Welcome to my kitchen!

ABOUT ME

Hi there! Im Colin. By day I work in IT, helping to secure large organisations from baddies; by evening, I am chief taxi driver and chef to 3 children; by night, I’m a chief tinkerer at Content Kings, helping to develop local websites. Colin is the Managing Editor and force behind Great Foodie. 

I started Gréat Foodie because I firmly we everyone should be able to access locally sourced, nutritious, delicious food and know how to cook it, no matter how little or how much money they have. 

I’ve been through the pressure of balancing feeding my kids healthy, the best, most nourishing food available, with the cost of buying it over cheap processed foods. 

Following a redundancy and shortly after a global pandemic, where our family added an extra mouth mid-lockdown, and my waistline grew by more than one (inch), what and how we eat as a family was really pulled into focus. I started to really look at what we as a family were putting in our bodies and also how it was sourced and then prepared

Growing up as the oldest child and only boy, I was shipped off each school holiday and long weekend to various relatives, who all came from a generation where everything was cooked from scratch. The kitchen was the hub of the house and, in many cases, the street.

During the various lockdowns, I started pulling together the many notes on what I had learned through these family fonts of knowledge, my own research and (a lot) of trial and error. So I decided to start sharing this learning farther afield than just my family.

Hence the idea for Great Foodie was born…. a domain name, hosting package and some help; we are up, running and online!

ABOUT GREAT FOODIE

Great Foodie is part of Content Kings Media Ltd, an independent media company working from the North Coast of Ireland. Our portfolio focuses primarily on sites in the travel, tourism and Leisure industries.

We started Great Foodie as we believe passionately that the great food produced locally in Ireland should be available to everyone and that it should not be an expensive option. 

You only need to have access to a few Glens of Antrim potatoes, some Chestnutt Farms milk and a garlic clove from Drummond House to make a decent dauphinoise, for example – and the only difference between someone who can’t make it and someone who can is a good recipe, a few simple cooking techniques and a bit of practice. And a plate of garlicky creamy dauphinoise and a dressed green salad makes a dinner.

At Great Foodie, we work on the basis that you only need 25-50 recipes in your cooking repertoire, and you can eat very well. We hope you find your collection of recipes on our website.

Not coming from a foodie background, indeed from the land of fried mars bars. We don’t subscribe to food snobbery or to a belief that you have to be a reader of a posh newspaper or be a ‘foodie’ (whatever that is) to eat well. For us, food is about family, life and living. We believe that it is a natural right to be able to buy good ingredients at a reasonable price and to know how to cook so you can feed yourself (and your family) well. It doesn’t make you a bad cook if you don’t have truffle oil or the latest trendy ingredient in your cupboard.

We will add new content to Great Foodie daily – you won’t find every recipe here. Still, you will find enough information to live a delicious life. 

We hope you enjoy browsing gréatfood.

OUR EDITORIAL STANDARDS AND ETHICS

With all of our sites, we strive to follow the highest ethical and professional standards. It’s what we believe in, so you can trust the provenance of the content on Gréat Foodie.

We don’t charge for editorial content and don’t accept paid content on editorial pages.

Any advertising or promotional content that appears on Gréat Foodie is clearly marked, so our readers understand that it is paid content.

Product placementS on editorial pages.

If we recommend a product, generally, it’s because we bought it with our own money, like it and want to share it with you. We are often sent sample items for review and treat these the same as if we had brought them ourselves, running them through the same paces to see how they stand up. If they don’t, then we say so. 

We do NOT plug products on editorial pages for money (please don’t ask us to, as a refusal usually offends). Get in touch if you want to run a sponsored promotion or pay for a promoted page. Still, the page will clearly state that it is advertising, so our readers know it is an advertorial.

Links

Gréat Foodie in the unique position of being able to be editorially independent. We do NOT include commercial paid links on editorial pages. 

Any links you see to third parties in the middle of an article are for the reader’s benefit so you can see the item we are writing about – you are under no obligation to purchase items from any third-party links – you should always try to find the item closer to home – but it is an easy way of giving you more details of the thing that we are referring to. 

These links may contain affiliate links to suppliers such as Amazon, Tesco where we get a small payment if you subsequently purchase it – feel free not to; we include it so you can follow a link to the product, not so that we can receive a few pennies….but it helps keep us independent.

Advertising

We accept advertising on Great Foodie because it pays for the content our readers receive. However:

• We only accept advertising or promotional content that marries with our ethics on food: if we are happy to eat and drink what you advertise, we’ll run the ad (and we eat most things from a meat pie in a tin to a savoury pudding containing sheep’s pluck, minced with onion, oatmeal, suet, spices, and salt, mixed with stock, and cooked while traditionally encased in the animal’s stomach (Haggis FYI) – try it, it’s delicious, especially with neeps (turnips) and Tatties (potatoes).
• We don’t run ads for anything unsavoury, either within the subject of food and drink or outside of it.
• We won’t take payment for any advertising that presents unhealthy food or drink to children.
• We judge every ad or promotion on its own merits. We don’t police our readers. We believe that adults make choices daily (including ourselves) that may not be the wisest or healthiest, and that’s part of living a varied and good life. And we firmly believe that it is our reader’s choice to decide what they eat and drink.
• We reserve the right to reject any advertising at the beginning or during a campaign running on Gréat Foodie without explanation.
• We run appropriate categories of google ads throughout the site. While we routinely check what campaigns are running and block inappropriate ads, sometimes google is too fast for us, and the ad appears before we realise the need to stop it. Please contact us if you see an inappropriate food and drink website ad. We are always happy to evaluate it and remove it if we agree.

ADVERTISE ON GREAT FOODIE

What we offer

We want to offer local businesses the opportunity to reach targeted markets both here and overseas at an affordable rate. We also offer advertising opportunities on this and our other sites.

One of our reasons for developing the sites we own is to help local, ideally small independent producers and service providers promote their work to a broader but more focused audience.

Most of our sites were previously funded through affiliate links to guides and products, most of which were not based here.

We will work with you to craft advertorial-style pages for your guide or guides. We will make this as detailed as you want to get it noticed and Ranking on Search Engines.

The Post will include images, videos (if you have them), testimonials and all the details you want. It can either link to your site or a page on it, i.e. bookings or sales.

To inquire about advertising your product, website, or content on Greatfoodie. I.e., please contact us at ADMIN@CONTENTKINGS.IE.

Before inquiring, please review the notes below to see if your advertisements are a good fit for the site and its audience.

What kinds of ad formats do we accept?

Currently, we support the following types of ad formats:

• Contextual Links:  Your is a word or group of words linked to a website/product within an article/post.
• Non-Contextual Links:  Your ad is a link outside of an article (ex: on a widget, directly on the homepage, or on the sidebar or footer).
• Contextual Images:  An image that is within an article. For example, a book review or product review has an image that links to a site where the product may be purchased.
• Non-contextual Images: An image placed outside an article (ex: in the footer, sidebar, etc.).
• Sponsored Post:  You provide us with an article, and we publish it. The article must follow our editorial policy.
• Sponsored Post (written by us): We write an article about your product or service. The article and it’s content (text, images) offer the product for purchase through an external site. Here’s an example.

We currently do not offer banner advertisements, “background-image” ads, homepage takeovers, or pop-ups.

What kind of products/websites can I advertise?

We will not link out to websites or products that oppose our philosophy. For example, we’d never link to a book by a psychic who claims to have supernatural powers or to a supplement that claims to improve memory or cure cancer dramatically. We would, however, link to a book that describes how psychics practice their craft (i.e., the art of cold reading).

In general, links to science-based products or educational materials are best (ex: microscopes, telescopes, books, DVD sets, courses, course-ware, funny t-shirts or other apparel, etc.).

What about the Google Ads you have on the site? 

We don’t control those since they’re served up by Google. We’ve blocked the nasty stuff, but occasionally you might see an ad that goes against our general policy. We keep an eye on it and will filter out inappropriate ads when possible.

What are your rates?

Our rates are very flexible and competitive. At this stage, we do not have a self-serve system, so please contact admin@contentkings.ie for any inquiries.

As a general rule, the fees for contextual ads are the lowest, and the charges for non-contextual image ads are the highest. For example, an image placed on the primary sidebar on the site (guaranteeing its visibility on any post) would have a higher rate than a contextual link in a single article. For sponsored posts, prices are flexible based on article length. Volume discounts may also be applied.