Donal Skehan makes a guest appearance on RTÉjr's new show Dizzy Deliveries, the first television series in Ireland to teach children Lámh signs.
When I catch up with Donal Skehan, he tells me he's knee deep in routine: with his eldest son Noah off to "big school", the cook and television presenter was just finished baking a batch of scones when he picked up my call.
"It's actually really nice to have a bit of regular routine because my world is always all over the place, so it's actually nice", he tells RTÉ Lifestyle. "It grounds you and it kind of makes things a little bit more systematic."
The Howth native has recently added another string to his bow as he made a guest appearance on Dizzy Deliveries, the first television series in Ireland to teach children Lámh signs, which launches today, 19 October – National Lámh Day.
Intended for all pre-schoolers and targets children with special intellectual needs, the groundbreaking show follows Joe – the delivery man with magical powers – and Ozzy, a flying robot who helps him make his deliveries.
It wasn't Skehan's first time dipping into sign language however, as the makeup artist for his cooking show is deaf, and "she teaches me quite a lot of sign language as we're working together", he says. "I suppose my ear or my eyes have been kind of tuned a little bit more to it."
Because of this, he jumped at the chance to be involved in the show, guiding a young Lámh user through baking some scones.
"For any families out there who have any kind of learning disabilities or intellectual disabilities and communication needs, it's a really important thing that there's visibility for it, number one. And then secondly, that there is a lovely way to communicate and it's a lovely way to express yourself. So I'm still very much in the infancy of learning about it!"
He adds that he and wife Sofie would use baby sign language with their boys, so he's especially aware of how useful a tool it is. "From my perspective, as someone who doesn't have it innately as part of their day to day, it was really insightful to be able to go in and understand how they were communicating with each other and to learn those little bits that would allow you to communicate.
"The sign system is something that can be learned by everyone. There's no reason why we can't learn a little bit."
Merging Lámh with baking was a natural fit for Skehan, who has long heralded the benefits of using baking to connect with children of all ages. "It's an interesting world because you could be just a television presenter, but having the food aspect has always been such an important communicative message to bring across people", he says.
He still turns to cooking and baking when it comes to spending time with his boys, especially as they have a natural interest in food too. "The boys love to taste food, and I always encourage that if we have a new vegetable or if we have something that's new in the kitchen, I always try and get them to try and tell me what they like."
In recent months, Skehan has been more open about balancing parenting with work, travel and everything in between, providing an honest and empathetic perspective on raising a young family. When we catch up, it's something he's happy to go more into detail on.
"It's something I've always wanted, to be quite present with my boys, and I think from both our perspectives, life is so busy and any parent will tell you there's just so many things that it is very often times that you forget about yourself. And I think we've learned over the last four or five years of parenting is that it's just so incredibly important to kind of step back and have time for yourself, to focus on things that were part of your life before parenthood.
"Because as time moves on, you lose that element, and oftentimes you find yourself grumpy or stressed or whatever, and you kind of wonder why. It's like, it's probably because you haven't made that time.
"Look, I'm not saying that I have that all the time, but I do think we're a bit more conscious of it. And I suppose we've been made conscious of it by the pressure of parenthood and stuff like that. So it's something that I see as a very big positive."
He adds that during the summer he took his first trip without the kids, with Sofie planning to do the same, but adds: "It doesn't have to be going away, it can be as simple as carving out time on a Saturday morning, going for a big long walk or seeing friends without the kids. It means that when you do come back you're all looking forward to each other and you're all looking forward to spending time."
It was also on that trip to Tuscany that he hit on his current foodie fascination: pizza. "We were at a party and the guy was making pizza and I literally, I'd had a few drinks only at that point, and I barged into the kitchen demanding to know who was making the pizza, would they give me the recipe. So on that night and he let me kind of get involved and he was showing me how he was making the dough."
Skehan is arguably the go-to source for delicious, easy to make batch cook recipes, so it's no surprise he's developing more as homecooks look to cut costs and make the most of the ingredients they have on hand. His current favourite recipe? A bolognese ragù "stoop".
"It sounds terrible when I describe it, but it's like a meat based soup with pasta through it. It's kind of like a meaty minestrone and really good, really cheap to make, simple."
As well as this, he's a big fan of veggie curries, lentil dahls – and the odd pizza or two!
Watch Dizzy Deliveries on RTÉ Player and tune in to RTÉjr weekdays at 9.550am, 12.10pm and 4.30pm.
