About Me

Hi and Welcome!

I think I definitely got my initial love of food from my mom. She is a very innovative cook, with the ability to put a creative meal together with whatever she has in the pantry; if you live in a very small town (think, no supermarket!) your weekly food shopping consists of scanning the contents of the pantry and a walk through the veggie garden. And as month-end approached, she had to get more and more creative, like a masterchef challenge with limited ingredients… it got interesting at times.

I love working with fresh produce. There’s something about picking your own veggies and herbs from your garden, running them under the tap and smelling the aroma of the wet soil… you can’t get fresher than that. At the moment, the variety in my veggie garden (more like a patch of dirt with high hopes) is seriously very slim; it basically consists of some herbs and a single tomato plant which I didn’t even plant - it just popped up (shoulder shrugging emoji) - but I’m not complaining. Ooh... and then there’s my hubby’s bird’s eye chilli which, frankly, we are a little terrified of actually trying. I’ll have to increase the greenness of my fingers first, but I would love to have a small, bustling veggie garden with a variety of fresh produce.

Some of my earliest food memories are of sitting around the kitchen table as a child, helping mom process buckets full of fresh pickings. Cutting off the heads and tails of green beans, chopping carrots, or removing the pips from apricots and later regretting the countless juicy halves we popped into our mouths (appelkoos-magie is a real thing). Chatting away around that table, chopping, peeling, and pitting, are actually some of my fondest memories… well, maybe not so much as a teen, as a day spent chopping beans was NOT not cool! Even as an adult when I visit my parents’ house, we still sit around the same table, peeling the potatoes for Dad’s suspiciously secret potjie, or chopping up pumpkin for what will become an incalculable number of mom’s pumpkin fritters. There is always enough to feed at least two families and sometimes we do; we are a close family with four siblings and there are always a few extra seats around the table for friends and family.

From helping mom at all the functions she hosted, waitressing in a hotel abroad and, after returning to South Africa, occasionally helping a friend with her catering events (all the while stuck in an office job… bills... need I say more?) my love for food kept growing. Eventually, this same friend opened up her own restaurant and asked if I wanted to work for her full time. I jumped at the opportunity and absolutely loved it. I learned so much from her; she is incredibly talented and the hardest-working human I’ve ever met. I will forever thank God for creating that opportunity for me to gain valuable experience. It was there that I learned how demanding the industry can be. It's no secret that the restaurant business is not for sissies and the long hours, nights, weekends and holidays, started taking their toll on my life. I was a newly-wed at the time and, second to God, my hubby-babs will always come first in my life; I decided it was time for my hospitality dreams to take a bit of a back seat. I started studying to become a teacher and, soon after, quit my job at the restaurant and became a full-time teacher. I adore working with children, seeing them grow and evolve and watching their amazing curiosity and bubbling excitement about life in general. The irony is that we teachers end up learning so much from them in the process; may we forever strive to be more like children.

More recently, my hubby and I relocated from the Free State to George in the Western Cape. I now teach extra classes from home and enjoy having a more flexible schedule... which has allowed me to rekindle and breathe new life into those dormant dreams revolving around food.

I am extremely excited to embark on this journey. I’ve always loved an attractively presented plate of food and in preparation, I have been you-tube-teaching myself some food photography and styling tricks (Rocky Balboa theme song plays in the background… to hype you up as much as I am). I am so looking forward to welcoming you all around my online-table, sharing with you my lip-smacking, drool-worthy, easy to make recipes, and the fellowship and joy that comes from dinner-table gatherings.