The farmer and his wife

IT was a Wednesday night and we were sitting round the stove trying to get warm. It had been a cold day, the window blowing from Siberia. “John, let’s have someone in on Saturday night.” I had to smil

SHORTLY after we were married, a farmer’s wife from near Lanark rang Anne and asked if I was going to the sheep sales there that year. I was, so she persuaded Anne to come with me and stay the night w

IT was about nine o’clock on a Friday night when we heard a vehicle pull up in the yard. You couldn’t miss it. I think it must have had a hole in its exhaust! Jip let the world know we had visitors. T

Betty Middleton had only moved in two weeks earlier, but already she was starting to annoy me with her frequent knocks at my back door. “Would you like a slice of my lemon drizzle? It’s home-made!” No

D inah was not a Christmas cook. Her ...

To truly understand Irish food you need to cook with what’s around you in the hedgerows, gardens, fields and ocean. Irish cooking is rooted in simplicity, shaped by the land and sea, and passed down t