Beautiful green homegrown Irish broccoli! YES we are well use to it being the trusty side veg but it can be the start of the plate and with a bit of roasting and dressing and it is incredibly tasty. Its important to char it to get the subtle bitter notes that taste delicious with the sweet, salty and spicy dressing.
We used the air fryer to cook this but you can of course roast in the oven also.
Make this with the next head of broccoli that arrives in your Green Earth Organics box.
Begin by chopping the broccoli into 8 long pieces, keeping the stalks on.
Sprinkle the broccoli with salt and pepper and drizzle with oil.
To cook: If air frying you may need to cook the broccoli in 2 batches lay flat in the air fryer basket and cook for 8 minutes at 180c. If roasting in the oven, lay the pieces flat on a tray and roast in the oven for 15 minutes approx at 180c.
For the sesame seeds: toast in the air fryer or oven for 5 minutes until golden, keep a close eye as they can burn easily.
While the broccoli cooks make the tahini dressing: Simply whisk all the ingredients in a bowl until smooth and creamy, taste and adjust the seasoning if needed.
To serve, spoon half of the sauce onto a plate and top with the roasted broccoli and spoon over the remaining sauce sprinkle with toasted sesame seeds.
We had a decision to make recently, in the grand scheme of things it may not have seemed like a very big one. But if we chose wrongly then it would have taken us away from our core value of biodiversity protection.
We had decided to put in an extra access road on our farm. There was a wall that could easily have been knocked which would make access easier and would have reduced the cost, so from a purely financial perspective it made sense to knock the wall and the growth around it. But as I was discussing this over with Emmanuel, nature gave us the nudge we needed in the right direction.
While we were standing there a giant bumble bee flew past us to nestle right into the grass and brambles at our feet, two little birds flew out of the bushes and as we continued to look we noticed a ladybird. One at first, then Emmanuel pointed out another and another there must have been 10 or more. There was a family of little red helpers there in that wall. This was in a tiny little space full with the vitality of nature.
The decision was made for us, and I was a little ashamed that I had been contemplating knocking the wall in the first place. So, the wall will stay, and we will work around it.
A small price to pay for the richness of nature that calls that little corner of the field it’s home.
This was a clear-cut decision.
When it comes to chemicals the effects can be much more difficult to spot. When chemicals are applied to fields and crops, they don’t just affect the targeted crop. There is no magic bullet, if the years spent studying chemistry thought me anything, it is that the magic bullet does not exist (The idea that a drug or chemical will only target a certain disease or pest without side effects).
So it is with chemicals that are routinely sprayed in nature. These chemicals are broad spectrum insecticides or herbicides. They do damage and they hurt biodiversity. The neonicotinoids for so long proclaimed safe for bees were as it turns out not safe for bees. Glyphosate which heralded a new in weed control has been shown to be a ‘probable carcinogen’ and it is everywhere in our environment now.
These chemicals are the unseen freebies we get with our food, and they hurt our health. But even more importantly they hurt our land and the life we share this planet with too.
Would that little corner of the field have been so rich and vibrant if we were applying chemicals to our fields? Absolutely not. So, with your support for our business you are supporting many little corners of land right across Ireland, whether it be here on our farm, or Joe Kelly’s farm in Mayo, or Padraigh Fahy’s farm in Galway, or Vincent Grace’s farm in Kilkenny, or Roy Lyttle’s farm in Antrim or Richard Galvin’s farm in Waterford or Cameron’s farm in Kildare or Philip Dreaper’s farm in Offaly and many more.
We all share the same belief that there is a better way to produce food that there is a safer and happier way to farm.
Thank you for your support, and for supporting our mission:
We are always on the hunt for the perfect ‘no bake’ homemade snack and this is one of the best yet!! They are cute, sweet, salty and delicious. We recommend keeping them in the freezer so they don’t disappear too quickly. They are incredibly moorish, a real treat.
The base is oat and ground almonds, centre peanut butter and coconut oil and top chocolate and coconut oil- with a bit of sweetness added.
If you’re a choc PB lover you’ll love these, we promise!
Make the oat base; add the oats and almonds to a blender, pulse to blend. Add the honey and 1 tablespoon of milk, blend again until the mix comes together, add more milk if needed. Spoon the base into the mini mounds and push down with the back of a small spoon.
To make the centre; melt the coconut oil in the microwave or small pot, stir in the peanut butter and honey, mix well. Pour on top of the base and chill for 1 hour.
For the top; melt the chocolate and coconut oil together and spoon on top, smooth over with a spatula.
Chill again for 15 minutes.
Pop the cups from the moulds, sprinkle with sea salt and tuck in.
They will keep in the fridge for 3 days or in the freezer for 1 month. Take from the freezer 30 minutes before eating.
Carrots are super versatile, economical and tasty! Carrots as a kid were boiled and boring but roasted with a bit of sweetness and spice they make a delicious sharing dish. We are hitting all the flavour profiles with this plate, sweet carrot, salty feta, bitter toasted pumpkin seeds and sour notes from the lemon zest!!! Try it out and get your taste buds tingling.
Serve up as a tasty snack, have it with a green salad or with some toasted sourdough..yum.
Try it soon and let us know what you think.
Lou 🙂
P.S. If you don’t have an air fryer simply roast the carrots with oil, s & p, for 15 minutes @ 180ºC then add the honey and cumin and roast for another 5 minutes.
Chop into 4 long pieces and add them to a mixing bowl and toss in oil, salt and pepper.
Add a 1/4 cup of water to the bottom of the air fryer basket. Place the carrots on the rack and air fry for 15 minutes at 180ºc, shake half way through.
While the carrots cook, make the whipped feta, simply add all the ingredients to a mixer and blend until really smooth. I used my Ninja smoothie maker, any small powerful blender will work.
Back the carrots after the 15 minutes are up, drizzle over the honey and sprinkle the cumin, give the carrots a shake and cook for a further 5 minutes at 200ºc.
When the carrots are done, toasted the pumpkin seeds in the air fryer for 5 minutes at 200ºc.
Pour the whipped feta into a bowl, pile the carrots on top and scatter the pumpkin seeds over both.
I honesty don’t remember any special Easter baking recipes from my childhood in Tipperary. As kids we were too consumed with the thoughts of getting an easter egg to think about what was being baked. My mother would usually bake her famous apple tart and a giant pavlova to have on Easter Sunday after dinner.
I was much older when I learned about hot cross buns at Easter time. They have been baked for centuries across Europe to symbolise the Christianity and Jesus on the cross.
This is a twist on the cinnamon and yeast bun. It’s a lot quicker to make and like the bun uses spice, dried fruit, orange zest and of course the signature cross too.
Preheat the oven 180ºc. Line a baking tray with parchment paper.
To a mixing bowl add the butter and beat for a minute to soften it, use an electric beater or wooden spoon.
Add in the sugar and beat for a further few minutes and then beat in the eggs.
Pour in the oats next and sieve in the flour, baking powder, cinnamon, mixed spice stir in the chopped date and orange zest.
Stir and mix all the ingredients together until a large dough forms.
Scoop or spoon onto the baking tray, push down to form round cookie shapes.
Bake for 18-20 minutes, until nice and golden brown. Transfer to a wire rack to cool.
To make the icing mix the icing sugar with 2 teaspoons of boiling water until you have a thick paste. Transfer to a piping bag or a zip lock bag leave to cool for 5 minutes then snip off the corner and pipe a cross onto the cooled cookies.
I am sitting here on our tractor at the bottom of the farm as I write. The tractor ironically being the noisy beast it is, is a great place to find peace. There is something highly satisfying about tilling the land.
As much as there is a business to be managed, the luxury of being in the field at least on occasion is something that really grounds and reconnects a person to nature. Whilst margins and spreadsheets and efficiency ratios are all important all of these things can sometimes cloud the real reason of why it is we do what we do.
Don’t pay enough attention to those variables of course and the tiling of the land is nothing but an idle dream. Pay too much attention and you run the risk of getting lost and losing track of “The why”. It was brought to our attention last week by ‘the traveling stoic’ on Instagram that ‘the restrictive practices order 1987 prohibits the sale of grocery products at below net invoice price’ but this law does not include fresh produce! It is deemed permissible to allow loss leading on all things fresh, and that includes you may be surprised to learn not only fruit and vegetables, but also milk, meat, and fish.
All our primary producers are essentially being told: ‘We don’t value what you do and we will sell your produce for less than the price of production.’ This is upsetting on a number of levels, but especially when you consider the time, energy and care each producer puts into their produce. It is demoralising and financially unsustainable. We know we cannot possibly compete with supermarkets.
As I was writing this on my phone, for some mad reason spell check but in ‘cartels’! maybe that is a more apt description of these institutions!Supermarkets can afford to squeeze the producers, they have all the power, they can dictate terms. This approach has led to more and more growers saying enough is enough, and sometimes over the seemingly paltry sum of 5c per piece.
That is a sad situation. Those skills especially when it comes to vegetables as there are fewer and fewer of us are gone for ever. Many moons ago we decided that we would quit supplying supermarkets for good. It was a decision taken in the heat of the moment, which usually are very poor decisions indeed. We were told one Monday morning that unless we reduced our pricing and became responsible for the waste in their stores we should look elsewhere for custom.
I can’t say here what I said then, but we never supplied those supermarkets again. It was rash, but it meant we doubled our efforts at making a successful business of growing our own food and supporting other Irish growers and delivering direct to you, our customers.
We, only with your help are still here today 18 years later and we are thankful for that. I think Emmanuel (our farm manager) may be getting a little concerned now, not having seen our tractor move for some time. Writing and tiling are very difficult endeavours to multitask at! So, I think it’s time to put the phone down and get back to it.
Chocolate mousse with hidden butternut squash, we couldn’t wait to try this one!! An indulgent chocolate mousse that is made mostly of healthy stuff sounds too good to be true.
This one pass the test with my kids and the butternut squash went undetected! The mouse is delicious on its own but if you want to give it a lighter texture try folding whipped cream through it, this is how I served it to my kids.
TIP: For a really tasty mousse its important to use a good quality chocolate.
Serve with a dusting of cacoa powder, whipped cream or cremé fraichê and toasted hazelnuts or almonds, banana or raspberries would be delicious too
Method:
Peel, deseed and cube the butternut squash. Put it in a medium sized pot cover with cold water. Put on the hob, bring to a simmer and cook until completely soft, 20-30 mins.
Melt the chocolate in a microwave or on a double boiler on the hob.
When the butternut squash is cooked, strain and add to a blender along with the melted chocolate.
Blend until silky smooth.
Pour into a large bowl or individual bowls. Leave to cool on the worktop then transfer to the fridge to set for at least 4 hours, overnight if possible.
Four Guinness Barrels and some scaffolding planks, that was our first makeshift packing table. My dad myself and Jenny used to pack all the boxes and then load them into the back of our small Peugeot partner van. I would head out do the deliveries and the packing week would end with a bottle of wine at about 12am on a Wednesday night, all deliveries done.
Life seemed Simpler then, but our mind often plays tricks on us, remembering the sunshine and forgetting the rain: who remembers summers that were hotter drier and longer when we were kids? (Or were they?). There was little money for anything, we made do with whatever we had. Jenny was working full time and that was our income.
Our packing week may have finished on Wednesday, but the working week never actually finished. We didn’t have the luxury of somebody to look after quality or packing or the farm, it was all done by us. Now we have great people doing amazing work, the care that goes into the packing each one of your orders certainly puts my early days of packing to shame.
I remember those days of not having a cold room to store our produce and of going out to the local pub carpark to meet the trucks to hand ball and unload some of our bought in produce.
There was one very funny, (well funny now, not funny then) incident where an artic truck came onto our farm, despite insistent communication that there was no way to turn a truck of that size. As I was eating my dinner one evening there was this giant truck parked right outside our house and the delivery driver waving in at me!
The driver decided on his own initiative to turn in our front field, needless to say this monstrous truck got stuck in the muck. Luckily through the kindness and help of two neighbours with very big tractors did we manage to get the truck out of that field.
These were the trials and tribulations of starting out in farming and business and making it up as we went along. But when all was said and done, we did what we did because we wanted to produce and sell sustainable food grown without chemicals, we wanted to do it whilst respecting nature and biodiversity and doing what we could for our planet in our own little corner of the world.
We did that and planted trees and hedgerows and food and got through those first few tough years. It struck me as the bean counters were totting up the figures for last year that although we are bigger now, we are back to the point of having to make difficult decisions to ensure we keep the farm and business afloat.
As Teagasc published another report detailing the pressures facing primary vegetable producers this week, with some farms closing their doors for good, and the amount of land area being farmed for vegetables decreasing due to the financial strain, it makes me wonder when will the value in good healthy fresh food be realised. When will the devaluation of fresh food by supermarkets end, when will they see the “value” rather than the “cost” in healthy fresh food.
As we look to the year ahead there is uncertainty. We are not sure what is to come, nobody is. This is our first ‘normal’ year in three years and for a business and farm it is hard to know what will be thrown at us, but whatever happens we will never compromise on our values.
Cauliflower doesn’t just taste great, it’s also really good for you. It’s high in vitamins C and K, and is also a good source of folate, which supports cell growth and is essential during pregnancy. On top of that, it’s high in fiber, calcium and potassium.
Here are a few ideas if you’re unsure what to cook with cauliflower. Click on the bold part to go straight to the recipe.
We all like to feel that we belong to something. At the very least we are all members of the human race, we have a nationality, we are from this county or that. There is of course much more to it than that, and on this day of all days, it seems relevant and right to speak about it.
The great Irish green wave can be seen far and wide on St Patrick’s day, a day when we celebrate being Irish and there are many things to celebrate, and food is certainly one of them.
Ireland is a nation of food producers; you would be forgiven then for asking the question why is it we import more than 70% of our vegetables. There are some pragmatic reasons for this. Next week we will come to the end of our Irish carrots, and we must import to fill the gap, the season is over. Seasonality is a major factor in supply. But when in season there should be no reason not to source Irish vegetables.
The Irish organic vegetable sector is a small niche within the overall Irish vegetable sector, which in itself is small. But there is something that makes the Irish organic sector special.
In my experience the Irish organic vegetable growers that I know are doing what they are doing because they believe in a better food system. They have no interest in putting chemicals on our food, they are interested and actively looking to improve conditions that help biodiversity thrive. They plant trees, they manage and look after their soil, they are interested in protecting our planet and ensuring that they are doing what they can to mitigate climate change and finally they all want to produce healthy happy food. This I think is a shared and common belief.
Because when it comes down to it, why on earth would anybody start growing vegetables on a small scale in Ireland? Why, when it is impossible to compete with supermarket prices, when it is hard work for little return, there must be a bigger guiding principle.
These growers are opting to take the path less travelled because they believe it is the right thing to do.
The same could be said for you, you may be sitting at home or in your car or wherever you are reading this, you too are choosing a different path. We know it is more convenient to pick up your produce in the supermarket, we know you take the time and make the effort to read our little posts and order from us, some weeks, every week or once in a while. This makes you part of a community of people that are taking action and making positive changes for our planet, because you value biodiversity and you value eating healthy food.
Earlier this year we planned out our farm, and I wrote about how we have cut back on growing certain crops. We have passed on the responsibility for producing these crops to others organic growers here in Ireland, we know too that they share our values. At the time this was a difficult decision but now as I look at this in a new light I realise that in essence we are stronger together and that hopefully this small step will lead to a better stronger more resilient Irish organic vegetable sector.
So for the day that is in it, I would like to raise a glass to you for your continued and appreciated support, and to all the other Irish organic vegetables farmers out there, grappling with exactly the same challenges as us, we are all in it together!
