Julie
One of my most favourite things in life is to welcome people into my home and feed them! Great food and good company just makes everything better.
I have spent most of the last 20 years being a mum of 3 and running my own successful catering company Simply Scrumptious. I had a wonderful time cooking for fabulous parties and celebrations with the occasional royal thrown in! I provided the VIP catering for Southampton University and I can honestly say, cooking for Princess Anne absolutely terrified me!!
I also ran a cookery school from home which gave me the opportunity to share some of my favourite dishes with others by cooking together and then eating it all for lunch, very social days. The idea behind the cookery school was to share my knowledge and love of food without being patronising. The days were designed to be hands-on rather than a demonstration, I wanted people to leave at the end of the day with a renewed love of cooking but also just as important, to have enjoyed themselves.
I first met Nic whilst I was working for Big Green EGG HQ in the events team. It was also here that I cooked on an EGG for the first time. I loved the controllability, the easy lighting, the ability to cook for hours but most of all, as a cook, I loved the taste of all the dishes that we prepared. It was a great place to work!
By this time, Meat Smoke Fire was proving to be a massive success for Nic, he was extremely busy and asked if I wanted to work with him. By working together, we would be able to offer more days and expand the geographical area that we could cover. What was so fantastic about this for me was it gave me the opportunity to get back to cooking which has always been my first love. I obviously said a massive yes and haven’t looked back.
Over this last year, I have cooked with over 60 fabulous people on 20 different occasions. It has been varied and fun. It is definitely not like a normal “job” and I can’t wait to meet more people next year when they welcome me into their homes and gardens to cook on their EGG’s.
I plan to offer some group classes from my home in Winchester, I will let you know more details next year.