Great to meet you. I’m Alison, a food-loving writer, photographer and cook with a passion for growing my own fruit and vegetables. 

Along with my husband Nick, I’ve been an allotmenteer for years, and I’ve picked up a wealth of know-how – or should that be grow-how – along the way.  It’s a labour of love and just when we think we have everything in its place, we find another job that needs tackling, but it’s an endless source of satisfaction too.

There is nothing more rewarding than pottering on the plot and filling my trug with fresh seasonal produce still warm from the sun and feeling little bubbles of joy knowing that we’ve turned a few little seeds into a bumper harvest.  We try to eat fresh and healthy food as much as we can and I’m always getting creative in the kitchen, trying new ideas and developing recipes.  

But what’s the Pesky Veggie thing all about, I hear you say?

Well, I’ve been a non-meat eater for most of my life.  As a youngster, even before I knew what meat was and where it came from, I simply didn’t have a taste for it and once I found out the facts, my appetite for meat completely nose-dived.

For a child of the 1970s and 80s, this made me an oddity, but we weren’t an adventurous nation of food lovers back then and vegetarian options were more or less unheard of, so at mealtimes, instead of tucking into a plate of meat and three veg, I survived quite happily on just the veg, with regular protein boosts from tinned fish, baked beans and dairy.

Eating outside the home though, was quite a different story, because most people were simply baffled by a child who wouldn’t eat meat. School meals were out, as they were wholly meat-based and holidays were fraught with mealtime misery.

Quite simply, I was the pesky veggie who made life difficult.

I started to experiment with vegetarian cooking in my teens and went on to obtain a degree in Hospitality and Management which opened my eyes to the world of food and nutrition and gave me the skills to cook with confidence.  Since then, I’ve been lucky enough to travel far and wide, which has introduced me to ingredients and cooking techniques that make me fizz with enthusiasm and I’ve become a food fanatic, always on the lookout for new things to grow, cook, photograph and write about for blog posts and magazines.

Though I’ve lived happily without meat for most of my life, my love of fish has grown with me, so in modern parlance I would probably be labelled as a pescatarian or pesce-veggie now, but as such highfalutin descriptions didn’t exist in the 70s, I think I shall forever be the Pesky Veggie.  (It’s pretty much the anglicised version of pesce-veggie anyway if you think about it!)

Adding low FODMAP recipes into the mix…

Something I’ve developed more recently is a repertoire of low FODMAP recipes, which became important for us when Nick was diagnosed with IBS. After years of suffering with nothing much to ease the symptoms, we discovered the low FODMAP diet, which was developed by Monash University in Melbourne, Australia and it was a turning point for him to start feeling well again.  For keen cooks, it can be a blow to discover that someone you love to cook for has a food allergy or intolerance which will restrict your culinary exploits, but I saw it as a challenge and set about adapting  dishes we already loved to create low FODMAP versions. I now regularly devise new low FODMAP recipes, some of which you’ll find in the recipes section.

I look forward to sharing my recipes and allotment adventures with you.

My Latest Recipes