the Love Menu - part 1

I met my partner in Brighton, playing netball. He’s incredible. Growing up, my dad would talk about knowing it was the one when it was easy. He’d say ‘you just know’, which never really felt helpful. How are you supposed to just know something? How many chances should you give before you learn?

I - to my own downfall - gave too many chances to people who weren’t the one. In my final relationship (before James), I gave my entire self, and ended up a broken mess. It felt like caring for someone who didn’t care for themselves. And then afterwards, when I had poured my heart into someone, I didn’t have anything left.

James taught me that real love isn’t giving pieces of yourself away so that someone else might have more. It isn’t giving someone your only bite of food so that they can see how much they mean to you. Instead, it’s that they care enough to see you eat. Love isn’t work; it’s support.

I think that’s what makes our relationship so easy. We match. We support one another and there’s no sense of drain.

So, after dating for 10 months we bought a house together. In Scotland. A 10 hour drive, our entire lives, a goldendoodle, and a maine coone. We both just knew.

Our first christmas in our home came shortly after. I needed a present that combined loving someone very much, and having absolutely no money.

Lucky for me, James adores cooking - and so the love menu was born.

From September to December, my evenings consisted of reaching out to James’ loved ones: family members, childhood friends, friends from Brighton, friends from Edinburgh, the likes. I asked for handwritten recipes, to capture ‘realness’, and make the book seem homemade. Then, each recipe was formatted and illustrated. The end result was a stunning home-made recipe book, fully created to show care, love, and celebrate shared food.

I enjoyed this project immensely and am looking to produce more custom cookbooks in the future (they make the perfect gift).

The pictures below are just a selection of the whole book.