Appetite for words sees M—na pen cook book

Date Published: {J}

If life threw lemons at Móna Wise, she’d make lemonade. Or maybe she’d do a savoury dish like lemon chicken or hummus. The one thing this capable Claregalway woman – and superb cook – wouldn’t do would be wallow in self pity.

Móna, who is a mother of four young children, has gained a huge following for her food blog, www.wisewords.ie, which she began four years ago, featuring wonderfully illustrated, no-nonsense recipes, and insights into her family life.

She has 600 people following her by email and has almost 3,000 fans on Facebook.

The 37-year-old is also in her third year of a creative writing degree at NUIG and is putting the finishing touches to her first book, a cookery book/autobiography, illustrated with her own photos. And for the month of November she successfully set herself the challenge of cooking daily dinner for her family of six (sometimes seven) for less than €70 a week, without compromising on nutrition.

On paper, it’d be easy to dislike someone who sounds like such a paragon of virtue! But you can’t dislike a person who offers to cook a vegetarian lunch for a fussy reporter and finishes the lovely meal in her large but cosy kitchen, with home-made chocolate chip cookies and coffee.

Outside the kitchen window, there’s a greenhouse where her chef husband Ron grows vegetables, while hens, ducks and two breeds of turkey peck around the back garden. It’s a rural idyll and it’s one that she and Ron have worked hard to create.

Móna emigrated to America when she was 19, working in various jobs in the hospitality industry, including as a wedding planner, a job she had for 10 years.

She met Alabama born Ron when she was 20 and knew instantly that he was the man for her. Ron who is some 20 years older than her – although he doesn’t look it – and had been married twice at that point, took a little more time to realise that they were soulmates. But he did. They are now together for 17 years and married for 12.

They opened their own restaurant in Ohio and, over the course of five years, built it into a thriving business, with Ron working in the kitchen and Móna in front of house. But when they adopted their daughter Rory and son Jack, she wanted to move home. The death of her father, George Dempsey, a few years ago was another factor in her desire to come back. Now she is the only one of five siblings living locally.

Rory, who is now eight and Jack who is nearly seven, attend the local school. The family has since increased to include Sam (10) and Lulu (6), two gorgeous girls who have been fostered by the Wises on a long-term basis.

Móna lives a half mile down the road from her childhood home and her mother, Catherine, is an invaluable part of the family. The retired teacher comes to their house four days a week to do homework with the children, while Móna focuses on college assignments.

These assignments have now become the basis for her first book, The Chef and I, A Nourishing Narrative, which will be the first of a three-part series.

She has a lovely life, she says, and much has gone her way. But it hasn’t always been smooth. The adoption process for her son Jack was difficult and traumatic, for external reasons, and took over a year, although it all worked well eventually.

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.