Joe McNamee: Practical cooking is not taught in schools and it’s a shame

Who’s going to teach those next-generation cooks?

All About Home Economics by Deirdre Madden

Every generation puts the brakes on inevitable old age and takes refuge in nostalgia. The 2010 republication of Leaving Cert poetry anthology Soundings was a huge success, but it was All About Home Economics, by Deirdre Madden, that snagged my attention. And I never did home economics.

First published in 1983 by Madden — a Dublin-based home economics teacher who died early in 1999 — it was republished in 2011 by her daughters as a cancer fundraiser and memorial.