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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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  😉

Loughshinny Lobsters

I love lobsters and happen to be lucky enough to live in a harbour where the most amazing lobsters live and get to watch the lobster boats sail in and out every day.

Loughshinny Harbour lobsters are probably the best in the world but I am biased.

When I first came to Ireland as a child we always travelled as a family by ferry and I never realised that there were such wonderful and beautiful creatures living just below our route from the UK. When I became a chef and started using Lobster most came from Canada which seemed strange to me as surely it was cheaper to get them from our own coastal waters.

But that’s what happens when you ignore the flavour and provenance for the cheapest price. Nearly all the best seafood goes from UK and Irish waters to the continent  as people will pay more for great tasting ingredients and have a love of the best . But fortunately our food habits are changing and more people are interested in good food than ever before and even better are cooking it themselves.

Ireland has amazing crustaceans and the local Lobster fisherman gets some of the best I have ever tasted. I can’t wait to get some more and show you a few things to do with them 🙂

This is a wonderful and amazing Lobster Paella made by my beautiful partner Elora being Spanish she has shown me the error of my ways with Spanish Cuisine