I was born in 1969 in Singleton and spent my early years there. Mum and Nan taught me to cook, and I have many memories of fun times in the kitchen. I grew up moved to Newcastle, moved back home, moved to Brisbane, moved back home and have now been in Sydney for over 20 years.

Married and became a chef. Becoming a chef was what I had wanted to do as a job from when I learnt there was such a job. Unfortunately during work experience in high school I had a reaction to cleaning products used in restaurant kitchens and had to give up that dream. Fast forward to 1993 and I was doing a certificate III in Hospitality(catering) Supervision and I found out as a chef you didn’t need to clean. So as soon as I was finished with the course, I became an apprentice in 1994 and have been a qualified chef now for over 15 years. I still love cooking. My collection of recipes goes back around 30 years.

So I will be trolling through the collections of all four of us and talking about the things I have made hopefully with some photos to accompany the text. It is also an interesting way to look at how cooking has changed over the past 80 or so years. A lot of the recipes have been written, some have been cut out and then pasted into exercise type books. Some are from friends, some are from magazines, others are just the title. The ones from friends and family often have that persons name in the title eg Jan’s jam drops, Pam’s chocolate cake, Mrs Elmes’ Cheesecake(truly delicious and the first cheesecake I learnt to make).

I hope you enjoy my adventures, recipes and family yarns.