My husband and I adore food. And I mean we really adore food. We grow our own, and we are obsessive cooks; going out for dinner used to be our main hobby until we had children, but we still manage, taking them with us as often as we can. We try to eat local and organic whenever possible, and whenever we travel, exploring what the locals eat is the highlight of our trip.
Now our kids are starting to experiment with food themselves, developing their own tastes and preferences. Will they learn to share their parents' passion for delicious, local, organic and seasonal food?
One way to encourage them, we decided, would be to take them on a foodie break. What is usually considered an adult holiday concept, could surely be adopted for little ones? Fun farm visits, tastings and activities would teach them a little about where food comes from.
No need to go far, we thought, when just a ferry ride away lies the south of Ireland, renowned for wonderful farm produce and seafood.
The overnight ferry took us from Swansea to Cork, where we headed straight to the city's famous English Market – home of the most fabulous food southern Ireland has to offer. We arrived as the stallholders were arranging baskets of baked soda bread, wheeling in trays of glazed pastries stacked 20 high, and pricing up piles of freshly caught fish. After selecting our breakfast from local delicacies including white pudding and spiced beef, Cork pork sausages and smoky bacon, we took off for a tour of the city on the open-topped bus, returning two hours later hungry for more.
At lunchtime the market was heaving and on the upper level people queued for a place at the popular Farmgate Cafe. We shoehorned ourselves in and surveyed the customers below. Our lunch was the best of local produce – sausages with champ, and salad with local cheeses.
Our tummies full, we headed south to picturesque Kinsale, where gastronome Keith Floyd made his home for more than a decade. This resort town is called the food capital of Ireland, and our first dinner, at Max's Wine Bar on Main Street (+353 21 477 2443) did not disappoint. The children were a little tired but toys were produced to distract them and to buy us extra time to gorge on delicately flavoured turbot, and an intensely delicious duck cassoulet. Tarte tatin was wrapped in foil for the sleepy children to take home.
Our beds for the night were at Glebe Country House, just up the river from Kinsale near Bandon. It's a wonderful Georgian B&B with huge, colourful rooms and period fireplaces. Waffles with bacon and cheese, organic free-range eggs with rosemary shortbread, and cheesy French toast all appeared for the children at breakfast.
Top of our holiday "to do" list was a fishing trip – foodie kids need to know where the things they eat come from. So we headed back to Kinsale harbour to hook up with Butch, the grey bearded skipper of the Sundance Kid, who runs fishing (and dolphin- and whale-watching) trips around the area. With the wind whistling in our ears we headed out for the Old Head of Kinsale, a rocky headland with the promise of a good catch.
None of the other three tourists on the boat batted an eyelid that their shipmates were only 19 months old (Oliver) and four-and-a-half (Amélie).
Amélie turned out to be a fantastic fishergirl, catching heaps of silvery-striped mackerel, a crab (the only one on the boat – she was so proud) and a thornback ray.
With enough fish for a meal, we made for the Blue Flag beach round the headland at Garrettstown with our haul. It was still blowing a hooly but while Oliver slept, Amélie and her dad scoured the beach for driftwood and built a fire. Wrapped in foil, into the embers went the fish. Not an hour after they'd been plucked from the water we were sitting on the white sand munching Amélie's mouth-watering catch with the juices dribbling down our chins.
The following day, we opted for the turf rather than the surf. Gubbeen is a little organic farm just outside the village of Schull in the far west of County Cork, and it had an ethos that made my heart sing. Giana, who is from Spain, and her family produce glorious nutty and buttery cheeses in their award-winning dairy, as well as salami, bacon and sausages. The pigs, chickens, wild boar and beautiful black Kerry cows are all free range and very well looked after. It doesn't promote itself as a tourist attraction, but visitors are welcomed with tea and oatcakes and can see the place at work.
Our children wandered around stroking piglets and calves, and chasing peacocks. Oliver was whisked away by the farmer to go slurry spreading on a bright red tractor. Does it get any more fantastic than that when you are a toddler? Amélie got to meet day-old chicks in the hatching area – a practical lesson in where eggs come from. We saw the smokery, stuffed with dangling smoking, and smelly, sausages, then wended our way to the vegetable patch and organic herb garden as the scent of mint, thyme and rosemary wafted around us. These are the flavours that make things like Gubbeen sun-dried tomatoes and garlic sausage so delicious.
Then it was on to Bantry, near the border with Kerry, then north through the Killarney national park and west along the coast to the Dingle peninsula.
One of Dingle village's best food experiences is Murphys Ice Cream, with its small and unassuming shop on the high street. We were greeted with a smile and a free spoonful from co-owner Sean Murphy, who sat us down for a tasting, talked us through the production process and reminded the children that the milk comes from the gentle Kerry cows we'd just met. We tasted a number of varieties: fresh mint, Guinness and plump rum-soaked raisin. Oliver happily tucked into a small bowl of creamy sea salt flavour, made with sea water.
My kids have pretty good palates for a couple of under-fives. They've eaten falafel and calamari in Dahab market in Egypt, and Amélie's first solid food was pecorino cheese in Tuscany. But nowhere has beaten the warm family welcome and the hands-on food education we had in southern Ireland. They now know all about fish being alive and swimming in the sea one moment and dead and ready to eat the next; they know ice-cream comes from cows living in a green field and not from a plastic tub in Tesco; and they know chips don't have to come with every meal.
Fastnet (0844 576 8831) runs ferries from Swansea to Cork from £280 return for a car and four passengers. Butch Roberts at Angling Kinsale (+353 21 477 8054) runs half-day fishing trips for €300 for the boat, plus €10pp equipment hire.
Glebe Country House (+353 21 477 8294) has doubles from €90 B&B. The Maritime Hotel (+353 27 54700) in Bantry has family rooms from €160 B&B. The Dingle Skellig Hotel (+353 66 915 0200) has doubles from €120. More information from discoverireland.com
