Can you make a meal from nothing?

You have culinary talents. You’ll certainly be a keen cook and maybe a WI jam-maker or acclaimed dinner-party hostess. You can have fun enhancing your abilities and perhaps discovering a future business along the way.

How to develop your natural talent

For inspiration:
• Check out farmers’ markets, farm shops and market stalls for best fresh-food sources
• Discover new ingredients in speciality shops or on the internet
• Get to know local producers
• Subscribe to foodie magazines
• Visit food fairs and festivals

Broaden your horizons:
By combining your love of food with other interests or talents, you may open up other worlds, eg:
• Food photography or art
• Food presentation, styling and table-dressing
• Specialist growing (fruit and vegetables, herbs, salads etc)
• Food and cookery writing or restaurant reviewing
• Livestock production

Learn more:
• Sign up for advanced-level cookery lessons
• Explore the science of nutrition in a short course
• Learn a specialist art such as cheese-making or patisserie
• Join a cookery-book group or internet foodie club

Your hobby has become a passion when...
• Your sugar-spinning/sausage-making/spice-mixing habits are completely out of control
• You make your children tell you about their school dinners so you can do a nutritional analysis
• You have taken to scribbling down brilliant recipe ideas in the middle of the night
• Your partner is losing sleep and putting on weight

Time to take stock
Perhaps you are at the stage of starting to speculate about more ambitious ideas:
• To have your own stall at the local farmers’ market
• To run a school-holiday cookery club for children
• To get your recipes published
• To advise friends and neighbours on healthy eating
• To produce your own pork from the pigs you have reared

Learn more, get practising…
You will need to focus, develop more skills, check out food-safety regulations and, above all, practise and experiment.
• Consider studying for an advanced-chef-skills, dietician or nutritionist qualification
• Volunteer to work in a charity kitchen or festival catering stall
• Start providing produce for the local café and shop
• Run a series of good-food and healthy-eating lectures for the local school, PTA or WI
• Team up with a farmer or market gardener to help promote their products

Towards a culinary business
This specialism lends itself well to being a part-time occupation or a slow build-up to a full-time business. There are so many options – here are just a few…
• Set up a home-produce outlet (shop, market or website)
• Run a café full-time or set up a seasonal tearoom
• Become a restaurateur
• Become a nutrition and healthy-eating consultant
• Develop a line of top-quality speciality products
• Become a caterer for functions
• Set up a company offering gourmet short-break holidays

Country Living advice If you are thinking about producing food or foodstuffs for other people, even in a small-scale way, make sure you check out health and safety rules first. Don’t be caught out by unannounced inspectors or, worse, bacterial catastrophe.

Resources for kitchen wizards:
Food Standards Agency food.gov.uk 020 7276 8000
FSA food-only website eatwell.gov.uk
FSA cookery clubs advice food.gov.uk/healthiereating/nutritioncommunity/cookit How to set one up
FSA food hygiene information food.gov.uk/safereating
British Library ‘Books for Cooks’ bl.uk/learning/langlit/booksforcooks/booksforcooks.html Food-history learning resource
The Foody thefoody.com For food-lovers, lots of links
People 1st 0870 060 2550; people1st.co.uk Sector skills council, search for short cookery courses and chef training
Open University open2.net/everwonderedfood Academic food-related studies)

The Nutrition Society 020 7602 0228; nutritionsociety.org Nutrition information and qualifications
Think Vegetables thinkvegetables.co.uk Supplier site with lots of vegetable information
Travel Quest travel-quest.co.uk/tqcookery.htm Cookery-school and gourmet holidays

Need further inspiration?

Here are some ideas to capitalise on your natural talents to think about - with ideas and advice for each...

Take our quiz to discover your natural talents...

...and then make the most of them

Can you spot a bargain at 20 paces?

Can you make a meal from nothing?

Are you good with children?

Can you talk to the animals?

Do you make or create things?

Are you a people person?