Nici Wickes’ truly wonderful new cookbook – and, lifebook? – More From a Quiet Kitchen is out now. Alice caught up with Nici to hear all about it, her tumultuous last two years falling out of love with her life (and Mother Nature!) and then finally coming home to herself.
When Capsule last caught up with Nici Wickes, she’d just launched her new cookbook, A Quiet Kitchen – a rumination of the pandemic years in which she made a rather surprising discovery: her joyful acceptance of living the single life.
In the two years since, life has taken several twists and turns – starting with the floods of summer 2023, which ravaged the beautiful, close-knit community she calls home, Port Waikato. Thankfully the damage to her property was on the lower scheme of things, but seeing the cliffs around her community crumble, crushing homes and uprooting lives, really shook her. Nici describes the feeling as being akin to having a break-up with Mother Nature. “I watched a great little doco about the community at Bethels and one woman talked about how she’d broken up with the land, I just sat in my lounge, sobbing, saying that’s what it feels like,” says Nici. “My trusted friend, Mother Nature, has kind of just slapped out – and why wouldn’t she after all the rubbish we do to her. It was a very sobering time.”
And then, it was her turn to finally catch Covid-19 and while she thankfully kept her sense of taste (always a big concern for those who rely on their tastebuds to earn a living!), she instead experienced an unexpected and very concerning other side effect: she completely lost her appetite – not just for cooking, but for searching for the joys in life in general.
“I just felt listless,” says Nici. “I’m usually quite in the moment, or joyful about things – things are normally quite intense for me, but I just had no intensity about me whatsoever. Everything in life felt bland. Including cooking. I definitely didn’t lose my tastebuds, but I just felt no desire whatsoever to be in the kitchen.”
Although Nici wasn’t too concerned about the cooking side of things (she’s completely changed her career more than once, so knows it can be done), thankfully for all of us who rely on her recipes (and pick-me-up Instagram videos she films from her kitchen), Nici got her mojo back. And now, More From A Quiet Kitchen (out now!) is a celebration of Nici coming home to herself.
It is an exquisite book. It’s very raw and brave, with Nici opening her heart about a plethora of different, often very personal topics. She discusses everything from loneliness to her adrenal glands, to anti-depressants and menopause. She talks about why aiming for ‘good enough’ is sometimes the best approach, how to get smart with your finances, finding the joy in eating and why travelling alone is so refreshing.
The whole book is refreshing – like a little tonic or salve for the soul, and I absolutely adored every bit of it. And that was before I even tried one of her recipes! Nici is a gifted cook, writer, storyteller and advice-giver. I think everyone should read this book, even if they never cook a thing out of it (which you absolutely should too).
Nici says she’d warmed up to being this honest, through writing her first book, but still, in the days leading up to the book being out in public, she’s feeling a bit nervous about how it will be received.
“It’s terrifying putting it out there, all my inner thoughts, and thinking, are people going to read this and go ‘Oh my goodness, what a lunatic! What a loser!’” says Nici. “But do you know what? What I learnt from the first book is, it turns out we all kind of share the same insecurities.”
Now, I have the great honour of knowing Nici well – for the years that I was editor of New Zealand Woman’s Weekly, she was the Food Editor, and, honestly, a beacon of hope and light, always. I’d always feel instantly happier even just seeing her name come up on an incoming call to my phone.
She’s someone I loved getting a coffee with – to discuss what might be coming up next, but more so to discuss whatever health ailment we had going on, whatever life crisis we were in the middle of, or for me to just get a great pearl of wisdom or solid piece of advice. Nici was always unflinchingly honest, but everything she does is also bound up in so much warmth and kindness.
My conversations with Nici would often jump around and go down wild tangents, and my phone call with her last week was no different. Nici is always so generous with her honesty, her thoughts and her wisdom. Here, I’ve tried my best to get to advice into a few distinct little themes, which I hope you enjoy – and, I hope you grab a copy of her delightful book.
Solitude and Loneliness
Now, as Nici reminds us, these two things are very, very different things. One does not need to be alone to feel lonely, and one doesn’t need to feel lonely just because they are alone.
Just before I’d spoken to Nici, I’d popped into ‘Rhyme Time’ at the local library with my toddler (they’re these little activity sessions libraries put on where they sing songs, read books and dance with little kids). I’d got talking to another one of the mums there – she told me she’d come along because her daughter had just turned one and it had been the absolute loneliest year of her life. She was far from alone – she was never alone anymore, but she felt a crushing sense of loneliness.
As Nici shared in 2022, Covid-19 and the lockdowns solidified something in Nici that made her very thankful for the life choices she’s made – to be childfree, and to be living alone. “For me, in lockdown – and it would have been the same for many people – your choices came home to roost, literally,” she says. “What I was delighted by was to find that I was happy with my choices.”
Now, Nici knows that what she enjoys and thrives on, is actually solitude. Yes, she might live alone and spend a lot of time alone, but she isn’t lonely. She believes there’s still a lot of misunderstanding, even stigma, attached to people living solo.
“That’s why I wanted to point out in this book, that I don’t think that solitude has got very much to do with loneliness,” she says. “You can be lonely anywhere. I think loneliness is more do with a disconnection. I often hear about this epidemic of loneliness, saying ‘Oh yes, it’s terrible – we need ways to connect with others and start up groups and get people together!’. But do you know what, I think maybe we could instead just encourage people to look inside themselves a bit more and to find those connections within ourselves. Because, I don’t think you truly make good connections if you’re not actually connected with yourself. We need to understand ourselves and our own emotional landscape and what’s going on in ourselves.”
In More From a Quiet Kitchen she writes “I sometimes worry about spending so much time alone, so I’ll make an effort to have more contact with people, but often all it does is scramble me. I don’t know how people hold their center around others, it’s not something I’m very good at yet. I end up fractured, not quite anything, least of all myself. I need time alone to ground me so that when I do see others, I’m better company. Working out your ideal level of social contact and participation – and this will b4 different for everyone – is crucial to not feeling lonely.
‘Good Enough’ Is Enough. It’s More than Enough.
With the rise of social media and the rise of so many perfect looking little lives out there – coupled with the fact that we woman often put a lot of pressure on ourselves – it’s no wonder that so many of us are burning out, feeling crap and just exhausted.
This is where Nici says we need to bloody cut ourselves some slack. She’s become a big fan of doing more things to a ‘good enough’ standard. She says a fantastic example of this is that she no longer roasts a chicken from scratch anymore and picks one up from the supermarket instead.
“I just had a chat with a few foodies the other day and mentioned a supermarket roast chicken and one of them said, ‘oh no, I would never buy one of those – it’s no problem just to pop a roast chicken in the oven,’ and I said ‘no, you’re right, that’s fine! But actually, I just absolutely love buying the already roasted chickens now,” she says. “I mean I never would have either in the past. I think in one of my other cookbooks I even talk about roasting the chicken from scratch and making a chicken pie with it. Well now, no way. Life is getting very short now! Too short to roast bloody chickens.”
Nici says it’s well worth giving yourself permission to do something to a lower standard than you would normally – particularly things of little consequence.
“I think being good enough is what it’s all about,” she says. “I mean, we women, we are fabulous but yet we really don’t give ourselves the credit for it very often. We are just trying so bloody hard, and our ‘good enough’ is often waaaay better than what is required. So, just give yourself a break! I mean, maybe not if you’re a heart surgeon. I don’t want a heart surgeon to lower her standards at work. But, if you’re a heart surgeon you should start lowering your standards in some other area of your life. Just figure out where you could lower your standards to make your life easier and just go ahead and lower them baby!”
To Be Aligned, You Have to Be True To You
Besides enjoying tuning in to the little Instagram videos Nici makes in her kitchen in Port Waikato – often without a scrap of makeup, or still with a towel wrapped around her hair after coming in from one of her winter swims – one of the things I’ve definitely admired about Nici in the past nine or so months, is that she’s been very vocal about bringing to people’s attention what is happening in Gaza and what we can do to try and make change or support the people in Gaza.
I spoke to Morgana O’Reilly about this same subject last month – that it’s an unfortunate truth, but if you’re someone with a profile and a following on social media, speaking out about Gaza can mean you lose followers, or risk your posts not being seen by as big an audience. It’s unfortunate that it has become a brave thing to do.
Nici says she felt like this was a cause that picked her, and it was important to stay true to herself, no matter what some followers said or thought.
“ At the beginning, I certainly had some people tell me, ‘I follow you for the food, I don’t really need to hear your political views’” says Nici. “But I really don’t feel these views are political, I feel as though they’re just things that make us human. I’m definitely never going to turn a blind eye. Then, of course, I’ve had moments where I’ve thought, well I am turning a blind eye to lots of other things – what’s happening in Sudan for example – but then I think, well, you can’t do everything. You can only hope that someone else is picking that cause or that cause is picking someone else. it’s not about saying this deserves the most attention – they all deserve attention. It’s about holding on to your values and I want to be proud and aligned in my values, and I wouldn’t be aligned if I was staying silent. I don’t think it matters if you’ve got five followers or 500,000 followers – I just think it’s probably a good idea to be putting these things out there in the world.”
Nici’s must-read book – More From a Quiet Kitchen – is out now, and available wherever you can find good books.
