Skerries Mills Farmers Market

• Location: Skerries Mills Farmers Market – Skerries, Co Dublin, Ireland
• Time: Saturdays 10am to 4pm – Outdoor
• What can you find: vegetables, pastries, meat, cakes, flowers, plants, crepes, preserves, fresh baked goods, crafts, and more!
• Note: Car Parking Facilities (FOC), picturesque surroundings, indoor coffee shop, 5 minutes walk from Skerries sea front, friendly atmosphere 🙂

Farmers markets are wonderful places to visit and shop for your local products. I love the friendly atmosphere, the homemade goods and the fresh vegetables that abound in them. People who love food, creating and sharing their skills and knowledge in a way supermarkets could only dream of.

We really should support these places of food worship more and buy more sensibly taking into account “Food Miles”.

Local artisans making great tasting cakes and sweets, preserves and pickles, cordials made from locally sourced ingredients. A circle of life that helps your community:

Grown Locally, Cooked Locally, Bought Locally = A Thriving Community

So find your Local Farmers Market and start to enjoy life, food and make new friends. Supermarkets don’t give a monkey’s about anyone but themselves, so spend some of your hard earned money with people who do care. I do, and feel happier for it.

The traders at Skerries Mills Farmers Market are a great bunch of people and I thank them all for letting me film them. It was great fun and if you would like to get it touch with anyone on this video send me an email at john@thedevilsmenu.com or leave a comment.

John

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Handy Links:

Farmers Markets in Ireland

Mussels, mussels and more mussels in Connemara

Beautiful view of Connemara

I showed you a week ago, a lovely place called Loughshinny, where you can get beautiful lobsters. It is amazing how many ingredients and food are available in nature in very surprising places.

As we like the odd adventure from week to week, we explored a beautiful part of Ireland: Connemara.
The visit to some close relatives end up into a mussel hunt on a glorious Sunday morning. When we say adventure, we really mean it… as it was more of a treasure hunt or mission impossible than a relaxing walk on the beach. Stuck in the mud with wellies one size smaller than usual is not what I call “a relaxing walk”.

We reached a very rocky area after a 20 minutes walk from the coast road and I must say, that we still are amazed by the huge quantity of mussels we found there. Which ended up feeding two families for a couple of days!

I would always encourage you to enjoy exploring nature, but also to respect such a wonderful gift, and disturb to a minimum the area so we can all enjoy it again. Leave the small mussels so they can grow into big mussels for next time  😉

Boiled Bacon and Cabbage (BBC)

Now my mum denies this, but me and my sisters all agree that mum served us Boiled Bacon and Cabbage at least 4 times a week as we grew up. I became sick of it!. As a child, to see ‘Hairy’ bacon on my plate was enough to give me nightmares.”Eat it” my dad would boom “It will give you hair’s on your chest”. Well, he was right as I have a hairy chest now but I still have issue’s with Bacon and Cabbage.

• Firstly hair on food is just wrong – Thankfully I haven’t seen that on the meat in years!
• Secondly mum cooked the cabbage in the bacon water (a good idea) till it could only be picked up with a spoon and all the goodness was gone!

A dark grey green coloured cabbage sludge is just wrong on all levels. When it is also served with boiled potatoes in their skins (now, maybe I’m strange but I hated potatoes in their skins) it was like finger nails been dragged across a blackboard to me.

The Irish brand of  ‘Chef ‘ sauce was always my saviour as huge dollops of this dark tangy condiment could hide all food abuse served to me. This meal was a culinary torture, an Irish Inquisition of Food.

Now I know that most of my friends and family love BBC and these are my personal opinions, but I’m the chef  and that makes me right! lol  😉

My goal is to make something wonderful with these ingredients, and keep the essence of the original dish. And fingers crossed, enjoy my cooking!

I want to believe that BBC is not a childhood trauma and an opportunity to challenge myself in the kitchen and cook something wonderful with these great ingredients:

• Boiled Bacon is stunning in flavour and texture.
• Cabbage, an amazing vegetable with so many varieties, textures, flavours and is high in vitamin A and C.
• Potatoes been the Holy Grail of Irish Food.

I would also like to apologise to my Mum for this tirade against her cooking of this particular dish but “you reap what you sow” 🙂 xx (she is going to kill me for this)

John
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