Walk with me to cookery school

Stock pots, marmalade, and missing the kids

As I mentioned in my last post, I’m doing a little bit of catch up on life in cookery school before we leave Ireland to return home. I’m so nostalgic reading through these already! I wrote this just a couple weeks into the course.

I wanted to give a little recap of cooking school and share what it’s been like for us on a day-to-day basis. Typically, Flora Jo wakes up with us. I nurse her before I go, and then she heads over to spend time with Granny—what they call grandma here—and the other kids get ready for their day.

I have never been away from my kids like this, really since I've become a mother, so it's a whole new experience for me. I knew going into cookery school that this would probably be the most difficult thing for me—just being away from my kids all day. As a homeschooling mom, I’m used to checking in with them throughout the day back home, but it’s only temporary, and I know we’ll all be better for this experience.

Today I was on stock duty, making chicken stock from old laying hens, simmered with onions, celery, herbs, and carrots all cooked slow in these massive pots. Ballymaloe teaches that a good stock is the foundation of great cooking, so one of us will make a stock each day.

Then at 8:30, we had our team meeting with Chef Rachel to recap what everyone is making for the day. I made leg of lamb, beans, gravy, glazed carrots, white soda bread, and seven jars of orange marmalade! We peeled the oranges yesterday, let them soak overnight, then cooked them down and canned them today. Daniel and I were in separate kitchens but met for lunch and shared our newfound love for marmalade. The color, the flavor—everything was just so good.

At noon, we break for lunch, which is always a feast of everything the students cooked—salads, soups, breads. Someone even made homemade butter today. Lunch is always a highlight.

Afternoons are for demonstrations. Today, Chef Rachel prepared shepherd’s pie, sorbet, shrimp with homemade mayonnaise, and yeast bread. We taste everything at the end, a small reward after four hours of note-taking.

Watching these chefs work is a bit miraculous, really. They're just making a million things at a time, going back and forth—almost like a dance. In the end, you have all these beautiful, plated meals. Chef Rachel makes a single-family portion for the demonstration, so everyone gets up and has a little tasting of each of the dishes.

Overall, it’s exhilarating to be a student again, learning everything from the ground up. It’s intense but it’s deeply satisfying. I already know so much of what I’m learning will shape how we cook at home—and how we grow Ballerina Farm’s future kitchens, menus, and creameries.

Our evenings at home are a mix of reuniting with the kids and handling business. Last night, we had a team meeting to plan and answer questions. I knew juggling the course, the kids, and the business would be a lot, and it definitely is, but we’re making it work.

The best part of my day!

A note from Daniel

Daniel is having a lot of the same experiences, and I wanted him to share a bit of his perspective with you all, too:

As Hannah said, this course is intense—fast-paced, long days, and a flood of information—but we’re hitting our stride. The four-hour demos are exhausting but it feels like the best way to absorb so much information.

We’re in the kitchen from 8:30am to 5:30pm, and then still have work to do at home. We prepare recipes for the next day—mapping out the order of work, planning how to approach the recipes before we cook them the next morning. By 8:30 a.m., we’re back at it, cooking two to four recipes before noon, with everything plated, tasting great, and graded. It’s unlike anything I’ve experienced, but I’m soaking it all in.