MotherFood

My guest today needs little intro. She is a leading expert in period health, hormonal health and an advocate for women's health. Maisie Hill is the author of best selling Period Power and Perimenopause Power, she runs her own podcast Period Power, and offers health coaching via her innovative membership platform The Flow Collective. She is also a trained acupuncturist, Chinese Medicine specialist and a doula. Five years ago Maisie gave birth to her son Nelson, which inspired a new trajectory in her work - to write, and this is how she broke waves with her debut book Period Power! I was fascinated to learn more about Maisie's journey into motherhood, her career and the role of food and nourishment in her experience of mama hood. So in this episode we cover all of those topics and more!  You can find out more about Maisie (if you haven't already) on www.maisiehill.com and join the conversation over on Instagram with us @alissatimoshkina and @_masiehill_ If you'd like to learn how to bring food into your experience of postpartum then check out my online cooking course MotherFood at www.alissatimoshkina.com & you can support my work by buying me a coffee at www.buymeacoffee.com/alissatim

A powerful episode that celebrates food and family! It is a moving tribute to Uyen's own family who experienced an unimaginably difficult transition from post-war Vietnam to London, but also to the very concept of Family and its power to heal, nurture and support us. Uyen's passion and genuine love for food shines through every word and will undoubtedly make you re-evaluate your own relationship to the seemingly banal daily ritual of feeding yourself and your family. We talk about Vietnamese food culture, the tradition of sharing your meals, the flavours and the deep understanding of how food nourishes your body on a deep level. Uyen share recipes and ideas for postpartum and baby weaning, and if I have another chance to experience that beautiful phase in my life, Uyen's new cookbook Vietnamese will definitely be the source of inspiration for me! Join the conversation with us over on Instagram @alissatimoshkina and @loveleluu If you love this podcast and would like to support what I do, you can buy me a coffee at www.buymeacoffee.com/alissatim

In this episode I have the pleasure of speaking to Caroline Gladstone, a woman of many talents. She is a co-founder and creative consultant on numerous food and lifestyle projects, from Granger and Co restaurants to The Good Life Experience Festival, which she runs with her husband Charlie Gladstone. As well as their numerous creative endeavours, Caroline and Charlie are parents to 6 children! In this episode I satisfy my curiosity about what is it like to have a family of 6! Caroline shares her birth stories, her childhood food memories, and what is it like to feed a large family as well as how being a team is at the heart of a successful household! Full of laugher and fascinating insight, this episode is likely to make you wonder whether you might be up for having another child! It certainly had that effect on me!  Join in the conversation with us over on Instagram @alissatimoshkina & @carolinegladstone Find out more about my cooking course MotherFood over on my website alissatimoshkina.com and you can buy me a coffee over on www.buymeacoffee.com/alissatim

Welcome to this delightful episode featuring Guilia Scarpaleggia, a food blogger, cookbook author and food photographer from the heart of the Tuscan country side. Guila recently became a mama to her daughter, Livia, and in this episode recollects the recent experience of being pregnant and giving birth during the pandemic. We also talk about her childhood memories and the cultural ideas around food and womanhood in Italy. There are a lot of mouth-watering depictions of various dishes that Giulia recalls eating as a child, as well as an inspiring list of dishes and ingredients that we can all recreate in our own family kitchens. Filled with so much love for food and family, this episode is uplifting and heart-warming and will make you want to rush into your kitchen to cook up a rustic Italian meal. Speaking of which, Guilia shares a recipe for her Chickpea Cake with us on my blog and if you like what you see do visit  Giulia's gorgeous blog Jul's Kitchen for more inspiration. Please join in the conversation with us on Instagram @alissatimoshkina and @julskitchen To find out more about MotherFood cooking course visit my website https://www.alissatimoshkina.com/motherfood-cooking-course and you can buy me a coffee at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/AlissaTim

Welcome back to Part 2 of the 3rd Season of the MotherFood podcast!  In this episode I have the absolute joy of talking to one of my food-mama heroines, Georgina Hayden. Georgina is an acclaimed food writer, author of best-selling cookbooks, food stylist and a mother of a Greek-Cypriot origin. This conversation, which I have been dreaming of since the very beginning of the podcast, is likely to move you to tears and make you laugh, and feel all the feels in-between. Georgina's story of motherhood is so powerful, moving and inspiring. While she never doubted her desire to be a mother of a big family, her journey towards that vision was all but straightforward. She experienced child loss when her first baby, Archie, died short after birth, her and her husband went through a miscarriage and IVF treatments to be able to welcome their two daughters Perspehone and Elektra, who are now 4 years old and 9 months respectively. We also talk about the role of food and sisterhood in a life of a Mother, Georgina's views on gender roles within a family and why it is essential to include men into all conversations, while she also shares some insights into a life with two under 4s during a lockdown alongside some tips on weaning and eating as a family! Please join in the conversation with us on Instagram @alissatimoshkina and @georgiepuddingnpie To find out more about MotherFood cooking course visit my website https://www.alissatimoshkina.com/podcast and you can buy me a coffee at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/AlissaTim

Welcome to this 2-part special episode dedicated to Her Nutrition, where I have the pleasure of talking to nutritionists behind UK's unique food-grown supplements brand, Wild Nutrition. Their supplements are ethically and sustainably sourced, and are 100% food-grown, i.e. an organic way of producing supplements without any addition of synthetic elements, solvents or bulking agents.  In this episode, featuring nutritional therapist, and mama of two, Marianne Grechko, we delve into nutrition and supplements for fertilely, pregnancy and postpartum. This episode is packed full of useful insight into the science of nutrition addressing specifically the needs of female body from pre-conception to postpartum, so I would invite you to make some notes. We also talk about how food is grown and where do the nutrients in the food come from - through that we touch on the essential topics of understanding the food chain, and eating seasonally and locally where possible. Marianne really is the perfect person whose outlook very much resonate with my own - she embodies both the science and the intuitive approach to food. Her indepth knowledge is rooted in profound love of food and nature as well as in the feeling of trust in her intuitive and the innate wisdom of the body. While there is a ton of very sound scientific nutritional advice,  I hope the key message that you carry out is that the main thing is to eat with pleasure and honesty with yourself, as it is the truthful and joyful process of eating that nourishes your body more than any particular ingredient! If what we speak about really resonates and you feel that you would love to learn more about how to nourish yourself in an accessible way then may I recommend my online cooking course MotherFood. Created as a digital pack it offers you many tips, recipes and cooking videos of simple and nutritionally balanced meals that tick pretty much all the boxes of your body’s needs! Join the conversation over on Instagram with @alissatimoshkina and @wildnutritionltd To find out more about MotherFood cooking course visit my website https://www.alissatimoshkina.com/podcast and you can buy me a coffee at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/AlissaTim

This episode is all about baby food and baby weaning! It was such a pleasure to have a wonderful husband-wife duo, Lisa and Sallar, founders of Omami, to delve in-depth into the questions of how to feed your baby. As young parents themselves, Lisa and Sallar, decided to start a new baby food brand at just 3 months pregnant, to create an alternative to baby food pouches. Omami makes healthy weaning simple with their nutritionist approved, chef inspired, baby food subscription boxes.  Their blends are freshly made to order and formulated with your baby’s development in mind. We discuss how baby food is manufactured, how Omami creates their fresh pots, as well as how they approached baby weaning with their own son. There is a lot of fascinating insight into their philosophy of food as well as into their lives as food entrepreneurs and first-time parents. Funny, heartfelt and super informative, this episode will be a gem for anyone with a young baby about to embark on the weaning journey!  If you would like to try out Omami subscription box, I am delighted to offer you a special discount - just head over to omami.co.uk and use MOTHERFOOD25 for 25% your first box. To find out more about MotherFood cooking course visit my website https://www.alissatimoshkina.com/podcast and you can buy me a coffee at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/AlissaTim

In this episode I speak to nutritional chef, fermentation expert and cookery teacher, Nena Foster about her experience of being a mother of two gorgeous children. She shares her story of a major career change after having her 2nd baby, how food made all the difference to her wellbeing during the postpartum phase, and how & why we could make our children more in-tune with what they eat. Nena shares tons of useful personal insight as well as professional opinion on the benefits of eating as a family, of cooking with your children, and we talk about gut-health and the essential role fermented foods play in our diets. Find out more about Nena's work on https://nenafosterfood.com and join in the conversation with us over on instagram @alissatimoshkina and @nenafosterfood  To find out more about MotherFood cooking course visit my website https://www.alissatimoshkina.com/podcast and you can buy me a coffee at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/AlissaTim 

Welcome back to Season 3! I’m thrilled to launch the new season with this episode featuring Moroccan chef, author and restauranteur, Nargisse Benkabbou. We discussed the role of food in creating a sense of belonging, the role of female lineage in preserving food traditions, North African food for post-partum and what it means to be Moroccan and European at the same tone; and many many more subjects! Nargisse shares some delicious food ideas which will make you want to run to your kitchen and cook a fragrant tagine! You can find her recipes on www.mymoroccanfood.com & join in the conversation on Instagram with @alissatimoshkina and @mymoroccanfood

MotherFood Xmas-special Happy Christmas everyone! I am so excited to share this very warm and cosy special episode with you today! I have asked some of the wonderful guests on the podcast to record a little story for you: remembering their most special memories of Xmas as a child, their first Xmas as a mama, share their plans for this year and tell us about their must-have dish! It’s been such a joy to edit this episode featuring Emiko Davis, Aran Goyoaga, Heidi Sze, Zuza Zak, Lara Lee, Eleanore Ford and myself! The community of women that has appeared in my life this year thanks to the podcast has been the most wonderful and at times life-saving thing this year! So I thank you from the bottom of my heart for this and wish you a warm, restful and cosy holiday, no matter what ✨ all my love and gratitude 🙏🏻✨

In this episode I speak to the amazing Alice Zaslavsky.  A Russian-Jewish Australia-based best-selling culinary author, educator, broadcaster and TV host, who is also a new mother to a baby girl. Alice and I, share more than just the name (she is also called Alisa in Russian), we share an Ashkenazi heritage, the memories of awful food in Soviet kindergartens, the awe for mother’s lineage and the profound love of food! Alice, a teacher by trade, took a huge risk leaving her beloved job to enter Australian MasterChef competition, which was the most important decision of her life. What followed was a succession of serendipitous events which lead Alice to where she is now - at the top of her game in food, education and broadcasting. We talk a lot about her journey and how we can learn to trust the path; how to hold on to our vision no matter what life throws at you and also what to remember when things get difficult. Alice shares her pregnancy and birth stories, we talk about the food she ate in the early postpartum (spoiler alert: a lot of tvorog and kefir!). We discuss her life as a working mother and how she shares parenting duties with her husband. We delve into baby weaning and how to involve children in cooking early on AND we finish this 1.5-long chat on a glorious subject of elimination communication! This episode is an absolute gem full of Alice’s witty, honest, quirky and wise character! You can find more about Alice and her work on https://www.aliceinframes.com And join the conversation with us over on isntagram @alliceinframe and @alissatimoshkina To find out more about my cooking course MotherFood please visit my website alissatimoshkina.com

Claire pretty much embodies the very concept of mother food as her cooking and food writing is so much focused on the family kitchen. Her cooking is very autobiographical documenting her experience as a mother of 3 girls. She’s an author of 5 cookbooks all of which have the home kitchen as their main location. So I highly recommend her books to all the parents listening to this podcast. Because her books really do have the answers to so many questions we often face in our kitchens - full of practical advise, seasonal, family orientated with practicality, flavour richness and nutrient value in mind. Claire is a really passionate chef and food writer, and as you will hear, her knowledge of and her delight in cooking is so intoxicating! I just loved talking to her and then coming back to this conversation while eating the podcast, as it gave me a very much needed boost of confidence, reassurance and inspiration to get me out of my culinary rut, in which I have been finding myself a bit too often this autumn. i loved learning how her professional life developed and flowed into her personal life almost seamlessly. I really have been chaining my mindset around what being a working mother means to me and I have been, looking for examples in other women, as I am still new to the idea of embracing home as my creative space, and of not clearly defining work time and family time. So Claire’s example was so inspiring and brought many smiles to my face as we were talking. Claire’s new book - Home Cookery Year - is an ode to the simple joys of cooking as well as to the sheer diversity of reasons and occasions we enter out kitchen. So Claire truly knows what she is talking about when it comes to family cooking. This episode is full of wonderful tips and ideas, and if I were to encourage you to take away one thing from this conversation it would be the joy and the playfulness around food, and the idea of not taking food and yourself in the act of feeding too seriously - something I am certainly guilty of a lot - so for me it was a very welcomed reminder that a good meal is a lot more simple than the ambitious cook inside my head thinks it is. Find out more about Claire's work from http://5oclockapron.com and join in the conversation with us over on Instagram @alissatimoshkina and @5oclockapron 

It is such a joy to welcome my good friend Zuza Zak back on the show, this time as a mother of two! Zuza is a Polish-British food writer, cookery author and food anthropologist. She’s the author of Polska cookbook and has her second book coming out in 2021! Zuza shares her wonderful VBAC story, discusses life as a mother of two and the challenges of parenting a 4 year old while looking after a new born. We talk about emotional intelligence and tools to cultivate patience and awareness as parents. Zuza openly shares her experiences of two miscarriages and we marvel at the magic of food and women’s cooking! Find out more about Zuza in S1 E2 of this podcast and join in the conversation on Instagram with us @alissatimoshkina and @zuzazakcooks

My guest today is Romy Gill, MBE chef, author, broadcaster and restauranteur. She’s the host of Ready Steady Cook and makes frequent appearances on tv and the radio food programmes. Romy is also a mother of two teenage girls! In this episode we talk about Romy’s family and the cultural values of being a woman in India. Romy shares her challenges during pregnancy and the early postpartum period reminding us how essential it is to have the support system around. We talk about family foods and cooking with teenagers, and what does a lasting marriage look like! Find out more about Romy at romygill.com end join in the conversation with us on Instagram @alissatimoshkina and @romygill

In this episode I talk to Eleanor Ford about her childhood filled with travels around the globe and visits to exotic food markets. We explore the importance of family culinary culture and how to encourage adventurousness around food in children. Eleanor shares her own story of being a mother while running her own business and writing award-winning cookbooks. We delve into the complexity of siblings’ relationship, share birth stories, and Eleanor offers the most delicious recipe for home made peanut sauce and chicken sate from her cookbooks “Fire Islands”. You can find this recipe on my website alissatimoshkina.com/blog and if you’d like to enjoy more of Eleanor’s beautiful food do visit her website Eleanorfordfood.com Join in the conversation over on Instagram @alissatimoshkina and @eleanorfordfood

This week sees the end of the Breast cancer awareness month, and to mark that important initiative I am sharing a very special episode with you today. It features Rachelle Poitras who is a holistic breast health expert. I absolutely love Rachelle’s insight and just the very idea of holistic breast health which hasn’t really crossed my mind, it struck a cord with me straight away. Truly holistic in her outlook on breast health Rachelle considers all aspects from lifestyle to mind set and nutrition. In this episode we discuss our relationship to our breasts and what breast health really means. We look at how we are socialised as women based on our breast size, we consider the emotional and spiritual aspect of our connection to our chests, and we look in-depth into hormone health and nutrition. We discuss how we can nourish and nurture ourselves inside and out with tips on supplements, foods, breast masks and tinctures and Rachelle also shares a beautiful practise of a breast massage. The most amazing thing that I took away from this conversation is a realisation that by taking care of our breast in a truly holistic way we take care of our body, mind and spirit. They really are an amazing portal to our wellbeing as women. Find out more about Rachelle’s work on https://www.hermetanoia.com and join the conversation with us over on Instagram @alissatimoshkika and @her_metanoia Some sources Rachelle mentions on the podcast Dr Gabor Mate Susun Weed @thelymphaticmessage Renegade Beauty Women’s bodies, women’s wisdom Breast cancer, breast health

Julia Busuttil Nishimura is a Melbourne-based food creative and a mother of two young boys. Her food celebrates simple ingredients and seasonal produce and is influenced by her Maltese upbringing and time living in Italy. She teaches sell-out cooking workshops and pasta master classes and is a regular contributor to Australian and international publications. In this episode we talk about the role of food in her life and what values around womanhood and motherhood were passed on to her through the family recipes. Julia shares her birth stories and how food was her zone of comfort and certainty in the hazy postpartum days. We discuss the importance of maternal mental care, and the realities of parenting and being a freelance creative. Julia shares some beautiful insights into her family life - from farmers market trips, to last minute tidy ups with a baby in a sling before a photoshoot. Honest, real and full of beautiful energy, this episode also features so really delicious recipe ideas! You can find Julia's delicious ricotta gnocchi recipe on my website and do visit Julia's Instagram and website for more of her gorgeous food.

Join me and the amazing Chetna Makan for a conversation about family food, the role of home and being a creative mom in a digital age! Chetna who charmed the hell out of us all as a contestant on the Great British Bake Off went on to create an illustrious career as a cookbook author and creator of her own award winning YouTube channel “Food with Chetna”. Full of warmth, honest insight and super delicious recipe ideas, this episode is a wonderful example of how modern mothers can reclaim the kitchen as a space for their own creativity! Follow the conversation over on Instagram @alissatimoshkina and @chetnamakan And visit www.alissatimoshkina.com to find out more about the MotherFood cooking course and to discover recipes featured on this podcast!

Welcome to the first episode of MotherFood Season 2. I am so honoured to open this new chapter with a conversation with the legendary Sheila Dillon, presenter of the Food Programme on BBC Radio 4, and a powerful and inspiring voice in the food industry.  In this conversation as well as talking about Sheila's career we talk about the lesser known aspects of her life - her experience of motherhood, womanhood and her childhood memories. I took away so many meaningful messages from our conversation and hope you will find Sheila's story as inspiring as I did.  Please join the conversation with us over on Instagram @alissatimoshkina and @thesheiladillon You can find out more about MotherFood cooking course on my website and join the first live online course launching in November.

Welcome to Season 2 of MotherFood Conversations that nourish the modern mother I am your host, Alissa Timoshkina Chef || food writer || author || curator || and a mother passionate about maternal empowerment through food and conversation. In this season we meet women who forged inspiring carers in food, nutrition and wellness, while also embracing lives as mothers. We talk about what it means to be a woman, a mother and a creative. We share intimate moments of our complex journey, with all the intricacies of our relationships to our bodies our partners and our children. And of course there’s a lot of talking about the food! I passionately believe that when women’s voices come together to share stories some magical transformation takes place. So, let’s talk! Join the conversation over on Instagram @alissatoshkina and visit my website alissatimoshkina.com to find out more about the MotherFood cooking course!