Urvashi and I met on 2011 The Great British Bake Off. She wowed the judges with her perfect little tartlets and frankly everything she produced was just perfect. She blogs, she tends an allotment, she mothers and she holds down a full time job. What a woman!
What’s your name? Urvashi Roe
Where do you come from? London
How old are you? 42
What’s your educational background? Did you leave school at 16 or finish with a PhD? BA Hons Applied Languages – ie French, German, Law and Economics
What’s your blog called? http://thebotanicalbaker.wordpress.com/
When was your blog born? Couple of years ago
Sum your blog up in one sentence: An outlet for my botanically led recipes and foodie adventures
Why did you start your blog, where did you think it would lead? I started my blog to develop my own ‘voice’ and write about things that I find interesting
Name 3 blogs you like: Green Kitchen Stories, Food To Glow and Smarterfitter
What’s your most popular blog post? My most recent most about my Patisserie Trip to Paris was very popular
How often do you check your blog stats, truthfully?! About once a week
What’s your biggest kitchen disaster? Tried to make bread from a recipe in Food of Morocco by Paula Wolfert and used totally the wrong flour mistakenly. It was like a big fat lump of cooked couscous!
What’s your advice to fledgling food bloggers? Write about what you care about and find interesting and not what PR companies throw at you
Is there anything you’d have done differently? Not named my blog Botanical Baker but rather Botanical Kitchen because I do more than just bake.
Blogging high? Every blog post is a high because I’ve written it because I want to and not because someone at work is telling me to meet a deadline
Blogging low? I went through a phase of doing lots of PR things and got really fed up having to do certain posts and specific times. It made me re-evaluate what I write about and why.
Who inspires you? Everyone who has had the courage to post a recipe or a picture of something they have cooked on Instagram or Twitter inspires me. How brave to share these things that are so personal.
Do you have a day job? Oh yes! A big one!
What keeps you awake at night? Nothing work related anymore. Last sleepless night I had was when my daughter Amber was away overnight on a school trip. I was a very neurotically worried mum.
Where do you see yourself in 10 years time? Behind the counter of my own space – not sure if that is a café, a shop or a bar but something food related.
What would be your 3 desert island items? Dark chocolate, Red wine, Salt and vinegar crisps
What advice would you give to your schoolgirl/boy self? Speak up and speak out. All anyone can ever say is no or disagree with you. What’s so wrong with that?
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