Food writer Nici Wickes is funny, chatty and enormously likeable, but her life hasn’t always been a bowl of cherries. She tells Sharon Stephenson about the overwhelming melancholy that came with menopause, losing her job during lockdown, and learning to love the single life in her little bach in a sleepy seaside town.
If you are what you cook, then today Nici Wickes is country chicken soup and gluten-free rhubarb and apple cake. Yesterday, Thrive’s food editor was vege lasagne, and tomorrow she could well be smoked fish salad, thanks to the two kahawai a neighbour just dropped at her door.
“Cooking and eating good food brings me such joy,” says Nici, pausing to take a bite of toast so thickly buttered she’s single-handedly supporting Aotearoa’s dairy industry.
Her joy comes with a simple rule we can all get behind: “To me, food has to be delicious and uncomplicated, made with the most basic equipment and ingredients that aren’t fancy-pants or expensive. Some of the best meals I’ve ever had have been cooked on the side of the road with one
