Family, food, friends and the frenzy of 2016

14 October 2016 By

I don’t know of anyone who is ready to wrap up this year in just 2 months and yet as I write this newsletter my thoughts are on Christmas and the brand New Year ahead and scarily even to March 2017.

How quickly 2016 rolled by! I know more of us are saying this familiar catch phrase. And yet I can’t help feeling almost cheated that I haven’t had time to fully embrace this special milestone year. I promised myself at the end of 2015 that I was going to travel at a leisurely pace, enjoy my pets, my garden and the outdoors… less hurrying – everything can and will wait I told myself. Well fracturing three toes late in April just before my 50th came as an early warning signal…but somehow even this painful episode didn’t help slow the pace.

The daily dose of happenings on my news feed makes my day go quickly as I try to juggle and make sense of various platforms. Getting my headspace at the age of 50 to grasp new technologies associated with a brand new website that was launched a few months ago was a challenging experience.

Having a daughter start uni studying economics and international relations meant hearty discussions around the lounge room and dinner table on Australian elections, Brexit, and the current American presidential debate.

Keeping abreast of cooking trends, programmes, delicious food, wine, beer, chilli, garden and food truck events, various street festivals, new cafe openings, latest pop up kitchens and weekly farmers markets all opening up in neighbourhoods every other week meant the passing of time just spun into seasons. The plus side is that all these events have brought people together, made our streets alive and community vibrant and engaging.

I have found myself at such varied events this year. From cooking at local farmers markets at the weekends, to conducting country shows at Dowerin, Newdegate and Waroona. And interstate at the Sydney Good Food & Wine Show and carrying out supermarket demonstrations around Adelaide. I’ve also had the pleasure of bringing our flavour range internationally to Singapore and Shanghai and found myself very much at ease demonstrating my range to an appreciative audience in those countries.

Over the years, I have found that cooking onsite at events like these is something I really enjoy i.e. engaging directly and in an impromptu mode with consumers. Receiving immediate responses and feedback is priceless. Usually everyone wants to just take me home with them and I have many long standing invitations from families all around WA, NSW and SA. More often than not I am tempted but the irony is that I’ve really have not had much time for cooking at home myself since I’m away so much.

In my travels this year, I have found people’s palates are truly varied and wonderful.  What an amazing experience it has all been and now in my 4th year of business I’m thankful to be constantly inspired from my growing community of LK lovers and followers.

They share so many ideas and tips like:

  • the lady at Sydney who enjoys our Cherry Chocolate with a ripe camembert;
  • and another who treats herself with vanilla ice cream and a drizzle of our Caramelised Apple Cider;
  • and the families who have such different taste buds with each family member having a favourite “Latasha’s” which they tell me they’ve mastered magnificently with an added personal twist.

One young man remarked how he feels he knows me very well already though we had never met before. This, thanks to his mom stockpiling so many of our jars in her pantry and regularly cooking ‘Latasha’s’ for family dinners.

I feel contented too that 26 of our lines are naturally vegetarian and 15 are naturally vegan that these plant eating groups are well catered for in our range of flavours.  We often discuss creative ideas on ways they can use our products as a flavour base to enrich their cooking repertoire.

I enjoy hearing and absorbing it all. It is what I love – making life easier and helping creative cooks, novices or professionals bring family and friends to the table anytime anywhere.

As always, wishing you many happy hours of cooking and eating with your loved ones, friends and colleagues and strangers you have just met.