For me, it has always inevitably come down to a series of Cs: city, career, culture, cafés, coffee, cousins and, truth be told, my much-loved core power yoga classes too.

You get the gist. And the biggest C of all? Convenience. Because let’s face it, no one does convenience better than urban America, even if it’s not good for you. For instance, in the beginning I struggled to make food and cooking convenient.

In the States, I cherished the ease of quickly finding good, healthy food outside of my own kitchen. So to my mind there was simply nothing better than having the convenience of on-the-go gourmet offerings at your fingertips: authentic Asian noodle houses, wood-fired pizza places, authentic Mexican restaurants, hearty organic salad bistros, wheatgrass and smoothy bars, sushi on the run ...

However, after I became pregnant and gave birth to our son, I decided I had to hatch a new outlook. I suddenly saw the potential in our Irish pastures dripping with dairy cows, clutches of chickens, heaps of hedgerows, and superb soil to start a plentiful kitchen garden. I realised that we had all of the basic elements to get started on a new culinary adventure – literally right in our front yard.

I became determined to make sure Geoffrey would grow up with a healthy appetite and understanding of where his food comes from. Now he adores cooking and spending time in the kitchen garden planting and harvesting his very own bounty.

I made a promise to myself that I would still enjoy dishes that I missed, even if it wasn’t necessarily convenient to do so. If I wanted good Asian noodles at the farm, we would mix water and flour and make them from scratch. A wood-fired pizza? One day we will build a brick oven. Corn tortillas? Find that tortilla iron and DIY. Super salads? GIY boatloads of organic greens.

I discovered that making our own at home on the farm, while not effortless, tastes exponentially better and can be so much more fun – especially when you are teaching a child a new skill.

On Sunday, I introduced one of my old city treasures: soba noodles. Soba is buckwheat noodles that can be eaten cold in a salad, or hot in a soup with protein and vegetables. It has a distinctive nutty flavour and, when made with 100% buckwheat flour, is gluten-free.

Soba Noodles

Makes four to six servings

280g buckwheat flour (available in natural food shops)

70g cream flour

175g water

1 Combine the flours and add the water until crumbly, but coming together. Knead the dough on the counter until smooth and shape into a disk.

2 Sprinkle the counter with a bit of flour and place the dough on top. Roll the dough out, gradually shaping it to as close to a rectangular shape as you can make it.

3 Fold the dough in half, like closing a book. You should end up with a tidy rectangular package.

4 Using a sharp knife, begin cutting the noodles 1/16in to 1/8in thick.

5 Set a strainer in your sink. Fill a large bowl with cold water and ice cubes, and set this near the sink. Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Salt the water generously and drop in the soba. Cook for 60 seconds, then drain through the strainer in the sink. Rinse thoroughly under cool water, lifting and gently shaking the soba until the cooking film is rinsed away. Immediately dunk the soba in the bowl of ice water. Drain and serve in your favourite soba recipe. CL