June 6, 2025 • 14 mins
Nadia Lim is a chef with a finger in every pie.
She’s a MasterChef New Zealand champion, cookbook author, TV personality, dietitian, entrepreneur, and an inspiration for many in the kitchen.
Her recipes and passion have shaped the way many approach food, the release of her cookbook Easy Weeknight Meals inspiring plenty of people to take up utensils.
To mark the 10th anniversary of that very cookbook, a special edition is being released, complete with 16 bonus My Food Bag recipes.
Easy Weeknight Meals 10th Anniversary Edition, published by Allen & Unwin NZ, RRP $39.99.
She told Jack Tame that ten years has gone by fast – time moving faster the older you get.
“I’m 40 this year and I started this journey out when I was like, 25, and gosh, the time’s just flown by,” Lim said.
“I’ve never been a great person at kind of, looking back in the past, but when anniversaries like this come around, it’s a good time to kind of look back and stop, pause, and reflect.”
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Speaker 1 (00:07):
You're listening to the Saturday Morning with Jack team podcast
from News Talks at Me.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Nadia Limb is a chef with her fingers and basically
every pie. She's a master chef, New Zealand champion, a
cookbook author, a TV personality, an entrepreneur, and an inspiration
to many of us in the kitchen and in the
garden for that matter. Her recipes and her passion shape
the way that many of us approach food. And to
mark the tenth anniversary of a cookbook that got so
(00:36):
many of us excited to cook simple, healthy, delicious meals
at home, Easy Weeknight Meals, has been re released in
a very special edition. Nardia Limb is with us this morning.
Held a good morning, Hey Jack.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
It's good to talk to you. I feel like it's
been a while.
Speaker 4 (00:50):
Yeah, it's been a week while.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
Good to have a friend of the show back on
the show. So yeah, we appreciate you giving us your time,
especially giving you are basically just the world's most ridiculously
busy person.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
But sake for yourself.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
Oh hey, so I can imagine that when the publisher
comes to you and sees it's the tenth anniversary of
Easy Week in weeknight meals that you kind of have
two responses. Like part of you is like, oh, this
would be a really good opportunity to share some other
you know, recipes, if we if we do a bit
of a tenth anniversary special edition. But the other side
(01:24):
of you is like, h ten years, Oh my god,
what so how do you how do you how do
you reconcile those feelings?
Speaker 3 (01:32):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (01:32):
Ten ten years goes faster. I feel like the older
you get, the faster time goes. I'm sure you know,
lots of people feel that way. My mum always used
to say it, and it's and it's absolutely true. I mean,
I'm forty this year, and I started this journey out
when I was like twenty five, and gosh, the time's
just flown by. But it's often when like I've always
(01:53):
I've never been a great person at kind of looking
back in the past, but when anniversaries like this come around,
it's a good time to kind of look back and stop,
pause and reflect and go wow, just think think back
to ten years ago and what what things were like
back then, and what I was doing back then, and
what I was feeling back then, and what the business
was like back then. And you know, fast forward to now,
(02:15):
and it's it's a really good time to reflect and
I think about I remember creating this book Easy Weeknight Meals,
ten years ago, and I was brand new the into
the industry. You know, it was such a big deal
to be creating a cookbook and doing all the food
starting for it and creating all the recipes and writing
them and editing them and all of that.
Speaker 3 (02:35):
And now I've had, you know, over ten years.
Speaker 5 (02:37):
Experience of doing it, and it's just like I can
do it, you know, easy peasy.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
Now, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, well yeah easy. I mean
I'm easy peasy for you, not for the rest of
us maybe. But is it like when you think back
over that time, correct me if I'm wrong. You you
weren't living down south by that stage.
Speaker 6 (02:53):
Jay, No, No, we've only been down south for six years.
Speaker 4 (02:56):
Yea, so at Auckland.
Speaker 5 (02:58):
And it was when so my food bag is almost
thirteen years old, or it's twelve years old.
Speaker 6 (03:04):
So back then, you know, the business was very very new.
Speaker 5 (03:07):
It was only a couple of years old, and it
was in such a different place. I mean, back then
we started off with just two bags and you had
if you ordered my food bag you had to get
what I had.
Speaker 6 (03:19):
Said you were going to eat, yeah night. And now, oh,
you know, fuss forward of just over ten years. It
is so different.
Speaker 5 (03:25):
Now every week there's over thirty different recipes to choose from,
so people create their own bag now. And now we
have like vegan recipes and vegetarian racipees and low car
recipees and fresh start recipes and bargain box recipees.
Speaker 6 (03:38):
Like, it's just so so different. We've got the ready
made meals and we've now got.
Speaker 5 (03:41):
A gifting service called shop Like it's just a completely
different business.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
It's massively expanded out. Well I'm not being paid to
say this, I swear, but we are my food bag
house and my wife and I always like have a
little competition to see who's going to be on the
app to choose the next week meet, next weeks meals
you know. So yes, so absolutely love that. So if
you go back ten years, what did you want to
try and achieve with this when it was first.
Speaker 5 (04:06):
Published, Well, and back then it was just we just
wanted to put all of the top rated recipes into
a collection, and so that's simply how we did it.
We so from day one, we've always collected data and
information from our customers about which recipes they love the most.
So from day one, customers have always been able to
(04:27):
rate the recipes out of five and that data has
come in so handy because we know what people really want,
and you know, there's it's it's it's kind of simple,
but it's also massively complicated at the same time, Like
if you could look into my food Bag's data system,
it is a massive the amount of analysis we do.
There's like AI and everything involved in it now. But
there's all these continuums. There's all these like continuums where
(04:50):
things are rated on like on their taste and flavor
and their nutritional you know, their nutritional aspect, the convenience,
how fast they are, and the algorithms like.
Speaker 6 (05:01):
Put everything together to come up with the perfect recipes.
Speaker 5 (05:04):
It's it's it sounds simple, but it's kind of complicated.
Speaker 3 (05:08):
But yeah, so do make.
Speaker 4 (05:10):
You write the recipes now?
Speaker 5 (05:12):
Well, so when we started again, this is just so
crazy how fast time moves. So when I first started out,
you know, obviously it started with me writing all of
the recipes, and then after about six months, I got
an assistant who started helping with writing and developing the recipes,
and then five years later there was probably about twenty
people in the development kitchen, and now we would have
(05:34):
I'm going to take a stab in the dark, but
this is a good educated guess, a good guestimation. We've
probably got about fifteen to twenty thousand recipes.
Speaker 6 (05:43):
On our database now, and they're all rated.
Speaker 5 (05:46):
Like I was saying that, there's different scales for everything,
you know, convenience, how fast they are, taste, what ingredients
they use, their nutritional aspect, and so now the analysis
can kind of take an algorithm and put all those
things together and create recipes from those from that existing database. Yeah,
(06:08):
it's like half human and half half algorithm.
Speaker 4 (06:12):
Yeah that's pretty good. Yeah, yeah, it's pretty cool.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
Yeah, yeah, it's cool.
Speaker 5 (06:16):
It's just kind of evolved to that now. But yeah,
it's quite a quite a like sophisticated system.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
Now, does it a recipe that you're like, well, hang on,
like it's gone, okay. People really love, you know, a
Ti green curry, but they also really love cheesy beef sliders.
And it's like we've got your Ti green cheesy beef sliders,
and you're thinking, I'm not percent sure that there's going
to land.
Speaker 3 (06:41):
No.
Speaker 5 (06:41):
No, it's more like, so if people loved a ti
green curry, then you can you can go Okay, people
loved the tigreen curry. They love those flavors, But we
want to use these ingredients instead, Like we want to.
Speaker 6 (06:54):
Use carrots and tofu and stuff instead.
Speaker 5 (06:56):
And we want to make it, you know, fifteen fifteen minutes,
and it needs to use a different protein.
Speaker 3 (07:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (07:04):
Yeah, there's still a lot of humans involved. Were still
it's still all humans, you know, testing the recipes and
then taking the photographs and everything for it and making
sure that they work and fool proofing them.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
So I would have just thought, like if if if
the algorithm was only considering my rankings, my concern would
be that all the five stars are for like the
three cheese KNOCKI and stuff like that, you know, like
and so like every sing when you when you're looking
at the most popular meals, it's just like, he what
is the most cover hydrates for the highest number of cheeses?
(07:37):
But obviously that's not the case.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
Yeah, have you been racing them? You might be skewing
the data a bit.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, So tell us about this new edition
of the book because you guys have gone with the
you took those popular recipes from the past, but you've
added in some new ones too.
Speaker 3 (07:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (07:51):
So this it's ten years since this book, Easy week
Night Meal was published. I believe since it was published,
it's been a using on bestseller since it's like, that's
why it's still being published. And yeah, as the as
the recipe, as the title states, you know, it's just
easy weeknight meals and they're all full proof, incredibly delicious,
easy to put together recipes because of you know, all
(08:14):
that data that we've collected over the years. But this addition,
to celebrate the tenth edition, we've got sixteen extra bonus
recipes in it. And the whole book is divided into
seasons because that's you know, how we like to roll.
We always use seasonal produce in our recipes.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
How has celebrated seasons, How has been on the farm
changed the way that you think about seasons incredibly.
Speaker 3 (08:38):
So like almost two extremes.
Speaker 5 (08:41):
So when we first moved on to the farm, I
went I went crazy with trying to be self sufficient.
So I grew everything, Like I was like, I am
not eating it unless unless I've grown it, And so
and we had her. You know, of course we've got
our own meat, our own eggs, our own honey as well,
and our own fruit and vegetables. And I went quite extreme.
(09:03):
I really went one way to the point where the
poor kids.
Speaker 3 (09:07):
I was like, Nap, it's pumpkin.
Speaker 5 (09:09):
We're eating pumpkin for the next three months, nothing else.
But now I've kind of gone, Now I do. We
can't grow everything. Yeah, and it is so much time.
There's quite a lot of time involved to be one
hundred percent self sufficient. So I will admit now I
am back to We get my food bag a couple
of times a week, so we get two to three
(09:29):
meals a week, and sometimes I do buy some of
our produce as well, but I still a lot. But yeah,
it really makes you appreciate I find living down here.
It's very The seasons are very dramatic, Like the change
between each season is so dramatic, and it is so
on time. It's crazy how on time, just like clockwork,
(09:52):
nature is like within I would say there's a buffer
of three days either side of the of when the
season starts, and it's just suddenly boom, like suddenly all
the leaves are gone for the trees and then we
get a dumping, a snow dump. It's so so drastic,
which is rich, is really really beautiful in it's in
its own sense, but it really makes you appreciate, you know,
(10:14):
the different products when it comes around. Like, for example,
we wouldn't eat you know, you get all this all
these all this pitit fruit. Like we get so many
apples at this time of year, and it will last
us because I keep them kind of in our our
larder area, in the cold storage area for you know,
up to a couple of months, and then none of
(10:35):
that and then and you go crazy with stewing everything
and freezing it all and then you've.
Speaker 3 (10:39):
Got none of it for for ages.
Speaker 5 (10:41):
And yeah, so you eat a lot of one thing
at the same time, but you really learn to appreciate
it when it comes back around.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
Yeah, hey, you've just been in Japan. I saw some
photos on social media, But how was Tokyo really cool?
Speaker 3 (10:55):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (10:55):
I did a quick kind of six day trip with
my oldest son body who's nine years old. Now, I
just thought, great age to travel and it's so much
easier just to travel with one kid rather than three,
and yeah, so I just took him by myself, just
the two of us, and it was a great mother
son trip.
Speaker 3 (11:12):
Was so lovely.
Speaker 5 (11:13):
You know, at this age you really start seeing their
their personalities come out. And because he wasn't he didn't
have his other brothers around, just spending that one on
one time was real special. And yeah, we got out
of the city a bit to some of the smaller suburbs,
you know, not just like central Tokyo. The food was amazing,
so good. It's hard to find a bad meal, Like
(11:35):
we didn't have a bad We didn't have a single
bad meal.
Speaker 3 (11:37):
All the food was so good.
Speaker 4 (11:38):
Yeah, how central was How central is food for you
when you travel?
Speaker 3 (11:43):
Oh? Like everything right?
Speaker 5 (11:45):
Okay, one thing obviously, And I always have this rule
like whenever I'm in a country, a different country, I
will only eat their cuisine only.
Speaker 3 (11:55):
Like there is no way.
Speaker 5 (11:57):
I would be eating pizza or pasta or anything like
that in Japan, Like it is just Japanese food, strictly
Japanese food only. And we tried like lots of different things,
and I was so impressed at nine years old, he's
he was great. He was so keen to try so
many different things. Like we had our first night, we
had I didn't realize, but I ordered shark cartilage and
(12:20):
cemented plum sauce on the menu. It translated as plum
crystals and I was like, oh, this sounds interesting and
it was very crunching, and I was like what is that.
Speaker 3 (12:30):
They explained it to me in Japanese.
Speaker 6 (12:32):
And translated it back, and I was like, Ah, this
is shark cartilage.
Speaker 4 (12:35):
Okay, something you get on the farm. Yes, oh definitely not.
Speaker 3 (12:41):
You know, lots lots of octopus.
Speaker 5 (12:42):
And it's more of a textural thing. Like the flavor
came from the cemented plum source, which I quite I
quite enjoyed, but the shark cartilage is more just like a.
Speaker 4 (12:56):
Test, just like a vehicle for the for the flavor,
rather than the.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
Actual Yeah, you wouldn't have shark cartilage by itself necessarily.
Speaker 3 (13:03):
I don't think. So it doesn't have any flip.
Speaker 2 (13:05):
Yeah yeah, yeah right, Oh there's so good and good
for you just kind of ordering random stuff off the
menu as well, not only you know, you gotta yeah yeah.
Have you ever played the Death Row Cuisine game? It's
tell me how basically it's just if you could only
eat one cuisine, so it's not one dish but one
cuisine for the rest of your life, what would it be?
Speaker 3 (13:26):
Oh, it would be Japanese or Tie.
Speaker 4 (13:29):
So I reckon Japanese is such a good call.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
Okay, Yeah, I reckon Malaysians up there too, although maybe
a bit rich, but yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3 (13:36):
I love Malayian food.
Speaker 5 (13:37):
I grew up in Malaysia for seven years, so I
love it, but couldn't eat it all the time because
it is so it's high fat, high salt, high sugar.
Whereas Ties, probably if I had to choose one thing
for the rest of my life, I'd probably go Tie
because very very fresh, a lot of fresh herbs, a
lot of like citrus, zest and that kind of thing.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
Then then you could throw the Vietnamese in there, and
then you've got got the little French, that little French
influence as well.
Speaker 4 (13:59):
No, no, I mean there's no there's no right answer.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
This is the thing that's just like what yeah one,
not a few have different through the Yeah. Yeah, I'm
glad to had a good trip. And congratulations on still
having this book as a best seller. I mean there's
a remarkable achievement day.
Speaker 3 (14:17):
Yeah, you know, it's great. I mean, it's just one
of those things that it.
Speaker 5 (14:20):
Just ticks away because it stood the test of time
simply because you know, these recipes work so well. They're
just simple, they're healthy, and they're delicious, and that's that's
what people want, the Easy Weeknight Meals.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
Yeah, ta tik tech. All right, Nadia, Well we'll let
you get on with things. Thank you so much.
Speaker 3 (14:37):
Great to talk again, Jack, Thank you so.
Speaker 2 (14:40):
Good to talk to you, Nadia limb there. The tenth
anniversary edition of Easy Weeknight Meals is now available in
all Good bookstores.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
For more from Saturday Morning with Jack Tame, listen live
to news talks that'd be from nine am Saturday, or
follow the podcast on iHeartRadio
You're listening to the Saturday Morning with Jack team podcast
from News Talks at Me.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Nadia Limb is a chef with her fingers and basically
every pie. She's a master chef, New Zealand champion, a
cookbook author, a TV personality, an entrepreneur, and an inspiration
to many of us in the kitchen and in the
garden for that matter. Her recipes and her passion shape
the way that many of us approach food. And to
mark the tenth anniversary of a cookbook that got so
(00:36):
many of us excited to cook simple, healthy, delicious meals
at home, Easy Weeknight Meals, has been re released in
a very special edition. Nardia Limb is with us this morning.
Held a good morning, Hey Jack.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
It's good to talk to you. I feel like it's
been a while.
Speaker 4 (00:50):
Yeah, it's been a week while.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
Good to have a friend of the show back on
the show. So yeah, we appreciate you giving us your time,
especially giving you are basically just the world's most ridiculously
busy person.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
But sake for yourself.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
Oh hey, so I can imagine that when the publisher
comes to you and sees it's the tenth anniversary of
Easy Week in weeknight meals that you kind of have
two responses. Like part of you is like, oh, this
would be a really good opportunity to share some other
you know, recipes, if we if we do a bit
of a tenth anniversary special edition. But the other side
(01:24):
of you is like, h ten years, Oh my god,
what so how do you how do you how do
you reconcile those feelings?
Speaker 3 (01:32):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (01:32):
Ten ten years goes faster. I feel like the older
you get, the faster time goes. I'm sure you know,
lots of people feel that way. My mum always used
to say it, and it's and it's absolutely true. I mean,
I'm forty this year, and I started this journey out
when I was like twenty five, and gosh, the time's
just flown by. But it's often when like I've always
(01:53):
I've never been a great person at kind of looking
back in the past, but when anniversaries like this come around,
it's a good time to kind of look back and stop,
pause and reflect and go wow, just think think back
to ten years ago and what what things were like
back then, and what I was doing back then, and
what I was feeling back then, and what the business
was like back then. And you know, fast forward to now,
(02:15):
and it's it's a really good time to reflect and
I think about I remember creating this book Easy Weeknight Meals,
ten years ago, and I was brand new the into
the industry. You know, it was such a big deal
to be creating a cookbook and doing all the food
starting for it and creating all the recipes and writing
them and editing them and all of that.
Speaker 3 (02:35):
And now I've had, you know, over ten years.
Speaker 5 (02:37):
Experience of doing it, and it's just like I can
do it, you know, easy peasy.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
Now, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, well yeah easy. I mean
I'm easy peasy for you, not for the rest of
us maybe. But is it like when you think back
over that time, correct me if I'm wrong. You you
weren't living down south by that stage.
Speaker 6 (02:53):
Jay, No, No, we've only been down south for six years.
Speaker 4 (02:56):
Yea, so at Auckland.
Speaker 5 (02:58):
And it was when so my food bag is almost
thirteen years old, or it's twelve years old.
Speaker 6 (03:04):
So back then, you know, the business was very very new.
Speaker 5 (03:07):
It was only a couple of years old, and it
was in such a different place. I mean, back then
we started off with just two bags and you had
if you ordered my food bag you had to get
what I had.
Speaker 6 (03:19):
Said you were going to eat, yeah night. And now, oh,
you know, fuss forward of just over ten years. It
is so different.
Speaker 5 (03:25):
Now every week there's over thirty different recipes to choose from,
so people create their own bag now. And now we
have like vegan recipes and vegetarian racipees and low car
recipees and fresh start recipes and bargain box recipees.
Speaker 6 (03:38):
Like, it's just so so different. We've got the ready
made meals and we've now got.
Speaker 5 (03:41):
A gifting service called shop Like it's just a completely
different business.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
It's massively expanded out. Well I'm not being paid to
say this, I swear, but we are my food bag
house and my wife and I always like have a
little competition to see who's going to be on the
app to choose the next week meet, next weeks meals
you know. So yes, so absolutely love that. So if
you go back ten years, what did you want to
try and achieve with this when it was first.
Speaker 5 (04:06):
Published, Well, and back then it was just we just
wanted to put all of the top rated recipes into
a collection, and so that's simply how we did it.
We so from day one, we've always collected data and
information from our customers about which recipes they love the most.
So from day one, customers have always been able to
(04:27):
rate the recipes out of five and that data has
come in so handy because we know what people really want,
and you know, there's it's it's it's kind of simple,
but it's also massively complicated at the same time, Like
if you could look into my food Bag's data system,
it is a massive the amount of analysis we do.
There's like AI and everything involved in it now. But
there's all these continuums. There's all these like continuums where
(04:50):
things are rated on like on their taste and flavor
and their nutritional you know, their nutritional aspect, the convenience,
how fast they are, and the algorithms like.
Speaker 6 (05:01):
Put everything together to come up with the perfect recipes.
Speaker 5 (05:04):
It's it's it sounds simple, but it's kind of complicated.
Speaker 3 (05:08):
But yeah, so do make.
Speaker 4 (05:10):
You write the recipes now?
Speaker 5 (05:12):
Well, so when we started again, this is just so
crazy how fast time moves. So when I first started out,
you know, obviously it started with me writing all of
the recipes, and then after about six months, I got
an assistant who started helping with writing and developing the recipes,
and then five years later there was probably about twenty
people in the development kitchen, and now we would have
(05:34):
I'm going to take a stab in the dark, but
this is a good educated guess, a good guestimation. We've
probably got about fifteen to twenty thousand recipes.
Speaker 6 (05:43):
On our database now, and they're all rated.
Speaker 5 (05:46):
Like I was saying that, there's different scales for everything,
you know, convenience, how fast they are, taste, what ingredients
they use, their nutritional aspect, and so now the analysis
can kind of take an algorithm and put all those
things together and create recipes from those from that existing database. Yeah,
(06:08):
it's like half human and half half algorithm.
Speaker 4 (06:12):
Yeah that's pretty good. Yeah, yeah, it's pretty cool.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
Yeah, yeah, it's cool.
Speaker 5 (06:16):
It's just kind of evolved to that now. But yeah,
it's quite a quite a like sophisticated system.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
Now, does it a recipe that you're like, well, hang on,
like it's gone, okay. People really love, you know, a
Ti green curry, but they also really love cheesy beef sliders.
And it's like we've got your Ti green cheesy beef sliders,
and you're thinking, I'm not percent sure that there's going
to land.
Speaker 3 (06:41):
No.
Speaker 5 (06:41):
No, it's more like, so if people loved a ti
green curry, then you can you can go Okay, people
loved the tigreen curry. They love those flavors, But we
want to use these ingredients instead, Like we want to.
Speaker 6 (06:54):
Use carrots and tofu and stuff instead.
Speaker 5 (06:56):
And we want to make it, you know, fifteen fifteen minutes,
and it needs to use a different protein.
Speaker 3 (07:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (07:04):
Yeah, there's still a lot of humans involved. Were still
it's still all humans, you know, testing the recipes and
then taking the photographs and everything for it and making
sure that they work and fool proofing them.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
So I would have just thought, like if if if
the algorithm was only considering my rankings, my concern would
be that all the five stars are for like the
three cheese KNOCKI and stuff like that, you know, like
and so like every sing when you when you're looking
at the most popular meals, it's just like, he what
is the most cover hydrates for the highest number of cheeses?
(07:37):
But obviously that's not the case.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
Yeah, have you been racing them? You might be skewing
the data a bit.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, So tell us about this new edition
of the book because you guys have gone with the
you took those popular recipes from the past, but you've
added in some new ones too.
Speaker 3 (07:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (07:51):
So this it's ten years since this book, Easy week
Night Meal was published. I believe since it was published,
it's been a using on bestseller since it's like, that's
why it's still being published. And yeah, as the as
the recipe, as the title states, you know, it's just
easy weeknight meals and they're all full proof, incredibly delicious,
easy to put together recipes because of you know, all
(08:14):
that data that we've collected over the years. But this addition,
to celebrate the tenth edition, we've got sixteen extra bonus
recipes in it. And the whole book is divided into
seasons because that's you know, how we like to roll.
We always use seasonal produce in our recipes.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
How has celebrated seasons, How has been on the farm
changed the way that you think about seasons incredibly.
Speaker 3 (08:38):
So like almost two extremes.
Speaker 5 (08:41):
So when we first moved on to the farm, I
went I went crazy with trying to be self sufficient.
So I grew everything, Like I was like, I am
not eating it unless unless I've grown it, And so
and we had her. You know, of course we've got
our own meat, our own eggs, our own honey as well,
and our own fruit and vegetables. And I went quite extreme.
(09:03):
I really went one way to the point where the
poor kids.
Speaker 3 (09:07):
I was like, Nap, it's pumpkin.
Speaker 5 (09:09):
We're eating pumpkin for the next three months, nothing else.
But now I've kind of gone, Now I do. We
can't grow everything. Yeah, and it is so much time.
There's quite a lot of time involved to be one
hundred percent self sufficient. So I will admit now I
am back to We get my food bag a couple
of times a week, so we get two to three
(09:29):
meals a week, and sometimes I do buy some of
our produce as well, but I still a lot. But yeah,
it really makes you appreciate I find living down here.
It's very The seasons are very dramatic, Like the change
between each season is so dramatic, and it is so
on time. It's crazy how on time, just like clockwork,
(09:52):
nature is like within I would say there's a buffer
of three days either side of the of when the
season starts, and it's just suddenly boom, like suddenly all
the leaves are gone for the trees and then we
get a dumping, a snow dump. It's so so drastic,
which is rich, is really really beautiful in it's in
its own sense, but it really makes you appreciate, you know,
(10:14):
the different products when it comes around. Like, for example,
we wouldn't eat you know, you get all this all
these all this pitit fruit. Like we get so many
apples at this time of year, and it will last
us because I keep them kind of in our our
larder area, in the cold storage area for you know,
up to a couple of months, and then none of
(10:35):
that and then and you go crazy with stewing everything
and freezing it all and then you've.
Speaker 3 (10:39):
Got none of it for for ages.
Speaker 5 (10:41):
And yeah, so you eat a lot of one thing
at the same time, but you really learn to appreciate
it when it comes back around.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
Yeah, hey, you've just been in Japan. I saw some
photos on social media, But how was Tokyo really cool?
Speaker 3 (10:55):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (10:55):
I did a quick kind of six day trip with
my oldest son body who's nine years old. Now, I
just thought, great age to travel and it's so much
easier just to travel with one kid rather than three,
and yeah, so I just took him by myself, just
the two of us, and it was a great mother
son trip.
Speaker 3 (11:12):
Was so lovely.
Speaker 5 (11:13):
You know, at this age you really start seeing their
their personalities come out. And because he wasn't he didn't
have his other brothers around, just spending that one on
one time was real special. And yeah, we got out
of the city a bit to some of the smaller suburbs,
you know, not just like central Tokyo. The food was amazing,
so good. It's hard to find a bad meal, Like
(11:35):
we didn't have a bad We didn't have a single
bad meal.
Speaker 3 (11:37):
All the food was so good.
Speaker 4 (11:38):
Yeah, how central was How central is food for you
when you travel?
Speaker 3 (11:43):
Oh? Like everything right?
Speaker 5 (11:45):
Okay, one thing obviously, And I always have this rule
like whenever I'm in a country, a different country, I
will only eat their cuisine only.
Speaker 3 (11:55):
Like there is no way.
Speaker 5 (11:57):
I would be eating pizza or pasta or anything like
that in Japan, Like it is just Japanese food, strictly
Japanese food only. And we tried like lots of different things,
and I was so impressed at nine years old, he's
he was great. He was so keen to try so
many different things. Like we had our first night, we
had I didn't realize, but I ordered shark cartilage and
(12:20):
cemented plum sauce on the menu. It translated as plum
crystals and I was like, oh, this sounds interesting and
it was very crunching, and I was like what is that.
Speaker 3 (12:30):
They explained it to me in Japanese.
Speaker 6 (12:32):
And translated it back, and I was like, Ah, this
is shark cartilage.
Speaker 4 (12:35):
Okay, something you get on the farm. Yes, oh definitely not.
Speaker 3 (12:41):
You know, lots lots of octopus.
Speaker 5 (12:42):
And it's more of a textural thing. Like the flavor
came from the cemented plum source, which I quite I
quite enjoyed, but the shark cartilage is more just like a.
Speaker 4 (12:56):
Test, just like a vehicle for the for the flavor,
rather than the.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
Actual Yeah, you wouldn't have shark cartilage by itself necessarily.
Speaker 3 (13:03):
I don't think. So it doesn't have any flip.
Speaker 2 (13:05):
Yeah yeah, yeah right, Oh there's so good and good
for you just kind of ordering random stuff off the
menu as well, not only you know, you gotta yeah yeah.
Have you ever played the Death Row Cuisine game? It's
tell me how basically it's just if you could only
eat one cuisine, so it's not one dish but one
cuisine for the rest of your life, what would it be?
Speaker 3 (13:26):
Oh, it would be Japanese or Tie.
Speaker 4 (13:29):
So I reckon Japanese is such a good call.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
Okay, Yeah, I reckon Malaysians up there too, although maybe
a bit rich, but yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3 (13:36):
I love Malayian food.
Speaker 5 (13:37):
I grew up in Malaysia for seven years, so I
love it, but couldn't eat it all the time because
it is so it's high fat, high salt, high sugar.
Whereas Ties, probably if I had to choose one thing
for the rest of my life, I'd probably go Tie
because very very fresh, a lot of fresh herbs, a
lot of like citrus, zest and that kind of thing.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
Then then you could throw the Vietnamese in there, and
then you've got got the little French, that little French
influence as well.
Speaker 4 (13:59):
No, no, I mean there's no there's no right answer.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
This is the thing that's just like what yeah one,
not a few have different through the Yeah. Yeah, I'm
glad to had a good trip. And congratulations on still
having this book as a best seller. I mean there's
a remarkable achievement day.
Speaker 3 (14:17):
Yeah, you know, it's great. I mean, it's just one
of those things that it.
Speaker 5 (14:20):
Just ticks away because it stood the test of time
simply because you know, these recipes work so well. They're
just simple, they're healthy, and they're delicious, and that's that's
what people want, the Easy Weeknight Meals.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
Yeah, ta tik tech. All right, Nadia, Well we'll let
you get on with things. Thank you so much.
Speaker 3 (14:37):
Great to talk again, Jack, Thank you so.
Speaker 2 (14:40):
Good to talk to you, Nadia limb there. The tenth
anniversary edition of Easy Weeknight Meals is now available in
all Good bookstores.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
For more from Saturday Morning with Jack Tame, listen live
to news talks that'd be from nine am Saturday, or
follow the podcast on iHeartRadio
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