Organico Bantry

A new Irish Slow Food Convivium has been set up in Bantry, West Cork. The committee is made up of Anne O’Brien, from O’Connor’s Seafood restaurant, Eileen O’Shea, from The West Lodge Hotel, Val Manning from Manning’s Emporium Ballylickey, Cathleen Carter from Bantry House, Hannah Dare from Organico Bantry and Letty Baker, former Mayor and Convivium Leader.

The first event planned for the Bantry Bay Convivium is being held here in Organico Cafe on Sunday the 20th of April. The theme is a Spring Tea Party and we are delighted to have Myrtle Allen, the Eurotocque Chair, and Giana Ferguson from Gubeen to assist us to launch Slow Food in Bantry. Artist Martha Cashman (currently showing in Organico Cafe) will also talk about her work.

Organico Cafe will serve a menu crammed with delicious tea-time treats (we’re currently getting very excited aboutclotted cream…mmm…) and, of course, organic fair trade tea!

Tickets are priced at €10 and will very shortly be availabel from Organico, from O’Connor’s, from the West Lodge and from Val’s in Ballylickey.

Membership forms will be available from these places also, and on the Sunday afternoon we will be delighted to invite new members to join us in the Bantry Bay Convivium.

Our mission in Organico is quite simple – to supply quality organic food at an affordable price. Organico Bakery is part of what makes us proud to be in business – we bake with stoneground organic flour which makes our bread healthy and nutritious. We also bake extensively with spelt – our customers tell us that before they found our spelt bread they couldn’t eat bread without their digestion suffering. When we found that so many people were more healthy eating spelt, we started making all our cakes, brownies and cookies from spelt, as well as our pasties, pizza bases and scones.

We make 4 spelt yeast loaves – white and brown, and seedy white and seedy brown; 2 Californian Sourdough – white and brown; and our ‘Health Bread’ which is pure wholemeal spelt sourdough packed with seeds and spirulina. The Health Bread keeps for a week and is hugely popular with people who like nutty tasting nutritious bread.
To keep the cost of our breads affordable (while still paying our devoted baking team a reasonable wage) we try to keep the wastage down, so we nearly always sell out early in the day. If we don’t we sell the ‘next day’ bread at 20% off. even though it is still perfectly fresh compared to the ‘fresh’ old breads they sell in the supermarkets!

Our bread is mixed totally by hand, and we let it rise for much longer than most modern bakerys which gives a far superior texture and aids digestion. Our Health Bread takes 5 hours to prove! If kept airtight, our breads have great lasting power – at least 3 days.

We often take orders to fill people’s freezers if you don’t live in the area but would like to eat our bread regularly. Please call us on (027) 51391 to place and order or to enquire.

The irish Basket Makers Association is presenting a unique opportunity of free workshops and demonstrations of a range of traditional skills in Future Forests in West Cork, this Saturday.

Martin & Yvonne Flynn, local organic farmers and basket makers, are organising this Traditional Skills day at Future Forests in Kealkil on Saturday the 19th of May (2-6pm). The day is being presented by the Irish Basket Makers Association and will also feature demonstrations/workshops of thatching, coppersmithing, woodcarving, chairseating, pole-laithing, woodturning, garden structures, blacksmithing as well as a kids corner and an organic cafe (we are supplying some of the food from Organico Bakery). Admission is free, as most of these craftspeople are trying to raise their profile and share their knowledge. There will also be baskets for sale, like the one pictured here (we have baskets like this in Organico Shop – our customers love using them to shop with) as well as plants and trees and garden sculpture. From 9pm that night there will be caile agus craic with Johnny Coakley, Noel Burke and friends.

Future Forests is well signposted from Kealkil village and is 15 mins from Bantry, and is well worth a visit all on its own if you have never been there!

Organico Shop, Glengarriff Rd., Bantry, Co. Cork, Ireland. Phone +353 (0)27 51391

In Organico Bantry more and more people are discovering our spelt breads, cakes and scones. the most recent addition to our range is a variety of savoury scones made with spelt flour. These are delicious with soup or with salad, and can be made in miniture for a party.
We follow a normal scone receipe but leave out the sugar. Instead we use a little salt, and add either chopped black olives and thyme, red onion and cheddar or corriander seeds, or onion and a little green chilli. It’s hard to give amounts because in some cases it depends on the saltiness (with olives say) or the strength of the chilli flavour you want to achieve, but in general you want to err on the side of caution as often these savoury scones are made to be eaten along side another dish and you don’t want their flavour to be too dominant.

Other favourites include fetta and sweet chilli and black pepper and tomato. Watch out for more receipes over the next months!

Organic food is set to become one of the beggest food trends in Europe in this century, according to an article published in the Sunday Business Post (September 2005 By Suzanne Mitchell). She points out that Organic Baby Food now accounts for almost half of all baby food bought worldwide ( a figure which does not reflect how many parents feed their babies organically because many parents use organic ingredients to make their own babyfood). Furthermore, Mitchell points out that in Itlay local authorities are oblidged to include organic and quality products on their school menus. In the Uk over the last year many schools are trying to use organic suppliers in an attempt to clean up their image after Jaime Oliver lambasted them in his TV programme.

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In Ireland, the organic sector is growing by 10% per year (Mitchell got these stats a year ago – I think it has sped up since then.) Apparently this represent only 1% of the entire Irish food industry – worth an estimated 38 million in 2003. However if we follow European treads then it will be worth 4 times that by the end of this year.

Mitchell’s article is not entirely complimentary to the ‘organic philosophy’. She quotes many sources that question whether organic agriculture is better than conventional agriculture, and whether the resulting foods are better for consumers. She quotes the British Food Commission (2000) as saying:

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”Hundreds of organic products are coming on to the market, including highly processed jelly sweets, sugar-laden organic cereals, organic chicken burgers and even organic cigarettes.”

In Organico, we clearly do buy into the Organic Philosophy; but we also welcome articles of this sort that encourage consumers to question what they are being fed. Unfortunately many organic products are coming onto the market now that are just as harmful to health, if not to the environment, than non-organic foods. We still have to read labels and choose brands that w believe in, not just brands that shout the loudest through their adverts.

When buying for a Wholefood Shop you carry a weight of responsibility in terms of what you choose to stock, as many customers believe that if a product is on a Wholefood Shop shelf it is going to be beneficial for their health. Also, many of us are in this business because we want to sell positive products, so naturally we select the products we sell for their organic credentials – not just their packaging!

In Organico Cafe yesterday a customer commented on her roasted aubergine and chickpea curry saying that it smelt and tasted amazing. ‘I know why’ she said ‘it’s because it is un-polluted food’.

As I carried on serving lunch I reflected on her comment. I think it is an excellent way to describe our food. We are not trying to serve Cordon Bleu. What we are trying to do is serve tasty, nutritious, clean ‘un-polluted’ food.

Today, our menu contains the following:

Organic Lentil and Pumpkin Stew served with Spelt Bread

Roasted Organic Aubergine and Chickpea Curry served with Organic Brown Rice

Spelt Pizza with sundried tomatoes and Fetta served with 2 Salads

Lentil and Seed Loaf served with Fresh Tomato Sauce, Rice and 1 Salad

Shepherd’s Pie (topped with Organic local potatoes and a red lentil and vegetable base) Served with 2 Salads

Fetta Cheese Salad with either Organic Bulgar Wheat or Quinoa, Organic Tomatoes, Cucumber and Lettuce

Cheese sandwich: Local Gubbeen Cheese or Dubliner

Salad Selections: Wild rice, Quinoa, Bulgar, red Cabbage and Pumpkin Seeds, Beetroot and yoghurt, Potato, Thai Noodles (all made with organic vegetables, sprouts and seeds).

A selection of cakes and cookies from our Bakery, all made with Organic Spelt Flour and served with organic cream.

A selection of Fair Trade Organic Coffees and Teas.

Come over for Lunch sometime – and be sure to let us know what you think!

Organico Bakery produces one of the biggest ranges of Spelt breads, cakes and scones in West Cork, possibly in Ireland. We have been baking with spelt for nearly 5 years, and we now make 4 different kinds of bread (white & brown yeast; white & brown sourdough; white & brown soda & french sticks, which are a mix of regular yeasted spelt dough with some sourdough mix thrown in for added texture & taste). We also make spelt scones, spelt chocolate chip cookies, spelt oat & raisin cookies, spelt chocolate fudge cake, spelt ginger cake, spelt lemon drizzle cake, spelt Christmas fruit cake, spelt banana cake, spelt Tarte Tartin, spelt chocolate tart & spelt pasties.

We have a regular bread stall in Bantry Market from April through to December, and from the stall we sell our breads and cakes as well as Spelt Pizza, Spelt Focaccias with all kinds of yummy toppings.
The flour we have found to be the best for the cakes and breads is Hildegard Health Organic Spelt Flour, which we also sell for home baking in our healthfood shop. We also sell Hildegard pastas, as well as the excellent Biona Spelt Pastas and Finestra de la Cielo cookies and crackers.

Drop in and enjoy! More receipes and tips for cooking and baking with spelt to follow.

In Organico Cafe we offer a wide selection for people who are coeliac or are trying to avoid Gluten, dairy, wheat, sugar, salt or saturated fats. Our aims are simple: to provide healthy, tasty and interesting food for everyone. We specialise in vegetarian foods because we believe that they are healthier and we are so enjoying cooking with vegetables, sprouts, beans, pulses and cheeses that we are not thinking of changing at this time, though we will keep you posted! Our customers are not all vegetarians but they all seem to love our food, so we must be doing something right!

All our soups are gluten free, dairy free and wheat free. We make our own stocks so we can be sure of this. Our curries and chilies are the same. We make all our own burgers, falafals and sausages, so we can tell you exactly what is in all of them. We use a lot of unusual grains such as Quinoa which is hugely popular as a salad and is also great in chillies. Our salads are all made fresh and on the premesis and with the exception of obvious ones like Bulgar wheat salad or couscous salad are gluten free.

We also offer a delicious gluten free cake made with apples, rice and millet flours, almonds and cinnamon, which is popular with coeliacs and non coeliacs too.
We can also make breads and cakes to order – we have a great receipe for GF chocolate cake and also for chocolate brownies.

In our shop we offer loads of GF pastas, crackers, bars, chocolate, sauces, and cooking ingredients.

More on this topic to follow.

For the best vegetarian lunch in West Cork, visit Organico Cafe in Bantry. We serve a full menu of Organic Vegetarian food all year round – soups and sandwhiches; salads plates and stews; curries and pasties. We also serve delicious organic Fair Trade coffee, cakes, scones and snacks from our bakery next door.

Organico Cafe is part of a family run business based in Bantry, West Cork, the home of Ireland’s gourmet food movement. West Cork is known for its cheeses, seafood, cured fish and meats, so we decided to complement all the interesting meat and fish restaurants by opening an exceptional organic vegetarian cafe for both locals and tourists who feel like a change. We already had a thriving healthfood shop and bakery, and a cafe seemed a logical next step.

Organico Cafe has been a resounding success. Initially trade was slow, which was a blessing as we were only finding our feet. But now, well into our 2nd year, we have made a name for ourselves in West Cork for delicious food which suits both vegetarians and also non-vegetarians who are open to trying something new. We are not completely vegetarian ourselves, which enables us to put together a menu which appeals to pretty much everyone – even some picky Italian students who were visiting the area found the Falafal Sandwhich to their taste!

Although our first focus in on the food, the Cafe is a great meeting place for people interested in living well in West Cork. We host meeting of West Cork Environmental Forum; of West Cork Homeopathy discussion groups, fundraiser evenings and regular Exhibitions of local Artists work. We also have internet available.

In Organico Bakery we bake fresh bread every day using only the best organic flour, water, yeast and sea salt – and lots of TLC! Our bakery specialises in hand made organic produce.

Our bakers, Sean and Sue, have become experts in baking wholemeal spelt, wheat, rye, granery and unbleached white breads and also a range of delicious cakes, cookies, scones, baps, pizzas and muffins. All the flours used organic flour, the water is filtered, the eggs are free range and local, the oil is extra virgin.

Our range includes:

Breads
Wholemeal Spelt
White Spelt
White Spelt with seeds and herbs
Wholemeal Spelt with seeds and herbs
Sourdough Spelt
Wholemeal Wheat
Wholemeal with seeds and herbs
Unbleached White
Sourdough Rye
Ballymaloe Rich Soda
Rachel’s Fruit Soda (more like a cake than a bread – delicious for breakfast!)
Cakes & Cookies
Spelt scones
Wheat scones
Spelt Date Slice
Spelt Choc Chip Cookies
Spelt Oat and Raisin Cookies
Spelt Chocolate Brownies
Spelt Ginger Cake
Spelt Banana cake
Apple and Cinnamon Cake (made with rice flour)
Spelt Chocolate Cake

We also take special orders if a particular receipe is required – to find out which days this service is available call (027) 51391