Kenmare’s Karen is a passionate foodie

Ahead of her appearance on RTÉ’S Today Show on October 25, Fergus Dennehy talks to Kenmare food blogger and ‘celebrity’ chef Karen Coakley about the success of her blog, her love of cooking and why its all about family for her.

FOR someone who describes herself as ‘just a mom who loves food’, it’s been quite the whirlwind few years for Karen Coakley, or ‘Kenmare Foodie’ as she’s better known as online.

Despite having received no formal chef training, Karen has managed to make quite the impression in the online food world, amassing thousands of likes and followers on her various social media accounts.

To date, she has over 4,200 likes on her ‘Kenmare Foodie’ Facebook page, over 4,000 followers on her Snapchat and Instagram accounts and she now has a live cooking appearance on RTÉ’s ‘Today Show’ to look forward to.

It hasn’t been the easiest of roads for the mother of four, having had her first child at age 19, but the West Cork native and now naturalised Kerry woman, has taken it all in her stride.

“I had my first child at 19, didn’t go to college and started my family young. I worked full-time until he was five and then we had our second and then I remember getting this very strong feeling that I just wanted to be at home and looking after my family and so feeding them became very important to me,” said Karen, speaking to The

Kerryman last week.

“I find cooking very therapeutic, I find it very relaxing, but for me, the most important thing has always been about helping to feed my family,” she continued.

So, how did this love of cooking translate into the success of her online blog? Well, if Karen is to be believed, everything started to change for her when she gave up smoking and took up more running and exercise.

“I found this new lease of life. Hopefully this doesn’t sound anyway selfish but I found that life didn’t just have to be me ‘sitting at home’ with the kids. There were other things that I could get out and do.

“With this revelation came my eventual work with the Kenmare Food Carnival and out of working there, came the setting up of the blog.”

While her Facebook page has been quite successful as a way of promoting herself and what she does, Karen says that it was almost like a ‘ligh-bulb moment’ for her, when she realised the power of both Snapchat and Instagram.

“I initially set up the blog about five years ago now when I was involved with the Kenmare Food Carnival. At the time though, things were far too hectic to really dedicate the proper time to it though so it fell by the wayside a little bit.”

“It’s [the blog] only really been up and running about three years now. I think it was three years in September of this year since I actively started putting my mind into it and trying to make something of it.”

“The big thing for me, with regards to building and reaching my audience, has been Snapchat and Instagram. I do live cooking tutorials where whatever I’m cooking during the day, I’m taking people through step by step guides of what I’m doing,” she continued.

“I was always on social media, Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat all of that. I had done Snapchat so many times before this and I just couldn’t get my head around it.”

All of a sudden then, maybe about a year and a half ago, it was just after Christmas and I said to myself ‘you know what, I’ll download this and give it one more go’. Then, it all just clicked.”

“Sometimes, before I’m even