Crafting Love with Lucy Sally Sommer

Today we are celebrating the launch of our Crafting Love Series, a collection of blogs featuring interviews with our wonderful KIND customers who have designed bespoke pieces with us and are contributing to the community in various ways.

We are thrilled to be kicking off the series this week with the lovely Lucy Sally Sommer – a nutritionist, food lover, and founder of Heritage Cafe – who is on a voyage to discover how the generations before us ate. Sit back and enjoy these wonderful words from Lucy about her recent work, and the significance of her bespoke necklace from KIND Collection.

Photo by Jasmine Benn (@Shot_By_Jaz)

Your incredible Heritage series follows you meeting fellow food lovers and preparing their favourite heirloom recipes. You have gained a huge following who, like us, can't help but fall in love with your simple nourishing recipes and dreamy animal & plant filled home life. Tell us a little about your memories of preparing and eating food as a child, and how has your experience of it evolved over the years?

My mother spent the majority of her life raising 7 children and, for me, this epitomises what home cooking is all about. We always ate as a family - everyone would scramble to the table once mum announced ‘dinners ready!’ and we would wait very impatiently for the selected family member to say grace until we could take our first bite (us younger siblings guarding our plate from the elder siblings as we were served first). My mother is a ‘no fuss’ kind of cook and she would adjust a recipe with ease according to what she had in the pantry. I would describe mum’s cooking style as generous and full of love - we ate very hearty, cosy food and cooking was very much her love language.

The smell of onions cooking in lashings of butter is a fond smell from my childhood. From a young age I wanted to be in the kitchen, at first it was to sneak a taste of whatever was cooking but that soon turned into a curiosity of how meals came together. I picked up little tips from my mum along the way, such as “never rush the cooking of onions, it’s the foundation of the meal”. My dad is and was a keen vegetable grower so a lot of our meals were centred around seasonal vegetables, something I definitely took for granted as a child!

I have always been an intuitive cook and I owe this to my mother. I continue to use my intuition in the kitchen to develop my own recipes and I take so much pride in making recipes that are homely and comforting, whilst also nourishing your body (much like my mothers cooking). I love how the tables have turned a little and now I get to cook for my parents and even show my mum how to cook some of my recipes which has got to be one of the best feelings.

Photo by Jasmine Benn (@Shot_By_Jaz)

When did you know it was something you wanted to focus on as a career and was it always important for you to explore the emotional value of food alongside the nutritional?

In my mid 20s I started a food instagram page (@lucylovesgoodfood) just as a creative outlet and to share meal inspiration and even then I wished I could turn it into a career but I didn’t know how.

I ended up meeting with a friend of a friend who was a head chef of a famous restaurant in London to ask about his career and what it’s like being a chef. He told me everything I needed to hear and I was quickly put off the idea, but, in the cafe where we were meeting, I noticed a Deliciously Ella cookbook on the shelf and that’s when I had a bit of a lightbulb moment; I thought, perhaps if I study nutrition I could use that as an avenue into the world of food blogging.

So that’s what I did and funnily enough I worked as a chef in a restaurant in Covent Garden whilst studying. So it took me a while to get here but eventually after a couple years of practising as a nutritionist I made the decision to give content creation a go, because I wanted a life in the kitchen.

Since getting into content creation I have realised that I am more interested in cultural food, cooking with people and sharing the story behind the recipe. I believe home cooked food, eaten in company, is more healthy than a lot of the “health trends” I see crop up on the internet.

Photo by Lucy Sally Sommer (@lucysallysommer)

Your Heritage series feels more about the shared experience of cooking and eating than simply sharing recipes. How did storytelling become such an important part of your process?

As wonderful as content creation is, it’s often very surface level and this doesn’t sit well with me. I started a couple of series which did well on social media but were very health focused and I quickly realised I didn’t want to be in the health and wellness space. What stuck with me though, was that I enjoyed doing this series because of the story behind it, so when I eventually started the Heritage Recipes series I knew that if I was going to ask my audience to share their favourite Heritage recipe I would also need to share the sentimental story behind the recipe. And this was actually my favourite part of the process because we can always resonate with someone else’s memories surrounding childhood and food.

What's next for LSS and do you have anything in particular you would like to achieve over the coming years?

I think I’ve probably bitten off more than I can chew but I’m putting together a youtube channel called ‘Heritage Cafe’ which follows myself and three other wonderful women that were previous guests on the Heritage series, as we get to know each other whilst discovering delicious food in London. It’s very early days but I am so excited to be doing this with them! Other huge milestones for my brand would be to publish a cookbook and if I am being really honest I would love a producer to discover the Heritage Recipes series (launching soon on youtube) to help me bring it to life….and a wider audience! I would also love to host a supper club with all donations going to a refugee charity.

Photo by Lucy Sally Sommer (@lucysallysommer)

You recently commissioned Tansy to create a bespoke necklace. Can you tell us a little about the design and what it means to you?

As soon as my logo was ready, I immediately thought that it would look so cute as a stamp on a necklace. Once I had this idea, I got in touch with Tansy and she understood exactly what I was looking for.

The necklace came out perfect and Tansy kindly gave me the actual stamps so I can use them again in the future! For me, this necklace represents me putting a stamp on my career. I wouldn't have gone through with this if I wasn’t invested in my brand and my future so it’s a nice feeling knowing that I’ve got somewhere in my career and I always wear it with pride!

Much like your recipes we feel our jewellery helps tell a story and keep memories of loved ones or life milestones alive. Do you have any piece(s) of jewellery you couldn't live without?

Yes, of course. The first being my engagement ring which belonged to Ben’s grandma, making it extra special. The second, is my signet ring stamped with our family crest - a resemblance of my own heritage. And the third being my Heritage Necklace by Kind Collection which is something I am very proud of and something I hope to pass on.

You cook a lot of seasonal food often picked from your bountiful garden. Can you share your favourite recipe for a quick lunch on a sunny day?

Fried courgettes with a squeeze of lemon and blistered tomatoes combined with quick-cook lentils. Served on a bed of herby yoghurt topped with feta and/or pine nuts and always a glug of extra virgin olive oil.

Photo by Lucy Sally Sommer (@lucysallysommer) and KIND Collection (@kindcollection)