Category Archives: Great brands and producers

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September 23, 2010

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Events, Great brands and producers

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Waterford Harvest Festival – Ireland (4)

Flahavans Oats


This is one of the bigger businesses to be featured here – and also one of the oldest. The 6th generation of the Flahavan family run this business and they produce a range of products derived from Irish Oats.

Sowan’s Organic


From this 1st generation business come a range of organic bread, gluten free bread and then cake mixes. I have tried the bread mixes and made a tasty loaf!

keith

Earlier posts in this series:

http://biabeag.posterous.com/waterford-harvest-festival-ireland-3

 http://biabeag.posterous.com/waterford-harvest-festival-ireland-2 

http://biabeag.posterous.com/waterford-harvest-festival-ireland

 

 

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September 22, 2010

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Great brands and producers

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New York Natural Kale Chips


Extact: The Rorschach allure of the dark, leafy shapes have you admiring the crisp kale chips before you nibble.  Amy Hamberry and Joe Orr make them by dehydrating kale in their Brooklyn plant, where some magic makes than taste fried. They come in three flavors: spicy miso, vegan cheese and..Bombay curry…

New York Naturals Kale Chips are sold at Columbus Natural Foods, Garden of Eden stores, Foragers in Dumbo, Brooklyn….

The full articles here, they look really tasty.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/22/dining/22kale.html?_r=1

Keith
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September 20, 2010

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Great brands and producers, Packaging

Nudo Extra Virgin Olive Oil, Italy


The guys who are behind this have had one of my favourite websites for a couple of years in terms of the simple yet powerful language they use on it – started as an Adopt An Olive Tree business model!

Their design approach on the site and products is gorgeous – a great example of how to communicate the passion and core values of an artisan food brand.

I have never tasted the olive oils from the farm but would sure love to. You can purchase them from their site or if you are in the US from the Cube Marketplace as well.

keith

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September 20, 2010

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Waterford Harvest Festival – Ireland (3)

Goatsbridge Trout Farm


Mags Kirwan and her husband Ger run Goatsbridge Premium Irish Trout in Kilkenny, Ireland and they are currently building out an extension to their facility which Mags is keeping a photo diary of via her twitter account – http://twitter.com/goatsbridge

They are dedicated to good food and passionate advocates of anything and everything which supports that. That focus helped to win Mags the title of Female Entrepreneur of the Year last Friday in Waterford.

Cramers Grove Ice Cream


A number of the businesses featured in this series were started by farmers who needed to diversify and have done so by developing strong packaged food brands.

Nigel and Carol Harper produce ice cream and sorbets in batches from their family dairy darm and they have flavours such as Pina Colada, Rum & Raisin and Tiramis!

keith

Earlier posts in this series:

 http://biabeag.posterous.com/waterford-harvest-festival-ireland-2 

http://biabeag.posterous.com/waterford-harvest-festival-ireland

 

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September 14, 2010

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Events, Great brands and producers

Waterford Harvest Festival – Ireland (2)

Oldtown Hill Bakehouse


Chocolate is nice but bread is fundamental and a country without a network of local bakers is missing something. Because Ireland has stopped training craft bakers Oldtown is staffed with bakers from countries such as Poland.

Oldtown (Joy Moore, above with her daughter and her husband James) was started in 1999 and has developed a large range of breads which are sold within 75 miles of the bakery. A very recent addition is Dolly’s donuts (yummy):


Check out this brief TV clip of them. They do not have a website so cannot point you at one 😦

http://www.youtube.com/v/VZbTwapiTHs&hl=en&fs=1&hd=1

O’Donnells Crisps

This is a more recent product – 2010 in fact.

2 flavours -Mount Callan Cheese & Red Onion and Irish Cider Vinegar & Sea Salt (tangy and tasty). Cheese from Co Clare and Cider Vinegar using apples from Co Tipperary (where O’Donnells are based). This is how food should be produced.

Their website is here: http://www.odonnellscrisps.com/

UPDATE – there is now a listing for O’Donnell Crisps on the Irish Food Base: http://irishfoodbase.com/odonnell-crisps/

keith

My previous post from the Harvest Festival is here. The main website for the festival is here.

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September 13, 2010

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Great brands and producers

Artisan at work: Rogue Chocolatier

Rogue Chocolatier

One man bean-to-bar chocolate making in Minneapolis

At a mere 24-years-old, Colin Gasko is fervently bringing the fine art of bean-to-bar chocolate making to the Midwest. Over the past few years, the Minneapolis-based Rogue Chocolatier has experimented with techniques….

Gasko sources his own cocoa and oversees the entire three-day-long production process…..

Gasko offers four different flavors of chocolate created from beans around the world, as well as the occasional limited edition…..

Read on Cool Hunting

Nothing to add to this, that would be amazing chocolate.

Keith

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September 12, 2010

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Great brands and producers

Ummera, Ireland


One of the minor complications of being a vegan trapped in a foodie body is that I will never get to taste the vast majority of foods I blog about (or in some case the foods of clients I work with). Tough, others enjoy the taste and I enjoy the passion and zest for quality of product, service and brand.

Ummera are Smokers in Cork and they pulled a 3 star Gold Award at the Great Taste awards in the UK in July. That is not easily done and a great compliment to them.

Check out their site – where they also share the frustrations of small food producers being hampered by legislation.

keith

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September 12, 2010

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Events, Great brands and producers

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Waterford Harvest Festival – Ireland

I spent a couple of hours with my family at the Amazing Grazing event today – part of a 9 day food festival held in the city of Waterford.

While time was spent eating and sampling I also chatted to a number of the food entrepreneurs who were there – some known to me and some new. I will feature them in a number of posts over the next week or so in the order I found them on the day!

The post started with a general shot of the crowd and day – they estimated that up to 40,000 people would turn up to visit over 100 food stands.

Paddy’s O’Granola


Patrick O’Connell does one product and does it well – a crunchy breakfast cereal which was kick started while he was still a student. The kids loved the taste of it. Read more on the Good Food Ireland site about him.

Knockdrinna Farmhouse Cheese


Helen Finnegan started this cheese business in 2004 and has grown it by a combination of internal product development and also taking over the production of another local cheese product in 2008. Read more on her site here.

keith

 

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September 11, 2010

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Great brands and producers

Cool Hunting: Nature’s Catch Smoked Salmon Jerky

Nature’s Catch Smoked Salmon Jerky

The classic road-trip snack gets a healthy, sustainable update

Nature’s Catch serves up a nutritiously tasty substitute with their Smoked Salmon Jerky….Using only wild Alaskan salmon, the Blaine, Washington-based company keeps sustainability in mind—the Environmental Defense Fund names salmon as one of the best eco-friendly fish to eat—when creating their thinly sliced jerky. 

Drawing on the well-managed population of salmon inhabiting the Pacific Northwest, the snack is rich in heart-healthy omega-3 fats, as well as vitamins D, B6 and B12.

Read on Cool Hunting

There are some great salmon/fish products out of Ireland as well and I will post about them here. The development of “value added” products and brands for marine based resources helps to create sustainable businesses and therefore helps to manage natural resources.

Keith

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September 11, 2010

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Great brands and producers, Media Watch

Cool Hunting: Alter Eco, global Fairtrade food brand

Alter Eco

Quinoa chocolate bars, purple jasmine rice and more from a powerhouse fair trade brand

Though today the fair trade food brand Alter Eco works with 25 cooperatives across 19 countries, they began in 1999 as a small shop in Paris carrying mostly furniture…. One of the leading members of the Fair Trade Initiative, their hands-on approach has led to major impacts in improving the food cycle…

Products range from bags of hearty grains like jasmine rice and quinoa to chocolate bars filled with sugary mint or crystallized orange peels…..

Each of Alter Eco’s 56 fair trade, USDA organic products sell on their site at reasonable prices…..For in-store purchase, check out the webstite’s retail locator, which lists carriers all across the U.S. and in parts of Canada.

Read on Cool Hunting

Keith