This great recipe comes from Hazel McFadden, cookery tutor at The Kitchen in the Castle in Howth. A couple of years ago, Hazel taught me on a month-long professional cookery course, and she is a brilliant teacher - patient, precise, caring and fantastic at cooking.
Hazel and her husband, chef Neil McFadden, are the creative brains [...]

Breakfast bars are handy when you are in a rush and you need a quick burst of energy without caving into another coffee. Rather than going out and buying them, why not bake your own. They are so simple to make, the basic ingredients are really cheap and you can add whatever you fancy and [...]

In the last of our series on feeding the family, Garth McColgan, resident chef at Aldi and the brains behind the Food Active summer camp, has a great family recipe. And check out his top five tips for establishing good eating habits in the toddler years.
Steamed Salmon with Sweet Potato Purée
by Garth McColgan
Serves 4 (a [...]

We’re joined again today by Garth McColgan - Aldi’s resident chef and the brains behind the Food Active summer camp - with his top tips for feeding kids and winning over funny eaters.

Recipe:    Gorgeous Green Puree
Serves 6    (Baby’s First Food)
Ingredients
40g Onion, peeled and chopped
15g Butter
200g Potatoes, peeled and chopped
375ml of Water and half a Vegetable [...]

My sister Barbara was pondering what foods to give her four-month-old son Dylan, and how best to wean him onto solids, so she asked me for some advice. But what do I know? Thankfully, our regular guest columnist Garth McColgan - he of Aldi and Food Active fame - came to the rescue. All week, [...]

Whether you’re in Dublin, Limerick, Galway, or Wexford, it can be hard to find child-friendly eateries. Today, we’ve joined by Jill Holtz of mykidstime.ie with this very handy guide.
www.mykidstime.ie is a free resource for families. With a full range of listings for activities, classes and clubs for children of all ages, as well as information [...]

If your kids are fed up with ham sandwiches, Aldi’s resident chef, Garth McColgan of Food Active, has some handy tips and tricks for a healthy school lunchbox, exclusively for CheapEats. They’re not bad as snacks for adults either!
By Garth McColgan
1. Banana and Nutella Sandwich
There is an amount of refined sugar in Nutella, but [...]

An aunt of mine only drinks Coke. One of my 10 billion nephews refuses to drink anything but “juice”, which is actually just a sugary diluted drink like Kia-Ora, Ribena or Robinson’s.
Like all the tastiest stuff, these are little more than sugar-delivery vehicles.  Loaded, overflowing, and fizzing with tooth-melting, waist-expanding, heart-killing sugar. But how many [...]

Jon Ronson, one of my favourite journalists, wrote a short piece for the Guardian Word of Mouth Blog recently about his young son being turned away from a half-empty restaurant that had a No Children policy.  The piece is ranty in a kind of tongue-in-cheek way, and it caused the most almighty scrap in the [...]

My wonderful, almost eight-year-old little nephew Jacob is the fussiest eater I’ve ever met. Or at least he was, until a few weeks ago, when his preferred diet consisted almost of sweets, potato waffles, spaghetti, sausages, and cleverly mashed up root vegetables.
His parents tried everything but to no avail. Last year, I took him to [...]