Food and drink are making the move online for this year’s Orkney International Science Festival.

Popular features each year are the daily lunches of Orkney fare at the Peedie Kirk, and the locally-themed Skaill House Sunday afternoon tea. The food and drink events enable visitors and local people alike to meet.

This year’s move online has presented a challenge but alternative approaches have been found, with make-your-own guides and virtual lunch tables.

Liz Ashworth in Moray and Phyllis Brown in Orkney have come together to produce two brochures with full menu guidance, recipes and lists of local suppliers from whom Orkney fare can be ordered direct.

Peedie Kirk Lunch Recipes

The Peedie Kirk lunch recipes include Orkney oatmeal soup and tattie drottle, smoked salmon and smoked mackerel pâté, beremeal bread and bere bannocks. Link: Orkney Lunch Recipes

Skaill House Afternoon Tea Recipes

Afternoon tea recipes for Skaill House include beremeal scones and dropped scones, an Orkney platter, and traditional home-baked cakes and biscuits. Link : Skaill House Recipe

More information from the Festival’s website www.oisf.org

Virtual lunch tables will provide an opportunity to meet up with friends and speakers. There will be 15 minutes of live discussion at 1 pm, featuring each day three guest speakers, who will then move to the tables for question and discussion.

The lunch tables are free to attend, but numbers are limited, and everyone is asked to book early using an online form from the Festival’s website.

To join the lunchtime discussion around a table, you just need to book a space online with this form. This will give you a link to a seat at an online table where you can chat with other Festival-goers. Once there, you can move tables from time to time if you’d like to mix further.

Food topics are also among a range of videos produced for the Festival this year from various sources.

The LEADER-funded Foraging Fortnight has provided a film by Mark Jenkins of chef Paul Doull from the Foveran cooking scallops with foraged additions, including seaweed and chickweed.

A video has been specially made by Jack Norquoy for the Barony Mill, with a tour by guide Ellen Hay and a demonstration of bere bannock baking by Margaret Phillips.

The virtual tables format is also going to be used to take the Festival Club online, where each year Festival-goers round off the day at The Reel.

 For discussions in the evenings at the Festival Club. You just need to book a space, using this form.

The Festival will also have tables available for its closing ceilidh.