Help in the kitchen – Zoe Willis, Real Life. Real Kitchen.
Help in the kitchen – Zoe Willis, Real Life. Real Kitchen.
It feels as though there is always a headline about food or food-related issues, and especially connected to children and family life, doesn’t it? It can all feel a little too much. Maybe your nanny takes over in the kitchen for the children’s meals which could be a relief but if she’s struggling too then perhaps you both need help!
Zoe Wilis of Real Life Real Kitchen based in Horsmonden, has just relaunched her website. Zoe has five children, and she homeschools but preparing nutritious, home-cooked meals remains a daily priority for her. How does she do it?!
She’s been telling me about her business and how it’s perfect for busy families.
What service do you offer, Zoe?
I run a kitchen consulting service and most of my customers are busy parents whether they work or not, who are feeling quite frustrated in the kitchen and overwhelmed by cooking. They all know something needs to change: maybe, healthier meals or they want to have more time and more space to be together as a family.
So, I come in and help; I cut through the overwhelm. We sit down, discuss the challenges and we put together a plan for them to get through that frustration, create more time and space, and better cooking habits.
What was the inspiration behind the business?
In my 20s, when I really should have been writing my master’s dissertation and my PhD dissertation, instead, I procrastinated and did a lot of home cooking! No clubbing, just cooking and home cooking on a budget.
I then have had lots of children, so the home cooking has continued. But what I hadn’t realised was that what I was doing at home was actually quite unusual. More and more friends and mums were saying, ‘How do you manage to cook so well?’ ‘How do you manage to do batch cooking?’ ‘How can you be so organised?’ Asking about the actual practicalities of standard cooking, which for generations, that sort of knowledge we would have known.
I knew there was a gap; excuse the pun, but people are hungry for help and support with preparing food for the family. And so, I started up this business and have been helping mums and families ever since.
Why do you think home cooking is important?
So many reasons. One of them, very much a hot topic at the moment, is health. There’s a lot in the news at the minute about ultra-processed foods and the damage that is doing to people’s health. With home cooking, you know it’s going to be fresh; you know, it’s going to be healthy because it’s only the simplest of ingredients, you’re much more likely to succeed with good health and good habits for you and your family if you’re home cooking.
The second thing is, it’s an opportunity to come together as a family. It means that you’re creating the spaces in the day when you can sit together as a family and eat well: precious family time. So, I suppose I’m on a little bit of a gentle mission to help those who want to recreate that family time. I want to help them feel nourished, both physically and spiritually and emotionally through home cooking.
How do the cooking sessions work?
A client will get in touch with me and say I’m really struggling with batch cooking, or I’ve got to start cooking on a budget, or I have to stop serving just chicken nuggets or I have to go gluten free or any other kinds of difficulty … Please help!
So, we then have an initial telephone chat or Zoom chat where we talk about the challenges they’ve got. I find out a bit about the home life, their real life, what the timetable looks like during the week, we discuss budgets.
I then go away and have a think, put together some recipes and create a shopping list so that the client can go to the supermarket and buy the ingredients.
For the in-house cooking session, I go to their house for a two-and-a-half-hour session where we will cook together. I experience their real life, real kitchen and we make real food! We will make the main meal for that day as well as batch cook a number of other meals, do some food prep for future meals and just really kind of talk about people’s challenges within the kitchen. I provide real-life, bespoke guidance that a lot of people would like. It gives people the confidence to feel creative in the kitchen.
After you’ve had that session, I write a report about the things we’ve discussed, some of the solutions we put together and I’ll put an action list of things for people to actually go and do; changes that they can make over the next two /three weeks. I provide ongoing support for a couple of weeks afterwards: if there are any questions that have, they can get in touch with me, and I can help them as a guide.
How do families tell you they’ve benefitted?
Feedback has been so positive! It really has changed the way families look at food, their weeks and their time, how they look at budgets, for example. It can be basic things like changing which shop they go to for their basics, and that can have a huge impact on the family’s budget.
They just have so much more time to be with the family. Cooking isn’t such a stress anymore. They can get joy out of it.
What is your family’s favorite meal?
It is Bolognese. Pasta Bolognese is the go-to – I put a lot of vegetables into my Bolognese sauce, so that’s quite a good smuggler of goodness, which is a bonus.
I always make sure that we have the Bolognese on a day in the week when it’s really busy so that when we get home, we just have Bolognese ready. And you know everyone’s going to eat it and everybody’s going to have a full tummy and sleep well.
What’s your top tip for a stress-free mealtime?
Don’t start at four o’clock in the afternoon when the children come home, or at five, six or seven o’clock when you get home from work. Please don’t do that. You’re tired. Nobody’s on good form.
If you’re dropping the children off at school, I’d really suggest that you when you get back at 9am, you get your food prep done then so that when they get back later on, you can just heat it up and it’s straight on the table. Everybody’s happy and it’s really, really simple.
I would also suggest for a stress-free mealtime that you eat as early as possible with the little ones. You can eat later with your partner!
So that’s my top tip: just get organised. Do it as early as possible so you can just heat it up and eat it up later.
Thank you Zoe – you make it sound so easy!
Zoe has a challenge that is a great introduction to Real Life Real Kitchen while helping you at the same time. Take a look here! The Magnificent (and free!) 7-Day Pantry Rummage Challenge
Images By: Little Olives Photography
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