Chef Cat and Eat More Kale

After the continued success of our weekly meal deliveries through this lockdown period, we just wanted to let everyone know how much we've loved cooking for you each week in the EMK kitchen!

Seeing as the whole reason we decided to offer these weekly meals was to offer support during an uncertain time and bring people together within the local area, we thought it would be nice to provide you guys with some more information about Chef Cat, the foodie fanatic behind Eat More Kale UK.

So a little from Chef Cat herself...
I have been running a catering business for over 10 years now, and have loved food and cooking ever since I can remember, probably stemming from working with my nan and grandad in their deli shop as a little girl. Food has always been a huge part of my life, and something I can always turn to in times of uncertainty to bring back a little joy into the everyday. 

Before running Eat More Kale UK, I ran Cat's Cookery School in Marlow for around 6 years, offering catering and classes to local people, all focusing on homemade, organic, and delicious food. However, following my daughter becoming vegan back in 2016, I began the start of my own vegan journey, turning fully vegan a year later and consequently retraining as a vegan chef and nutritionist at CNM in Kings Cross.

Following the completion of my degree, I worked part-time in Vanilla Black, a fine-dining all-vegan restaurant in Holborn, which furthered my resolve to entirely transform my existing catering company and cookery school in alignment with my new mission in the world of vegan cheffing: to enable more plant-based eating. 

Taking the knowledge I learnt at CNM, paying close attention to nutrition and the fundamentals needs of our bodies, alongside the skills and finesse I was able to develop and refine during my time at Vanilla Black, I took on a totally new approach to catering, teaching, and vegan cooking. 
Following the launch of Eat More Kale UK in 2018, our first campaign was to set up a series of bi-weekly workshops, detailing the intricate details of skills such as vegan cheese-making, pantry staples, vegan baking, and easy vegan meals. Alongside the classes, I began catering private events, parties, and private cheffing, introducing local people to accessible, nutritious, and of course delicious vegan food!

We then decided to launch our pop-up supper clubs! Each supper-club focused on a different theme and style of dining, whereby a whole vegan menu was cultivated for our guests to indulge in. The first supper-club was an Italian gourmet five course meal, followed 3 months later by Burgers and Beers, and  finally our Tapas night!

Following the success of these classes and events we decided to take the leap and launch the Maidenhead Vegan Market: seasonal all-vegan market in the centre of Maidenhead, showcasing the talents of small vegan businesses across the South East of England, and hopefully encouraging the wider community of Berkshire and Buckinghamshire to consider veganism as a lifestyle they could get behind. After the first successful market, we ran three more, and began plans on setting up vegan markets in other nearby towns, however, then Corona decided to hit, and everything changed.
​
So, following the lockdown of the whole of the UK on the 23rd of March, it seemed that all of our projects were temporarily stunted, and so we decided to refocus our efforts and resources into the launch of our weekly meal deliveries! Our initial motivation for delivering these meals was simply as a way to offer support to our local community during a difficult time, but since then - wholly because of the overwhelming positivity of the responses we've received from our customers - it's become so much more than that; a source of joy for us and for our customers in an uncertain and strange time. So much so that we plan on carrying on with our weekly deliveries long after Corona says hasta la vista.

Thanks for reading!
​
Love,
Cat x