The Menus That Taught Us Something New

I need to write this one from the heart, because that's exactly where it comes from.

There is a particular kind of joy in feeding people. Not just serving food — feeding them. Watching someone take a first spoonful not quite knowing what to expect and watching their face change. That joy is the whole reason any of this exists and it's the part I never want to lose sight of, however big this gets.

Why We Cook This Way

Kaytee and I wanted every menu to work for vegetarians and vegans without anyone at the table feeling like an afterthought, which meant unlearning some habits that had never needed questioning before. Eggs became apple sauce. Dairy cream became cashew nut cream. Silken tofu, which I'd barely cooked with before this, became the answer to more problems than I expected — whisked with melted chocolate and honey into a mousse, blended with garlic and spinach into a sauce that comes out startlingly green.

I came at this with my gut health coach hat on, wanting to show people that fibre doesn't have to feel like medicine. It can be a rainbow Buddha bowl with roasted sweet potato, sauerkraut, chickpeas and a miso ginger dressing, and you'd never clock that it was doing your gut any favours at all. Kaytee came at it wanting to keep growing what she knew how to cook — different foods, different techniques, spices she hadn't reached for before — trying things neither of us would have attempted on our own.

Here's the thing though — we always cooked in our own homes, separately, so neither of us ever actually tasted the other's dishes before they landed on the table. We simply trusted each other's cooking. I was usually in charge of the focaccia, the chickpea crackers, and, in the early days, the desserts. I'd turn up at Kaytee's with all of it, and she'd already be there with whatever she'd made. She'd say, try this soup, it's delicious and honestly, it always was. Or she'd tell me, oh my goodness, the green goddess sauce is so good this time, full of fresh garlic — and I'd taste it for the very first time standing in her kitchen, minutes before guests arrived. That trust, cooking apart and meeting in the middle, is something I don't think either of us has ever really said out loud until now.

Ingredients I'd never cooked with before this kept turning up too — trying them out, sometimes getting it wrong, sometimes finding something that became a regular on the menu.

Our WhatsApp never stopped pinging through any of it. Kaytee's daughter used to comment on how much the two of us messaged each other — constantly, at all hours, about a chickpea recipe or a dessert that hadn't quite set. Looking back, that thread of messages is basically the whole story of how this got built, one ping at a time.

We write out every recipe properly. Alongside each one goes the alternatives — what to swap if someone's avoiding a particular ingredient — and the nutritional value, because that matters to me and I know it matters to a lot of the women who come. We keep them all together in a folder and that folder sits right there on the supper club table. When someone loves a dish, we offer to email it to them. More often than not, they've already got their phone out taking a photograph of the page before we've even finished the sentence.

The Moments That Stay With Me

One woman loved our tomato soup so much she went home, dug her soup maker out from wherever it had been living, and started cooking again. Properly cooking, for herself, after what sounded like a long time of not bothering.

Another told us, quite leisurely, over a plate, that she'd made babaganoush "just like that" — no big fuss, no drama, just tried it. She'd only started cooking a few months before. Watching her face while she talked about it, her wins and her disasters both, was pure joy. Not polite joy. Actual joy.

And then there was the woman who turned up with her own home-baked lentil rolls, holding one out and asking me why hers had come out so pale next to ours. I told her — because you used the cottage cheese recipe. That was it. That was the whole exchange. But it's stayed with me, because it meant she'd taken something we'd made, made it her own, and cared enough to ask why it looked different. That's exactly what we hoped would happen when we started printing these recipes out.

We started telling women to bring packing-up boxes with them, because Kaytee and I always panic that we haven't made enough — and every single time, without fail, there's plenty left over. Some women turn up with the most wonderful containers, properly kitted out for taking food home, and the next day the messages start coming in about how good their lunch was. It's a win all round. We don't have to lug food home ourselves, nothing gets wasted and our guests help themselves to exactly what they fancy. Simple, and somehow one of my favourite parts of the whole evening.

What It Actually Means to Me

I don't think either of us set out thinking we'd spark anything beyond a nice evening. But hearing that someone tried a recipe and it worked — that they loved it enough to tell us, that a soup maker came back out of a cupboard, that someone found the confidence to cook something new and wanted to talk about it — that is everything to me. That's the bit that gives me goosebumps when I sit and write it down.

I love talking about food. I love the wins as much as the disasters. I love spices and colour, and a plate that makes someone want to stop and look before they eat. It turns out that's exactly what Kaytee and I have been building, one recipe at a time — and I don't think I'll ever get tired of watching it happen at someone else's kitchen table, not just ours.

This is the third in a series about building a supper club from scratch.