My earliest food memory is learning how to bake brown bread with my grandmother, Winnie Egan, who lived with us when we were growing up.
“I can still hear her wedding band hitting the side of the brown Mason mixing bowl as she was making the bread, how she would turn it so elegantly, shape it and put the cross on it.
"Later on, it was my job to make the brown bread every day for the house and nothing will ever equal the gift that she gave me with the ability and the trust and the ‘know how’ to do that. Every time I put a cross on a cake, I think of her.
“My other granny, Jenny Ryan, was a great homemaker as well with a sense of elegance, while my late mother Ethna had a great flair for desserts.
"Every recipe would be cut out of The Irish Farmers Journal and in the end, the book got so fat with recipes, they’d be falling out!”
Passion for ploughing
“But another passion growing up was ploughing. We would have been dairying when we were young and rearing cows and beef, but my father Eamon would have mainly agricontracting, so that’s where the ploughing came in.
"In 1988, when I was 15, the Co Longford Ploughing Championships were coming to Ballinalee and he said to me, ‘Would you like to give it a go?’ I said I’d love to.
"But I remember being up on top of the headland and there was a big crowd at the bottom, and I turned around to daddy and I said, ‘I’m not going down there, all those people!’ And he said, ‘Ara you will, go on out of that!’
"And so I went forward; and I’ve never looked back.
You are very much part of the food journey
“Working alongside my father will always be something I treasure and I’ve met lovely people through the ploughing community. And it’s all so relevant to what I do.
"To sit up on a tractor or to stand behind a plough and to be breaking ground to eventually getting that produce on your table, you are very much part of the food journey.”
Food trends
“While I studied part time at the bakery college in Kevin St in Dublin, apart from that, I’m self-taught; and proud of it. Before I got married, I had a little bakery in Keenagh and later started doing the farmers’ markets in Ballymahon and Athlone. There was no plan to start a cookery school, but somebody asked me if I would do a cookery class for their friend’s birthday. I said yes, and that’s how it progressed. It was quite organic.
“We take six to eight students for the hands-on classes, and I also do demos. Looking at food trends, we’re very much going back to what we grew up with.
"One time it was all about France and Italy and their ingredients. Now it’s very much more about what we are producing, how local is it. We’re going back; but we’re bringing it forward.
“We have our own garden here, we produce our own pork and bacon, we use our own lamb, our own poultry our own eggs; and what we don’t have ourselves, we try to get as local as possible.
"This time of year is all about comfort food and connecting with yourself. It’s also a lovely time to go out into the hedgerows to pick crab apples or rosehips; you’re really living in the moment. You have to feel grateful for that.”
Farm to fork
“While I lead the cookery classes, Michael brings the students on a farm tour. It’s a great opportunity to expose people to farm life and to things we take for granted ourselves.
"One doesn’t really work without the other. I wouldn’t feel right giving the cookery class and not exposing people to where their food is coming from.
There are great people working in the county, from the local council and tourism office to the chamber of commerce
"Going forward, we don’t want to get too big, but we’d like to hone in on different aspects, like butter making or harvesting our own water. It’s authentic here and we want to mind that.
“From Center Parcs to Maura Higgins’s success on Love Island, Longford is getting the attention it well deserves; and long overdue.
"There are great people working in the county, from the local council and tourism office to the chamber of commerce, as well as initiatives like The Hidden Heartlands and Taste The Island from Fáilte Ireland.
"Collectively, people are looking at what Longford has to offer.
“But my mother, my father, my two grannies, Michael: they are the backbone of this business. If I didn’t have them, I’d go nowhere.”
Fiona will be involved in the upcoming “Taste of the Lakelands” festival on 13 October.
For further information about the cookery school, visit fionaegan.com or follow on Facebook.
“I’m the fourth generation in the family here farming. What we run is mainly a calf-to-beef mixed farm, and selling some of them as stores, and then we run a flock of about 200 mid-season lambing ewes.
“The farm wasn’t really a part of the cookery school at the beginning, but one complements the other.
There is a great sense of satisfaction when you see visitors going home happy from our farm, maybe from feeding pet lambs or letting the suck calves lick their hands.
“We take all of this for granted; but it’s a tourist attraction in itself.”