Sharing food and sharing our food skills should be deep rooted in everyone’s culture - it should almost be an instinct.

When we share food, we talk more! The list of implications of this goes on and on - socially, economically, culturally - you name it, we benefit from it.

I used to think that the way forward was to promote everyone to be using locally sourced, organic, sustainably sourced products, dump the supermarket rubbish and move to the good stuff - I still stand by this to an extent, but not only is it not viable for everyone to afford it but it will also never happen until you love cooking.

So if you’re starting out on your food journey, don’t worry about the ingredients you’re using or where they’re coming from, just cook them, eat them and enjoy them! If you’re already on your way, cooking, exploring and getting into the swing of things, start looking locally for the better, more sustainable ingredients - this is when you’ll start to appreciate the difference locally grown, organic and high quality ingredients make to your food - its about building a connection with food and that’s going to happen with baby steps!

Skills are the building blocks towards creating delicious food but the foundations have to be set with a strong philosophy towards food, everyone can find a connection with food, you just have to explore enough and look for it. This is what I try to inspire whenever I’m teaching, educating, speaking or cooking food! Once you find that, the rest will fall into place pretty easily