The Cornucopia Story Author: Deirdre O’Mara McCaffertyISBN-13: 13978-1068664571Publisher: The Liffey Press Guideline Price: €24.95, 272ppReaders will have to wait until the end of The Cornucopia Story to find lentils or chickpeas. If this is surprising for a memoir from the co-founder of a beloved Dublin wholefood institution, the book, like the restaurant, is about much more than legumes. In Deirdre O’Mara McCafferty’s beautiful and deeply moving account, food is indistinguishable from community, radical ideas and, perhaps above all, love. In the early 1970s, O’Mara McCafferty encounters many of the forces that will shape her life and worldview: Marxism, feminism and, most consequentially, a handsome young Derry man named Neil. Soon, the pair are “completely in love with life and each other”, and planning to move to the United States to escape fraught politics and oppressive social mores. In Boston and New York, the couple contend with more strange new phenomena, from race relations to baba ghanoush. When they return to Dublin in 1984, they are brimming with the ideas and idealism that will inspire a restaurant on Wicklow Street, now celebrating its 40th anniversary. O’Mara McCafferty’s memoir is a tender, relatable portrait of the adventures and loneliness of the Irish immigrant experience. It is also a life-affirming testament to how what seems inevitable in retrospect is really the result of so many eventually happy accidents. There is real joy in watching the couple plant the “seeds” of their life, unbeknown to themselves. Following a chance encounter with the Hippocrates Health Institute, O’Mara McCafferty is before long preparing wheatgrass juice, cooking vegetarian food, and “preparing for a future [we] hadn’t yet imagined – Cornucopia’s menu to be”. The book is also an exploration of grief and a tender tribute to Neil, who died from cancer aged only 40.At a time when wellness culture can seem depressingly individualistic, The Cornucopia Story is an uplifting reminder that health can be holistic, communal and joyful. While O’Mara McCafferty does not dwell on the controversial elements of the Hippocrates Health Institute’s teachings, it is hard not to be inspired by a story of two young people in love, full of convictions that they are determined to live by.[ Restaurant review: Cornucopia is one of the few places you can eat well for a reasonable priceOpens in new window ]The lentils and chickpeas that finally appear at the end of the book are found in 10 of Neil’s original recipes for Cornucopia. They are worth the wait.