BROADCASTER and now food writer Clare McKeon can certainly throw a party. On Wednesday night the ebullient Clare took over the top floor of Cookes Cafe in Dublin to launch her new food book The Emotional Cook.
It's a very attractive book with wonderful illustrations by Eva Byrne, and it's as far away as you can imagine from the usual Irish soda bread and coddle type cookbook.
Clare has chosen 37 emotions, from amorous to zesty, and concocted recipes to go with them. "I love food, it's the most mood altering substance that's legal," says Clare, and I wanted to write a cookbook that would have international appeal."
Research in America and Australia revealed that there was nothing linking food and the emotions so she set to work and already the North American rights for the book have been snapped up.
Her good friend Minister Ivan Yates arrived to launch the cook book even though it was his birthday and he must surely have more press ing things on his mind. "Ivan must be quite stressed at the moment," opined Clare, dipping into her book and finding that celery juice, a simple salad and some fruit should sort him out. (Note, no beef, very hard on the system," diagnosed Clare.)
As a birthday gift Clare presented him with a tie covered in cows heads which Ivan promised to wear next week. He should be warned that in the present climate it's the sort of witty neckwear that could provoke either laughs or lynching.
Louis Copeland, PR woman Rhona Blake and her horsey husband Charlie Murless, and Mary O'Rourke TD, were there, as were her Moveable Feast TV costars John Daly and Tom Doorley. Nell Stewart Liberty arrived exhausted. She had spent the previous few hours in a meeting with Eileen Murphy and a couple of other women who she got together to nominate Ireland's 100 Sexist Men for the next issue of her Social and Personal magazine.