Because food is love. Plain and simple.

Looking back, I think my high school friends may have been using me.

“Has your mum made any…. cake recently?” they’d ask as they walked in the front door on any given day.

“Or slice, has she got any slice?”

“Muffins?”

Fortunately for them, nine times out of ten there was something made with love (and sugar) sitting on the kitchen bench ready to be devoured.

And so my “friends” kept coming back, week after week after week.

These days – given that there’s less reason for my friends to visit my mum – I try to tell myself that they’re not just using me for cake.

Just as an FYI, you should know that this post is sponsored by Love Beets Baby Beetroot. But all opinions expressed by the author are 100 per cent authentic and written in their own words.

But I’m not sure if I can say the same thing for my work colleagues.

“Mum’s in Sydney and she’s going to drop by and say hi,” I tell them one Friday afternoon.

“Is she bringing cake?” they ask.

Umm….

“Well, surely she won’t come empty handed?”

That’s the thing about having a cook in the family. There is always delicious food around. And with that food comes friends. Many many friends always keen to “catch up” or “hang out” so much so that Mum now has a picture in her kitchen that reads: “Good cooks never lack friends.”

But do you know what else good cooks aren’t without?

Mooching Adult Children. Or MACs, as I like to call them.

There’s a long running joke in my family about “going shopping in the fridge.” That’s when an adult child comes home to “visit” and leaves not only with a belly full of dinner, but also enough ingredients from mum’s pantry and fridge to make their own meals for the next week.

My mum and her sister (my aunt) are both cooks so they’re very familiar with the process. But it’s not all bad – I promise you that. As one of the aforementioned MACs, I can tell you that we’re not just dropping in for food. We’re coming under the pretence of food, but with the actual intention of spending some time with our parents.

Because in my family, food is what brings us together.

With two mums who work as professional cooks – and a tribe of adult kids who want to learn everything they can – food is our shared passion.

Lately the entire extended family have all been spending a lot of time at my aunt’s holiday house over weekends. And it’s the food (and the spending time together in the kitchen) that we look forward to the most.

On Friday, we’ll text and email about what’s planned for dinner and then Saturday afternoons we’ll gather in the kitchen from around 5pm and spend the next few hours laughing, chatting and dicing whatever vegetables are required for the feast.

Sometimes it’s Mexican (we’ve been experimenting with a pulled pork recipe lately), sometimes we make our own pizzas or hamburgers. Other times it’s something more traditional, like last weekend’s roast.

We did it a little differently this time in a few ways. The first was that we had the Sunday Roast on a Saturday and the second was that we added some beetroots (2 x 250g packs of Love Beets, cut in half) to the roast veggie mix.

There’s an old saying I’ve heard (or it might just be the title of a cook book?) about a kitchen being the heart of the house. And that’s very much the case with my family.

It’s the place we dissect life dilemmas, catch up on what’s happened in the week, solve the world’s issues.

And sometimes – or most of the time – there are more than a few people around to help.

Check out the rest of the Mamamia teams favourite family recipe’s …

What’s the best recipe your mum has ever passed on to you?

Beetroot is trending hot – from appearances on cooking shows, in magazines and on restaurant menus, beetroot is even enjoying some positive PR on its health benefits, beetroot is on everyone’s lips!

It’s fair to say that Aussies Love Beetroot, but don’t like the mess and fuss of preparing it! Keen to give Aussies what they love, OneHarvest began to look for ways in which we could bring appealing beetroot to the Australian market. Inspired and determined, we engaged a Cowra-based beetroot farmer and built our own processing facility in Bairnsdale, Victoria.

Since then, we have been working around the clock to produce the perfect Australian grown Love Beets beetroot – and now you too can enjoy it! Available in the fresh produce fridge!