If there’s one thing I love in life, I mean really, passionately adore, it’s vegetables. Sure, I love my dog and my parents and all that too. But what stirs in me genuine awe-filled wonder, what I worship with all the zeal of a fanatic, are plants.
Where vegetables are concerned, count me in. Writing, recipe creation, styling, photography, cookery demonstrations, events - if it gives me an excuse to talk about vegetables, I’m there.
I haven’t always been a veg-evangelist. I used to work in advertising but left that life, and London, for the Cotswolds in 2012 where I retrained as a chef and began a new career (full, and grizzly, story below). Now I grow vegetables in my garden, create recipes and host monthly supper clubs from the harvests, and teach cookery classes.
I won The Young British Foodies Vegetable award and the Soil Association Best Blog award in 2019. I have also been shortlisted for a Garden Media Guild Award and won a Guild of Food Writers Award since.
My debut cookbook, From the Veg Patch, came out in 2021 and was named one of delicious magazine’s top cookbooks of 2021.
I write regularly for The Simple Things magazine, Borough market’s Market Life, OcadoLife and others. You can find more of my writing, and free weekly recipes, on my Substack.
Ok, well if you want the full story….
In 2012, I was a global strategy director for a London advertising agency. I had been working in adland for over a decade. We’d moved to the Cotswolds a few years before with the hope of finding some escape from the rat race. But all that did was add a four-hour commute to my already jam-packed, plugged-in, horse-trading, Blackberry-addicted day. Eventually, and so predictably, burnout and depression took hold. So I quit. With no idea what to do next.
Jobless and dysfunctional, I found solace in the garden, pulling up weeds and scattering a few old vegetable seeds (bought when we first moved and I had visions of becoming Barbara Good) on a bare patch of soil. Despite my haphazard care and wandering attention, the seeds grew and we ate our first homegrown meal. Sure, it was just lettuce and radishes, but it felt like I had conjured then out of thin air. I was hooked. The harvests that first year, and my burgeoning obsession with cooking them, would be my therapy, reconnecting me with the world, giving me hope, and ultimately, a new career. So, without sounding too glib about it, part of the reason I love vegetables so much is because they have been my saviours.
I started writing my food blog, Gluts & Gluttony, about the gluts I was getting in the patch and the ensuing gluttony in the kitchen. (Some of the early recipes are archived now to save my embarrassment, but many you will still find the blog intermittently active.) Enthused by life as a (newly-impoverished) writing cook, I retrained at Ashburton Cookery School and got a job at Daylesford Organic Farm working in the kitchen garden and subsequently full-time in the cookery school. I spent 3 fabulous years at Daylesford learning how to grow, cook and teach. Meanwhile, I began hosting supper clubs and cooking privately for clients in the Cotswolds. All the menus then and now are dictated by what is available in the allotment. I eventually left Daylesford to go full-time on G&G. Amidst all of this, I did several placements at places like River Cottage HQ and in the gardens at Thyme in Southrop.
The worky bit…
Today, I continue my own supper clubs and have partnered with Waitrose to create supper clubs which showcase their organic ranges.
As well as my award-winning blog, I write a regular recipe column in Borough Market’s magazine and have a regular slot on BBC Radio Oxford.
I have also written for publications like delicious magazine, The Independent, Cotswolds Life, The Telegraph, The Simple Things magazine, The English Garden and Vegetarian Living magazine amongst others.
I give cookery classes and demonstrations at cookery schools and festivals including Daylesford (obviously), River Cottage (ditto), Borough Market, Taste of London, Big Feastival, Wildernsss Festival, St Ives Food Festival and The Good Life Experience plus regional food and literary festivals.
I also create content (recipes, videos, photographs, ‘influencer stuff’, that sort of thing) for brands - mainly organic ones - like as Yeo Valley, Sharpham Park, Filippo Berio organic olive oil and Parma Ham Organic. I am an ambassador for Organic UK.
If you’d like to chat about vegetables or commission me for any of the above, do get in touch.
Until then, here’s my second love after the vegetables, Hadleigh the spaniel…
