Smashed potatoes were a huge viral hit recently and we were just dying to try it out with our delicious new potatoes. Needless to say they did not disappoint, they turned out so wonderfully golden and crispy right round the jagged edges. They are amazing to eat as they are but we thought we’d whip up a quick pesto to celebrate our spuds even more!
Grab the kale in your veg box for this tasty pesto. Blend it and taste it and add extra salt and lemon juice if needed.
Step 1: Wash the potatoes but no need to peel them. Steam or boil them for roughly 30 minutes, until they are cooked through. Let them cool for 15 minutes.
Step 2: Preheat the oven 200ºC, line a large baking tray with parchment paper (or 2 smaller trays) Once cooled place one potato on the baking tray, use a shape knife to mark an X on top. Then use a glass with a wide flat bottom and push down on the potato to smash it. Carefully lift the glass off. Repeat with the other potatoes.
Step 3: Drizzle with oil, salt and pepper. Roast in the oven for 30-40 minutes, until golden and crisp around the edges.
Step 4: In the meantime add all the pesto ingredients to a powerful blender. Blend until combined, if it’s very thick add more oil. Taste and add more salt if needed.
Step 5: Dip the smashed potatoes in the pesto, enjoy!!
Back to school and back to busy schedules for the whole house! September can be a great time to reset your eating habits, its a bit like new year. We love to pull out the recipe books and plan some wholesome hearty meals, using lots of vegetables from the farm, to make September run smoothly and enjoy the cosy autumn evenings.
We’ve put 5 of our favourite recipes together for you. Most of them just need one pot and some need an extra one for the rice or pasta, so minimal fuss. The vegetables from the farm make each dish sing, cauliflower, courgettes, cherry tomatoes, squash, spuds and kale. Theres something for everyone.
We like to get back to having family meals together in the evening, talking about the school day, new friends, new subjects and all the time taking enjoyment in the food we eat.
We hope you enjoy these recipes, please let us know if you try them in the comments below.
Lou 🙂
Click on the recipe below to bring you to each recipe:
The summer months seem to fly by in a flash! The kids will be back to school really soon and that means the return of the lunch boxes too! We will be making lots of yummy homemade snacks to help fill them. We love using wholesome organic ingredients to keep little tummies fuller for longer and help add some much needed nutrition for their growing bodies and minds.
Theres a few reasons why love to make homemade snacks for the lunchbox. They are cheaper to make than buying pre-made shop bought snacks. We know exactly whats gone into them, we can make them mostly organic and they are not individually wrapped in plastic. We can get our kids to help make them and thats pretty special too!
Here’s 5 recipes for you to save and try. They include healthy oats, dates, seeds, fruit and veggies, our online shop stocks most of the ingredients you need. We hope you give them a go, please let us know if you do, we love to hear from you.
Lou 🙂
Just click on the link below to bring you to each recipe:
This is a wonderful recipe. It can be dairy free, vegan, gf and its so simple and delicious. You can enjoy it in 3 different ways, hot to drink, cold to eat or whipped to decorate a cake or cupcake.
My kids love hot chocolate so we had our first batch warm with marshmallows and sweet waffle soldiers for dipping. The second batch was made into a set mousse and some was whipped and used as a delicious icing for our chocolate cupcakes.
We have some fabulous organic products that make this recipe extra special such as Amaizin Coconut Milk and Happy Chocolate, check them out in the shop.
Which way will be your favourite? Let us know in the comments.
Lou 🙂
Ingredients: makes 2 hot chocolates or 2 small mousses or frosting for 4 buns
1 x 400g tin coconut milk – just the thick cream – use the liquid for smoothies
Step 1: Open the tin of coconut milk and scoop out the thick creamy part put it in a small pot, use the liquid for smoothies and to thin out the hot chocolate.
Step 2: Chop the chocolate and add it to the pot too along with the maple syrup. Gently heat on the lowest setting until the mix is melted and silky smooth. Sprinkle in the sea salt and stir.
Step 3: Decide how you want to serve it: Hot/Chilled/Frosting
For the hot chocolate, if its a bit thick thin with the coconut liquid, whisk well and pour into mugs and serve straight away.
For the mousse let the mix cool and pour into glasses or mugs. Cool completely and chill in the fridge for at 2 hours. Serve with fresh seasonal berries.
For the frosting, let the mix cool and set just like the mousse. Then whip it with an electric beater to loosen and smooth onto a cake or cupcake. If it is hard to spread, dip a pallet knife in boiling water, dry it off and smooth on the frosting.
I met Gerry who looks after the beehives on our farm a couple of weeks back. He comes onto the farm once or so a week and checks on the bees. On the day we met there was two acres of phacelia (a beautiful purple flower) swaying in the wind behind us and it was covered in bees. Gerry looks after 6 apiaries and of the 6 the one on our farm produces three times more honey than any of the others. The bees are vibrant and strong, and they are in amazing health.
The reasons are not complex, they have an abundance of food, the phacelia being one major food source, but not only that, the early apple blossoms, the courgette flowers, the tomato flowers, the cucumber flowers and all the flowering weeds (good and not so good) that spring up between the plants. The bees are thriving.
The bees have little reason to roam further than our farm and as result they never encounter agrochemicals routinely used in conventional agriculture that can damage our pollinators. One class of chemical that is thankfully now banned were the neonicotinoids, these chemicals when used damaged bee health by affecting their immune system, navigation skills, capacity to forage and communicate, and ability to reproduce.
Without the bees and the other hosts of pollinators we rely on for our modern-day food system we would not be living such a life of food luxury. Our always on food system, the year-round availability is only possible due to a complex and precarious food system and a logistics chain that spans the planet. It is a system dependent on large scale production of crops, heavily dependent on agrochemicals and cheap labour in other parts of the world. We have seen this year that as the climate crisis deepens, climate shocks to our food system can be sudden and deep, the future effects of the climate crisis on our relatively fragile food system will be large.
Nature is a complex web of interactions, it is strong and resilient and can recover from manmade interference, but when we continuously damage nature, or change the climate that local ecosystems work in then we risk damaging nature and our ability to grow food immeasurably.
But, as with the bees on our farm, when we get it right and give a little back then the results can be startling, amazing and larger than anything we expect, and we reap the benefits too: as food producers we have a bumper courgette and tomato crop. The phacelia adds organic matter back to the soil when we cut it, and it allows us to grow something for nature while resting the land.
Something so simple as growing a strip of wildflowers or planting a small area of trees makes a massive positive difference to nature, surely instead of focusing purely on intensification of farming activities, it would not be so hard to weave this into our current agriculture policy as a critical requirement of all farms.
The bees are one of our constant companions here on the farm, but there is a myriad of other unsung heroes that quietly go about their business and never get the recognition they deserve. The flies and beetles, the butterflies and birds, the bacteria and fungi, this whole beautiful complex web of nature all working together help produce better food and make up a rich and vibrant local ecosystem.
Whilst there is much to be done, there is much that is within our power too. Removing chemicals from this chain of life is one clear step we can take to make an instant and recognisable difference to the diversity of nature we share this world with. Choosing more local food strengthens our local food system and crucially reduces our carbon foot print too.
As always it is your support that makes it possible here on our farm and the farms of our other supporting farmers to do the right thing.
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”
Beautiful calming lavender, the scent is so distinctive, even the bees can’t resist it. I have a huge lavender bush in my small front garden. It has grown so much in the last 3 years. I just love how natural it is and how much the bees adore it. This is my first time baking with its pretty purple buds and it won’t be my last.
These shortbread biscuits are delicious, yes they taste floral but thats the point. If you are not swayed by the lavender just use the zest of a full lemon or orange in its place.
We hope you try them, they are the perfect tea time sweet treat. Browse our baking aisle for the organic dry ingredients.
Lou 🙂
Ingredients: Makes 18
175g soft vegan butter
2 tbsp fresh, unsprayed, finely chopped lavender flowers (pick them off the stems to measure)
Step 1: Line an 8in x 8in baking tin with parchment paper.
Step 2: Beat the butter and lavender together first to get the best flavour from the lavender. Beat in the sugar then mix in the flour to form a dough ball.
Step 3: Gently press the dough into the prepared tin, use an extra square of parchment paper to smooth out the dough with your hands, get it right into the corners. Remove the extra parchment paper and discard.
Step 4: Use a butter knife to mark the dough into 18 biscuits, cutting right to the bottom of the tin, see the photos. Prick with a fork and sprinkle with brown sugar. Put the tin in the fridge to firm up for 1 hour.
Step 5: Preheat the oven 170ºC. Bake the shortbread for 20-25 minutes until pale brown.
Let them cool completely then cut again along the lines to separate and enjoy with big mugs of tea.
“We live in a remarkable world. Planet Earth is full of diverse wonders that nourish us in many ways. It is the place where we live out our lives, work, eat, love, play; in short, it is the place we call home. And it is our only home.”
The food we eat and how it is produced can improve our health, increase biodiversity and reduce carbon emissions. However, the food industry today and vested interests would have us thread an increasingly well-worn path to ill health, environmental damage, increased carbon emissions and pollution of our planet and bodies.
These are some of the thoughts of Dr Sean Ownes, a member of Irish Doctors for the Environment and the chair of “The Climate and Health Alliance” who earlier this year launched a new and ground-breaking report examining in detail the connection between our food health and the health of our planet, he was kind enough to provide his thoughts below:
There is currently a syndemic of unhealthy poor diets and related chronic disease paired with climate change and critical biodiversity loss. The problems with the Irish healthcare system can be summed up in one word: capacity. The problems with Ireland’s food system might also be summed up in one word: sustainability.
This report is unique it is the first time that multiple healthcare institutions, such as UCD, RCSI, ICGP, RCPI, the Irish Heart Foundation and many more have all arrived at a consensus that the current Irish diet is causing great harm to people and planet, while also recognising planetary boundaries and the need to live within them.
Our shared food environment has completely changed in a single generation secondary to unfettered market forces and weak public health policies. The standard Irish diet now exceeds planetary boundaries by over 200%. This report highlights how our dietary habits of today are taking food off the plates of the next generation, while also undermining our planet’s fragile and rapidly declining ecosystems.
The food system touches all of us, be it consumers, primary food producers who work the land, those in retail or healthcare professionals who work at the distal end of the system i.e., chronic disease, and as a multi-level system it requires multi-level action. There has been a lack of joined up thinking to date, as well as a lack of any urgency commensurate with the threat of the climate crisis. Given that our AgriFood strategy is an export growth model, while there is now more awareness and urgency, it is unlikely that Ireland will make the necessary changes to meet our emissions obligations.
The report seeks to highlight how sustainable diets are critical for not only our climate targets, but also a viable healthcare system going forward. Adding plants to your plate isn’t just a favour to the planet, it is a heath gain for your heart, your gut and your future self. It isn’t about the usual tired debate of vegan vs farmer, rather it is about rethinking our own diet as a health pension, and everyday there are many opportunities to pay in. As pensions go, there can’t be one of better value. The report wants our policy makers to know that we can’t ask people to swim upstream and chose to eat healthy foods when they are too expensive, inaccessible, competing with cheaper junk foods and more. We urge them to engage with healthcare professionals, especially dietitian’s, but also marketing experts, public health experts, policy experts and look towards other jurisdictions that have implemented meaningful changes with Just transition at their heart. The report also asks that all farmers be given the support they need to make a transition to meet our emissions targets.
The greatest challenge will be making forward progress free from the undue influence of vested interests and powerful lobby groups. We need to see this transition as a generational opportunity for not only health and a viable healthcare system, but also for the Irish economy and for rural Ireland now and in the future. Healthy and sustainable diets don’t need to be invented; we only need the policies to make choosing them the best option.
The report is a well-researched detailed document, and you can check it out here. Thanks Sean to you and your colleagues for the great work and for trail blazing the link between diet health and planet.
Kenneth
Link to report : https://climateandhealthalliance.wordpress.com/resources/
We are always looking for ways to use our gorgeous homegrown glossy green courgettes. This is our take on an Italian dish called Scarpaccia which loosely means ‘bad shoe’ because its as thin as a bad shoe apparently! It does make a very thin courgette tart for sure. The courgettes are very thinly sliced and the juice is extracted with salt but not wasted as it goes into the batter. We love the zero waste here.
Most of the recipes I came across used cornmeal but I used dried panko breadcrumbs in their place and it worked out just fine.
This is a gorgeous recipe to try, let us know if you do.
Step 1: Use a mandoline if you have one to finely slice the courgettes and red onion, 2-3mm thick. Then add the slices to a large mixing bowl. Sprinkle in the salt and toss through with your hands to coat in the salt, 2-3 minutes. Put a plate on top and a weight like a couple of tins to help extract all the liquid. Leave this for 2 hours.
Step 2: Preheat the oven 180ºC and oil a baking tray really well, 9 x 13 inch is what I used. After this time, use a cheesecloth or clean kitchen towel. Add the vegetables and squeeze out the extra liquid. The courgette juice will be used for the batter. To the juice add in the flour, dried panko breadcrumbs, fresh thyme leaves, nutritional yeast and black pepper, whisk well it should look like pancake batter. Then add the vegetables back in and stir to coat. **If the batter seems very thick add a small dash of water.
Step 3: Pour the mix into the baking tray and use a spoon to smooth out evenly.
Step 4: Bake for 30-40 minutes until cooked through and golden on top.
We are spoiled with beautiful organic Irish blueberries in the summer and autumn. They are gorgeous to eat fresh as they are but if you are looking for a recipe to bake try these delicious crumble bars. They do crumble so keep one hand under to catch those crunchy crumbs.
We were paying a friend a visit so make a batch of these to have with tea and a catch up. My kids adore them, they are just sweet enough with lovely pops of jammy berries.
Shop for the wholesome organic ingredients in our shop.
Let us know if you make it, we love to hear from you.
Step 1: Preheat the oven to 180ºC and line a 8in tin with parchment paper.
Step 2: Measure the flour, oats, brown sugar and baking powder into a bowl, mix well. Then add the butter and work it into the oats and flour with your fingers until it starts to clump together and feels like wet sand, this will take a few minutes.
Step 3: Tip HALF the mix into the tin. Push down into the tin until its spead out and even, make sure to get into the corners. Bake in the oven for 10 minutes. In the meantime mix the blueberries with the granulated sugar, cornflour and lemon juice.
Step 4: When the base comes out of the oven top with the blueberries and scatter over the other half of the crumble mix. Put it back in the oven to bake for another 25-35 minutes.
Leave it to cool for an hour to set and then cut into bars.
What is growing in the fields of Ireland? We produce lots of meat and dairy products and grain to feed this industry, but what about our vegetables?
Only 1% of farms in Ireland now grow vegetables. We have been focused on just this issue for the past 18 years. If anything, July onwards represent the months of Irish plenty on vegetable farms, but where are our vegetables growers? More and more Irish vegetable producers are going out of business due to the loss leading practices of supermarkets, and in the long run this will not be good for you or I. There is no such thing as cheap food, there is always a price to be paid somewhere. Carrots for 49c may mean that more Irish farmers go out of business, they can’t run a farm for these returns. This year farmers were closing their doors for good, shutting down their vegetable operations, those skills are lost for ever and are not easy to replace. A food model based on the cheapest food possible is not sustainable, either the environment pays a price or the people producing the food do, or the end consumer (you and I) do, it is as straightforward as that. Cooking from scratch can prove so much cheaper than buying overly processed packaged goods, plus you know what is in your meals and you will generally get better quality ingredients. There are so many options right now especially for vegetables, these are the months of Irish seasonal plenty. On our farm alone and many of the organic farmers that supply us there is a fantastic array of Irish seasonal stars. We have started harvesting our own onions, amazing tomatoes, we are getting fantastic cucumbers from Joe Kelly in Mayo and the best spinach and chard from Padraig Fahy in Ballinasloe. We are harvesting lettuce, and salad, and kale, and broccoli, there is courgettes a plenty and the best Irish organic mushrooms from McArdles mushrooms right here in Ireland. Our gorgeous early IRISH potatoes taste amazing (just boil them gently!) Or how about Ralph Haslam’s fresh organic milk, yogurt, and cheese from Offaly, you may know it as Mossfield organic farm. David Butlers organic eggs are delivered fresh in each week. All amazing Irish producers. We truly have so much Irish organic produce and now is certainly the time to support it. The bonus of course, is fresh, organic, Irish food on your plate that is better for you and crucially you are supporting truly Irish businesses. Here’s to an amazing Irish July and August. Kenneth
