In my childhood, food was always considered as a form of medicine.
Even though I was born in Sheffield, England — my family always stuck to their roots, raising us in a traditional Jamaican household. Coming back to this generational knowledge has informed my life path in ways I could never have predicted.
My inspiration came from my mother who was the alchemist in the kitchen. She was a keen gardener who grew her own vegetables and cooked everything from scratch for our family of eight, long before the days of processed foods.
As a child I suffered from eczema and was constantly prescribed steroid creams. When I was a teenager, I started to feel the side effects which caused thinning of the skin as well as liver problems. Unable to find any skin products where I could understand the ingredients on the label, I decided to start my own line of 100% organic and food-grade skin products that were free from artificial chemicals and synthetic ingredients.
At the age of sixteen I attended a catering college for three years in Sheffield. My passion for cooking led me to travel across Greece, Italy, Germany and Holland — where I continued to gain knowledge and experience as a chef. In 1998 I opened a vegan & macrobiotic restaurant in Amsterdam.
Our lives revolved around ritual, where practices such as fasting were seen as a great contribution to health. This generational wisdom is what informs my path today.
In 2002 my husband was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease called colitis ulcerosa. Combining my experience as a chef with generational knowledge and traditional cooking, I have successfully treated his symptoms through medicinal foods for more than twenty years without any medical intervention.
This led me to start taking a more holistic approach to health and to deepen my knowledge of more traditional ways of preparing food through fermenting, sprouting and dehydrating — as well as producing cosmetics and cleaning products from food-grade ingredients.
Fast forward to 2015, I relocated to Portugal with my husband and two sons, with the aim of living closer to nature. Based on Picota — the second highest mountain in the Algarve at 600 metres above sea level, we have a small farm consisting of 25 chickens, 3 rescue dogs, a food forest, tropical orchard and a vegetable garden. Our water comes from the spring that flows through the mountain.