Karen Austin - West Cork People

Break the bar not the bank with this chocolate and olive oil cake

Karen Austin April, 2026

I’ve been checking out chocolate cakes for this month’s easter recipe and it’s led me down an interesting path. Our chocolate and hazelnut cake, which used to be so popular in our shop, first came to mind. However when my brain scanned the ingredients, I realised that the 300 grams […]

Going green

Karen Austin March, 2026

March has the potential to be the greenest month with everything gearing up to go after a long wet and grey winter. The grass, the nettles, the kale and broccoli, the leaves on the trees – they are all ready to burst into full green mode and are so welcome. […]

Spice up February

Karen Austin February, 2026

This month’s recipe comes from India, where we escaped for the month of January. India is huge, one of those countries whose size exceeds expectations – it never looks that big on a map. We have worked our way up from Kerala in the very south, which is lush and […]

A supergreen salad

Karen Austin January, 2026

The decorations are packed away and we’ve nibbled our way through the last of an enormous Christmas cake so I think we can say we are really ready to embrace the new year. The chickens have been ready since before Christmas when their inner egg radar kicked in on December […]

Turkish tales and tasty stew

Karen Austin November, 2025

At this moment we’re sitting in the airport awaiting our direct flight from Izmir to Cork. This wasn’t planned but as we wandered around some of the Greek islands we realised we were very close to Turkey, closer than the twelve-hour ferry ride back to Athens and a direct flight […]

Food & Drinks

A soup full of beans

Karen Austin October, 2025

September bought us, amongst many other things, a lot of beans. Not our first beans – we’ve been picking them since June – but more beans…and now we are harvesting beans in pods, which is super exciting. I managed to get my hands on some new varieties this year, which […]

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