Ahead of their fourth cookbook, ‘The Daly Dish Air Fryer’, Gina and Karol Daly talk about fulfilling their recipe dreams since the first food diary went viral on Instagram in 2019 and the joy their third child, born with Down syndrome, has brought amid loss and weight struggles
Cookbook authors Gina and Karol Daly with their three-year-old son Gene. Photo: Paddy Kirk
Gene Daly sits up at the table with us as we talk about his parents’ latest cookbook, The Daly Dish Air Fryer, and the whirlwind that has been the last five years of Gina and Karol’s lives. Gene recently started playschool near their home in Co Meath, but he’s home today, a bit under the weather, while his teenage siblings, Holly and Ben, are at school. He’s cheerful nonetheless and full of smiles, passing dinosaurs to Gina and Karol and I as we chat, taking a chocolate chip cookie from the plate and licking it comprehensively before deciding he’d like a Danish instead.
It is fitting that three-year-old Gene is at the heart of a conversation that covers all the highs and lows of their recent years, which includes a miscarriage, the death of Gina’s dad, struggles with body image and the all-too-common trap of taking care of everyone but yourself.