Food doesn’t have to be fancy to be good.
Growing up in a family of foodies, quality time was spent sitting round the dinner table for hours chatting nonsense over home-cooked recipes that I still cherish and use today. Baking was something I learnt very early on from my mother, but at some stage I just naturally took over and became the culinary queen of the family. I would find any excuse to rustle something up in the kitchen, even baking my own cupcakes to bring into primary school when it was my birthday.
Being in the kitchen is where I feel most at home, where I am my truest self. I have always provided food for entertainment, be it catching up with old friends, spending quality time with family, or games nights with colleagues after a long week at work. There is no greater pleasure for me in life than taking the time to prepare food for people – I cook and bake with great affection, even when I’m sad or angry. And it is exactly this affection that is my secret ingredient.
There are three possible parts to a date, of which at least two must be present:
entertainment, food and affection.
It is customary to begin a series of dates
with a great deal of entertainment,
a moderate amount of food,
and the merest suggestion of affection.
As the amount of affection increases,
the entertainment can be reduced proportionally.
When the affection is the entertainment,
we no longer call it dating.
Under no circumstances can the good food be omitted.
– Judith Martin
Food holds powerful meaning; you could be biting into a hot cinnamon donut when you get a phone call with a job offer that will change your life, or you could be finishing the last bite of a cheesy lasagne when you you realise you’ve found the one. And just like that, a flavour can suddenly become sentimental forever.
As my favourite quote above so elegantly demonstrates, at no point in life and love should food be omitted. So in 2020, I started Gourmaisie to bring more zest into people’s lives and bring meaning to food with the small gesture of offering up something as simple as a flavour. But a flavour you won’t ever forget.
