April 1st may be April Fool's Day, but in the elegant surrounds of the Lough Rynn Castle in Lovely Leitrim, we turned it into April Food Day with the cooking talents of Joe Shannon and Ethna 'The Burlesque Chef' Reynolds. Both chefs turned out lovely dishes, including a veggie cake, soup, pork stir fry, stuffed mushrooms and pasta. Ethna even demonstrated how to turn soggy vegetables into pickled wonders.Joe gave us some simple tips to avoid waste...using boiled carrot water as a base for soup stock, using every bit of an orange to create a lovely syrup and how to store a vanilla pod in sugar to be reused up to five times when infusing custard with flavour. The resulting vanilla infused sugar is also delicious in coffee!Ethna is passionate about her food, taking cookbooks into bed with her at night for nighttime reading. She explained that soft apples, plums, pears and other fruit should not be thrown out, but used to make stewed fruit for eating with yogurt, porridge and used to make a quick and delicious crumble.

We'd like to thank Leitrim County Council for hosting this event and for the circa 150 people who attended. We hope this event will inspire you to combat food waste at home, at school, at work and in the community.You can download Joe's recipes here and Ethna's recipes here.