Mary Sheehan Coming Home To Cook

In the Burren,  Lamb’s lettuce is growing out of the rocks. It’s one of the first edible plants that appears in the spring. Female hazelnut buds are on the bushes, primroses and daffodils are blooming, wild garlic is sprouting up. The basket willow illuminateswith a red, orange and brown glow. I had my first baby carrots and purple curly kale that had intered over from a planting last October. I will soon be  helping Annaliese with gardening. Here’s some pictures from the day I spent on her farm. The handsome lad is her son, Yarrow, who tends the goats and the cattle.

The nights are getting longer and the days are noticeably warmer here in West Clare.  The recession hovers over everything, the celtic tiger is dead and as one fine fellow exclaimed , “now things will get back to normal.”  But, normal post Celtic Tiger will never be the same as “normal” was. Now, everyone has basic services even if they don’t have jobs.  And, everyone is banking on Obama to turn things around. But, here on the windy west coast things seem quite the same. There’s still lovely traditional music in the pubs, folks are friendly and warm, gardens are being planted, kids, lambs and calves are entering the world and dotting the landscape of the Burren with their downy coats.  I spent an amazing few hours watching kids coming into the world at Annaliese’s. Every goat is pregnant with 2 kids. They are born very quickly, take a breath, mom licks them 1/2 clean(!) and they’re up on all fours nursing. Lovely! As I always do, I left there feeling so lucky to be living in this part of the world.

I’ve scheduled many cookery demos – see “demos and events” ,promoting myself as the Healthy Cook, getting press in local papers and working on getting on the radio again – see “press and media”.    and check out my website to order Coming Home To Cook.