The art of food with Lucy Tweed - Every Night Of The Week

We love that you come at food from a visual perspective! Fusing art and food together - which is super aligned to how we like to work. Sal is the 'Chief Flavour Officer' and recipe developer at Farmer Jo, but her background is in interior design. She is always thinking about how food looks as well as tastes.

Sally: With four girls - 10, 8 and 3 y/o twins, breakfast in our household can be mayhem! As HR manager and chef to a family of 5, can you tell us what breakfast looks like in your household? 

Lucy: Mayhem, chaos, unpredictable… These terms once lent towards the negative for me. I love knowing what's happening, with who and where. But there has been a really enjoyable change regarding this after having 3 kids (13, 5, 2).

Pre-COVID and definitely looking forward to returning to this; our door is always open. Kids from our block wander in with our own, eating, running to the trampoline, a neighbour walks in with a glass of wine, our dogs whipping past people to play with each other. It’s really loud, and you’re never quite sure where anyone is or even who the people in your house are and whether they might hopefully stay for dinner.

And I really love it.

Quite possibly breakfast is the only calm point in the day.

Sleepy soft-skinned kids still warm from slumber. Coffee being brewed. Munching cereal or porridge usually eyes still glazed and not focused. Mindless tasks being completed in a state of meditation - lunches packed, dishwashers emptied. Sometimes there’s news on… but if I can, I turn it off straight away. The unfolding of the morning and everybody’s different moods each day is a really special moment for me as a mum.


Sally: We love everything about Every Night of the Week, but in particular, we love that your photos make us hungry! Can you talk to us about your dish philosophy? 

Lucy: I love dish philosophy! it feels calm and well-intentioned! and I am so glad my images/recipes make you hungry.

I am a pretty engaged eater. The consumption of food for me begins way before you’ve cooked it, or even shopped for or sourced it.. it begins the moment you decide what you are going to eat.

All these stages are enjoyable for me. Some people eat for fuel and others eat for the experience.

For almost everything I cook there are layers of flavour and excitement added at the end. Perhaps this began because as a food stylist for print media you need to invite the reader into the image so deeply that they can almost smell the dish.

Accentuating ingredients, amplifying texture, highlighting freshness, and of course appealing to generous comfort.

I always like to finish a dish with something oozy, crunchy, and then zesty.

Oozy could be oil, or yoghurt or cream, crunchy can be raw shaved veg, fresh icy herbs, fried breadcrumbs, and zesty is a flavour with bite: lemon zest, gremolata, parmesan, chilli flakes, salad dressing.

It means the whole dish is an experience and possibly inspiration for the next.

It’s easy to explain with savoury… but I see it happening so beautifully with Farmer Jo muesli… it’s like all these elements have been considered: the pops of flavour, the chew of fruit, the crackle and crunchy of toasted ingredients.

Sally: The recipe you shared for those insanely yummy looking chocolate pots are so simple! Using granola for dessert is our favourite mid-week hack. Now that restrictions are lifting and we can now start to have friends over for meals again, do you have any other granola-for-dessert hacks that will visually impress but are dead easy to whip together? 

Lucy: Absolutely!

• I’ve been scattering the salted maple baked muesli over a baking dish of chopped granny smith apples, cinnamon, brown sugar, and some melted butter. Just eat with a dollop of cream.
• A quick and easy banana split for the kids with coconut ice cream, paleo muesli and chocolate ganache/sauce.
• A really simple galette - store-bought puff pastry, combine some chopped fruit (I love figs) with some of your favourite jam or marmalade and spread on the puff, leaving a 1cm edge (you can score the pastry also here so the edges puff higher!), sprinkle with cranberry and fig toasted muesli, bake till golden and bubbling.