‘You do know that steak is just dead cow’, my big brother told me gleefully, looking sideways at the bistecca I was about to eat. I paused, my mum reports, slowly lifted up my knife and fork and looked him straight in the eye. ‘I love dead cow’. More than a quarter of a century later, including a good decade of vegetarianism – not, I hasten to add, a result of my brother’s goading – my sentiments are the same. Dead cow is delicious. And although the world is moving in a more plant-based direction for myriad reasons, many of which I fully support, we still incorporate some red meat into our f ..read more

‘Mummy, do you ever make anything that doesn’t have an extra vegetable inside?’ Growing up, my mum always encouraged us to eat well. Vegetables appeared at every meal, we regularly visited the health food shops and she was baking with tahini long before anyone had ever heard of Ottolenghi. I’ve mentioned it here before – the trauma is clearly real – but I’ll never forget one Halloween when she invited several trick or treaters to share a packet of Sunmaid raisins she’d found in the back of the cupboard, so low was our household on ‘treats’.  You never know what kind of parent you’re goin ..read more

Christmas is almost here, and with it the promise of good things to eat. School holidays and festive celebrations mean more free time to cook and more people to make things for, so there couldn’t be a better time to get into the kitchen with your kids. Treats like mince pies, gingerbread men, iced cakes and marshmallow-topped hot chocolate are Christmas classics for a reason – and I’ll be making all of the above with Nino and Joy over the coming weeks – but it’s also nice to have a few more wholesome treats up your sleeve to meet the daily (hourly?) snack requests whilst adding a little nutri ..read more

Do what you love and love what you do. Ten years ago, I started this blog. I pressed publish on my first post sitting at the same table I’m at now, so some things remain, but also . . . change. So much. What a difference ten years make. Ten years ago I wasn’t yet married, hadn’t published a cookbook, didn’t own the house we’re in now, hadn’t yet met or really even conceived of the three children who currently consume so much of my every waking breath.   I started this blog because I love food. I love to cook and bake, a passion which progressed into recipe development, and I love th ..read more

And then there were five. Over the last seven years I’ve been pregnant four times, given birth three, breastfed a total of thirty three months and lost who knows how many hundreds of hours of sleep. I’ve celebrated and argued with my husband, discovered new highs of happiness and lows of exhaustion, felt my heart expand and fallen in love again and again and again.  Motherhood is a tough gig. It’s easy to lose some of yourself whilst focusing on the lives of little people and I’m definitely deep in that season, attached to a newborn whilst juggling a feisty two and a half year old and he ..read more

The last thing I published on this blog – way back in March 2020 – was an ebook of family breakfast recipes. We were a week or so into the first UK lockdown, the world felt strange and disconcerting and my hope was to put something out there that might offer some help, inspiration, or simply distraction from the madness and uncertainty with which we found ourselves surrounded. Hundreds of you downloaded it, which blew me away. So thank you. Seeing your pictures and hearing your feedback during those months made the world seem a closer, less isolated place. Nearly a year later and we’re someho ..read more

I’ve written an ebook! Not a full on book, but seven quick and easy breakfast recipes put together with the intention of providing a little inspiration for your mornings. And it’s free – the smallest gift in these strange and uncertain times. I have to admit I’m feeling pretty helpless about the current global situation, but we all still have to eat and if I can make that part of your daily routine just a little bit easier or more delicious, it’s the least I can do. When I wrote this book, the world was a very different place. But now we’re spending more time (i.e. ALL the time) togeth ..read more

Last week I spent almost an hour reading back over old blog posts. I always intended this space to be a diary of sorts as well as a recipe archive and found myself sucked into the narrative of Nino’s early months, comparing my notes and mindset with where I sit now. Any mother of two small children will know that an hour alone is seriously precious – there are so many things I could, or should, have done with that time – but instead I sat and reminisced over silly stories and anecdotes, things my son might have eaten or done, reliving those early months. In just a few days, Joy will turn ni ..read more