Plant based educator and caterer Ciara Brennan, founder of Happy Food at Home, has teamed up with Limerick College of Further Education to offer the first certified vegan course in Limerick.
“Introduction to Plant Based Cooking” will take place on Tuesdays from 7pm – 9pm on the LCFE Mulgrave Street campus and will include demonstrations of affordable and uncomplicated plant based dishes with great flavour combinations, which are suitable for all ages to enjoy. Students will have an opportunity to learn how to safely adopt a plant based diet, receive nutritional advice and enjoy sampling the dishes prepared.
Ciara has been a lifelong vegetarian and studied hotel management in Shannon to indulge her passion for cooking and to pursue a career as a chef. She has worked in kitchens across the globe but found that her vegetarian diet was not compatible with her dream job and moved into human resource management within the hospitality sector.
In 2016 she changed from a vegetarian to a plant based diet along with her teenage daughter and has personally experienced the nutritional and financial challenges that the transition presents.
At the same time, Ciara established Happy Food at Home. Initially a Saturday food stall selling vegan dishes upstairs in the Limerick Milk Market, the plant based business has evolved to include bespoke catering, menu consultancy with hotels and restaurants and educational experiences as well as a regular food stall at the Limerick Milk Market and Ennis Farmers’ Market.
“Every week in the Milk Market and in Ennis, I am asked for advice about how best to adopt a vegan lifestyle,” explained Ciara. “The first step is diet related and I love hosting cooking classes in customers’ homes on a one to one or group basis. The collaboration with LCFE presents a very exciting opportunity to share my plant based expertise and vegan journey and to provide students with a repertoire of mouth watering recipes.”
The €90 course starts next week on Tuesday 24 March and runs until Tuesday 28 April. It will be of interest if you wish to explore how to reduce the amount of meat you consume on a weekly basis or if you have adopted a vegan lifestyle or are catering for a family member who has done so.
For more details and/or to enrol on line visit www.lcfe.ie
