By Georgia Scapens for FoodSt

My sister is a fabulous cook. I’ve talked about her in a previous blog post - she’s one of those people who you look at and think: why on earth are you not a chef?

Her food is both seemingly effortless and mouth-wateringly good. And beyond that, cooking brings her so much joy. Her eyes light up when she finds the perfect combination of flavours and she bounces around the kitchen with so much energy, a champion of multi-tasking. Watching her in the kitchen is a total delight.

But there are a couple of very easy answers as to why she isn’t a chef, even though she’d love to be. My sister is a surgical nurse in a day clinic, and she is also a full-time single mum. Chefs are generally required to work early mornings or late nights, and those are both times that she has committed to her children.

As a family we’ve talked about ways that she could fulfil her dream of cooking – like a small catering business that she could run during the day – but it has never quite been feasible. The risk of giving up her nursing job and pouring her savings into a new and unknown career is too much, and being a single parent she has always worried about the time and energy it would take to build a business from the ground up.

This year we stumbled across Food St, and with it came the solution. My sister can choose the nights that she wants to cook, she fits it around her nursing hours and she prepares the meals while her kids sit at the kitchen counter and do their homework. She has a little extra money in her pocket each week and she is doing what she loves.

Now, every Tuesday and Thursday, my sister’s kitchen is noisy with chatter and full of delicious smells, and she couldn’t be happier.

FoodSt enables passionate home cooks to sell their delicious meals from home. To find out about becoming a cook go to www.FOODST.com.au.