All photos provided or taken by Emma Galloway.
Emma Galloway might be more known to some as food blogger My Darling Lemon Thyme. From small beginnings as something to keep up her cooking while at home with the kids, her blog now attracts around 90,000 hits a month – and growing. Raglan bred, she is currently living in Perth, Australia. On a short trip home to work on her up and coming book, we sat down with the Gluten free Vegetarian. Lucky us! It’s a little longer an interview than normal, but as usual when it comes to food and its good, I just keep on going. Gorge away…
How many people check out My Darling Lemon Thyme?
I’m currently getting around 90,000 hits a month.
Did you imagine that’s what would happen when you started?
Not at all, I remember celebrating after I had got to 30,000 hits in the first year. 90,000 in one month kinda freaks me out!
Food blogging and the online world is pretty crazy. It only takes one person to mention you online and it just seems to snowball from there.
Is food blogging a big sharing thing?
All us food bloggers love to share our knowledge, recipes and stories. Especially when you realise that 99% of us do it for the love of it with no monetary gains whatsoever. The food blogging community is pretty massive, but in another sense its pretty small. There’s a lot of food blogs out there, but once you get to know all the main players in the game, its actually quite small and I’ve come to know so many of them all via the internet. I converse with food bloggers from the states and other parts of the world on a daily basis, which makes the world seem pretty damn small. When I first started blogging 2 and a half years ago food blogging was still really small here in NZ, but this past year or so has seen so many people catch onto the wonders of food blogging that we now have a NZ Food Bloggers Association and conferences held on a yearly basis.
What made you start your blog?
Friends had suggested I start a food blog after we’d be eating gluten and dairy free for a couple of years. At that stage I didn’t even know what a food blog was, I think they were a little ahead of me on that one! I kinda went “Yeah, ok, whatever. I won’t even go there’.
But a few months later when reading Heidi Swanson’s cookbook -Super Natural Cooking, I read about her award winning blog 101cookbooks.com and my food blog obsession began. A few months later after reading loads of food blogs, my friends advice once again popped into my head. This time I listened.
I figured I wasn’t working and could do it while home with the kids, it was something that I could do to keep up with my cooking. So I started My Darling Lemon Thyme in July 2010.
What’s the future for my darling Lemon Thyme?
Who knows? I’d like to think I’ll keep doing what I’m doing on the blog for as long as I’m still enjoying it. Everything that I’m currently doing with the book etc have come about because of the blog. And for that I will be forever grateful. Writing cookbooks is what I’ve always wanted to do, so if I could keep doing that I’d be pretty happy. I’d also love to move into food writing for a magazine or something. That would be the ideal.
Favourite thing to cook – or bake?
Hrmm, I do bake lots. I have a bit of a sweet tooth, but it’s kinda under control these days. I tend to bake much healthier versions of sweet treats than what I used to cook when working in the industry, which is how I justify my weekly baking habit. I also love to cook Vietnamese food – how perfect that I married Si (who was born in Vietnam but grew up in Australia).
What is your highest priority… taste / ingredients.
I’d probably say both. The shock for me when I started eating gluten free was how horrible most of the store-bought products were. Many taste like dry, hard cardboard, gross. I am a chef, so it’s pretty important to me that my food taste good but it also needs to be good for our bodies too. It will never taste the same as wheat products, but if I can get it as close to, without having to use all the unnatural things that lots of companies use – like the gums and high proportions of starches – then I’m happy. It’s pretty important to me that not only does my food taste good but it’s actually nutritious too, since many gluten free foods aren’t.
So it’s not nutritious?
Heaps of gluten-free products aren’t. Lots of people -because the gluten free diet is such a fad at a moment- get caught up in thinking that if they swap all their wheat products for gluten free products, then they’re eating healthy… but 99% of the time that ain’t the case. Read the ingredients on many products like gluten free bread, crackers or pizza base and you’ll see they are made from starches, gums and loads of refined sugar, which have no nutritional content at all. The bulk of the flours I use are whole grain with just a few starches used to give the correct texture in baked goods. My advice if you are wanting to eat a more healthy diet, just eat real food. Get rid of the junk food and processed products and take charge of what you put into your mouth.
Do you feel being from Raglan has helped you in anyway?
Yeah, I don’t know how it has exactly, but I think it must’ve. There are so many talented and creative people that have come from this place. What is it in this water?!
What’s your favourite thing to do in, or about Raglan?
Waking up and seeing the ocean everyday. Even if I don’t get in there daily just being able to see it makes me feel happy. We live a little inland in Perth, which I find hard as I’ve lived my whole life overlooking the ocean. After a month of not being to the coast, I find myself needing an ocean fix, so I drive to Freemantle. Coming up over the hill where you first catch a glimpse of the sea always takes my breath away. But being in Raglan with the ocean right there, man how lucky are we? And of course catching up with family and friends is my other favourite thing to do in Raglan, I’d better add that in too!
Do you have advice for someone starting a blog?
I actually wrote a post about food blogging last year, with tips and tricks that I have found out over the few years I’ve been doing it. But in a nutshell; write great recipes, take amazing photographs and write honestly. Also make sure you post regularly and just be yourself. I’m not a professional food writer, and I’m not overly great at writing in the ‘correct’ way. Instead of trying to be someone I’m not I just try to be myself, I think that’s what people connect with.
