December 14, 2025 • 23 mins
Sophie Gray is the face and inspiration behind "destitute gourmet", the ‘dg’ cookery series and is a popular speaker, teacher, and regular contributor to Food and Taste magazines. She leads an international community of followers through her active Destitute-Gourmet Facebook page, as well as Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, YouTube, and an upcoming money-saving app.
Sophie shares family-friendly recipes that are easy, tasty, healthy, affordable, and often include gluten-free and dairy-free alternatives, supported by fundamentals such as menu planning, smart shopping, creative use of leftovers, and seasonal eating.
Based in Auckland with her husband Richard and their teenagers Isabella and Jack, she works full-time communicating the destitute gourmet philosophy.
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Speaker 1 (00:09):
You're listening to a podcast from News Talk SEDB. Follow
this and our Wide Ranger podcasts now on iHeartRadio. Real Conversation,
Real Connection. It's Real Life with John Cowen on News
Talk SEDB.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Gooday, welcome to Real Life. I'm John Cowen and it's
great to have the destitute Gormet Sophie Gray in the studio.
Welcome Sophie.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
Oh, thank you for having me.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Now, Sophie's produced a trove of cookbooks. I'm not too
sure how many he's in a trove. How many have
you done? Ten?
Speaker 3 (00:49):
Ten?
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Yeah, that's a trove and a half. I'd reckon. And
your specialty is helping people to eat well for less,
and you do cooking classes, and you've done a podcast
and a whole lot of things, all of it geared
to help people tackle life better because life can be tough.
But first of all, I want to say you've had
a pretty tough time lately, and my sympathies for some
(01:11):
of the things you've been through in twenty twenty five.
Speaker 4 (01:13):
Oh yeah, I will not be sad to see the
end of twenty twenty five has been It's been a
brutal year.
Speaker 3 (01:18):
For our fun.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Are you yeah, and things keep on coming at you.
And some of those things in the past when we've
talked before, have eventually spawned some good things. So I
don't want to be one of those Pollyannas that say, oh,
it's all for a plan, it'll all be good, stuff
will come out of it, because it's rotten at the moment.
And my sympathies are losing a grandson and your dad,
(01:43):
and so grief like that, how do you, how are
you coping? How's it hit you? Bit more importantly, are
you composting it down into any sort of wisdom that
might help our people listening about how to handle grief.
Speaker 4 (01:59):
I've become very aware of grandparent grief, so that for
people who lose a grand child, you grieve twice because
you're seeing your child, your own child, go through the
most unimaginable pain and you can do nothing to make
(02:22):
that any less. And then you are also grieving the
loss of your grandchild. So it's a double whammy. And
I had not really been aware of that. And for
the first while, my grief was all for my daughter
(02:43):
and her partner and the agony that they were in,
and then you know, you have this other wave yourself
of the empty arms and the hopes and the dreams,
all of those things.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
So I would say that.
Speaker 4 (03:00):
Being really aware of what grandparents go through has been
a new thing for me, and also the room necessity
to focus on one day at a time, just one
day at a time. I think it's the Finns who
have a saying that I'm up and I'm not crying.
So you know, when somebody says, you know, how are
you going, how's your day, I'm up and I am
(03:22):
not crying, and that's actually, you know, that's enough some days,
just to be up and not crying and get through
that day. So that that has been very much our
mantra over the last six months.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
And grief doesn't behave itself, does it. It sometimes says, oh,
I'm going now, but then it comes back.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
And unexpected waves.
Speaker 4 (03:41):
I burst into tears. And Target in Australa was over
Victoria State government had paid for me to do some
workshops in one of their sort of hard hit communities
in Melbourne, and so I was over there and had
a break between events and was having a browser around
Target because we don't have Target here. I found myself
in the baby section and I just burst into tears,
(04:03):
and it was very.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
Out of the blue. But I've always had a theory.
Speaker 4 (04:07):
So my mother died when I was quite young as well,
so it's my very early twenties, and I learned then
to cry all the tears, to not actually try and
hold them in or stop them from coming. And I'm
very aware too that when you are crying that people
will often try and comfort you because your tears make
them uncomfortable. So I've become somebody now when somebody else
(04:31):
wells up, I don't go over and try and hug
them because I'm not going to try and stop their
tears falling. I would rather stand there and weep with them.
And I've got a friend who lost her husband a
week before we lost our grandson, and she and I
have sat over morning coffee together and both had tears
rolling down our cheeks as we chatted, and then ten
(04:52):
minutes later we can be laughing and eating a piece
of cake and neither of us needs to stop the
tears from flowing. And I think there's a real freedom
and liberation in that.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
Yeah. I think I read a quote from you saying
you You've got to sit number of tears and they
all have to be cried.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
They do.
Speaker 4 (05:07):
So cry them in the shit, cry them in the car,
cry them wherever you have to, but don't stop. Don't
try and stop them, because they will take you by
surprise when you're in a department store.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
I sometimes pity those people that suppress it all down.
I remember being at a funeral and I was asking
the bereaved wife, you know how it was going, and
did she like the eulogy? And she said, oh, I
didn't listen. I turned my hearing aids off so I
wouldn't have to hear it. I didn't want to get
too sad. And I'm thinking being said is part of
(05:40):
the proceeds.
Speaker 4 (05:41):
And I think in the rest do we do grieving
and lost so badly that you know, generations ago you
wore black. Everybody knew to treat you gently, And I
think a tongue he is a much much better way
of farewelling somebody than trying to cram it into an
hour and a quarter of everybody trying not to cry.
(06:01):
You know, you need the time to be able to
laugh and tell stories and weep and eat together and
tell stories.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
Now you've lost someone very young in your life, you
also lost someone very old in your life, in all
your life, your dad, and he was ninety he was
ninety five. Yeah, yeah, that's you know, to have had
him in your life for so long, and now you'll
be thinking of things that you would have told him
and you'd like to share with him.
Speaker 4 (06:29):
Well, it's interesting too with your very elderly parent if
you have the luxury as I did of having a
kind dad. You know, lots of women don't have a
father who was safe, but my dad was safe and
kind and funny. He was very tight with his money,
but also really witty and affectionate. He was a feminist
(06:49):
as well, with two daughters, so that was a wonderful thing.
And we had the great good fortune also that he
kept his marbles right.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
Until the very end.
Speaker 4 (06:58):
So he became somebody I could just go and talk
to because he had nothing going on, He had no news,
so he really looked forward to you coming and and
telling all your news. And so, you know, having him
just sitting there, ready to drink and whatever was going
on in the outside world and in the way to
family was a delighted.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
Oh well, you've what a privilege to have had him. Yeah,
and what a sad loss to have lost him. So
my sympathies all around for what are rotten twenty twenty five.
And I certainly hope that there's some good things going
on in your life. I mean, what are some of
the good things that are happening. You mentioned this trip
to Australia, so people and Ozzie know about you you
(07:38):
over there.
Speaker 4 (07:38):
Yes, yes, I've had followers in Australia for a very
long time, and I think our food culture is really similar,
and as is my thing, I like to visit a
supermarket wherever I can, so I actually spun around four
different supermarkets while I was there, and it was really
interesting to see that essentially we have the same problems,
(07:59):
just just slightly different, so you.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
Know it meat is differently.
Speaker 3 (08:02):
Yeah, meat is.
Speaker 4 (08:03):
Really expensive here. It was cheaper in Australia, but produce
was really expensive there and our produce a cheaper those
kinds of things, so that that actually, you know, was
quite reassuring.
Speaker 3 (08:12):
And I do really interesting.
Speaker 4 (08:15):
Work running it, running the Good Works Trust, food bank
and Social supermat It is really really interesting.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
Is another chapter.
Speaker 4 (08:23):
Yeah, yeah, that's my nine to five is Yeah, you know,
run the biggest food bank on the North Shore and
so so that has been really quite a stimulating thing
to be part of and to be part of trying
to do good better.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
Yeah, okay, well that's probably part of your mentor for
a lot of things, right right, backers, you'll just step
back on your story. I mean, you were sort of
getting into financial work or something back in the ninety
eight nineties or something, and then boom along comes the
(09:02):
credit card crunch or not the credit card grudge, what
do they call it.
Speaker 3 (09:05):
The it was the GFC or whatever it is.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
The stock market, the big stock market, remember which particular
desaster was, and there have been so many and that
left you in debt without a job.
Speaker 3 (09:20):
Yes, so I was working in financial markets.
Speaker 4 (09:23):
I worked for a brokerage house selling exchange traded commodity options,
which is an incredibly risky thing to be investing in,
and it was a very unregulated industry in New Zealand.
So I had basically no training whatsoever. It was very
much a sales job, and I didn't know that the
(09:45):
company that I was working for was actually really sketchy.
Speaker 3 (09:49):
None of the staff did.
Speaker 4 (09:51):
The corporate fraud squad did work it out, and so
they shut the place down. But it was basically around
that time that the market crashed, and so it became
very very difficult then to get a job if you
had been in that industry, because you were seen as
being sketchy, so down the bottom.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
Of the recruitment scale. I guess, Oh.
Speaker 4 (10:16):
Yeah, no one wanted to touch me with a barge pole,
so that it was a real wake up call actually,
because you know, we'd had a very buoyant employment market
in New Zealand. I had the great luxury of being
offered every job I'd ever gone for up until that time.
And yeah, all of a sudden I was unemployable and
with an enormous amount of credit card debt because I
(10:38):
had shopped, eaten and drunk myself into debt in between
commission payments. So yeah, it was really very very sobering
and frightening and embarrassing.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
I think would be fair to say that out of
the rubble of that chaos called a new Sophie Grave.
It was an allergy to debts.
Speaker 4 (10:56):
Yes, I became I like to say I became a
born again budgeter and a great.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
Passion to help other people get out of debt and
to live within their means. But eat well at the
same time, if you've just and my guest tonight is
the Destitute Gourmet, Sophie Gray. We're just catching up on
what the highs and lows of the last couple of years,
and we'll be back with her more to talk, especially
about her latest passion, which is this food bank that
(11:23):
she's involved with, and it's it's tuned slightly differently from
what you probably think a food bank is. This is
real life. I'm John Cown talking of Sophie Grey Gray.
This is News talk z.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
EDB intelligent interviews with interesting people. It's real life on
news Talks EDB.
Speaker 5 (11:41):
Well, welcome cmd space for you now well the bottom about.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
News Talk's EDB. I'm John Cown. This is real life.
And that of course is Dave Dobbin. Welcome home, Sophie Gray.
Who's my guest, Destitute Gourmet. What did you pick that,
Dave Dobbins Anthem?
Speaker 4 (12:14):
I really love that song. It really speaks to me
because for a long long time my cultural identity was
a complete mystery to me. My parents were immigrants. My
mother was Australian and had moved to the UK. My
dad was English, but his heart was in Scotland and
they moved to New Zealand when I was a toddler
(12:34):
and I don't sound one hundred percent like a Kiwi
And for most of my life people will be asking
me where I was from and I did not know
how to answer that. And it has been much later
in my life that I realize I am a Kiwi
Artro in New Zealand.
Speaker 3 (12:53):
That's my home.
Speaker 4 (12:55):
I love that song and it speaks to me and
I think, you know, for a lot of Pakihar, our
cultural identity has been lost, and I think being able
to to go, I love this place, this is this
is who I am, this is where I'm from. I
want to be part of the future of New Zealand,
(13:18):
a New Zealand that treats everyone well. That that for
me is really important and that song, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
I hope that being treated well extends to when life
turns against people. And because probably more than any other time,
I can recall there are people now that are needing services.
And you've you know, the COVID calamity tipped a lot
of people onto onto their back sites. You yourself, yeah,
(13:50):
made redundant, maraide redundant. You were an editor or you
were a contributed Yeah.
Speaker 4 (13:55):
I was the food director for Bauer Media Group, an
editor of Food magazine.
Speaker 2 (13:59):
Yeah, and then a quick phone call was it?
Speaker 3 (14:02):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (14:03):
Yeah, I think two hundred and seventy of us were
made redundant in a seven minute zoom.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
Yeah. It was pretty pretty harsh.
Speaker 3 (14:11):
It was social.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
Yeah, So Dejavo back to being unemployed after in lockdown
and the fact that you had the stack of cookery books,
that you were doing courses, that you were well known,
you had profile. That still doesn't make you overly employable.
Speaker 3 (14:28):
I guess no, not at all.
Speaker 4 (14:29):
I'm qualified to do absolutely nothing whatsoever. So yeah, it was.
It was really live for a lot of people. It
was a very very uncertain.
Speaker 2 (14:40):
Time and remain so. And so you're working out with
this food bank as the director.
Speaker 3 (14:46):
Yeah, I'm the operations manager.
Speaker 4 (14:48):
So I took over at the end of twenty twenty
and at that time New Zealand was COVID free and
it was a little food bank. It was I was
only working ten hours a week. I was asked to
fill in for somebody and it was a ten hour
a week thing and I had nothing else going on.
(15:08):
Said yep, I'll do that. And at the end of
my sort of six weeks that I was going to
be filling in, I went and spoke to the board
and I said, you can't actually even make a meal
out of the food that you're currently providing. And so
they rewrote the brief and they said, find out what
(15:29):
the need is on the North Shore and what the
Good Works Charitable Trust should be doing to meet that need.
And so now we have sixty volunteers working across eight
volunteer programs. We run an independent social supermarket. We supply
school lunches across nine north Shore schools that don't get
(15:49):
any government lunch provision, and we're the biggest crisis an
emergency provider for the Shore right.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
And you're seeing a different type of poor person. I say,
putting inverted commas around poor because they may not look well,
I think type of what a poor New Zealander looks like.
Speaker 4 (16:10):
Yeah, and I don't really know what a poor New
Zealander looks like because I was one and I was
wearing designer clothes, but I was poor.
Speaker 3 (16:17):
So there are people.
Speaker 4 (16:19):
Who are living in the house that they were living
in and driving the car that they were driving when
there will turned to custard there are women who's who
have experienced financial and domestic abuse, who are in a
very nice house, but they have no ability to feed
their children or put gas in the car to get
their kids to school because they've been locked out of
(16:40):
the bank accounts. So I don't know what poor looks like.
I do know that of auckland Is who are under
the median average income, twenty percent of them live over
on the north Shore. I know we had twenty thousand
plus children living in benefit dependent households. But I also
know that food insecurity isn't necessarily about having no money.
(17:01):
Often it's just not having enough money. So we're trying
to build a food secure where there's nobody who can't
afford to access food through one way or.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
Another right and so other agencies coordinate with you.
Speaker 3 (17:19):
Yes, yep.
Speaker 4 (17:20):
So we take referrals from every agency who has clients
on the North Shore who are experiencing food and security,
and then we're looking at what the best path forward
is for them. So you said we are not a
traditional food bank. It's not a no questions, no criteria operation.
We do ask questions because sometimes the questions enable us
(17:41):
to do a better job of meeting somebody's need. So
you know, just just providing a food parcel doesn't necessarily
solve somebody's problem.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
So once again you're onto this almost a sense of mission,
a sense of calling to help these people, and this
food bank as a Christian underpinning.
Speaker 3 (18:05):
It definitely does.
Speaker 4 (18:07):
And you know, grew out of the convergence of an
existing trust that used to operate in Devonport, the Devenport
Network Trust and the Share Vineyard Church, and then it
became an entirely separate entity some years ago, the Good
Works Charitable Trust. So it is a separate entity, but
(18:27):
very much our values are rooted in the values of
the church that it grew out of.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
And it lines up with your values too, of faith
with its working gloves on.
Speaker 3 (18:40):
Yeah, very much so.
Speaker 4 (18:43):
And you know, I think that you know, we have
a real precedent from scripture.
Speaker 3 (18:48):
Jesus said I was hungry. You gave me something to eat.
Speaker 4 (18:51):
He didn't argue about whose job it was to feed you,
or you know, whether or not you know somebody's dropkick.
Parents should be the ones feeding their children. It's like, Okay,
you're hungry, let's get you something to eat. And then
that for me has become the thing that helps me
make the really hard decisions at the end of the day.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
It's spaically how often in life your solution has been,
what can we do, let's feed somebody.
Speaker 4 (19:17):
Well, it's very, very difficult to function when you are hungry.
You can't learn, you can't heal, you can't make good decisions,
you can't manage your emotions. All of those things are
impacted by food. Food is more than just fuel, though, Yes.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
A people's attitude of food, it often tells you a
lot about what's going on inside the heads.
Speaker 4 (19:40):
Yeah, and it's very interwoven with the way we celebrate
and the way we mourn, and the way we project
ourselves to society. It's a reflection of our culture. All
of those things are tied into the way we eat.
So one of the things I've learned is that for
many families who can't give their children lunch, there's children
just simply don't go to school. Providing the family with
(20:02):
a school lunch kit, which is what we do.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
Reduces that obstacle.
Speaker 4 (20:07):
Increases schoo tends. In some cases, ABO up to forty
percent doesn't need a truancy officer, doesn't need a home visit.
We just give the schools the kids and they decide
which families get them.
Speaker 3 (20:18):
And then they're telling.
Speaker 4 (20:19):
Us we have kids coming to school who are not
coming to school because their parents can make them lunch.
They don't need a cooked meal, they just need a
sandwich amusly bars and crackersn't a piece.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
Of fruit, as well as working out the logistics of
how to get the food in and get the food out.
Speaker 3 (20:35):
And how to pay for it when there is no funding.
Speaker 2 (20:38):
Yeah, which I imagine keeps you busy affair, but of.
Speaker 3 (20:41):
The keeps me awake at night.
Speaker 2 (20:43):
Yeah, it's I'm intrigued that you that you're still looking
about the things to do and things are like one
of the things that I came across maybe it dates
back to when you were actually is still the editor
in the magazine was a podcast looking at the issues
facing people in your at your age and and things. So, what,
we've only got a couple of minutes left. What's some
(21:05):
sort of challenge that you think? Yeah, I could see
this challenge was on my plate, but I'm rising up
over it.
Speaker 4 (21:11):
Is it?
Speaker 5 (21:12):
Well?
Speaker 4 (21:12):
I think when we started doing the podcast, it was
very specifically for women sort of in their their sort of.
Speaker 3 (21:18):
Late forties to you know, late sixties.
Speaker 4 (21:22):
It was called I Wasn't expecting that, and it was
it was about the Sandwich generation of women, where you've
got aging parents and you've got adult children, but you're
actually also still working full time and all of the
issues in and around that. And you know that my
podcast pal narrator Ashcroft from Rema, she and I both
(21:45):
really resonated with that because we were both in exactly
that same phase, you know, trying to juggle spending time
with your parents and also navigating your full time job
and your adult children.
Speaker 3 (21:57):
It's a lot.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
Okay, well, let's just finish with what's the best part
of being at the stage in your life. I hope
is the best part.
Speaker 4 (22:10):
Oh, I definitely think so. I think I feel really
really optimistic about the next decade. I'm really really looking
forward to it. I'm looking forward to grand grandchildren. I'm
enjoying adult children, but I'm also enjoying the opportunity to
pursue interests in hobbies and pursuits of my own.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
Okay, now I can hear the next piece of music
that you've packed playing underneath. What is this that you've picked?
Speaker 3 (22:33):
Oh, it's a piece by text.
Speaker 4 (22:35):
He's an amazing Kiwi artist and this song talks about
redemption and fresh starts and yeah, basically like turning a
page right.
Speaker 2 (22:48):
Well, Sophie, you're inspiring because you have hit the floor
a few times, but you bounce and you come up
strong and I enoyed. And not only that, you help
people cope with their setbacks and reversals as well. So
you're an inspiration and it's always a pleasure talking with you.
Thank you so much. This is real life on news
Talk set. But I've been looking to the destitute gourmet
(23:09):
Sophie Gray, and I'll be back with you again for
the last Real Life of twenty twenty five next week.
I have a great week.
Speaker 3 (23:21):
Why why.
Speaker 5 (23:33):
Why?
Speaker 1 (23:40):
Hie soy For more from News Talks ed B listen
live on air or online, and keep our shows with
you wherever you go with our podcast on iHeartRadio.
You're listening to a podcast from News Talk SEDB. Follow
this and our Wide Ranger podcasts now on iHeartRadio. Real Conversation,
Real Connection. It's Real Life with John Cowen on News
Talk SEDB.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Gooday, welcome to Real Life. I'm John Cowen and it's
great to have the destitute Gormet Sophie Gray in the studio.
Welcome Sophie.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
Oh, thank you for having me.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Now, Sophie's produced a trove of cookbooks. I'm not too
sure how many he's in a trove. How many have
you done? Ten?
Speaker 3 (00:49):
Ten?
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Yeah, that's a trove and a half. I'd reckon. And
your specialty is helping people to eat well for less,
and you do cooking classes, and you've done a podcast
and a whole lot of things, all of it geared
to help people tackle life better because life can be tough.
But first of all, I want to say you've had
a pretty tough time lately, and my sympathies for some
(01:11):
of the things you've been through in twenty twenty five.
Speaker 4 (01:13):
Oh yeah, I will not be sad to see the
end of twenty twenty five has been It's been a
brutal year.
Speaker 3 (01:18):
For our fun.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Are you yeah, and things keep on coming at you.
And some of those things in the past when we've
talked before, have eventually spawned some good things. So I
don't want to be one of those Pollyannas that say, oh,
it's all for a plan, it'll all be good, stuff
will come out of it, because it's rotten at the moment.
And my sympathies are losing a grandson and your dad,
(01:43):
and so grief like that, how do you, how are
you coping? How's it hit you? Bit more importantly, are
you composting it down into any sort of wisdom that
might help our people listening about how to handle grief.
Speaker 4 (01:59):
I've become very aware of grandparent grief, so that for
people who lose a grand child, you grieve twice because
you're seeing your child, your own child, go through the
most unimaginable pain and you can do nothing to make
(02:22):
that any less. And then you are also grieving the
loss of your grandchild. So it's a double whammy. And
I had not really been aware of that. And for
the first while, my grief was all for my daughter
(02:43):
and her partner and the agony that they were in,
and then you know, you have this other wave yourself
of the empty arms and the hopes and the dreams,
all of those things.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
So I would say that.
Speaker 4 (03:00):
Being really aware of what grandparents go through has been
a new thing for me, and also the room necessity
to focus on one day at a time, just one
day at a time. I think it's the Finns who
have a saying that I'm up and I'm not crying.
So you know, when somebody says, you know, how are
you going, how's your day, I'm up and I am
(03:22):
not crying, and that's actually, you know, that's enough some days,
just to be up and not crying and get through
that day. So that that has been very much our
mantra over the last six months.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
And grief doesn't behave itself, does it. It sometimes says, oh,
I'm going now, but then it comes back.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
And unexpected waves.
Speaker 4 (03:41):
I burst into tears. And Target in Australa was over
Victoria State government had paid for me to do some
workshops in one of their sort of hard hit communities
in Melbourne, and so I was over there and had
a break between events and was having a browser around
Target because we don't have Target here. I found myself
in the baby section and I just burst into tears,
(04:03):
and it was very.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
Out of the blue. But I've always had a theory.
Speaker 4 (04:07):
So my mother died when I was quite young as well,
so it's my very early twenties, and I learned then
to cry all the tears, to not actually try and
hold them in or stop them from coming. And I'm
very aware too that when you are crying that people
will often try and comfort you because your tears make
them uncomfortable. So I've become somebody now when somebody else
(04:31):
wells up, I don't go over and try and hug
them because I'm not going to try and stop their
tears falling. I would rather stand there and weep with them.
And I've got a friend who lost her husband a
week before we lost our grandson, and she and I
have sat over morning coffee together and both had tears
rolling down our cheeks as we chatted, and then ten
(04:52):
minutes later we can be laughing and eating a piece
of cake and neither of us needs to stop the
tears from flowing. And I think there's a real freedom
and liberation in that.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
Yeah. I think I read a quote from you saying
you You've got to sit number of tears and they
all have to be cried.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
They do.
Speaker 4 (05:07):
So cry them in the shit, cry them in the car,
cry them wherever you have to, but don't stop. Don't
try and stop them, because they will take you by
surprise when you're in a department store.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
I sometimes pity those people that suppress it all down.
I remember being at a funeral and I was asking
the bereaved wife, you know how it was going, and
did she like the eulogy? And she said, oh, I
didn't listen. I turned my hearing aids off so I
wouldn't have to hear it. I didn't want to get
too sad. And I'm thinking being said is part of
(05:40):
the proceeds.
Speaker 4 (05:41):
And I think in the rest do we do grieving
and lost so badly that you know, generations ago you
wore black. Everybody knew to treat you gently, And I
think a tongue he is a much much better way
of farewelling somebody than trying to cram it into an
hour and a quarter of everybody trying not to cry.
(06:01):
You know, you need the time to be able to
laugh and tell stories and weep and eat together and
tell stories.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
Now you've lost someone very young in your life, you
also lost someone very old in your life, in all
your life, your dad, and he was ninety he was
ninety five. Yeah, yeah, that's you know, to have had
him in your life for so long, and now you'll
be thinking of things that you would have told him
and you'd like to share with him.
Speaker 4 (06:29):
Well, it's interesting too with your very elderly parent if
you have the luxury as I did of having a
kind dad. You know, lots of women don't have a
father who was safe, but my dad was safe and
kind and funny. He was very tight with his money,
but also really witty and affectionate. He was a feminist
(06:49):
as well, with two daughters, so that was a wonderful thing.
And we had the great good fortune also that he
kept his marbles right.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
Until the very end.
Speaker 4 (06:58):
So he became somebody I could just go and talk
to because he had nothing going on, He had no news,
so he really looked forward to you coming and and
telling all your news. And so, you know, having him
just sitting there, ready to drink and whatever was going
on in the outside world and in the way to
family was a delighted.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
Oh well, you've what a privilege to have had him. Yeah,
and what a sad loss to have lost him. So
my sympathies all around for what are rotten twenty twenty five.
And I certainly hope that there's some good things going
on in your life. I mean, what are some of
the good things that are happening. You mentioned this trip
to Australia, so people and Ozzie know about you you
(07:38):
over there.
Speaker 4 (07:38):
Yes, yes, I've had followers in Australia for a very
long time, and I think our food culture is really similar,
and as is my thing, I like to visit a
supermarket wherever I can, so I actually spun around four
different supermarkets while I was there, and it was really
interesting to see that essentially we have the same problems,
(07:59):
just just slightly different, so you.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
Know it meat is differently.
Speaker 3 (08:02):
Yeah, meat is.
Speaker 4 (08:03):
Really expensive here. It was cheaper in Australia, but produce
was really expensive there and our produce a cheaper those
kinds of things, so that that actually, you know, was
quite reassuring.
Speaker 3 (08:12):
And I do really interesting.
Speaker 4 (08:15):
Work running it, running the Good Works Trust, food bank
and Social supermat It is really really interesting.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
Is another chapter.
Speaker 4 (08:23):
Yeah, yeah, that's my nine to five is Yeah, you know,
run the biggest food bank on the North Shore and
so so that has been really quite a stimulating thing
to be part of and to be part of trying
to do good better.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
Yeah, okay, well that's probably part of your mentor for
a lot of things, right right, backers, you'll just step
back on your story. I mean, you were sort of
getting into financial work or something back in the ninety
eight nineties or something, and then boom along comes the
(09:02):
credit card crunch or not the credit card grudge, what
do they call it.
Speaker 3 (09:05):
The it was the GFC or whatever it is.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
The stock market, the big stock market, remember which particular
desaster was, and there have been so many and that
left you in debt without a job.
Speaker 3 (09:20):
Yes, so I was working in financial markets.
Speaker 4 (09:23):
I worked for a brokerage house selling exchange traded commodity options,
which is an incredibly risky thing to be investing in,
and it was a very unregulated industry in New Zealand.
So I had basically no training whatsoever. It was very
much a sales job, and I didn't know that the
(09:45):
company that I was working for was actually really sketchy.
Speaker 3 (09:49):
None of the staff did.
Speaker 4 (09:51):
The corporate fraud squad did work it out, and so
they shut the place down. But it was basically around
that time that the market crashed, and so it became
very very difficult then to get a job if you
had been in that industry, because you were seen as
being sketchy, so down the bottom.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
Of the recruitment scale. I guess, Oh.
Speaker 4 (10:16):
Yeah, no one wanted to touch me with a barge pole,
so that it was a real wake up call actually,
because you know, we'd had a very buoyant employment market
in New Zealand. I had the great luxury of being
offered every job I'd ever gone for up until that time.
And yeah, all of a sudden I was unemployable and
with an enormous amount of credit card debt because I
(10:38):
had shopped, eaten and drunk myself into debt in between
commission payments. So yeah, it was really very very sobering
and frightening and embarrassing.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
I think would be fair to say that out of
the rubble of that chaos called a new Sophie Grave.
It was an allergy to debts.
Speaker 4 (10:56):
Yes, I became I like to say I became a
born again budgeter and a great.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
Passion to help other people get out of debt and
to live within their means. But eat well at the
same time, if you've just and my guest tonight is
the Destitute Gourmet, Sophie Gray. We're just catching up on
what the highs and lows of the last couple of years,
and we'll be back with her more to talk, especially
about her latest passion, which is this food bank that
(11:23):
she's involved with, and it's it's tuned slightly differently from
what you probably think a food bank is. This is
real life. I'm John Cown talking of Sophie Grey Gray.
This is News talk z.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
EDB intelligent interviews with interesting people. It's real life on
news Talks EDB.
Speaker 5 (11:41):
Well, welcome cmd space for you now well the bottom about.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
News Talk's EDB. I'm John Cown. This is real life.
And that of course is Dave Dobbin. Welcome home, Sophie Gray.
Who's my guest, Destitute Gourmet. What did you pick that,
Dave Dobbins Anthem?
Speaker 4 (12:14):
I really love that song. It really speaks to me
because for a long long time my cultural identity was
a complete mystery to me. My parents were immigrants. My
mother was Australian and had moved to the UK. My
dad was English, but his heart was in Scotland and
they moved to New Zealand when I was a toddler
(12:34):
and I don't sound one hundred percent like a Kiwi
And for most of my life people will be asking
me where I was from and I did not know
how to answer that. And it has been much later
in my life that I realize I am a Kiwi
Artro in New Zealand.
Speaker 3 (12:53):
That's my home.
Speaker 4 (12:55):
I love that song and it speaks to me and
I think, you know, for a lot of Pakihar, our
cultural identity has been lost, and I think being able
to to go, I love this place, this is this
is who I am, this is where I'm from. I
want to be part of the future of New Zealand,
(13:18):
a New Zealand that treats everyone well. That that for
me is really important and that song, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
I hope that being treated well extends to when life
turns against people. And because probably more than any other time,
I can recall there are people now that are needing services.
And you've you know, the COVID calamity tipped a lot
of people onto onto their back sites. You yourself, yeah,
(13:50):
made redundant, maraide redundant. You were an editor or you
were a contributed Yeah.
Speaker 4 (13:55):
I was the food director for Bauer Media Group, an
editor of Food magazine.
Speaker 2 (13:59):
Yeah, and then a quick phone call was it?
Speaker 3 (14:02):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (14:03):
Yeah, I think two hundred and seventy of us were
made redundant in a seven minute zoom.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
Yeah. It was pretty pretty harsh.
Speaker 3 (14:11):
It was social.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
Yeah, So Dejavo back to being unemployed after in lockdown
and the fact that you had the stack of cookery books,
that you were doing courses, that you were well known,
you had profile. That still doesn't make you overly employable.
Speaker 3 (14:28):
I guess no, not at all.
Speaker 4 (14:29):
I'm qualified to do absolutely nothing whatsoever. So yeah, it was.
It was really live for a lot of people. It
was a very very uncertain.
Speaker 2 (14:40):
Time and remain so. And so you're working out with
this food bank as the director.
Speaker 3 (14:46):
Yeah, I'm the operations manager.
Speaker 4 (14:48):
So I took over at the end of twenty twenty
and at that time New Zealand was COVID free and
it was a little food bank. It was I was
only working ten hours a week. I was asked to
fill in for somebody and it was a ten hour
a week thing and I had nothing else going on.
(15:08):
Said yep, I'll do that. And at the end of
my sort of six weeks that I was going to
be filling in, I went and spoke to the board
and I said, you can't actually even make a meal
out of the food that you're currently providing. And so
they rewrote the brief and they said, find out what
(15:29):
the need is on the North Shore and what the
Good Works Charitable Trust should be doing to meet that need.
And so now we have sixty volunteers working across eight
volunteer programs. We run an independent social supermarket. We supply
school lunches across nine north Shore schools that don't get
(15:49):
any government lunch provision, and we're the biggest crisis an
emergency provider for the Shore right.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
And you're seeing a different type of poor person. I say,
putting inverted commas around poor because they may not look well,
I think type of what a poor New Zealander looks like.
Speaker 4 (16:10):
Yeah, and I don't really know what a poor New
Zealander looks like because I was one and I was
wearing designer clothes, but I was poor.
Speaker 3 (16:17):
So there are people.
Speaker 4 (16:19):
Who are living in the house that they were living
in and driving the car that they were driving when
there will turned to custard there are women who's who
have experienced financial and domestic abuse, who are in a
very nice house, but they have no ability to feed
their children or put gas in the car to get
their kids to school because they've been locked out of
(16:40):
the bank accounts. So I don't know what poor looks like.
I do know that of auckland Is who are under
the median average income, twenty percent of them live over
on the north Shore. I know we had twenty thousand
plus children living in benefit dependent households. But I also
know that food insecurity isn't necessarily about having no money.
(17:01):
Often it's just not having enough money. So we're trying
to build a food secure where there's nobody who can't
afford to access food through one way or.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
Another right and so other agencies coordinate with you.
Speaker 3 (17:19):
Yes, yep.
Speaker 4 (17:20):
So we take referrals from every agency who has clients
on the North Shore who are experiencing food and security,
and then we're looking at what the best path forward
is for them. So you said we are not a
traditional food bank. It's not a no questions, no criteria operation.
We do ask questions because sometimes the questions enable us
(17:41):
to do a better job of meeting somebody's need. So
you know, just just providing a food parcel doesn't necessarily
solve somebody's problem.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
So once again you're onto this almost a sense of mission,
a sense of calling to help these people, and this
food bank as a Christian underpinning.
Speaker 3 (18:05):
It definitely does.
Speaker 4 (18:07):
And you know, grew out of the convergence of an
existing trust that used to operate in Devonport, the Devenport
Network Trust and the Share Vineyard Church, and then it
became an entirely separate entity some years ago, the Good
Works Charitable Trust. So it is a separate entity, but
(18:27):
very much our values are rooted in the values of
the church that it grew out of.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
And it lines up with your values too, of faith
with its working gloves on.
Speaker 3 (18:40):
Yeah, very much so.
Speaker 4 (18:43):
And you know, I think that you know, we have
a real precedent from scripture.
Speaker 3 (18:48):
Jesus said I was hungry. You gave me something to eat.
Speaker 4 (18:51):
He didn't argue about whose job it was to feed you,
or you know, whether or not you know somebody's dropkick.
Parents should be the ones feeding their children. It's like, Okay,
you're hungry, let's get you something to eat. And then
that for me has become the thing that helps me
make the really hard decisions at the end of the day.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
It's spaically how often in life your solution has been,
what can we do, let's feed somebody.
Speaker 4 (19:17):
Well, it's very, very difficult to function when you are hungry.
You can't learn, you can't heal, you can't make good decisions,
you can't manage your emotions. All of those things are
impacted by food. Food is more than just fuel, though, Yes.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
A people's attitude of food, it often tells you a
lot about what's going on inside the heads.
Speaker 4 (19:40):
Yeah, and it's very interwoven with the way we celebrate
and the way we mourn, and the way we project
ourselves to society. It's a reflection of our culture. All
of those things are tied into the way we eat.
So one of the things I've learned is that for
many families who can't give their children lunch, there's children
just simply don't go to school. Providing the family with
(20:02):
a school lunch kit, which is what we do.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
Reduces that obstacle.
Speaker 4 (20:07):
Increases schoo tends. In some cases, ABO up to forty
percent doesn't need a truancy officer, doesn't need a home visit.
We just give the schools the kids and they decide
which families get them.
Speaker 3 (20:18):
And then they're telling.
Speaker 4 (20:19):
Us we have kids coming to school who are not
coming to school because their parents can make them lunch.
They don't need a cooked meal, they just need a
sandwich amusly bars and crackersn't a piece.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
Of fruit, as well as working out the logistics of
how to get the food in and get the food out.
Speaker 3 (20:35):
And how to pay for it when there is no funding.
Speaker 2 (20:38):
Yeah, which I imagine keeps you busy affair, but of.
Speaker 3 (20:41):
The keeps me awake at night.
Speaker 2 (20:43):
Yeah, it's I'm intrigued that you that you're still looking
about the things to do and things are like one
of the things that I came across maybe it dates
back to when you were actually is still the editor
in the magazine was a podcast looking at the issues
facing people in your at your age and and things. So, what,
we've only got a couple of minutes left. What's some
(21:05):
sort of challenge that you think? Yeah, I could see
this challenge was on my plate, but I'm rising up
over it.
Speaker 4 (21:11):
Is it?
Speaker 5 (21:12):
Well?
Speaker 4 (21:12):
I think when we started doing the podcast, it was
very specifically for women sort of in their their sort of.
Speaker 3 (21:18):
Late forties to you know, late sixties.
Speaker 4 (21:22):
It was called I Wasn't expecting that, and it was
it was about the Sandwich generation of women, where you've
got aging parents and you've got adult children, but you're
actually also still working full time and all of the
issues in and around that. And you know that my
podcast pal narrator Ashcroft from Rema, she and I both
(21:45):
really resonated with that because we were both in exactly
that same phase, you know, trying to juggle spending time
with your parents and also navigating your full time job
and your adult children.
Speaker 3 (21:57):
It's a lot.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
Okay, well, let's just finish with what's the best part
of being at the stage in your life. I hope
is the best part.
Speaker 4 (22:10):
Oh, I definitely think so. I think I feel really
really optimistic about the next decade. I'm really really looking
forward to it. I'm looking forward to grand grandchildren. I'm
enjoying adult children, but I'm also enjoying the opportunity to
pursue interests in hobbies and pursuits of my own.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
Okay, now I can hear the next piece of music
that you've packed playing underneath. What is this that you've picked?
Speaker 3 (22:33):
Oh, it's a piece by text.
Speaker 4 (22:35):
He's an amazing Kiwi artist and this song talks about
redemption and fresh starts and yeah, basically like turning a
page right.
Speaker 2 (22:48):
Well, Sophie, you're inspiring because you have hit the floor
a few times, but you bounce and you come up
strong and I enoyed. And not only that, you help
people cope with their setbacks and reversals as well. So
you're an inspiration and it's always a pleasure talking with you.
Thank you so much. This is real life on news
Talk set. But I've been looking to the destitute gourmet
(23:09):
Sophie Gray, and I'll be back with you again for
the last Real Life of twenty twenty five next week.
I have a great week.
Speaker 3 (23:21):
Why why.
Speaker 5 (23:33):
Why?
Speaker 1 (23:40):
Hie soy For more from News Talks ed B listen
live on air or online, and keep our shows with
you wherever you go with our podcast on iHeartRadio.
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