About me

I have lived in Auckland most of my life, originally from Howick. I did a short stint in Hamilton while I was studying film which is where I met Scott, my now husband, and we have been living in Waiuku for the past three years. We adopted our dog Bard, a labrador x staffy in 2014 and he’s the best. People sometimes ask us when we’re going to have kids and our reply is huh? What do you mean? We already have one… He’s a bit like me actually, clumsy, stubborn and obsessed with food. 

When I’m not in the kitchen making delicious meals and treats you will find me in the outdoors walking Bard or possibly at the beach, bingeing on crappy reality TV, doing yoga, practicing my photography skills, or attempting, and likely failing at gardening. I can’t go past a good vineyard especially on a nice sunny day and even more so when there is tasting involved. I have a mild obsession with coffee and chocolate, the dark 70% Whittaker’s is my fav! I love to travel both around NZ and internationally and am a strong believer that food and eating should be a large part of a travel experience! There are so many different cultures and local foods, it’d be rude not to try them! My favourite place for food so far is Spain, I have been to Barcelona and Madrid and the the food was amazing! Those tapas and sangria!

I first became pescatarian in early 2010 before transitioning to full vegetarian and there’s absolutely no going back now. Over the past few years I have been eating a lot more plant based foods. I was misdiagnosed with type 2 diabetes at the start of 2019 and treated for it, and then later correctly diagnosed with type 1. I’m still figuring stuff out and still learning, it’s definitely a big change and a challenge.

I hope you find this blog and my recipes useful and fulfilling, whether you are vegan or just trying to eat fewer animal products, diabetic, or just experimenting with eating less sugar and lower carb, I hope you will take something from it!

My Food Journey

I love food, I always have. When I was younger I was that person who was constantly hungry and on the prowl for food. I love trying new things and experimenting, both in the kitchen and when eating out. Food and eating makes up a large part of my day – What’s for breakfast? Ooh is it too early for lunch? Snack time yet? …You get my drift. 

As a kid I think I did a fairly normal amount of baking and cooking but I loved it. I remember “helping” my Mum to cook and bake, and baking lots with my Nana, including equal amounts of bowl and spoon licking.

Eventually when I moved out of home and went flatting I quickly realised I had to cook all my own meals. At this stage, believe it or not, I was a meat eater and didn’t think twice about the food and nutrients, or lack of, I was putting into my body. My meals were pretty basic and boring, you know, the standard kiwi meat and 3 vege. One day I was frying up a store bought hamburger patty and the amount of fat and grease coming off it was disgusting and I just thought hmm meat is kind of gross, how do I eat this? Those poor animals, and I don’t even really like the taste. I became pescatarian (still eating seafood but no other meat). I got so much more creative with my cooking and using all these vegetables I’d never cooked with before. I realised I actually never liked the taste of meat, it was all the sauces and spices with the meat that I really liked. It was so much fun and rewarding cooking all these new meatless meals! Fast forward a few years and I decided I didn’t need or want to eat seafood. Sealife is diminishing due to overfishing and I didn’t want to be a part of that. Not to mention the amount of plastic humans ingest due to all the plastic which ends up in the sea which fish unknowingly eat, and subsequently so do we. Thus the start of my vegetarian journey. To be honest I did find this stage a little harder, I had to think a bit more outside the box. Of course my baking of cakes and other sweet treats weren’t affected by my vegetarianism, I mean who puts meat in a cake?!

Around this time I chose to take part in a fundraiser for the NZ Cancer Foundation called Junk Free June. This could kind of be interpreted how you saw fit. My now husband and I did it together and chose to cut out all takeaways and fast food and all pre-packaged food had to have less than 5% sugar. This was hard. Like really hard. EVERYTHING had sugar in it! But it made us really notice and think about what we were eating. After we completed the challenge I just couldn’t bring myself to eat how I had been before the challenge. I became an avid checker of nutritional labels and trying to find ways of eating healthier. I now will not buy pre packaged cereals, the sugar content is just insane, and I always make my own pasta sauces and stir fry/curry sauces. Of course I still allow myself treats (let’s be honest I can’t say no to chocolate) as long as my main diet is good. 

At some point, I actually can’t remember what the trigger was, but I started eating more plant based.I started with swapping cow’s milk for plant milk, soy is my go to. Then cheeses – I began trying and eating dairy free alternatives, and same for mayonnaise and yoghurt. It continued from there. At this stage my baking had to change. Eggs, milk and butter are big culprits when it comes to animal products in baking. I actually didn’t find it too hard and I loved swapping ingredients out and making things vegan and not telling people, they’d have no idea and still devour it. 

Things were going pretty well in my food life, I was feeling good and was doing lots of successful plant based cooking and baking.

Then at the start of 2019 I was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. Other than this news obviously being far from good, it meant I now needed to eat a lot less carbs and sugar. I began cutting carbs down a LOT. But the baking? Making it vegan but also low or no sugar and low carb?? How was I going to make that work? Baking is one of my most favourite hobbies so at first I was just sad. Then I thought well I managed to make things vegan, maybe I can try to make them more diabetic friendly too. I also thought, what if there are other diabetic vegans? Maybe this is my chance to help them too. And so the experiment began. Then at the end of the 2019 my diabetes got a lot worse very fast and I soon found out I’d been misdiagnosed and am actually a type 1. Well, LADA technically, which is like a slow onset type 1 which adults get. As I write this I am currently only on basal insulin, and short acting will come in time. Of course this would mean I don’t need to be quite as careful with what I eat as I can correct with insulin. However as I’m not yet bolusing for what I eat, and seeing as I’d already started experimenting and finding ways to eat less sugar and lower carb I thought it can’t be a bad thing to continue. And so my blog was born. 

My kitchen and Cooking Favs

Kitchen tool – Has to be my Nutribullet. I got it after I got my food processor and it’s so much more powerful. Whenever I’m blending something in any of my recipes that’s what I’ll be using. 

Spice – Cinnamon. I am obsessed. It works so well for both sweet and savoury. 

Herb – Rosemary

Vegetable – I’m not sure if a tomato counts as a vegetable? If so definitely tomatoes, cherry tomatoes specifically. The best way to cook them is roasted! Otherwise I’d go with onion or eggplant. 

Fruit – Avocado

Type of wine – Definitely reds over whites, currently love a good Malbec. 

Condiment – Definitely Culley’s Picklenaise. Amazing. 

Thing to eat out of the jar – Tomato paste. I’ve always done it, it’s so good. Peanut butter would be a close second, the natural oily kind. 

Food – Gotta be pizza. Yes I know it’s full of carbs but I can’t help it. There’s never a day I couldn’t go for a pizza. 

Vegan place to eat – The Unbakery Cafe. I have a lot more to try, but this place is amazing! I also love their pre packaged macarons.