I’m Gem, one half of the Family Feed team. The other half is my husband and food-loving soulmate – Jim. Family Feed has been in the making ever since I can remember, standing next to my mum in the kitchen making pastry as a child… I just didn’t know it until now. 

I grew up in one of those houses where people ‘popped in’ on a Sunday and ended up joining us for dinner. No one came to our house without being fed. Looking back I wonder how my mum made the food stretch – plan for the worst and hope for the best! (I’ve never seen her cupboards empty in my life). But those formative years peeling spuds, washing cabbage and learning how to multitask have never left me. The kitchen is where I am at home. I have done everything from grieving the loss of grandparents to celebrating our marriage and children by feeding people and celebrating life around a full table.

Feeding a family

Feeding a family is never a walk in the park. It doesn’t matter if your family is you and a flatmate, you and three small children, grandparents, older children and everything in between. We often feed our families the food that we know works for us and that makes life easy. But what happens when you find yourself stuck in a rut, tied into the same meals week in week out.? When this happens to me I force myself to cook something new every week until I find some new keepers. I turn to my cookbooks, Instagram, Jamie Oliver’s website, food blogs. But the keepers nearly always come from the recipies and ideas that have been shared with me from family and friends.

Cooking in a pandemic

2020 has been an unimaginably turbulent year for so many. Covid-19 has caused destruction far and wide. Life has taken a virtual detour and we have lost out on so many experiences and events. As I look back on the period of lockdown at the start I can see that I cooked my way through it all. A small baby in one arm, a toddler in the other, a husband working from home and the hormones of a new Mum… cooking is my therapy. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy. It doesn’t mean we eat wonderful food round the clock. It’s a balance of baked potatoes one night and King Prawn Saganaki the next.

Finding new ways to feed our family

I am always searching for new ideas and recipes that come recommended or that I can adapt. Finding a recipe you know will be with you forever is a great feeling. It’s like adding a new tool to your belt. Family Feed is born from the notion of sharing. We want to share recipes within our community. As we begin this journey we have collaborations with friends and family in the pipeline. We hope to grow a community centred around feeding our families.

Teamwork makes the dream work

Jim is a huge contributor to Family Feed and our life as a family of four. His background is in publishing, conferences and events and he has spent the last 15 years travelling the world and doing brilliant things with his team and partners. Family Feed benefits from Jim’s vast editorial experience, his knowledge of content and the world of content marketing. He occasionally writes for FF, he takes care of the site, our SEO and entertaining the children while I film the videos.

Cooking with an audience

These days when I cook I do it with the clatter of mischief in the background. I am busier than I have ever been before. My feet chase children from morning to night, I bake with them, play with them, go to work, keep the house ticking along (all alongside Jim) and feed my family from my heart and soul. Bringing the family together at the table has always been my favourite experience. I love the buzz of the stories from that day, the happy faces enjoying and sometimes protesting the food I put in front of them. But most of all I love recreating the sense of belonging that it gave me as a child.

It doesn’t have to be perfect!

When we decided to start Family Feed in the summer we did so in a moment of clarity. “It doesn’t have to be perfect!” I had toyed with the idea for a few years but I always felt that it was impossible to find the space and time to bring a polished and perfect image/video and ideas to your screens.

I studied film in Manchester 12 years ago and I have always loved storytelling, but the technical side was never really my forte – I am no whizkid. That a-ha moment we had was so liberating. We realised that if we are cooking real food, for real families, why does it need to be captured any differently to the food I put on our table?… it doesn’t. In fact, it shouldn’t.

If Family Feed is going to be sustainable for us then the food needs to be quickly shot right before our hungry family devour it. It needs to be captured on my phone while I scramble to make dinner in a moment of opportunity. If it’s going to be sustainable for the reader then it needs to be real and honest.

Creativity and motherhood

Being on maternity leave in 2020 is a strange experience. But it’s also allowed me to seek new ways of self-expression. So often we are depicted by our jobs/responsibilities that we can lose a sense of what brings us real joy. I have loved reconnecting with my own creativity by starting Family Feed. Motherhood has taught me to be equal parts efficient/practical and adventurous/creative. I hope that as you join us on this journey of feeding our families we can share food that represents the many different ways a family functions.

What you can expect

We don’t know how this will evolve and we like that it is open… Family Feed will bring you ideas and inspirations from our kitchen every Friday, check out the first here! We invite you to cook these meals and share your own. We plan to collaborate on a monthly feature with a guest. I will cook their food, share their stories and celebrate the way food and family are inherently connected. We will always listen to your thoughts and ideas. I will try to focus my ideas so you can follow along in your busy life. I will use quick videos for speed and I can’t promise the odd typo won’t get through…

We look forward to sharing this adventure with you!

Gem & Jim