Ladies with a recipe for fundraising

Quin residents are inviting the county to come dine with them in aid of the local school and community centre. Carol O’Neil and a group of friends have put together a cookbook, Come Dine With Us, in which they hope to share the village’s recipes and raise funds for local facilities.
“About five or six mothers, after the school drop, would head off for a five, six or maybe a 10k walk around Quin. By the time we would reach the village again it would be time to start thinking about lunch.
“So the conversation would turn to food and we decided to meet up in each other’s homes and share some of our recipes. It proved to be a very enriching culinary experience and of course great fun. We would all arrive to one house with our recipes and our aprons and then one person would teach us how to cook their recipe.
“We dubbed ourselves the Desperate Housewives and decided to compile our information into a book and raise money by doing so,” explained Carol.
“Myself, Angela McAteer, Irene Rochford, Evelyn O’Donnell and Sarah Lennon were the core group I suppose but other people would join us on our walks sometimes too. It was Sarah’s idea and she was really the one who taught us the most. Being the culinary expert, she would lead the groups and put us through our paces. The result was so fruitful that we decided we had to share it,” Carol added.
The group of women have been walking together for over a year and a half but it wasn’t until September that they decided to pursue the venture.
“Once we started collecting recipes it developed quickly because we didn’t want to lose the valuable information we were getting.
“That is when we decided to turn it into a book. We each contacted about 10 people we thought might be interested in contributing recipes and we got a huge response.
“We started by talking to people who were well known for their cooking and then we started contacting local characters and personalities who might be interested in taking part.
“We went to the local businesses and targeted, in particular, the wealth of skilled chefs in the area. We also wanted to include all the various clubs that use the community hall. By the end, we had gotten such a large response that we couldn’t use all the recipes so we may even have to bring out a sequel,” Carol laughed.
It was easy to select the community centre and the school as beneficiaries of the project.
“Sarah Lennon has been involved for many years in the huge redevelopment of the community hall and we agreed with her that it would be a worthy recipient of funds. Also, as many of the contributors were parents of school children, we decided to include the school as well,” Carol outlined.
Come Dine With Us is available in businesses in Quin, Juniper in Ennis and there is more information on the Facebook Come Dine With Us page.
“The book includes the famous Stirrup Cup from local vet Paddy Hassett, delicious cupcakes from Elma Campion and some Christmas favourites as well as a kiddies’ corner.
“Many of the recipes have a personal note regarding the recipe’s origin from the various contributors, which gives them a personal unique touch and of course all of the recipes have been tried and tested by us so it is well worth getting and the proceeds are goin