About

I'm based in Lancashire in the north of England, but I was born and bred on the other side of the Pennines, in Yorkshire.

This means I talk funny. I use British spellings with extra letters such as diarrhoea and coeliac. I also say aubergine, courgette, and rocket instead of eggplant, zucchini, and arugula.

As a northerner, I also eat breakfast, dinner, and tea instead of breakfast, lunch, and dinner, but I've reigned that one in a bit on the blog to avoid confusion.

I became vegan whilst taking part in Veganuary in 2015. I'd been a fussy meat-eater my whole life, but made the switch to veganism virtually overnight.

I kept the fact that I had turned vegan a secret for months until I was sure it was something I would be able to commit to in the long term. Quickly, I realised that I would not be returning to eating animals. From there, I began sharing my experiences and recipes with family, friends and strangers on the internet.

I have had IBS symptoms for as long as I can remember, right back to early childhood. To make things worse, due to terrible acne, I spent many years on strong antibiotics from my pre-teens to early twenties. Never realising long-term antibiotic use would ravage my insides.

In 2017, due to a combination of work-related stress, lifestyle factors, hormonal changes, ageing and my switch to a vegan diet, my IBS was at its worst. Up until that point, I'd always just tried my best to ignore it and just accepted it as my normal state of being. My late parents suffered in the same way and my sister has also experienced a variety of digestive issues. It was always just my reality and something we all suffered with in silence on a daily basis.

My symptoms have always been predominantly IBS-D dominant. This means that during a flare-up, my bowel movements are usually urgent, voluminous and loose with soft, easy to pass stools, though not always typically classed as diarrhoea. Other common symptoms I've experienced include:

~intense pain and stomach cramps 
~extreme bloating and an uncomfortable feeling of fullness, especially after eating 
~excess gas and flatulence, typically the loud and embarrassing type
~uncontrollable urgency to poop, inability to hold in a bowel movement
~a feeling of never having fully emptied my bowels, resulting in multiple, frequent trips to the toilet and straining
~blood and mucous discharge from my bottom and in my poop
~painful internal haemorrhoids and bleeding from my anus
~chronic lower back pain
~joint and connective tissue pain, injury or weakness
~heavy, painful periods and irregular menstrual cycle
~pain during and after sex
~loss of libido due to physical and psychological factors
~rosacea, skin congestion and sensitivities
~fatigue
~social anxiety
~brain fog, concentration issues, poor memory

That's right, I'm bringing sexy back in a BIG way! Whilst many of my symptoms are now well managed, they can still flare up in response to my food choices and eating habits, stress and anxiety, travel and my menstrual cycle. You can read my full IBS story here, including getting stuck in the toilet on my first day at primary school.

I'm a self-taught home cook. Despite my mam being a wonderful traditional cook (I deeply regret not learning from her before she passed away). I only really began experimenting with cooking in 1996, when at the age of 18, I moved away from home to go to college.

As a student, I was cooking in shared facilities with a very limited budget and literally had to eat my mistakes. There was often no money to throw away a meal and start again if it went badly wrong. After eating a lot of crappy food I learned not to make the same mistakes again and began developing a very intuitive approach to cooking.

Although at the time I became obsessed with food magazines, cookbooks and watching TV chefs, I rarely follow a recipe as written. I'm constantly tweaking and reworking recipes to suit what's to my taste, in season and in the fridge. I honestly think this is the best way for everyone to cook. I offer my recipes with the intention of them being inspirational to guide you towards your own delicious concoctions.

Between 2002 and 2011, I worked in busy commercial kitchens within hospitals and local government. During my hospital stint, I saw how food had the power to make or break a person's physical recovery and also raise or dash their spirits. I learned traditional catering techniques, how to cater for food allergies and dietary intolerances, advanced food hygiene practices, time-saving food prep tips and thrifty ingredient hacks from those environments.

Despite my love of cooking, recipe development and feeding people, I could never cope with the heat, pace and pressures of cooking professionally at a high level and much prefer to play a supporting role in the kitchen.

I was raised in a family where money was tight and food was never wasted. Meals of my childhood were typically thrifty with an emphasis on getting creative with leftovers. These experiences have stayed with me and resonate still in my cooking style. I work with a very small budget to create my recipes and videos and only cook the number of servings my husband and I can realistically eat. There are no extra portions, no weird inedible hacks for aesthetic purposes, no overly expensive ingredients and no waste. If a dish turns out wrong, gets burnt or looks crappy it still gets eaten but the recipe video doesn't see the light of day. I often end up eating the same meal several times over in order to test, develop and perfect the recipes I put out into the world.

My focus is coming up with new and delicious ways of using simple ingredients. You'll often see the same ingredients being used time and again in my recipes. I really don't like it when recipes call for obscure, expensive, hard-to-source ingredients that you'll likely never use again. The most unusual items I use regularly are;
~asafoetida
~black salt
~nutritional yeast
These may be unfamiliar to some people but are worth including in your vegan, low FODMAP pantry. I add them to many of the recipes I create so you don't need to worry about them going unused and out of date in the back of your cupboard.

I love spending time in nature, more specifically with my dog and husband, usually in that order 😉. I love walking, hiking, travelling, nature and travel photography and exploring new places.

Since our dog became part of our family in 2010, we have taken only dog-friendly holidays around the U.K. We usually visit Wales or Scotland at least once a year. Although we've only been once, we really fell in love with the Isle of Wight. We've recently been venturing south to Devon and Cornwall and love the milder climate and laid-back, beach lifestyle.

I genuinely love food. Shopping for it, cooking it, eating it, talking about it, but also reading about it, learning about it and watching TV shows and documentaries. I am obsessed. Many people are surprised to hear that I still watch regular cooking shows and take inspiration for the vegan recipes and videos I create from non-vegan chefs, cookery books and resources.

Funnily enough, despite my love for cooking, I'm not a dinner party hosting kind of gal. I find cooking for anyone outside my immediate family really stressful, which just takes the joy right out of it.

My favourite forms of exercise are walking and gentle yoga. Both are helpful for my IBS, chronic back and joint issues and mental health. I walk around 30 miles a week with the dog. Several years back, I regularly attended yoga classes, but these days I tend to do my own thing at home. Usually, I follow an online class or do some basic stretches and positions. My husband and I can often be found dancing around the kitchen and shaking our arses whilst we whip up something delicious. It means the cooking takes a bit longer, but we have a lot more fun doing it.

I'm not into high-intensity exercise, and I'm very prone to injuries, chronic back pain, tendonitis and arthritis flare-ups. This limits me quite a bit as to the types of exercise I choose and enjoy.

I'm an old hippy at heart! I'm drawn to reading and learning about spirituality, new age, alternative healing and lifestyles. Although I don't really take the time to practice these things regularly anymore, I qualified in 2002 as a complementary therapist. For a while, I professionally practised aromatherapy, reflexology, Swedish massage, stress massage, manual lymphatic drainage massage, head massage and ear candling. I still regularly use aromatherapy and self-massage as a way to ease my mind and symptoms. I'm known for whipping up a batch of 'magic oil' to help ease the ailments of friends and family.