Welcome to my website!
So, you want to know a little bit about me…
I was born on a military base on the west coast of Canada, where my father was stationed in the late 70s. I grew up on Cape Breton Island, on the east coast of Canada, falling out of trees in the summer, building igloos in the winter, and generally being as tomboyish as possible.
In 1999, I moved across the big pond. I was working at a fantastic health foods shop on the corner of Young and Agricola in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and the boy I was dating at the time had just dumped me for his ex-girlfriend. I was gutted. After work one day, I laid on the couch, blanket up to my chin, telly remote in hand, feeling well and truly sorry for myself while flicking through the channels on the box. I caught the last 20 minutes of the film Rob Roy, and fell asleep.
The following day, I went to work as usual and made a decision that changed my life forever. I wanted to move to Scotland, the home of my MacIntosh ancestors. I searched the internet and made a list of the names and addresses of every health shop in Scotland (except for Holland & Barrett’s because they were a big chain, and I didn’t want to work for a big chain). I posted 50 resumes. I heard back from three places – one shop in Oban said I was overqualified, but a woman was opening a vegetarian restaurant they could pass my details on to. A shop in Dundee also offered me employment, but a woman in Shetland, with an accent I could barely discern, offered me the part-time employment I accepted. She was into dowsing, that whole hanging of the pendulum and asking a question yes-no thing. She hung her pendulum over my CV, and it said yes. She hired me based on that.
So, I sold almost everything I owned at the Canadian equivalent of a car boot sale and obtained the appropriate visa (UK Ancestry Entry Clearance since my grandmother was from England). My family thought I was nuts. Four months after I decided to move, I landed in Glasgow via a stopover in Iceland with just shy of £200 in my pocket. On my back was an army surplus rucksack containing all my worldly possessions.
I completely bypassed Scotland and ended up in Shetland, a remote archipelago in the North Sea, midway between the mainland of Scotland, Faroe and Norway. The Arctic Circle is closer to Shetland than London is.
In 2001, I had my firstborn.
In 2005, I signed up for my first Open University science course to work towards a BSc (Hons) in Life Sciences. Meanwhile, I worked at the health food shop and wrote for publications, including The Shetland Post and in Shetland.
As I procrastinated from studying, I baked a lot and had two more children.
In November 2011, I set up my private blog on Blogger. Friends encouraged me to set up my own website since I’d been sharing so many foodie photos and recipes on Facebook.
When I started blogging, it was a strictly private affair; you could only access it if you had a personal link, but then I joined Twitter and found a welcoming community of food bloggers. With great trepidation, I then opened my blog to the public.
I graduated from the Open University in 2013 with a First Class Honours degree. In the meantime, my blog blossomed. I learnt loads about food and photography, discovered a fantastic online community and found a writing voice I never knew I had. In May 2013, I registered as self-employed.
In April 2014, I moved from Blogger to WordPress.
In 2018, I met Jamie Oliver and won the Vuelio Best Food & Drink blog in the UK
In 2019, I shook hands with the 39th US President before having breakfast together in Plains, Georgia, USA.
During the pandemic in 2020, I started cycling.
In 2021, the blog took a back burner as I focused on cycle training and started working freelance for Shetland Food and Drink.
In 2022, I qualified for the Island Games Cycle Team, met Nicola Sturgeon while dressed up like a Viking Princess, and was Nick Nairn’s ‘expert’ on-stage assistant during his first live cooking demonstration post-COVID.
In 2023, I began a side career as a commercial fisherwoman, became the Karma Keeper of the Aald Harbour Hoose, and joined the team at Shetland’s first-ever single malt whisky distillery, Lerwick Distillery. I also joined the team on the MV Jorgen Amundsen.
In 2024, I made my TV debut on Channel 5 and began cooking for Shetland Wool Adventures tour guests.
The rest of the story remains to be told…
