I’m Ellen and this is my blog. My daughter had just turned 2 when I discovered I was pregnant with twins and it turned my world upside down. I was so sick for the entire eight months of the pregnancy that I could barely eat a thing other than instant ramen noodles and packets and packets of Haribo sweets. I had never even had a sweet tooth before, but I found myself fantasising about jelly snakes in bright reds and greens. Pink fluffy pigs with shiny jelly ears, cola bottles and little orange and yellow bears took my exhausted body to the shops to buy packs and packs of them. I laughed at social media when I saw posts from pregnant women talking about eating all these nutritious meals –I would have loved to be able to eat but I just couldn’t and it felt so strange. It was just another way in which I did not feel like myself at all. I was unrecognisable in every possible way; physically, emotionally and now unable to eat any of the food I loved. And I really LOVED food, so it was devastating.

Then suddenly I had two newborns and a 2 year old and they needed so much that cooking for everyone seemed like an insurmountable task. It had to be done every day though, because no-one else was going to do it, but often it was done in such a rush – holding a baby in one arm while frantically pressing buttons on the air fryer with the other, in between milk feeds and settling babies for naps. It felt almost impossible, so when I finally went back to work and the children were all at nursery the opportunity to cook opened up again and it was like being allowed to enter this forbidden wonderful world I had lost.

So I just started cooking! In my twin boys’ first week of nursery, when I had a few days’ leave for ‘settling in’ disasters/to prepare myself for full-time work, instead of resting or going out to meet friends or whatever other people thought I should be doing with my newfound ‘free’ time, I spent it baking two cakes for my sons’ first birthday. One chocolate fudge, and one Victoria sponge. And as I weighed and whisked and stirred, I was ecstatic. Music on, singing at the top of my voice for the first time in years, I was just so happy to be cooking. To be cooking for cooking’s sake, for the pure enjoyment of reassuringly methodical techniques, busy hands, creative pleasure and at the end of it all the heartwarming and empowering sense of having created something that was real, that you could taste and touch and smell, and it felt wonderful.

Since then, I have never looked back. To me, rediscovering the joy of cooking was rediscovering the joy of being alive. It felt important, and, in a world where so much invisible work is done silently by women every day, I wanted to break that silence which why I decided to start sharing this with all of you.