Can you believe Quirky Cooking is now in its’ 10th year?? I’m kind of amazed it’s already been 10 years, but part of me also feels like it surely must’ve been longer – so much has happened in that time! My own personal health journey (and that of my family) has taken me in directions I never imagined 10 years ago, and the blog has come along for the ride…

As any of you on a health journey will know, there’s no such thing as a straight line from ‘unhealthy’ to ‘healthy’. Someone once said, “There’s no direct line to success. The only thing keeping you from getting there is doing the next imperfect thing.” Although this may be referring to business success, it applies to health, too. The secret to improving your way of eating and your overall health is to just keep taking forward steps, no matter how imperfect those steps may be.

About 20 years ago I started taking those imperfect little steps towards improving my diet and my health, and after a while I started to see results. Small improvements. A lessening of the symptoms and the food reactions and the stress that I’d always lived with. So I decided to begin sharing what I was doing on a blog, as I knew there were a lot of other people out there who needed help in these areas as well. And so, on December 26, 2008, Quirky Cooking was born!

I didn’t see myself as an expert (I still don’t!), just a mum who was working it out as I went along, sharing the practical, everyday things like cooking healthy meals for the family, reducing refined foods and sugars, getting back to whole foods, menu planning, eating well on a budget, tweaking recipes to make them suitable for allergies and intolerances, working out healthier alternatives for family favourites, and developing new recipes to show what could be done with basic ingredients.

There have been plenty of ups and downs on my ‘quirky journey’, which I’ve always shared with the Quirky Cooking community. I think it helps to know we are all human and we all go through ‘stuff’. Just when you think everything is going well, life throws you a curve ball and you begin a new season of learning!

We’ve been through changing our diet for food intolerances, trying to increase nutrition because of issues with low weight gain, realising our problems were gut health related and changing our diet to heal the gut, working through OCD and anxiety with my younger son and anxiety and an autoimmune disease with my older son, transitioning back to a wider whole food diet, struggling with hormonal issues which resulted in surgery for me, learning to be kinder to myself and more patient with recovery, healing adrenal fatigue, working on letting go and stressing less… the list goes on. But we learn through the difficult times, and I’m a big believer that everything happens for a reason – and sometimes that reason is so that you can later help someone else who is going through the same struggles you’ve already been through!

So this is what we do at Quirky Cooking – we share our lives and what we have found has helped us on our healing journeys, in the hope that it will help others along the way.

The last 10 years in a nutshell…

December 2008: Quirky Cooking blog began. 2010: Facebook page started and grew into a vibrant community of like-minded people, supporting each other online, having fun with cooking, and learning together about healthy eating and healthy living. 2014: Quirky Cooking cookbook released; Quirky seminars and cooking demonstrations around Australia; started A Quirky Journey podcast to share what we were learning as we worked through Isaac’s OCD and anxiety. 2015: Cooking workshops and classes in Australia and the UK. 2016: Online program Quirky Cooking for Gut Health released; Fouad joined the team. 2017: Our Life-Changing Food cookbook released; Life-Changing Events held around Australia in 2017 and 2018. Our Quirky team has grown throughout the years, and we now have the most amazing staff EVER, helping with customer service, emails and admin, running our online store, and helping to organise events.

So what’s next for Quirky Cooking? Well, I’m open to new experiences and am excited about the year ahead! I’ve been inspired by my recent travels overseas and have some awesome ideas for new directions. I’m looking forward to working with Hope for Health to help improve indigenous health here at home. And there are amazing new collaborations and projects planned for 2019 and beyond. But the focus and foundation is still the same as it has always been…

Our Vision:

To help families and individuals to eat well by sharing delicious recipes that are based on traditional, nutrient-dense, whole foods.

To demonstrate how food and lifestyle can be powerful tools for improving the health of our families.

To support those who are working on healing through food with  resources, information and encouragement.

To inspire change without overwhelm.

Our 10th Birthday Giveaway!

As a big THANK YOU to you all for being a part of our community, and to celebrate our 10th year, we are giving away some of our favourite products from the Quirky online store… including five Solidtkenics pans!!! 😃

Solidteknics are an Aussie company making non-toxic, sustainable, multi-generational, iron cookware. We use them in our kitchens daily, and love having non-stick pans that don’t leach toxins into the food. To find out more about our favourite pans, visit our Solidteknics page … And check out their newest pans – a 35cm BIGGA version of the Flaming Skillet, and their DEEPA Pan – both available here on Kickstarter until March 15th! 🎉🎉

SHARE YOUR QUIRKY PHOTOS TO WIN!!

HOW TO ENTER:

To enter, all you have to do is share a photo of something you’ve purchased in our online store, showing us how you are using it and why you love it. 😍 See above photos for inspiration – interesting/funny/cute photos taken with our cookbook or other products from the store, recipes you’re cooking from Life-Changing Food, etc! (Details of competition below.) We want to see some FUN photos, so be creative with your photo shoot, and may the best photos win!! (And don’t worry if you’re not an awesome photographer – it’s the creativity of the photos we will be judging, not the photography skill levels!)

To enter on Instagram, post your photos on your public profile,
and tag @jowhitton #quirky10birthday

Note: For the month of March only, we also have FREE SHIPPING Australia wide for orders over $100, if you use the code ‘birthday’! So if you’ve been hanging out for a special… here it is!!

PRIZES:

1st Prize 
1 x Solidteknics 26cm ‘Satin’ Flaming Skillet
1 x Solidteknics 26cm ‘Satin’ Chef’s Skillet
1 x Solidteknics 35cm BIGGA Skillet
1 x Life-Changing Food cookbook
1 x “Quirky & Loving It” Apron
✨Prize valued at $744.85

2nd Prize 
1 x Solidteknics 30cm Skillet with helper handle
1 x Life-Changing Food cookbook
1 x sToop Wooden Toilet Footstool
✨Prize valued at $409.95

3rd Prize
1 x Solidteknics 21cm Deep Pot
1 x Life-Changing Food cookbook
1 x Large Wonderbag Portable Slow Cooker
1 x Changing Habits Gelatine
1 x Meadow & Marrow Bone Broth Concentrate
✨Prize valued at $337.90

TERMS & CONDITIONS:

You have all of March and up to midnight on the 5th April (2019) to enter your photos.

Multiple entries are permitted. Each one of your entries must show a different Quirky Cooking product.

Quirky Cooking employees and immediate family members of employees are not permitted to enter.

Winners must be comfortable with their photos being shared on Quirky Cooking social media.

The competition is open to Australian residents only, but if you’re an international follower we have some exciting news coming up for you very soon, so stay tuned! 😃

Winners will be announced 6th April, 2019, on social media and via our newsletter, and also messaged privately.

Winners will be selected based on creativity. Judges decision is final.

If the winner cannot be contacted, Quirky Cooking has the right to select a new winner.

This promotion is a game of skill, and is in no way sponsored, endorsed or administered by, or associated with Facebook or Instagram. By entering, entrants agree to a complete release of Facebook and Instagram.

Thank you again for being part of our Quirky Cooking community. Here’s to many more years together!! 😍🥂 Good luck with your entries!!

Lots of love from Jo & the Quirky Team xx