Paddy Daly discovered a passion for cooking at age 67 and is now on a roll with his baking, writes ÁILÍN QUINLAN
BUSINESSMAN Paddy Daly always loved his food – but until he was in his late 60s, he didn’t know a cooling rack from a cookie cutter.
He didn’t have to.
His wife May was a fabulous cook: “Her scones were out of this world and they were great on a consistent basis! Her Christmas cakes were fantastic. Her cooking was profoundly simple and absolutely delicious,” he recalls.
But in 1995 May was diagnosed with Front Lobal Dementia – and Paddy, known locally in his Sandycove, Dublin, neighbourhood as Paddy the Polish – was soon shaken out of his charmed existence.
“When May became ill I had to find cooked food to bring home. There are many places that sell prepared food, but the quality was very inconsistent – and it was also very poor compared to what May used to make. I used to get quite angry about the standard of food that was being sold,” he says.
A few years after May became ill, he signed up for a course at the renowned Ballymaloe Cooking School run by Darina Allen in Co Cork – and discovered a previously unsuspected passion for cooking.
At the age of 67, Paddy Daly finally learned not only how to boil an egg, but to make a proper home-cooked meal: “I did the Back to Basics course, a one-week course which taught you all the basics of home cooking. That was the beginning. I got the building blocks there – bread, cakes, stews, casseroles, etc, right across the board. It was great. It was an incredible discovery for me to find I had a passion for cooking. It was a lifesaving experience!”
By the time May passed away in 2001 he was an experienced cook. However, her death left him very depressed, and in 2006/2007, he did a computer course to cheer himself up and get out of the house.
He started talking to people on the course about cooking and brought in samples of his bread, scones and cookies. Several fellow students, mostly young men in their 20s and 30s, were fascinated, and asked how he had learned to bake.
“I invited them back to the house and gave them a cookery demonstration in the kitchen,” he says.
And in this modest way, what was to become his hugely successful SOS or Share Our Skills Network, was born.
Energised by the interest shown by his fellow students, Paddy, then aged 75, started to offer samples of his baking to elderly neighbours – and found many were interested in learning how to do it themselves.
“That’s how it all started,” he says. “I noticed that when I started reaching out to people through baking, I was getting energised so I set up the Share Our Skills Network. How it works is, I invite some people into my house and teach them how to do scones, for instance.”
While people can make a contribution towards the cost of the ingredients, the official “fee” for the course is simply a pledge to pass on the skill.
It’s a fantastic idea, enthuses author and food guru Darina Allen – and particularly relevant to the hard times we’re currently experiencing.
“In the last 20 or 30 years, many people have been encouraged to concentrate solely on their career to the exclusion of learning other skills,” she says.
“When the Celtic Tiger was booming, people thought they didn’t need to learn how to cook or grow vegetables or keep hens or be in any way self-sufficient.
“Now, very suddenly, when people are in a different financial situation, many may be incredibly skilled in their own area without even knowing how to shop properly for food or cook basic meals!
“They need survival skills, so basically this recession has been highly effective in making us realise we must be prepared not to allow our children or grandchildren to go out without learning the life skills. And of course, there’s also the joy you get from cooking things!”
So far – two years after the establishment of his SOS Network – Paddy has passed his baking skills on to hundreds of people, and later this year will launch his SOS website: “I do scones and brown bread. I haven’t kept figures on the number of people I’ve taught but it’s in the hundreds. They find out about me by word of mouth though I plan to set up an SOS website this winter and make it official.”
Now 77, he’s travelled the country in his camper van, teaching the basics of baking to everyone from Franciscan friars to young children to people in their 20s and 30s, to elderly people who live alone.
“I’ve given baking workshops from Achill Island to Moyross in Limerick, down to west Cork over the past year – the next step is to do the website.
“It’s a way of talking with your hands, but the emphasis is very much on sharing – sharing the bread and sharing the skills.
“Learning how to bake and share with others have brought me out of the black depression of May’s death, it has brought me out of loneliness and the discovery of how to energise by reaching out to others with my skill – to me baking is a blessed skill.”
Don’t leave it all up to Paddy, warns Darina Allen – grandmothers and grandfathers everywhere must do their bit to pass on their traditional skills to their grandchildren and to adults who are interested in learning how to cook.
“We can all help each other out, particularly in these times,” she says. “There are a lot of widowers who have been cooked for all their lives and are longing for the kind of food their wives would have cooked – simple basic comfort food!”
Brother Seán Ó Connor, head friar at St Patrick’s Friary in Moyross Limerick, is one of those who learned how to make scones and brown bread at Paddy’s elbow. “One of our friars met Paddy, who told him his story. Paddy came down to us last St Patrick’s Day for two days to give us a little clinic on baking,” he says.
“Paddy also did some sessions with local men and local children – we utilised his presence quite a bit. He made great scones and brown bread.”
Paddy recalls: “One of the kids told me the brown bread wasn’t bad – and that was very high praise!”
'I'm only sorry I didn't learn it before now'
WIDOW Mary Kelly (81) always enjoyed cooking – but had no interest in baking bread until she bumped into Paddy Daly:
“I’ve always been very interested in cooking, but not so much baking. I was brought up in the country- side in Galway, and my mother would have baked her own bread, but I wasn’t much into baking myself.
“Paddy came along about two years ago and got me interested in baking by talking about it. Then he came to my kitchen and gave me a demonstration of making brown bread with things like seeds and honey and different flour – it was lovely, so I got the recipe from him and made it myself with pumpkin seeds, brown sugar and sunflower oil.
“I make the bread about once a week and freeze it. He also showed me how to make stewed rhubarb with ginger – I like stewed rhubarb but the ginger makes all the difference.
“I’ll be passing the skill on to my sister, but she’s recovering from a heart attack at the moment. She’s out of hospital and back home so I hope to be teaching her over the next few weeks. There are some other people that I plan to teach to bake as well!
“I really enjoy baking – I live on my own so it’s something to do – I’m only sorry I didn’t learn it before now.”