A Year In Redwood

I have already written about our Saturday trip to Kilkenny which was all about food and the pleasure of food!

We also travelled to Kilkenny on Friday for the Foodcamp.  I had been last year for the first time and had been mightily impressed by the array of speakers, all speaking passionately about what is their passion.  This year we were both invited to speak at Foodcamp.

A chose to speak about his passion – how we feed and treat our animals – especially those we intend to eat!  Himself and Brendan from Castlemine have been working over the past months putting a proposal together for Bord Bia that will hopefully be the working document for a ‘free-range’ food label.  Under the free-range title, there is also the question of what we feed animals and that brings us nicely to GMO contaminated foodstuff.

A’s slot was at 10.45 on Friday morning – he was a bit disappointed that only 8 or so attended his talk (he was competing with the Bretzel Bakery who were talking about how bad commercial bread is)…. but those who did attend were enthusiastic and astounded to hear just how much genetically modified stuff is allowed into the food chain.  But I will let you read A’s post on that! (it will be coming up soon).

Next up for me to attend was Susan Boyle on a history of wine in Ireland…. gosh we drank a lot of wine way back then… So now we have the ideal excuse to do some catching up!

Then it was time to listen to Suzanne Campbell discuss as she put it ‘the darker side of food’.  I have read parts of Suzannes’ book “Basketcase”, but will be going back to it after listening on Friday. Having listened to Suzanne, it does pose the question ‘how do we get the message out there’?  If a chicken is selling €2.99 – what has it been fed? what has the farmer been paid? how much does the supermarket get? Did you know that each chicken fillet in a 6 pack could have come from a different country?  There really is a dark side to food!

As happened last year, there was a ‘picnic’ lunch!  All participants were asked to bring some lunch to ‘share’.  We brought sausage rolls (as did someone else!)…. I had planned on bringing a dessert too, but ran out of energy!  I knew I didn’t need to worry that there would be plenty and there was!

I can verify those heart shaped biscuits were delicious!

Then, after lunch, it was my turn to talk.  Dee from Greenside Up and myself had been joking that we would probably not have anyone attend our sessions – we clashed with the Irish Food Bloggers Association!  I made my apologies to Caroline for not attending – she promised to keep my posted, but that their hope was that bloggers would take the lead for the direction and running of IFBA.  A also volunteered to attend the IFBA session and report back.

Huge thank you to those who did attend my session.  I hope I was able to share some of the knowledge we’ve learned over the past 2 years of using Social Media to promote our business. (And big thank you to Suzanna from Zwartbles Ireland for being the photographer) 🙂

Having talked for 45 minutes I took time out on the next session, before attending the Great Irish Food Fight which was the final session of the day!  Again, some interesting points raised about how we Irish classify our food, and treat the history and story of our food.  Thought provoking!

Overall Foodcamp is an opportunity to share your passion, maybe get some ideas going and it is a wonderful networking event.

We met up with old friends from last year, and put faces to people to whom we had become connected in the past 12 months via Twitter and Facebook worlds…. but now they have become ‘real’ people!