About BEK

Hi!

I'm Bek.
I am a busy single mum to an amazing
9 yr old and a beautiful 4 year old girl and we live on the gorgeous Sunshine Coast in Queensland.

I am also a very passionate horticulturalist, recipe creator & photographer, presenter and published award winning author.

As a horticulturalist gardening is a huge part of my life. I am very passionate about organic gardening especially and creating gardens for children that are chemical free and full of nature's wonderment. I truly believe that children and gardens just go together and when children learn to grow fruits, herbs and vegetables at home, or at school they also love to eat them!
I love growing food and garden fresh foods, bush foods, organic foods, wild foods, medicinal plants and visiting farms.
I love learning about aboriginal foods and culture.
I love learning about so many different cultures and their traditional foods.

I am a big advocate for getting unplugged and out into nature as often as you can.
Exploring any forests or woods where you live. visiting national parks, mountains, rivers, beaches, lakes, deserts and all sorts of natural wonders
I think we recharge by being out in nature and it gives a beautiful fresh perspective on life.

I love to grow food and to create themed gardens and really enjoy landscape designing and visiting amazing gardens and wild places.
I enjoy teaching edible gardening, especially to mums. I love writing about gardening and nothing is more exciting to me than visiting a gorgeous nursery or plants growing in their element, especially trees. I LOVE trees.
I have run garden clubs and created my own successful garden club for Bunnings Warehouse in Bundaberg, for which I created and wrote a monthly gardening newsletter full of tips and articles and also designed an award winning float for the Bundy in Bloom parade and Agro Trend Show plant displays.
I have also had a gardening community radio show.

I also care deeply for the environment and protecting the remaining forests and natural places that we still have. So much has been lost and is dismissed all the time so we really need to stand up and protect the beauty and wonder we are blessed with on our planet. I believe with a positive approach we can all do something to help protect these amazing green spaces, and sometimes we just need to share their story, their beauty, what makes them so great to get lots of other people to fall in love and appreciate them too.
we all realise that the green, leafy suburbs are the most beautiful and calm and yet we continue to clear what green beauty we have around us without really giving it much though.
I believe in a positive, educational approach to being more responsible environmental citizens.

Something that been really exciting for me is seeing the local food movements grow all around Australia and especially where I live on the Sunshine Coast.
It is a buzz of interest you can almost feel about getting to know food, where it comes from, how it is grow, where it is grown and by whom?
People are curious now. They don;t just want to fill their troleys with the cheapest and quickest, they want the whole food experience.
They want taste, colour, flavour, smells and the story behind it.
As a recipe creator it has been my delight to work with a very innovative supermarket where I live called theMaleny Supa IGA who I teamed up with in 2012 to create local product local recipe  recipe cards. I created all the recipes for these cards and did all the photography as well as preformed a taste testing event each month of every 4 recipes as they came out, which huge success.

I have since been invited out to many local producers to meet them and see the story behind their food products, many of these stories you will see here on my blog.

I also promoted eating local across the entire Sunshine Coast through 9 library Edible Sunshine Coast events, the Cooroy Fusion Fetsival and the Sunshine Coast Show, all free for the public to come and learn about local foods in this area, to taste test and also try 2 of my recipes.
I was backed with these events by the Maleny IGA, Maleny Dairies who attended every event and also Nutworks, Noosa Chocolates, Olives Direct, Pomodora's, Chick Nuts, Fab Slabs, Maleny Avocado oil,
and Buderim Ginger.

Along with IGA recipe cards I have had recipes published in Holistic Bliss Magazine and now in the Sunshine Coast's very own WHY Fitness matters magazine with BFresh with Rebecca Mugridge.

And if you couldn't tell from all the food photo's I also LOVE to cook! I am a fourth generation foodie and come from a family of chef's, professional cooks and women who love to bake and throw dinner parties!
I grew up coking in the kitchen with my mother who grew up cooking her mother who grew up cooking with her mother. It is a very strong connection and bond in my family.
My mum worked as a professional cook and cake maker, so many memories from childhood are watching my mum in commercial kitchens, seeing her whip up a feast for dinner parties and cooking with her with my friends. She too grew up with her mum a highly regarded chef, and seeing her in action.
Cooking as a family is this beautiful, deeply nurturing thing. Food is one of life's most simple and yet delightedly intricate too pleasures. It can be a soul soothing, healing, friendship forming, love blooming, family bonding and memory making experience.

My first published book, THE PRAM DIET was published by Random House and saw me on A Current Affair twice and also featured in various magazines and newspapers like That's life, Slimming and Health, Who, Woman's Day, Women's Running Australia, Baby Buzz, Noosa Style Magazine, The Courier Mail, Body and Soul, Bundaberg Newsmail, Adelaide Times, Sunshine Coast Daily, Range News and more.

(You can see lots of the media coverage of me under the media tab.)

The Pram Diet is an inspirational, heartfelt and supportive book written by a mother to other mothers.
It features my own very personal story of becoming a new mum, from a busy, involve career to becoming a stay at home in what felt like overnight. My experience with post natal depression, regaining my identity after having a baby and getting my body back too!
it contains some of my favourite home recipes at the time, expert gardening advice on composting and getting started growing your own food, learning to love your reflection and simple ways top reduce stress.

The Pram Diet was nominated by a reader and then won the Australasian Ausmumpreneur People's Choice Best Product Award amongst very talented and  fiercely competitive competition.

I love writing and always have I had my first story published in just year 1 at school, a short story in a newspaper and even got an award at school for it.
I try do some writing in some form every single day. Whether it is a blog, writing for a book or writing out a recipe!

I am excited to be working on edits for 3 children's picture books that received top reviews at the CYA conference. One is about the wonders of an edible, organic garden through the eyes of a child, one is semi educational and is all about trees and the forms they take.
The third and probably my favourite is Bernie the Bush Turkey, cute, funny and a beautiful story of unusual friendship and finding it in unlikely places with an undertone of seeing our wildlife as important.
I am also working on a new book which you can find out about through the tabs on this blog, The Healthy, Happy Mums book which features many of Australias top women in business, blogging, health and parenting.
And a cookbook, Healthy, Happy Lunchboxes.

If you are an agent or publisher - I would love to hear from you!

Following on with the Pram theme I co created a successful charity event on the Sunshine Coast, all about prams called The Pink Pram Push, for which I was able to gain the then Prime Minister Julia Gillard's
official support and had a speech written by her read out by Senator Claire Moore. The event was a Guinness World Record attempt for the most prams pushed at once and to promote healthy lifestyle ideas in the community by encouraging pram walking as a great way for mums to get out of the house, socialise and exercise with their babies.
All proceeds went to breast cancer and we raised over $2,400.

I love to be involved in my community, wherever I live and have always felt inspired to do so, when I lived in
Bundaberg I was involved in many community events, even judging gardening competitions and being the opening speaker for the 10,000 steps program.
On the Sunshine Coast I co created a big community charity event for mums, have been promoting local foods and food producers heavily throughout the region and through many forms of media and print.
And currently I am working for some fellow creative women from the Sunshine Coast to organise some affordable, working mum time slot friendly get togethers and networking for business mums.
I really do believe the more you get out there and support and become involved in your community the more you feel connected to it, feel like you belong and you do fall in love with it, and that is a very special thing.

FUN facts about me?
I have no idea what my hair colour is anymore! I have been dying it forever and people always think I am a natural redhead, so I'll just go with that!. I am a HUGE star wars fan. I love Lord of the Rings and read it for the first time when I was 11. I was very well behaved and received an award for being dux of my primary school but got sidetracked with earning money, boys and being a wild teenager in highschool!
I love reading and rereading my favourite books.
I love the colour blue and nearly everything in my kitchen is blue with splashed of hot pink and green since having my two daughters, whose favourite colours just happen to be pink and green!
I am a "dance mum" still very much learning my way but loving how much JOY dance brings to my two girls lives.
I love a good action or Sci-Fi movie. Sir David Attenborough is my hero. I still cry when I think about the amazing Steve Irwin. I had a crush on the Bush Tucker man when my friends liked Johnny Depp.
I would love to travel Australia learning about our indigenous food. I love everything Egyptian.
Did I mention that I love trees?

Thanks for stopping by,
 Bek xX