But before you stop reading let me explain myself – you see up until recently I was a living, breathing social worker. That’s right I worked with all kinds of folk with the goal of empowering them to achieve their own goals towards happiness. Sounds great right? The only problem was in the process of helping so many others I completely neglected my own personal journey towards happiness. As the world’s biggest hypocrite I really lost a sense of myself and what makes me smile. Note to self: if you wake up crying before going to work every morning – it might be time to review a few things!

It’s kind of like that scene in Alice in Wonderland, when the caterpillar is questioning Alice about her identity with his question of “who are you?” Such a loaded question. And I (like Alice) respond to this with “I hardly know sir – you see I’ve changed so many times since this morning, you see.” I know what I am in relation to other people, a friend, daughter, sister, wifey, mother (to a fur balled cat), ex-social worker – but independently of these, I have no bloody idea.

The only consistent thing I have kept up in my 27 years of consciousness is my love of cooking and food. My tastes in just about everything else have changed, but I feel like my culinary repertoire and food loves has just gotten bigger and bigger (just like my cookbook collection).

In fact it is my kitchen that has gotten me out of some pretty dark times of late. So I figured logically the next step should actually be to DO something with food. Doing something that actually makes you happy – such a simple concept, but one so routinely ignored.

This is a speech by Alan Watts that a good friend showed me recently, which resonated with me so profoundly that I wanted to share it with you too. It really questions our motivations in doing what we do and exposes the futility of making so-called ‘sensible,’ life choices. Enjoy this clip with a cup of herbal tea.

So here I go, this blog is an attempt to share my love, experiences and obsession with food (and my ginger cat Jeremiah) with the world and see what happens. I reckon cooking is one of the most therapeutic practices on the planet so if I can help anyone out there to broaden their culinary horizons I’ll feel I’ve made some small contribution to the world.

bye for now from Rach & Jeremiah x