going down the rabbit hole now. Take this a step further, as some of these chemicals are “systemic” that means they are absorbed into the plant, brought inside and there they reside until harvest and eventual consumption on our dinner plates. Washing will do little to remove these as they are inside the produce.
So, we have these non-selective, systemic toxic chemicals being sprayed on our food and they are hurting us and destroying biodiversity. But there is an often-overlooked further issue here, and that brings us back to polyphenols.
These amazing compounds are produced by plants to defend themselves against disease and pests, these powerful antioxidants protect the plants, and guess what? They protect us too, when we consume them. But here’s the issue, when plants are sprayed to remove pests then the plants have little need to produce polyphenols so not only are we getting chemically contaminated food, but the actual composition of the food is also being changed by the application of these chemicals, isn’t that just crazy?
It is so easy to ignore all of the above, as when we see produce on the supermarket shelf it looks amazing (and it is without doubt better to eat fresh produce than not), but if there is an option at all, and I understand for some this is not possible (But you can always try our rescue box, which is always sold at a greatly reduced price) then choosing organic is just always, always going to be better for you, if you can choose local organic then there are all the other benefits also of supporting a local food economy.
So please for your own sake and the sake of our fragile planet, if you can at all choose organic.
Tomatoes are naturally high in lycopene, which is a powerful antioxidant. Cooking tomatoes not only increases the level of lycopene in the tomato but also makes it easier for the body to absorb. This is also a great dish to make if you’ve young chefs in the kitchen who’d like to help-out as it is so easy to prepare. It’s packed full of nutrients and serves well by the bowlful with chunks of bread on the side, or it transports well in a thermos flask for a lunch on-the-go. Enjoy!
Method 1. Preheat the oven to 200°C/fan 180°C/Gas 5.
2. Place the chopped tomatoes, garlic cloves and onion in an ovenproof dish. Drizzle over the olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Sprinkle over the smoked paprika and sugar, and season with a pinch of salt and some freshly ground pepper.
3. Using a wooden spoon, combine all the ingredients together.
4. Roast in the preheated oven for 25 minutes.
5. While everything is roasting, make the pasta according to the pack’s instructions.
6. In a large saucepan heat the stock, stir in the cooked roasted tomato mixture and simmer over a low heat for 15 minutes.
7. Add the basil, saving a few leaves for serving. Using a liquidiser or hand blender, blend the soup until smooth.
8. Divide the pasta between four bowls, pour over the soup and top with a few basil leaves.
I distinctly remember being encouraged to use Roundup as we embarked on our fledgling enterprise 18 years ago, “a touch of roundup” to use the exact phrase. Well, I nodded my head and went about my business, there was little point in trying to explain that in my view this was madness. Certainly, never in my lifetime will it be used on our little 20-acre patch of land in the west of Ireland. We are never going to apply a toxic weedkiller, no matter how easy that might make our lives.
This year and last year the weeds have got the upper hand, and the reason is straight forward: the rain. We have been challenged at ever turn, we have not been able to get the machines out into the fields to do our usual work as it has not stopped raining. There will be some casualties as a result, but I have to say if you look at the broccoli we are harvesting from our farm now, the weeds are certainly making no difference to the yield and quality, it is some of the best we have ever grown. You will be able to come and see for yourself on the 7th of September….. but you can meet us earlier too in Dublin, we’ll be at the National Organic Food Fair in Merrion Square on August 31st/Sept 1st!
Roundup provides a “Clean field” or an “Empty field” but in my view using it creates a landscape devoid of life, a landscape that could not be dirtier in terms of actual chemical contaminants. I believe the organic approach to producing food is certainly more difficult, more challenging, but it gives you imperfect perfection, which may seem a little ironic, but it is true. Perfect vegetables, but maybe to the naked eye the scene in the field does not look perfect. Maybe the vegetables do not always meet the exacting criteria of supermarkets, but maybe the produce is perfect just as it is and what is missing is the chemical contaminates, this is what makes our produce and the produce of all the other amazing Irish organic farmers that supply us perfect.
You have to ask the question with the overwhelming wave of chronic and serious illnesses that are sweeping society today, could the increased use of chemicals in growing our food and in producing our food have a role to play (and there certainly is no one reason for sure). As a medicinal chemist I would have to say these chemicals are not improving the situation, and the cocktail effect of consuming hidden chemicals in our food is for sure having a negative impact on our health. Just think if you saw a bottle with the description: irritant, toxic, harmful to aquatic life, carcinogenic, would you even consume a tiny bit of that. I certainly would not, would you? Chemicals that kill bugs and plants are toxic, they destroy life.
I digress, roundup and all modern herbicides are used to destroy life. They destroy any vestige of plant life that all other biodiversity relies on for their homes. What then? Where will the insects live? Where will the birds find their food when there are no insects? And how indeed will whole ecosystems survive when we remove all the critical natural environmental pieces of life they rely on? The answer is simple, they won’t.
We need to urgently look at how we are growing our food, I am not saying that organic is perfect, it certainly is not, but it does at least put environmental considerations at the centre of the food production journey. That was and is and has not changed in 18 years our central mission, to protect our beautiful biodiversity, and protect the environment whilst producing clean healthy imperfectly perfect food.
Thanks you for your support,
Kenneth
PS We are harvesting amazing broccoli amongst many other things, click to see them all here: IRISH SECTION HERE.
PPS: VERY EXCITING ANNOUNCEMENTS!
Announcement 1: We are going to be in Dublin for the national organic fair on the 31st of August and the 1st of September, please come by and visit our stall in Merrion square, more info here.
Announcement 2: We are having our first and only farm walk to mark the essence of the Irish harvest season on Saturday the 7th of September, put the date in your diary, details to be announced closer to the day!
“Isn’t it ironic, don’t you think? Alanis Morissette, to add our line to this great song “We have tonnes of fresh Irish organic produce and all our customers go on holidays, isn’t it ironic don’t you think?” We asked last week if you could help, and you certainly did, we were bowled over. Can you help again next week and continue to support us during the summer when we need it most?
It is Thursday the 25th of July as I write this. I have spent the morning in the farmyard grappling with one frustration after another, it is a fact of farming life when you have machines you are given near daily opportunities to practice patience. Today has been a great day for that practice. Our net machine that unrolls the nets to cover the crops and conversely rolls it back in when we need to harvest decided to stop working and after visiting a couple of places it was the kind help of a neighbour that hopefully eventually has set us on the right track.
Our planting machine decided it was time to break a drive chain, and again after visiting 2 fixer type shops it was the kind help of the individual in the second shop that set us straight and fixed the chain, enabling us to get on with the final tranche of brassica plantings.
Then there is the weeding machines. Maybe, it is just that July is so insanely busy or maybe it is that these machines pick their moments and they all go caput together, is it a planned assault on a farmers sanity? Our trusty and old intrarotovator came apart in the field, again it was the timely and very kind help of a metal working neighbour that put it back together and dropped it back to us all in the space of a day.
The final machine to play truant this week was our usually very reliable brush weeder, it hasn’t exactly broke, but because the conditions for weeding have been so exceptionally poor, wet and sticky, the brushes have worn away to nothing and we need to replace them, this we are still working on.
That is just this week! But I realised if it wasn’t for the connections we have with people and other businesses in the area and their willingness to help us in our time of need and get us the fixes that we urgently required everything would have ground to a halt.
I tell you this because you are one of those people, you helped us out in our plea last week. Your amazing support and help this week just gone kept our wheels turning so to speak, we saw over 300 extra orders and that has made an enormous difference to us. All the sharing, comments, orders, good wishes, it all matters, it saved the day.
Our weeks keep going, our harvest keeps coming in, our machines keep breaking and we keep going and whilst I was messing around with all these bits of machinery the farm team were busy harvesting all sorts of fresh lovely produce from our fields.
But next week is a new week, with new challenges and opportunities, we will still be here harvesting and working away on our farm, and if you can continue to support us over the week and weeks ahead it keeps us going especially for the ironic (loads of produce, not loads of customers) months of July and August.
You can watch my weekly Instagram update by clicking here.
Thank you as always for your support Kenneth
PS I have just eaten our very first freshly harvested cherry tomatoes, over 1 month late this year, and I am not promising there will be very many next week, but we certainly have loads of other freshly harvested Irish organic produce, to see it all click here.
Imagine it was less than 20 years ago when somebody erecting a polytunnel in the west of Ireland was looked upon with mild suspicion.
Or so it seemed as we were eating our dinner one night and we had a visit from the local Garda: “what are you growing out there?” “Do you mind if I take a look around?” he was of course referring to the polytunnel. I am sure the pepper and aubergine plants and even the tomatoes would have looked foreign to him, and of course they would have. Where else would you see these plants growing, certainly not in the West of Ireland, not since the supermarkets stepped in and went on a rampage of destroying our industry. Anyway, we showed him around and alleviated whatever concerns he may have had…. If you would like to listen to my little story this week from one of our fields CLICK HERE! The second interesting occurrence, well to be fair there were many on this journey, but on this instance again it was a recommendation by a well-meaning neighbour. He could not believe, just could not get his head around, why we were not using Roundup and his advice was “just a touch of Roundup, here and there will sort you out”. Well, that was never going to happen, there is little doubt though considering we were fighting with a field covered in “scutch grass” that it would have made our lives so much easier. It is hard to fathom how the discovery of Roundup revolutionised farming, it found its way into every aspect of farming, from grass reseeding to tillage to horticulture and to many older farmers it must have seemed like a miracle. All that hard work of weed control was suddenly controlled out of a can, it was easy and it was safe they were told. It was like the iphone of weed control, it really did change everything. Or maybe a more likely analogy would be the heroin of the drug world. Because once farmers started using it, there was no going back, and whole systems were established around its use. You had to keep using. And of course, people then forgot that there were once other ways and we were not always reliant on an armoury of chemicals to mark our stamp of control on the natural world to grow our food. Never mind the bees, or the insects, or the myriads of plants that support life, all of that was cleared away in the name of a new efficient chemical controlled system. So that is where we are today, that is our food system, and the precarious nature of this production is never really revealed. It doesn’t take much to mess up our food supply. Roundup for all its perceived benefits has bred even here in Ireland super weeds that cannot be controlled and are more rampant, they have evolved to not be susceptible to the chemical anymore. Anyway, I think of that Garda sometimes, and I think of all the good things, and all the positive change that has occurred and all of the support, and all of the awareness that you good people have and I feel in earnest that things have improved. Nobody looks with suspicion anymore, I think in fact more and more people understand that relationship between our food, our planet and our health. They are all interlinked. Afterall, we have only one life, one body, one planet, one shot at doing things right, and don’t we owe it to our selves to take care of it all, and if we do one thing isn’t it worth leaving the world just a little better each day by the actions we take. Not saying it’s easy, or we get it right all the time, but that is what we try and put into action every day. Thank you for your support. Kenneth PS We are seeing our orders drop as the summer kicks in, if you can at all don’t forget about us, now we are getting right into the the very best Irish product of the season, we will be harvesting broccoli at the end of next week, and hopefully the first of our own tomatoes. Check out our IRISH SECTION HERE
When the veg box is brimming with beautiful colourful veg it’s so great to roast up a pot or tray with diced (veg) plants for a delicious nutritious summer pasta supper.
Our family schedule is jam packed this summer with work and holidays, summer camps and playdates. One pot meals are fantastic. Adding lots of organic vegetables to your meals gives everyone a healthy boost that’s needed to get through the busy day.
Make the most of the plants in your veg box this week.
Lou x
Ps The roast bulb of garlic can be added to the pasta or used to mix into butter for your bread.
Step 1: Preheat the oven 200ºC. Chop and prepare all the veg. Using a wide pot or deep tray add the diced onions, cherry tomatoes, red pepper, sweet potato, courgette and bulb of garlic. Drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper and put it in the oven to roast for 30 minutes. Checking half way through, add more oil to the garlic if needed.
Step 2: Make the hot veg stock in a jug and stir in the tomato puree. When the veg is roasted put the roast garlic to one side. Make a space in the middle of the pot for the pasta then pour over the hot tomato stock. Put a lid on the pot if you have one, or cover with foil and either return the pot to the oven for 30-40 minutes or cook on the hob on a medium heat until the pasta is cooked.
Step 3: Make the roast garlic butter. Wait until the garlic is cool enough to handle then squeeze out the cloves of garlic and mash into the butter.
Step 4: Toast the seedy bread and spread it with the roast garlic butter, serve with a bowl of plant powered pasta and some fresh basil leaves.
When we started our farm and business it was with the aim of keeping chemicals out of our food chain. Chemicals applied enmasse out in nature destroy biodiversity and hurt our health.
Many years ago, I had the pleasure of sitting with Darina Allen and directing questions at a Dept of Agriculture official on why the residual level for glyphosate (Roundup) in oats was much higher than that in wheat. His answer, people eat less oats! Apparently, you can have a higher concentration of this probable carcinogen in oats because people in general eat less oats than wheat. The limit “deemed safe” in wheat is 10mg/kg and in oats it is 20mg/kg, twice that of wheat.
If you would like to listen to my weekly rant in video form CLICK HERE
No herbicide in the history of our planet has been applied so heavily as glyphosate (the active ingredient in the weedkiller ‘Roundup’) it is quite literally everywhere and in everything.
Virtually all known conventional foodstuffs containing some processed product derived from soya, wheat or corn will have had an application of glyphosate.
The people who watch out for our health set maximum residue levels (MRLs: this is the highest limit of chemical that is allowed in food). These MRLs are supposed to protect the consumer, but they can also be set based on what is required by agriculture to be an effective dose to control a pest or disease. The concentration required to kill a weed can often be much higher than that which is considered “safe” to consume (if consuming toxic chemicals can ever be deemed safe).
These limits are often arrived at *in partnership with the Agri-chemical companies* who manufacture the herbicides and pesticides!
Take the maximum residue level of glyphosate in wheat by country:· Canada 5 mg/kg· EU 10 mg/kg· USA 30 mg/kg
Apparently, it is safer to eat more glyphosate in the USA than it is in Canada ….!? As the application of glyphosate has grown exponentially the assessment of what is safe in our food has also increased and so MRLs have increased.
The increase of allowable glyphosate residues in crops is directly correlated with the introduction of genetically engineered crops that are resistant to glyphosate.
In 1990 3.5 million kgs of glyphosate were applied in the USA, in 2014 that number was 113 million kgs. At these rates of application, the total volume of glyphosate applied in 2014 was sufficient to treat 30 % of globally cultivated land. Nearly 9 billion kg have been sprayed since 1974, this is a mind boggling number.
Glyphosate has been labelled as a “probable carcinogen” by the world health Organisation. The state of California labelled glyphosate as “Carcinogenic”. The conventional agriculture industry, and even the EPA, often claim pesticides are safe right up until the moment they are banned because of overwhelming evidence showing they are toxic to humans.
We are all doing what we can, conventional farmers are stuck in a broken food system, we all are, but eating organic where you can is the very best chance you have of avoiding free helpings of the chemicals like glyphosate. There are some rays of hope breaking through and although the EU granted a further 10 years of use of glyphosate in the EU, the use of this toxin for drying (desiccation) crops before harvest has been prohibited and this is a very positive step.
Through your support we are supporting a system that keeps chemicals out of our food chain.
Thanks as always, here’s to clean healthy food.
Kenneth
PS We are coming into the season of loveliness now, loads of fresh Irish produce, we are just waiting with bated breath for our own tomatoes, they are much later this year due to the cold spring, and you would be forgiven for thinking it was the middle of November at times during the week, I keep waiting for the “summer” to “start”! Anyway in the meantime you can check out our wonderful farm and farmers produce here: See our IRISH SECTIOH HERE
In the summer months the tunnels are brimming with courgettes. They grow so well and are delicious in so many recipes, and we’ve shared lots. These courgettes can be air fried or oven baked. I like to keep the temperature low so they cook slowly, soften in the middle and turn golden on top.
This easy garlicky cashew cream is full of flavour and deliciously morish topped with nutty breadcrumbs you’ll be coming back for more.
Let us know if you’d like to try it,
Lou x
Ingredients: serves 1 as a starter or 2 as a side
1 or 2 courgettes (use 2 if you can fit them in your air fryer basket)
1 bulb garlic
oil
Salt and pepper
For the cashew cream
1 cup of cashews soaked in boiling water for 1 hour
METHOD Step 1: Preheat the air fryer or oven to 160ºC fan.
Step 2: Prepare the garlic bulb, cut the top off the bulb exposting the cloves, place on a square of tin foil and drizzle with oil. Close up the tin foil to make a parcel.
Step 3: Slice the courgettes in half lengthways then lightly score the white flesh in a criss cross shape, sprinkle with salt and place upside down on kitchen paper to let some of the moisture drain out. After 10 minutes, cut in half to fit in the basket, drizzle in olive oil and place in a preheated air fryer or oven add the garlic bulb parcel to the basket too. Slow cook for about 20 – 25 minutes, checking half way through.
Step 4: To make the garlicky cashew cream. Discard the water off the cashews, then blend with all the other ingredients as well as the roasted garlic, just squeeze out the soft cloves. Taste and adjust the seasoning if needed.
Step 5: To make the nutty breadcrumbs, whizzed up the bread and almonds in a blender. Pour onto a frying pan drizzle in olive oil, salt and pepper then toast until crispy. Let it rest on a plate lined with kitchen roll until ready to use.
Step 6: To serve, spread the cashew cream on a plate top with the golden courgettes, sprinkle with the nutty breadcrumbs, lemon zest and fresh basil.
During the week I was asked to come on the Sean Moncrieff show to talk about the supermarket practice of loss leading with fresh produce. Only 1% of farms in Ireland now grow veg, there are only 60 commercial growers left in the country down from over 400 in 1998.
Not as glamorous as talking from a box in the middle of the field I think, but we gave it a go anyway!
And if you are inclined to listen to my rant from a box in a polytunnel CLICK HERE
Here’s an example to illustrate exactly why this is happening, a few years ago most of the celery and scallions during the season were grown in Ireland, now that situation has changed dramatically. This year there has been a massive decline in Irish grown celery and scallions on supermarket shelves, and why is this? The bottom-line growers, who are struggling to cover production costs (they have gone up by 43% in the last 3 years!) could not negotiate a very small cost increase, and we are talking cents single digit here, as a result the farmers decided to stop growing the produce.
Two years ago one of the biggest sprout growers in the country closed after three generations due to lack of supermarket support.
The irony of this situation is that as supermarkets continue to practice squeezing the primary producer here in Ireland for short term gain, they must look to source the produce elsewhere. But there is pressure on growing systems everywhere due to climate change and as a result they can end up paying more for imported produce.
Because after all, with the disastrous growing year we had last year, if you cannot put a little aside in the good years how do you survive the bad years and if your only outlet is the supermarkets, and they won’t help out then there is no other viable choice but to stop growing food.
We, who once were a nation of food producers and vegetable growers have let our primary vegetable growing industry virtually disappear.
I strongly feel that it is a very sad reflection on this retail model and the mindset and expectation it encourages in us as consumers that fresh produce is worthless. Not only does it make the craft of growing food financially unviable, but it is highly demoralising to growers to be told that their produce is essentially worthless.
At the very same time that fresh produce is used to get consumers in supermarket doors by devaluing it to nothing, you have a production and retail industry that thrive on making high margins on junk food. This food, ultra-processed rubbish, is nutritionally worthless and is making us sick and lines most retailers’ shelves.
The solution is simple, primary producers need to be paid more for the produce they grow, this can come about through the celebration of fresh produce, food that will make us well and healthy and in the long run ironically will save us all money and will save an industry.
As always thanks for your support.
Kenneth
PS We have amazing Irish organic produce now, from our own farm, kale Green, Black (Cavolo Nero), Purple, salad, lettuce and courgettes, we have Irish producefrom Joe Kelly in Mayo, Padraigh Fahy in Beechlawn, Marc Michel in Wicklow, Enda Hoban in Galway, Mick and Audrey in Millhouse, John Mc Ardle for mushrooms,and so much more. See our IRISH SECTIOH HERE
