fair weatherIf the parade's not your thing, drop by the RDS Main Hall in Ballsbridge, Dublin 4 for Tastefest 2007 next weekend (March 16th to 18th).
Billed as "a multicultural festival of food, beverage and entertainment", the event will run along similar lines as last year's big foodie event, Taste of Dublin (which takes place at the Iveagh Gardens on June 14th to 17th). Tokens will be on sale at Tastefest that can be used to pay for sample dishes from any of the 12 restaurants involved in the event. Exhibitors will be serving food from Ireland, India, Japan, Turkey, Thailand, Lithuania, Poland, Malaysia, Cuba, South Africa and the Basque country. There will be cooking demonstrations, and wine and spirit tastings, too. See www.tastefest.ie Marie-Claire Digby
have your cakeCakes made with D'aim and Snickers bars can't be good for you, can they? Well, not quite, but a new range of Swedish-made frozen dessert cakes available in SuperValu shops (and familiar to anyone who has sought refuge in the food section during a visit to one of the giant IKEA stores) have the advantage of containing neither gluten nor artificial additives or preservatives. The Almondy cakes, as the name suggests, have an almond biscuit base. The cheesecake costs €3.85; the D'aim and Snickers cakes are €1 more. They can be defrosted in 30 minutes at room temperature or 90 seconds in a microwave with a defrost setting. Marie-Claire Digby