Beth the Free Range Chef

My Recipes & Ramblings has a new home

Hello to my subscribers old and new. Here is the beginning of a new chapter…

The path of how I came to be here is so wiggly and varied that I’m never too sure how to succinctly pronounce who I am and what I do, perhaps because they are essentially the same thing. I am a chef. That is my job, my purpose, and my passion. What also seems to bumble along nicely with this way of life is being a mum, food and life writer, half-baked gardener with much enthusiasm but limited time (and no ability to control slugs), bassoon player, cake baker, turnip lover, wild swimmer*.

The main way in which I feed people is on retreats, usually focused around yoga with varying degrees of energetic activities and levels of crystals and cosmicness. There is something hugely special about cooking for people when they are in need of rest bite from whatever troubles them. You are giving them energy and inspiration and if you are lucky, you are aiding the healing process not only with the nutrients within the food but with the love you put in to every dish. What a privilege. Sometimes I’m cooking in a nice big house with all mod cons, i.e. electricity and walls. Often it is in the woods with fire and smoke and squirrels. There’s usually something foraged, something pickled, something dried and it’s all vegetarian, often vegan. This is my most favourite way to cook, using as little as possible to create plenty, with no food waste and many happy and replete guests. I’ve been nourishing people in this fashion since 2014. Before this time, lies an impressive root system of jobs and opportunities, some tailing off only to lead down another path, everything seemingly making sense in hindsight.

My time in commercial kitchens began after completing a degree in Creative Writing & Cultural Sturdies in 2006, when an opportunity to move to London and work in journalism did not go to plan. At the time it seemed like a huge set back and if someone had said, this may be the best thing to have happened, well, it would not have stopped my ugly crying that’s for sure. As time passed and my confidence grew, I was struck by how happy it made me. I would wake at 5am 5 days a week to drive half an hour, park and walk 15 minutes to my place of work, turn on Radio 2 (back in the good old Terry Wogan Breakfast Show days) and bake muffins ready for breakfast at 7.30am opening. And I thought I was the luckiest lady in town. How can this be work? I still can’t quite believe it now, although do check back in with me on this one when I’m buried underneath 2 hours worth of washing up with back pain that forces me to the floor in child’s pose every 10 minutes, as opposed to sitting at my laptop with a glass of red wine and the prospect of an early night!!

It was at the age of 7 I realised I wanted to be a writerthough. I can’t remember what triggered this, only that I remember fondly many English teachers with their quietbelief in my prose even though I’ve always been mildly dyslexic. At 15 my careers advisor suggested there mightbe a more, I don’t know, more standard, reliable, less airy-fairy job I could aim for. I was disheartened but not put off. When I write, on a good day, it is like I’m propelled forwards, off balance, my fingers and thoughts doing an excitable hopscotch together and when the moves match, there are few things that feel as natural to me. It is the same when my Tetris-like intuition connectsflavours in my mind to bring together something simplebut often unique on the plate. Luckily for me food and writing go extremely well together and you can imagine how happy I am to finally feel like the two are becoming my reality. I’m filling my life with the work I’ve always wanted to do and I’m so bloody grateful.

* As our journey together continues, you may also pick up and my mild obsessions with guinea pigs, ghosts, The Isle of Wight, colourful things and so on…