What's new?.....

We've gained a couple of new stockists over the last few weeks - Rooney's SuperValu in Killybegs and the Green Man in Dunfanaghy. So now I'm delighted to say we are in all SuperValu stores in the county of Donegal! I will be in the Killybegs store on Tuesday 4th December from about 4.00pm to do a tasting, alongside Kevin Dundon who will be demonstrating his culinary skills. The Green Man, Dunfanaghy is a wonderful store, a foodie's haven filled with beautiful products including ours now! Neil and Eileen have a great place there and I'm glad we can be part of it.

Simple Tuna Pasta

This has to be the simplest, quickest way to make a delicious tuna pasta dish for a weekday meal. Take Anna's Natural Creamy Wine sauce 320g tub and warm in a pan. The sauce is ready to eat and cooked by hand in our Tullyarvan Mill kitchen so that you can save  cooking time and always be sure of fresh quality food.
Take a tin of tuna, drain off the brine or oil, and add to the sauce. Heat this thoroughly while your favourite pasta is cooking. If you have prefer to be gluten -free make sure to buy good pasta as recommended by the Coeliac Society listing. You can be confident that Anna's Natural Sauces are all gluten-free,whichever one of the range you choose.
When your pasta is cooked, combine with the sauce and tuna mix and serve immediately - so easy and so tasty!

Meeting Maria

Recently I met up with Maria Moynihan, a journalist with the new Irish Country magazine of the Farmers Journal. It was an interesting experience for me - maybe more like pulling teeth for poor Maria! She was interested to know how and why I started my business, perhaps highlighting points with interesting anecdotes and personal insights. I struggled to think back past the last  three or four weeks! When you are so close to a project it is very hard to take that step back and see how far you have come and similarly, when you are always looking forward to visualise where you want to be it is quite grounding to place yourself exactly in the present! I wait with bated breath to see how Maria translates my gabbled chat to the printed word!

Irish Country Living June edition

Today was so exciting! I left the house so early that I missed my local newsagents where my copy of Irish Country Living has been on order, so I called in to Buncrana and bought another copy. It looks fantastic and is full of really interesting articles - Catherine Fulvio sounds like my kind of woman who relaxes with a good book and good chocolate!

Maria Moynihan is one of the magazine's editorial team who rang me a couple of months ago when she was planning this issue. She had noticed the great pictures on my blog taken by Mari McCallion of LetsPose Photography and styled by Brenda Tierney Joyce of RubyRose Creative. Maria asked me to contribute to the June issue with some summer food memories, which I was delighted to do of course. I hope you will take a look at the magazine yourself as I describe a lovely recipe for Thai Crab Cakes, which is a delicious summer supper dish but it was inspired by the beautiful fresh crab that is caught off the coast here in Inishowen.

Spreading Wings

Since the move to Tullyarvan Mill, the extra workspace and storage space has encouraged me to start talks with distributors and spread my delivery wings into Northern Ireland. Hopefully it won't be too long before I can report new stockists - yes if I can fix it I will get product down to Treanor Meats in Omagh! Anne Treanor is keen to stock fresh gluten free sauces for her customers and I'm sure she's not the only one. Be assured I am on it!

Delicious fish at Easter

Many stores will have special offers on this weekend and I happen to know that Canny and Doherty's Supervalu in Carndonagh is running a special promotion on fish this Easter  so if you're in the area hurry along while stocks last! Try making a really easy Fish Pie using my Creamy White Wine sauce, it's so quick to make and the family will love it. Buy the freshest fish you can find (double check that there are no bones) and just place it in a shallow casserole dish, cover with sauce and top with mashed potato and grated cheese on top. Place in the oven at about 190 degrees C for 25-30 minutes and serve.

Low Calorie

Good news if you're watching the calories!
Way back the end of last year I was talking about how healthy my sauces are, particularly the Rogan Josh and Spicy Tomato varieties. So I have recently completed the nutritional analysis for these two and  I can confirm that they both are really low in calories and fat.

Spicy Tomato and Olive sauce :
contains a total of 118 calories per 320g tub, of which calories from fat are 45
total fat content per tub is 6g
total carbohydrate content per tub is 16g, of which 3g is dietary fibre and 10g is sugars

Rogan Josh sauce:
contains a total of 168 calories per 480g tub, of which calories from fat are 53
total fat content per tub is 5g
total carbohydrate content per tub is 29, of which 10g is  dietary fibre and 14g is sugars

I will complete the breakdown for all the other sauces too but obviously as they contain some Donegal Creameries fresh cream, and a little Donegal Rapeseed Oil, the calorie count is going to be a bit higher! But I still hold with the idea that fresh, natural food is best for you even if it is carrying some calories and fat - variety is the spice of life.