Nourish From Within

03/12/2025

✨ Family-Style Nourish Day ✨

Today I cooked for one of my beautiful regular families in Rockhampton. They choose four dishes cooked fresh each visit, with each dish made into four trays, and each tray giving four generous portions. Plus sides to match.

This family now has 8 different meals stocked in their freezer from the last two visits…
and I love how they use them:
three family dinners each week, all stress-free, wholesome and ready to heat.
These meals will comfortably last them the next two months.

Their menu today:
• Beef Bourguignon with creamy mash
• Lamb Madras with fluffy basmati rice
• Olive + Chicken with parsley + roasted chat potatoes
• Chicken + Vegetable Healing Broth

Their freezer is now packed with nourishing, slow-cooked, real-food meals — ready for busy nights, after-school chaos, or those moments they simply want to eat well without the effort.

Always a pleasure cooking in their beautiful kitchen for such a grateful family.
These are the homes I love to nourish. 🤍

FreezerMeals WholefoodChef RockhamptonMums YeppoonMums CentralQueenslandEats NourishingFamilies MealPrepChef RealFoodLove

28/11/2025

Studies Show It Takes A Woman 1–2 Years To Recover From Pregnancy, Not Just 6 Weeks.

🌸 Most people only hear about the 6-week postpartum checkup, but that doesn’t mean the body is fully healed.

Pregnancy reshapes a woman from the inside out — and science shows true recovery is a long, complex journey.

💡 What Really Happens After Birth:

• The uterus may shrink in weeks — but pelvic-floor muscles can take months to over a year to regain strength.
• Abdominal muscles often separate during pregnancy (diastasis recti), and may take 6–18 months to heal.
• Hormones don’t return to pre-pregnancy levels until months after weaning.
• Sleep deprivation and stress can delay both mental and physical healing.
• Emotional recovery varies widely — postpartum anxiety and depression can appear up to a year later.
• Even the brain changes during pregnancy (yes, literally) may take 2 years to rebalance.

✨ Motherhood is powerful — but it’s also demanding. The “bounce back in 6 weeks” expectation is outdated and unrealistic.

Let’s normalize long-term healing.

Let’s support mothers beyond the first month.

Because recovery isn’t a countdown — it’s a journey. 💛

21/11/2025

Just a little top-up cook for my clients yesterday:

🍪 Big batch of cookies
🫐 Macadamia & Blueberry Breakfast Slice
🧀 Mac n’ Cheese
🍗 Sticky Ginger Chicken + Rice
🐟 Lemon & Garlic Fish with Greens

Fresh, simple, nourishing. 💛


❤️

20/11/2025

29/10/2025

Today I cooked for a regular — a beautiful menu designed to be light, nourishing and full of flavour. 💛
My client eats predominantly plant-based, low dairy, low fat, and with wholesome ingredients, so I built her menu around those needs.

✨ Ginger + Orange Fish with Brown Rice
🍄 Mushroom Parcels with Parsley & Cauliflower
🎃 Pumpkin Lasagne
🥔 Sweet Potato & Tuna Bake
🫐 Blueberry + Lemon Muffins
🍑 Upside Down Plum Cake

some Keto Crackers for a snack (perfect with a dip!)

The total ingredients came to $182.71, all fresh and real — no additives, no shortcuts, just food made with care and intention.

I love creating personalised menus like this — each one tells its own story, aligned with how my clients want to feel in their bodies and homes.

22/10/2025

💛 Postpartum Meal Prep Love

Today I cooked for a mama who’s just a few weeks away from meeting her baby.
Her family — all the way down in South Australia — wanted to support her from afar. Normally, they organise a meal train after she gives birth, but since she doesn’t live nearby anymore, they all chipped in to gift her a postpartum meal-prep voucher.

They made sure she’d be nourished and cared for in those sacred first weeks — and it meant she received over 70 portions of food, plus banana bread and Ayurvedic rice pudding.

It’s such a powerful reminder that love and community can still hold us close, even across distance. 💫

🍲 Family-Style Smoky BBQ Beef Mash & Veg
🍗 Mango Chicken & Rice
🥩 Osso Buco with Dates & Ginger
🥣 Nourishing Golden Daal Soup
🥣Lemon & Pumpkin Soup
🍌 Ayurvedic Rice Pudding with Cinnamon & Baked Pear
🍞 Banana Bread with Dates & Walnuts

Happy Birthing & Easeful Postpartum Wishes 💖

18/10/2025

Every 3 weeks I step into my longest clients calm, welcoming kitchen — it’s one of those spaces that just feels good to be in. We’ve been cooking together for just over two years, and every session is a beautiful rhythm of nourishment and care.

My client follows a low-sugar, gluten-free, dairy-free, no onion or garlic diet, so her menus are always thoughtfully tailored — wholesome, balanced, and full of flavour.

This week’s line-up included:
🥧 Chicken Pie
🍛 Fish Curry with Rice
🌭 Curried Sausages
🍗 Ginger & Orange Chicken with Sweet Potato Mash
🍋 Lemon & Blueberry Loaf
🍖 Whole Roast Chickens + Roast Veg

Sourcing the best produce from Doblos, Glenmore Seafoods, the local butcher, and Woolies, it’s always a labour of love from start to finish.

Cooking here reminds me why I started Nourish From Within — simple, intentional food prepared with care, in spaces that feel like home. 💛

14/10/2025

Looking forward to this 💖

🌿 Homeschool Support Gathering — Tuesday, 21st October 🌿
📍 Venue: Homegrown Nature Play
🕰️ Time: 9am

Our monthly Homeschool Support Group is a place for parents to connect, share stories, and find encouragement on the journey. Whether you’re new to homeschooling, considering it, or have been walking this path for year; you’re invited.

This month, we’re so blessed to have Emily Burtt joining us as our guest speaker.
She’s travelled many paths: starting with school, then homeschooling, unschooling, and even road schooling her kids. Emily has supported her children through autism, anxiety, and autoimmune challenges, and she’ll be sharing her experience with registration and developing individual learning plans

✨ Bring along your favourite homeschooling resources!
We’ll have a little show and tell time to share what’s working for our families. Sometimes online curriculums can feel overwhelming, and it’s so helpful to see what others are actually using: what works, what doesn’t, and what sparks joy in learning. 🌻

After Emily’s talk and our resource sharing, we’ll gather in circle for open Q&A and honest conversation about real homeschool life — the rhythms, the chaos, and the beauty of learning together. 🌾

Please book online, so we know how many parents to expect. This is a free offering.

Refreshments provided. And browse our Homeschool Library!

Can't wait to see you there!

14/10/2025

Looking for Plant-baded meals? Highly recommend PlantFoods Yeppoon Made by Chef Mel 👩‍🍳

Menu's UP 🥘🍲🥗🥣
Contact chef mel direct for more details 🌱💚
Orders in by 6pm today for this Saturday pick ups 👩‍🍳
#

13/10/2025

“Working with My Cycle”

Since working with Alissa, Feminine Attunement I’ve started running my business in alignment with my menstrual cycle — and it’s changed everything.

I no longer try to operate in the same energy every week. Instead, I honour the shifts, the inner seasons that move through me.

My business, Nourish From Within, feels more sustainable, spacious, and alive when I follow this rhythm.

“It’s still a process to fine-tune. Sometimes, I slip up and notice myself booking someone in, only to realise later what I’ve done. Thankfully, I have some wonderfully understanding and flexible clients that are able to accommodate these changes at times.

We’re not meant to work like machines, especially as women. We are cyclical beings. We’re meant to ebb and flow, create and rest, rise and return.

It’s such a gift to experience business through the lens of feminine wisdom. 🌿