Food & Me

Welcome to my blog!

Hi there, thanks for clicking in! I really hope you find Meatballs and Muffins interesting, useful and fun.

Meatballs and Muffins is about Sunday dinner with my family and what happens around our dinner table. My Blog is a way of sharing our family dinner stories, recipes and what I’ve learned about food over the years as a mother and home cook. My hope is that others will be inspired to experience the joy that sharing home cooked food can bring to their family and friends.

Why Meatballs and Muffins I hear you ask? Well, it’s very simple really. My family (there they all are below) really love the meatballs and muffins I make, so I decided to name my blog Meatballs and Muffins.Apart from the fun stories about our family Sunday dinners, what you will find on my blog are lots of easy-to-follow recipes made from fresh, seasonal and (mostly) local produce that are both affordable and easy to find.

A little about me
My name is Vicki and I am a wife, mother, mother-in-law and a yiayia (Greek for grandmother) and I love each and every one of those roles. After my family, my next love is cooking and sharing good food.

My love of food and cooking started a very long time ago when I was about 15 years old watching my mum cook classic Greek dishes. Growing up, fast food was a rare thing in our house. Apart from the occasional KFC and fish & chips we ate during summer at the beach, my mum always fed us home cooked meals.

I have great memories of being in the kitchen helping mum to prepare many different dishes including roast lamb – seasoned with oregano, garlic and lots of lemon juice, slow cooked until the skin was crispy on the outside and the inside melted in your mouth, and Yemista – fresh tomatoes and capsicums stuffed with rice and aromatic herbs from our home garden – one of my all-time favourite foods. The aroma of these dishes wafting through the kitchen still makes my mouth water.

Growing up, family gatherings always centred around a table completely covered with delicious home cooked Greek food. Since those days, I’ve expanded my food horizon and discovered a whole other world of cuisines. Cooking and eating healthy food became even more important to me once my 3 boys were born.Anyone who has raised boys will know how much food they can eat and my boys are no exception. They would constantly ask “what is there to eat mum?”, so making sure there was always something healthy for them to eat was a constant challenge. Lucky for them I love to cook and even luckier for me, they love to eat everything I cook – a match made in heaven!

Like most self-taught cooks, I’ve had my share of failures in the kitchen, but I believe the failures (or “Moroccan incidents” as my husband calls them) have helped me to become a better cook.

Food is more than just a meal to me. It’s about feeding my family food that not only tastes great, but is also good for them. Most importantly, food is about taking a little time out of our hectic lives to spend sharing with family & friends and making great memories that last forever. It’s also about using fresh seasonal produce grown locally by people who care about the environment and our children’s future.

Food is such a great way to bring people together and, in my family, Sunday is the day I get to cook and spend time with the most important people in my life. It’s a ritual that I hope my children will continue long after I’m gone and this blog is my way of ensuring the memories and recipes are not lost.

Thanks again for visiting and I hope you’ll be back soon. Once you’ve had a chance to look around Meatballs and Muffins, let me know what you think because your feedback is important to me 🙂

Kali Orexi (Bon Appetite)
Vicki