A Year In Redwood

We had a few Irish food bloggers here last week.  And what a wonderful afternoon it was!

Nine people who hadn’t met before sitting around for a few hours just talking about food!

It all began when 2 bloggers – Theresa Storey of The Green Apron and I – missed out on attending the Bord Bia event in May.  Caroline Hennessy of Bibliocook took the initiative and thought she would organise a foodies group meeting in the country!  So now there were three!

Next decision was where to meet?

Farmer Alfie and I thought it would be great to meet with people who love food and write about it, but OK let’s be totally honest we also thought it would be a great way to promote our pork too!  So we invited everyone here.

Foodies on tour

On Wednesday last, in glorious sunshine, 9 people – who as I say had never met before – gathered to talk tea, coffee, milk and food.  And that is literally what was discussed – real tea, real coffee, pasteurised or unpasteurised milk and growing, sourcing and eating good food.

Naturally, as Oldfarm is mainly about Pork and Bacon, there was some talk about pigs and of course, a visit to meet them all.

Foodies on tour

Ralph Haslam of Mossfield Cheese joined us for part of the afternoon, as it is the whey from his farm that is fed to the pigs, as well as locally grown barley and vegetables.

Visiting pigs is hungry work, so it was now time to sit down to afternoon tea.  And what a spread that was!

There was Battley Cake from The Green Apron, as well as Chocolate Raspberry Conserve… all that can be said about that is wow!

Bibliocook and Dinner Du Jour had brought two different types of chocolate cookies.

The piece de resistance was the Chocolate Torte brought along by Some Say Cocoa… that was totally amazing!

There were fresh strawberries and cherries from the garden.

Ralph had brought some of his wonderful cheese along.

And there was even some old-fashioned fried bread – home-made soda bread fried in Oldfarm lard!

The table was suitably groaning with all the food!

afternoon tea

Both Caroline from Bibliocook and Gillian from Some Say Cocoa have written about their trip – so just don’t take my word for it – we really did have a lovely afternoon.

It was terrific to meet such nice people, everyone was so relaxed.  It was as if we had known each other forever.  The afternoon finished with plans being made for the next meet up!

Our next event at Oldfarm is a BBQ Course on Saturday, 3rd July, with Chef John Whelan, formerly of Quaglino in London.  Check out John’s blog to see just how much he plans to cover on the day.

It is going to be a really fun and exciting day of barbecuing… hopefully the sun will shine.  But contingencies have been put in place and it will happen no matter what the weather may do!