Awards, Press, Publicity

It’s That Time of Year Again

Thanks to whoever nominated me for the Irish Blog Awards! As always, it’s wonderful to see the varied and interesting blogs out there! Best of luck to all of them. 

I’ve been nominated in two categories: Best Food and Drink, and Best Business Blog. I have asked that icecreamireland be withdrawn from the business category, since I’ve already won it twice. 

Here are the long list of nominees in the two categories, and they make good reading:

Best Food/Drink Blog – Sponsored by Bord Bia

Best Blog of a Business – Sponsored by RedCardinal.ie

Book of Sweet Things Wins Award

 I’m delighted to announce that our cookbook, The Book of Sweet Things, has won the Gourmand World Cookbook Award for best Irish dessert cookbook!

The book was garnered mostly from this blog, so thanks again to everyone for your help, comments and feedback!

Technorati Tags: , , ,

In Thornton’s Kitchen

 Yesterday evening, we went along to Thornton’s Restaurant for the press launch of a new, 6 part, foodie radio show on Newstalk that will air starting on Christmas day. Presented by two gastronomical bloggers – Kevin and the lovely Caroline, and produced by Soundsdoable, it should be great fun, as was the evening. Fingal was there from Gubeen Farmhouse, as well as Carmel from Good Things Cafe, Aoibheann from Ard Bia, Ross from Food and Wine and many others. We snacked on some great treats Kevin whipped up, as well as Fingal’s cheese and a bit of his cider. As for the ice cream, Kevin was kind enough to let us use his kitchen, and we built a few ice cream snowmen! 

Foodtalk on Newstalk radio schedule is as follows:

Program 1: “Livestock” (Christmas Day, 1.30pm)
Kevin Thornton and Caroline Hennessy hunt down some fine meats and discuss Kevin’s project to rear Irish Kobe beef.
Guests: Jacque Barry from Jacques Restaurant, Cork and Fingal Ferguson of the Gubbeen Smokehouse, Schull, West Cork

+ Program 2: “Seafood” (New Year’s Day, 4.30pm)
Kevin Thornton and Caroline Hennessy share their pleasure in eating seafood.
Guests: Tony Daly from The Lime Tree, Kenmare, and Paul Kelly, mussel farmer and goldsmith, from Kilmackillogue

+ Programme 3: “Spices” (11th Jan)
Kevin Thornton and Caroline Hennessy marvel at the power of spices.
Guests: Carmel Somers from The Good Things Café, Durrus, Co Cork and Arun Kapil of Green Saffron, Midleton, East Cork

+ Program 4: “Wild Food” (18th Jan)
Kevin Thornton and Caroline Hennessy gather up an armload of free, wild food.
Guests: Áine Maguire from Kueppersbusch and Seamus Moran of LoTide Gourmet Sea Vegetables, Westport, Co Mayo

+ Program 5: “Dairy” (25th Jan)
Kevin Thornton and Caroline Hennessy explore all things creamy.
Guests: Aoibheann McNamara, Ard Bia, Galway and Kieran Murphy from Murphy’s Ice Cream, Dingle

+ Programme 6: “Garden” (1st Feb)
Kevin Thornton and Caroline Hennessy marvel at the good things a garden has to offer, and wonders how many more of us will now start to grow our own.
Guests: Henry Stone from The Sha-Roe Bistro, Clonegal, Co Carlow and Ultan Walsh of Gort-Na-Nain Organic Farm, Nohoval, Cork, who grows the veg for (among others) Denis Cotter of Café Paradiso.

TV Trip to Dublin

Sean and I are heading to Dublin today, since we’ll be on Ireland AM on TV3 tomorrow morning (Tuesday) at around 7:30. It’s part of Christmas in Killarney publicity, and I’ll be bringing along some Aztec Hot Chocolate to warm everybody up!

Video here (although we were actually on for three segments).

South Wind Blows

For anyone wanting to listen in, I’ll be on the South Wind Blows on RTE Radio One with Philip King this evening at 8:00 talking about the food festival, the food awards, ice cream, and playing some of the music we play in our shops…

You can listen to the archive of it here.

Go Puddle Jump!

A customer just informed me that Brian O’Connell picked up on my blog post about rainy Olympics and lists my top ten rainy events in his “On the Move” travel blog round-up in Go Magazine (today’s Irish Times). It’s a sign of a busy day that I haven’t managed to open the paper yet!