2013 Press Releases
Food for thought
UCC food historian, Regina Sexton, will appear in two TV productions on RTÉ One and TV3 over the next few weeks.
As food history and food studies become more attractive to the general public, the media attention given to food heritage has increased accordingly. TV3 is currently running a series on the Irish Big House with the focus on the life and work of the house and kitchen servants. Regina worked as the series food/culinary consultant in recreating dishes from the mid18th century through to the early 20th century. The Big House runs on Monday evenings at 9pm on TV3.
Another series which looks, in part, at the emergence and evolution of plant and animal foods in Ireland, is Secrets of the Irish Landscape which begins on RTÉ One this Sunday (5 May) at 6.30pm. The three part series is presented by television presenter Derek Mooney and tells the history of how the Irish landscape came to be, using the very latest scientific research. It features some of Ireland’s leading minds who present the story of Ireland’s natural history in an engaging way. The series starts at the end of the last Ice Age and covers the key turning points of our natural history right up until the present day.
Regina will look at Ireland’s plant foods before the introduction of the potato and recreate the common staple of the later medieval period, colewort pottage.
The programmes also celebrate the life of botanist Robert Lloyd Praeger, as Derek follows in the footsteps of Ireland’s greatest naturalist and author of the iconic book The Way That I Went. This lavish and epic new series is supported by the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland. UCC is well represented in the series with Peter Woodman, Mick Monk and Tomás Ó Carragáin.
The book that accompanies the RTÉ series is published by Cork University Press.