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Sharon Shannon’s ‘Garden of Vegan’
Fancy a salad with balls? Or maybe a burger with attitude?
Well then, get along to The Garden of Vegan, the latest venture from musician and animal lover Sharon Shannon.
Determined to “remove the preciousness” that can often surround vegan cooking, Sharon has teamed up with Galway’s Good Food Truck company to set up a specialist truck that will visit festivals the length and breadth of Ireland this summer.
The Garden of Vegan menu also includes a Root Vegetable, Chickpea and Lentil Hot-pot and a Spicy Coconut Malaysian Curry, all accompanied by Spuds, Spuds and more Spuds.
Sharon, who has been vegetarian for more than a decade, finally gave up all dairy and egg produce two years ago, because she feels it’s wrong to exploit animals for human food. Becoming vegan has turned her into a more experimental cook, she says, and that’s the message she wants to spread.
“I want people to be adventurous. When you are vegan, you have to try a lot of stuff you’ve never tried before and a lot of it would be new to meat-eaters too.”
Sharon has already proved her worth on the TV series, The Restaurant – as the mystery chef, her vegan menu got three stars from the judges.
Vegan cuisine often gets labelled as boring, but Sharon loves her food and, as her success on The Restaurant shows, she has no interest in eating dishes that aren’t tasty.
Her initial quest with this new venture is a simple one – getting people who might never have eaten vegan food before to try it.
“Everyone can eat this food, whether you are a meat-eater, vegetarian or a vegan.”
And because it’s all gluten-free, it’s also suitable for coeliacs.
The idea for this show came about when Sharon was being interviewed by Anton Savage on Today FM about her success on The Restaurant.
Vinny and Yasmin McNelis, who operate The Good Food Truck service, which travels to festivals all around Ireland, were listening and heard her talk about her ambition to promote vegan food.
They contacted Sharon and her manager John Dunford to explore the possibility of establishing a food truck for festivals which would specialise in vegan meals.
Sharon would create the menus and their chef would cook them. And that’s what happened.
As John Dunford explains, “she is a musician, not a chef, so she won’t be flipping burgers at festivals anytime soon”.
But the menu is based on the food she cooks at home, including dressings and sauces that she uses to flavour meals.
Naming the dishes for the menu was great fun – initially she wanted to call the burger ‘the great big dirty burger’ purely to point out that vegans “can be just as macho as meat-eaters”.
However, given that the idea was to promote healthy food, she revised that, so now it’s ‘A burger with attitude’. With chick peas, soya beans, green lentils, sprouted seeds, toasted pumpkin seeds, beetroot, pomegranate kernels, grated carrots, beetroot and potato, topped with special salad dressings, it’s both health and tasty.
Credit for the ‘salad with balls’ title goes to American blog, Thug Kitchen, which is vegan but as far away from obsessive ‘clean eating’ as it’s possible to get.
Although she’s not precious, going vegan has brought benefits to Sharon who feels much healthier since cutting out eggs and dairy from her diet, and – bonus for everybody who wants to trim up – has lost weight from her belly.
Most of that was due to bloating, she feels, and that’s gone since she went vegan.
While she’d like everybody to have more regard for animals and their welfare, her immediate goal is to get people to sample the fare.
She has already cooked in pop-up restaurants, including Nick Munier’s Avenue in Dublin and may do more of that in future. For now, she’s constantly experimenting with new dishes when she’s at home in Galway. Not everything works, but her most recent successes have included a wild garlic and nettle pesto.
Meanwhile, The Garden of Vegan food truck has already travelled to Africa Day in the Phoenix Park where there was great demand for the food. Next up is the Challenge Galway triathlon which runs from June 24-26.
Meanwhile, for anybody who wants to try making vegan food at home, Sharon recommends visiting govegan.ie a website run by fellow-vegan Sharon Higgins, which has a ‘vegan kit’ to help people replace meat and dairy produce in their diet.
Significant state investment is required to address ‘shocking’ inequalities that leave cancer patients in the West at greater risk of succumbing to the disease.
A meeting of Regional Health Forum West heard that survival rates for breast, lung and colorectal cancers than the national average, and with the most deprived quintile of the population, the West’s residents faced poorer outcomes from a cancer diagnosis.
For breast cancer patients, the five-year survival rate was 80% in the West versus 85% nationally; for lung cancer patients it was 16.7% in the west against a 19.5% national survival rate; and in the West’s colorectal cancer patients, there was a 62.6% survival rate where the national average was 63.1%.
These startling statistics were provided in answer to a question from Ballinasloe-based Cllr Evelyn Parsons (Ind) who said it was yet another reminder that cancer treatment infrastructure in the West was in dire need of improvement.
“The situation is pretty stark. In the Western Regional Health Forum area, we have the highest incidence of deprivation and the highest health inequalities because of that – we have the highest incidences of cancer nationally because of that,” said Cllr Parsons, who is also a general practitioner.
In details provided by CEO of Saolta Health Care Group, which operates Galway’s hospitals, it was stated that a number of factors were impacting on patient outcomes.
Get the full story in this week’s Connacht Tribune, on sale in shops now, or you can download the digital edition from www.connachttribune.ie. You can also download our Connacht Tribune App from Apple’s App Store or get the Android Version from Google Play.
On the eve of completing his 150th marathon, an odyssey that has taken him across 53 countries, Loughrea’s Marathon Man has announced that he is planning to hang up his running shoes.
But not before Jarlath Fitzgerald completes another ten races, making it 160 marathons on the occasion of his 60th birthday.
“I want to draw the line in 2026. I turn 57 in October and when I reach 60 it’s the finishing line. The longer races are taking it out of me. I did 20 miles there two weeks ago and didn’t feel good. It’s getting harder,” he reveals.
“I’ve arthritis in both hips and there’s wear and tear in the knees.”
We speak as he is about to head out for a run before his shift in Supervalu Loughrea. Despite his physical complaints, he still clocks up 30 miles every second week and generally runs four days a week.
Jarlath receives injections to his left hip to keep the pain at bay while running on the road.
To give his joints a break, during the winter he runs cross country and often does a five-mile trek around Kylebrack Wood.
He is planning on running his 150th marathon in Cork on June 4, where a group of 20 made up of work colleagues, friends and running mates from Loughrea Athletics Club will join him.
Some are doing the 10k, others are doing the half marathon, but all will be there on the finishing line to cheer him on in the phenomenal achievement.
Get the full story in this week’s Connacht Tribune, on sale in shops now, or you can download the digital edition from www.connachttribune.ie. You can also download our Connacht Tribune App from Apple’s App Store or get the Android Version from Google Play.
From the Galway City Tribune – An impassioned plea for a ‘masterplan’ that would guide Galway City into the future has been made in the Dáil. Galway West TD Catherine Connolly stated this week that there needed to be an all-inclusive approach with “vision and leadership” in order to build a sustainable city.
Deputy Connolly spoke at length at the crisis surrounding traffic and housing in Galway city and said that not all of the blame could be laid at the door of the local authority.
She said that her preference would be the provision of light rail as the main form of public transport, but that this would have to be driven by the government.
“I sat on the local council for 17 years and despaired at all of the solutions going down one road, metaphorically and literally. In 2005 we put Park & Ride into the development plan, but that has not been rolled out. A 2016 transport strategy was outdated at the time and still has not been updated.
“Due to the housing crisis in the city, a task force was set up in 2019. Not a single report or analysis has been published on the cause of the crisis,” added Deputy Connolly.
She then referred to a report from the Land Development Agency (LDA) that identified lands suitable for the provision of housing. But she said that two-thirds of these had significant problems and a large portion was in Merlin Park University Hospital which, she said, would never have housing built on it.
In response, Minister Simon Harris spoke of the continuing job investment in the city and also in higher education, which is his portfolio.
But turning his attention to traffic congestion, he accepted that there were “real issues” when it came to transport, mobility and accessibility around Galway.
“We share the view that we need a Park & Ride facility and I understand there are also Bus Connects plans.
“I also suggest that the City Council reflect on her comments. I am proud to be in a Government that is providing unparalleled levels of investment to local authorities and unparalleled opportunities for local authorities to draw down,” he said.
Then Minister Harris referred to the controversial Galway City Outer Ring Road which he said was “struck down by An Bord Pleanála”, despite a lot of energy having been put into that project.
However, Deputy Connolly picked up on this and pointed out that An Bord Pleanála did not say ‘No’ to the ring road.
“The High Court said ‘No’ to the ring road because An Bord Pleanála acknowledged it failed utterly to consider climate change and our climate change obligations.
“That tells us something about An Bord Pleanála and the management that submitted such a plan.”
In the end, Minister Harris agreed that there needed to be a masterplan for Galway City.
“I suggest it is for the local authority to come up with a vision and then work with the Government to try to fund and implement that.”
Families queue up for school’s offer of free house
West has lower cancer survival rates than rest
Galway minors continue to lay waste to all opponents
Gardaí and IFA issue a joint appeal on summer road safety
Marathon Man plans to call a halt – but not before he hits 160 races
