There is no better example than Nadia Lim that there are two sides to anyone’s everyday life — it is just that most of us try keep the chaos locked down and quiet.
You see, the evening before I spoke with her, she had to shower a dirty farm dog who had found the compost heap, she found rotting bananas shoved down the bath plug hole by one of her beloved little boys which took an hour to unblock, the kids were yelling, a delivery truck got stuck right on the kids’ bedtime and she fed the children peanut butter on toast after accidentally burning the leek pie in the oven.
Turn the page to the morning after, and we are talking about a successful celebrity chef, marketeer, PR agent, writer, television host, sales agent and running their farm in the Cardrona Valley with husband Carlos Bagrie.
"When things get that bad, all you can do is laugh. I just internally laugh about it," she says about the hectic evening on the farm.
Within the space of eight months she has filmed and launched the new Three series Nadia’s Farm Kitchen and her latest cookbook Nadia’s Farm Kitchen which includes recipes from the series, as well as the two previous Nadia’s Farm series which were successfully rated, too.
"The feedback has been amazing on it. I was a bit dubious because people really loved Nadia’s Farm show and this format is a bit different. I thought ‘are they going to mind?’, but the most common feedback is it should be one hour."
The series this time around has more of the chef cooking in the kitchen than being outside on the farm like the previous two. The reasons behind the switch was because she missed her "happy place", plus the businesswoman knows when to end on a high.
"They wanted to do season three of Nadia’s Farm, but we kind of felt like we had done so much on the farm that was shown on the TV shows and we are not doing anything new on the farm now. We were thinking if we are doing a third series, there is not going to be anything new to show, it is business as usual."
"The show had gone so well and when things go well my philosophy is you end on a high, before trying to push things."
It wasn’t until she stepped back in front of the camera with her kitchen tools and ingredients that she realized how much she missed what she does best, cooking.
"It is my happy place.
"We just thought how about instead of a farm show with a bit of cooking what about a cooking show with a bit of farm in it. It felt a natural progression."
The show still included Ms Lim getting out to the farm, as well as visiting and showcasing other local producers such as the local strawberry farm in Luggate, a dairy farm and an orchard,
"There is that element of primary food production, but I am getting the chance to see it right through to the end to the final dish."
As if stuffed bananas in the plug and a television series wasn’t enough, she decided to write and place all the recipes into a book for her loyal fanbase and those wanting to learn dishes to cook.
"As I was doing the show I thought, ‘gosh I have got all these recipes that I have done on Nadia’s Farm, and people are going to want to cook these recipes. I need to put them into a book.
"It includes a lot of everyday dishes that we would have maybe once every week or fortnight at home like our lamb ragu with gnocchi, right to our celebratory dishes we might have like my Aunt Pippa’s cherry trifle, which we only cook once a year."
There are also a dozen short stories about the family living on the farm, her favourite part, she says.
"I do all of it, the conception of the book, I do the marketing, the sales and PR. I organise the book tours, talk to retailer, I do the recipes, write them up, I do the cooking and all the food styling.
"I am meticulous."
But she’s also very authentic, because in the same breath we are back on the farm, talking about that burnt crust of the leak pie. One out of ten of her trial recipes can be a blunder — so Ms Lim is as regular as any of us, on that note.
"If you are experimenting in the kitchen, I must have it written down because I can potentially develop it into a recipe and test it until I get it right. Otherwise, I will completely forget a recipe.
"I would say every one out of ten is bad, but the others are between OK and really good."
Also, relatable, Ms Lim speaks about her "side dishes" helping pay the mortgage and the 1200-acre Royalburn block being a bit of a "pit" in the sense farming is hard to make lucrative right now.
"I am just trying to hustle; it can all easily end. The farm is a big pit, in some sense, and it just keeps digging a deeper hole."
At the core of Ms Lim and behind her past, current and future successes, is a rural mother who speaks about her three children Bohdi, River and Arlo fondly, and she advocates for the farming lifestyle being a wholesome and comforting experience.
"It can be good to get away, but I kind of miss the kids straight away when i do. It is one of those ‘love hate’ relationships, and you have just got to laugh on those harder days."
