Hello, I’m Kathy Slack. I’m a food writer, cook and veg grower. And I’d like to invite you into my kitchen garden to share the highs and lows of growing and cooking your own food, and the healing powers of gardening, in my new podcast, Tales from the Veg Patch. Because if there’s one thing I love in life, I mean really, passionately adore, it’s vegetables. Why this obsession you may ask? Well, vegetables saved my life. I know that sounds glib but it’s really only a very slight exaggeration. After more than a decade in a high-flying job in London, I was a wreck. It’s a total cliche of modern burn out and the consequences of a life in the rat race, my mind and body just shut down one day and crippling depression took hold. But I found peace in an unlikely place – a vegetable patch. I put my hands in the soil and felt reconnected. A year digging, sowing seeds, counting worms, failing to contain the bindweed, and the veg patch quietly, without fanfare, saved me, giving me the courage to leave one life behind and begin a more connected life and new career in food. Even now, if I feel a wobble coming on I head out to the garden for a bit with my spaniel, Hadleigh at my heel, and I’m back in an even keel. Calm, re-balanced, reconnected. And that’s what I want for this podcast. To offer you the same 15 minutes of rural tranquillity to restore and inspire with stories that get you back to the land. They are hopeful, sometimes funny, tales about the garden, cooking and the restorative power of nature. A quiet manifesto, I hope, for a more connected life. There’s The Love Story of the Overlooked Leek (spoiler: they all live happily ever after in a leek and chestnut crumble); an essay on How to Buy Dirt, in which I go shopping for soil; and, musings on the Morals and Mysteries of Failing to Catch a Mole (it’s actually tunnelled into the raised beds, baffling.). Of course there’s lots of eating too, with super simple seasonal suppers (oo that’s quite hard to say) in every episode and plenty of ideas for making the most the season’s bounty whether that’s homegrown or shop-bought. I’m really looking forward to sharing the harvest with you. And secretly I’m also hoping to turn you all into veg evangelists as well. So hit subscribe and join me for a peak over the garden gate every Thursday for 15 minutes throughout the growing season. Hadleigh and I, and the bloody mole, will see you there. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
