by Marina Pagucci
2020 has been a strange and challenging year indeed, but one that for me personally, has brought me on a journey back to what I love. It’s also been a year where I started to prioritize what was important to me and a year that despite the lockdowns due to COVID and the stress of the US 2020 elections, it gave me lot to be grateful for. Time spent with family and friends – albeit mostly on zoom and later, socially distanced on our front lawn. I really enjoyed the time I had to myself to spend more time on my passion…. Baking and cooking – and feeding people I love!
When the initial lockdown orders happened in March in LA, my company reduced my hours to 20 hours a week part time and being stuck at home, I naturally started to bake as this is my meditation – the one thing that I can get lost in and which relaxes me. Unfortunately, my waistline and scales did not thank me for indulging in my favourite past time! So I started to bake and deliver cakes, scones and other delicious British baked goods to my family and friends. Then my god-daughter who is English and lives in New York posted a very unfortunate looking cake that she attempted to bake on Instagram and I suggested that we could do a weekly zoom baking class to teach her how to bake. She was apprehensive at first as she had never baked in her life. She invited several of her friends to join the class and we ended up with people joining the zoom class from New York, LA and the UK! We started off mainly baking classic British baked goods like scones, Victoria sponge, banoffee pie, sticky toffee pudding and within a few weeks several of the ‘students’ who were American were all dab hands at making British cakes and desserts that they loved but couldn’t bake. I still had the problem of not wanting to expand my waistline with all this baking but then one of my friends asked me if I could make her sausage rolls, scones and cakes regularly to order – and hence it was the start of Simply Peckish. My husband came up with the name as he loves the story of how when we were out on our second date, he had asked me if I wanted to stop for something to eat and I told him that I was only a little peckish – to which he replied ‘what’s that?’ (he’s American). I’m sure he might have had all sorts of interpretations of it in his head!! 😊
As we approach Christmas and we’re now heading into another lockdown of sorts, I am spending more and more time at my oven and decided that I would share the love of my baking over the Christmas holidays. So, if anyone is missing homemade mince pies, sausage rolls or fancies some lovely festive cakes for Christmas, feel free to check out the Simply Peckish Instagram page: @simplypeckish – order forms are in our bio.
The moral of this story is that when life give you lemons – make a lemon drizzle cake!!
Marina. x
