One of the byeproducts of my time at TerraMadre last week was the pleasure of meeting Evan Doyle, proprietor of Brooklodge.

He is one of the Slow Food people helping to organise next weekends celebration of wild food which takes place in Macreddin village in Wicklow.

Looks like a great event for anyone who enjoys their food. The lineup of food stalls and tastings is complemented by a wide variety of workshops – all free to enter once you have paid the 5 euro daily charge to get in. You can download full workshop details here – WILDFOOD WORK SHOPS 2012 FINAL DETAILS.

Booking can be done via this form – WILDFOOD WORK SHOPS PRE-REG FORM2 2012

For me interesting ones would be:

Back to the Basics A workshop where Darina Allen, Ballymaloe, will focus in depth on the traditional methods of preserving as used by our grandparents for pickling, drying and potting that gave them tastes of summery fruit in jams well after the trees were bare, cured meats and fish in the darker months, and allowed them have vitamins and minerals while nature slept.

Blackberries and beyond. Ireland has 327,258 km of common Irish grass verges and hedgerows. In this workshop, Evan Doyle, Ed Hick and Biddy white Lennon will concentrate on what is available there for free, where to look for it, and when it is best harvested, using the Wild&Slow templates to bring participants through each season.

Much about Mushrooms. Guiding through six months of annual mushroom harvesting, Bill O’Dea, informs the workshop on the Top Ten Irish edible wild mushrooms, when to look for them and most importantly…where to find them.

This is a shot from the first Wild and Slow event in 2011

The event website is here.

Keith