Got Passion for Food? Gruyère Guru

In Green Gecko's first installment of What's Your Passion? we have Addy. She is a foodie and creative writing student who has combined both her passions on the eye catching, mouth watering blog, Gruyère Guru.She started blogging after her encouragement from her journalism instructor at Bath Spa University. Addy heralds from the U.K. When I caught up with her on these inter-webs this is what she had to say:

Q1: Your blog looks delicious. Can I eat it?

If you were going to eat my blog, I would suggest you fry it - there's nothing like a bowl of fried computer pixels - and serve it with either a side salad, or some cooked veg. However, I wouldn't recommend eating it, as I wouldn't like to think it would taste like, or what it would do to your digestive system. I would stick to eating the content!


Q2. Now seriously, you are clearly passionate about food. How old were you when you discovered your  loved food so much?

I was 14 when I first started to really get into food. I had a bit of an eating disorder for a while and was always in the kitchens, looking through the food cupboards, trying to pretend that I wasn't hungry. I'd also help my mum cook dinner, because I wanted it to be ready sooner! We're a very foodie family, as my mum is a Cordon Bleu trained chef and used to work as a caterer in London, so as my passion developed, she was able to teach me how to do everything right; from chopping vegetables to how to do a full Sunday roast (although I've yet to attempt one of those on my own!) as my passion in food grew and blossomed.


Q3. Call you tell us a food story? Like did you meet your husband over cake?

Hmmm... A food story... OK. Get this. In my first year of university I lived on campus, which is only down the road from a little village. I walk a lot and so passed through it most days, and one day I saw a notice that they were having a harvest auction and supper. Being from a rural village this very much interested me, so I banded together a load of friends and we headed down there one late October evening. We got quite a few funny looks – I doubt that many people from my university came to the village for the harvest supper, but we sat down, bought drinks and were well behaved. Then the auction started and we made it clear that we were there to spend money. One of my friends got so obsessed that he was bidding away on marrows – he ended up spending about £10 on them! These marrows in question ended up sitting on my friend’s desk for the rest of the year, and he only got round to throwing them out at the point where they were starting to collapse in on themselves. He was forever known in that village as the Marrow Man. Let me assume that the rest – Ok, most – of the produce we bought at the auction was put to good use!


Q4: Talk about your blog a little. What does it take to  run such a delicious looking blog?

I started Gruyère Guru just over a year ago now. My feature journalism teacher at uni said we should have blog in order to 'get our voice out there'. At the time I was really getting into my cooking stride and had already decided that I wanted to become a food writer. I blog about anything I come across that's foodie related. I'll blog about where I eat out, what I'm cooking at home, if there's any exciting foodie news that's just been released, any recipes I've come up with, if there are any food products that I've discovered that I would recommended to people and about any foodie events I've been it, be it author talks and demos, or food festivals. I also review cookery books and have recently started a new series called 'Producer of the Month' in which I find a small food producer, buy their food products and blog about them. Doing all of this requires a lot of time and money. Not masses of money, but most of my student budget does get spend on food! It also means I 'like' a lot of food producers of Facebook, or follow them on Twitter so I stay in the know about what's happening. I have to be up to date with news and the latest trends. This isn't a chore for me though, because it's what I'm interested in!

Thanks Addy!