Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Savour Kilkenny : Foodcamp

A few months ago, I heard about Savour Kilkenny which was happening over the October Bank Holiday weekend - I had a little chat with The Hubs who gave it the green light, so a hotel was booked and preparations began for a weekend of fun and food at the festival.  As time passed, emails and tweets began pouring in about various activities happening over the weekend so our first port of call was Foodcamp in the Newpark Hotel.  The rules were simple - show up, listen, bring food for the picnic & be prepared to enjoy yourself!

We were at talks by Helen from Knockdrinna Cheese & Clare from the Dungarvan Brewing Company discussing beer and cheese pairings.  The Hubs was a very happy man at this talk, yes indeedy.  I had to drag him out of the room afterwards.  Next up was a talk by Suzanne Campbell called "What's Ireland Eating".  This definitely made me think as Suzanne told us about US farming standards (or lack thereof in some cases) and made me feel rather guilty about what we had eaten on holiday.

Clare from the Dungarvan Brewing Company & Suzanne Campbell in full flow

The communal picnic was just stunning - so many people brought so much food and we ate and ate and ate.  At this point, I'll be a lady and gloss over the fact that Ken from Any Given Food was trying to pass off my Toffee Apple Cake as his own.  But he should sleep with one eye open for the foreseeable future...

That's MY cake there in the middle, not Ken's... 


A beautiful picnic lunch and the once pristine tables which held the food

After a very long lunch, we stumbled back into the Walnut Suite for the highlight of the day - Kristin & Caroline of the Irish Food Bloggers Association talking about the IFBA's 1st year.  Caroline was joined by the newest member of the team, little Miss Maya who was beautifully behaved, despite Keith Bohanna calling us all weirdos! Plenty of suggestions were made which will keep the ladies occupied for quite some time.

He said what????

Our final discussion of the day was The Masterchef Experience with Christine O'Sullivan, Clare Anne O'Keeffe and Conal Markey, eater of my sausage rolls, who entertained us with beautifully discreet tales of their time on the show.  We discovered that Richard (aka The Ginger Whinger) probably did cry the most during the show as he's a big old softie and that Dylan had a very soft spot for Christine!

Conal, Clare Anne & Christine in action

We had to depart before Food Fight but according to The Daily Spud, it was highly entertaining with very vocal opinions on both sides...  Aoife also paid far more attention to the actual topics discussed so her report is full of detail which I missed (probably because I was Tweeting far too much for my own good as per usual).

So, were you there?  If so, what did you think??

4 comments:

  1. It's a shame about that Ken fellow :-)

    Thanks for coming along Aoife. Even if you are one of us weirdos....

    Keith

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  2. Aoife, I CANNOT believe I missed out on that toffee apple cake! HOLY!!!!!!

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  3. Imen - it's the easiest cake ever (and you have ready access to many apples!!!)

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  4. It was lovely to meet you Aoife - and even better to meet the Toffee Apple Cake! Thanks for those tickets. Finished the weekend in Callan on Sun checking out the outdoor pizza oven. So pizzas at mine next Spring!

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