Honest2Goodness Newsletter 20th February 2010

Spring is definitely in the air, lots of bulbs starting to appear in gardens, so this is the best time to get fit and healthy after the winter blues. Come along to the market for great fresh food, a chat with stallholders, lots of food and wine tasting, cookery demos, meeting your friends and others in the Honest2Goodness community – what more could you ask for? Well, maybe an improvement in the weather, but… we’re not miracle workers!

Kingfisher Teas are joining us this Sat!

Kingfisher Tea 'provides the refreshing flavours of whole-leaf teas and the relaxing fragrances of flowers and herbs to your tea cup. We bring you the affordable luxury of the finest loose-leaf tea in attractive packs to enjoy yourself or give as gifts. Unique teapots, cups and strainers for optimal loose-leaf tea preparation are also on offer'. Mico Hassett will be with us on Saturday with lots of teas for you to try!

Veggies – Dublin Meath Growers remind you that in season vegetables include:

Carrots, Celeriac, Parsnips, Potatoes, sprouts, cabbage, turnip. In season fruit include Irish apples, and Spanish Oranges and lemons.

Café News:

To celebrate the availability of in-season oranges and lemons, and the arrival of Spring (!), the café is lightening up the menu with some Tunisian Orange Cake and lemon and poppy-seed muffins, alongside the excellent mini-apple pies that are proving irresistible! Soup of the day will be Cauliflour & Blue Cheese and the hot dish of the day is Thai Chicken. The Killowen yogurt compotes are now available for purchase at €1.60 each – the tasting panel approved!

Pantry:

Following customer requests, the cheese end of the pantry has got in a sample of a mild cheese called Carrigaline, made in West Cork, handmade in the traditional manner by Ann and Pat O'Farrell on their farm of Friesian cows. The cheese is semi-soft, with a delicate flavor, becoming piquant with age. For full flavour, it is best eaten at 12 weeks or older. Carrigaline may be enjoyed in sandwiches or a cheese board and is excellent for cooking. It is best served at room temperature. We will be delighted to offer you a sample on Saturday.

Wine offers and tastings this week:

Our two wines on offer this week are both from the same Italian producer Luigi Valori (read about him and the wines here).

Our Trebbiano (aromatic, dry white wine) normally retails at €14 - we are offering it with a 15% discount per single bottle (€11.90), or a 25% discount on 6 bottles

Our Montepulciano d'Abruzzo (full-bodied, smooth red wine) normally retails at €14.50 - we are offering it with a 15% discount per single bottle (€12.33) or a 25% discount on 6 bottles.

Finally, we have published a couple of new recipes to the FOOD section of the website. How to make mayonnaise is published here, and the easy to do potato wedges recipe is here
If we have forgotten to publish a recipe that we demonstrated or cooked in the kitchen, dont hesitate to ask us for it!

And, finally, finally, please forward the newsletter to other food & wine lovers. If you received the newsletter from a friend, and you would like to be on our mailing list, please email us at brid@honest2goodness.ie and we'll send you your own copy each week.

Oh, and dont forget to ask us about the hot-air balloon sculpture that is now hanging in the large market area!!!

Honest2Goodness Market Newsletter 11th Feb 2010

Welcome to this week’s news and special offers from the market!

As Sunday is Valentine's Day, we start this week's newsletter with Aine's Chocolates and their wonderful heart-shaped chocolates which anyone who visited their stall last Sat will have seen. They have some really beautiful ideas for that special person in your life, at very reasonable prices, so no excuses not to be sorted with a pressie by 4pm on Saturday - you wont be running to the local petrol station for that bedraggled bunch of chrysanthymums on Sunday morning! And you have the added bonus of being able to eat half the chocolate yourself...

Fish!

Still great fishing on the west coast, so expect more of the great produce that Cailean presented us with last Saturday. Remember, he is more than happy to prepare any fish for you - he will fillet your flat fish, tell you how to cook it (although he and I disagree on the use of lemon juice on fish!), give you advice on shellfish - he was even spotted shelling fresh prawns last Saturday, and anything else you want to ask him about!

Meat!

Jim Ryan’s Butchers are repeating their special on his great mince/stewing beef – at an amazingly good price of €5 per kilo. Jim himself is very busy with the lambing season, so his colleague Ray Doran will be manning the butcher's stall on Saturday. Ray will also have a small quantity of well-aged striploin available, so if you like your aged beef, get there early to get some.

Free-range, organic Eggs!

We ran out of eggs again last Saturday - I think the stallholders and staff are buying up lots of them before any customers make it in the door, so we hope to have a larger quantity available on Saturday. Our eggs are proving one of our most popular additions - they are organic, free-range eggs from Boyne Pastures, Stackallen, Co. Meath, which is near Slane. They are being sold through the Spud Man's Stall. Alternatively, let me know by email and I’ll get some put aside for you.

Wines on tasting and on offer!

Valentines Day Sparkling Special - All sparkling wines from our award winning producers in Spain and Italy 15% off for Saturday Only .

St Veran VV Les Perrettes, 2007, A full bodied but refreshing white wine from southern Burgundy, great with chicken or meaty seafood like Monkfish. Usual price €16.25, down to €13.81/btl or €12.19 when you buy 6.

Clos l'Hermitage 2007, a single vineyard Rhone wine with plenty of zip as the vineyard is owned by ex F1 driver Jean Alessi! A full bodied, complex and smooth wine to warm you up over the weekend, great with red meats and casseroles.

Usual price €17.50, down to €14.87/btl or €13.12 when you buy 6.

Artisan Jams on tasting:

Sarah Doran-Glavic will be at the market on Saturday for a tasting of her great jams and other produce - including lollipops made from fruit juices and natural cordials. Her produce is stocked in our pantry area under the name of 'From Mother's Kitchen' a business she started last year with her sister-in-law.

Cheese!

On tasting this week-end is Cooleeney’s raw milk cheese – cheese as it should be! We also have a great new yoghurt compote on tasting from Killowen - which somehow didnt make it onto the tasting table last Saturday.

Recipes!

Two recipes from last Saturday - our vegetable and bean soup (from a few weeks ago) and our Lamb Casserole dish. Apologies for the non-arrival of our italian meatball recipe - I am still refining the recipe! If you would prefer me to send the recipes to you as an attachment, just drop me a return email and I’ll forward them to you.

Hot food at the market:

This Saturdays hot dish of the day is our Barbequed Beef Stew (which isnt actually cooked on a BBQ, despite the title!), and we'll be trying out another Winter Vegetable Soup. All made from market produce, and available in take-away dishes for you to pop into your freezer when you get home, there for that day when you cant bear to go shopping!

We look forward to seeing you on Saturday - please feel free to forward this mail to other food and wine lovers that you know! Remember to tell anyone who hasnt visited us before that we are the second market in Dublin Industrial Estate and to follow the H2G and Honest2Goodness Green signs.

Check out our Market facilities section for local information