Phew! Finally, I can now share with you what I’ve been working on and planning for some time. Honestly, I’m so excited to share my new adventures with you!
Re-branding is my way of re-introducing myself to the world again and sharing my love for Food especially Filipino food and my beautiful family.
Before I get into it, I want to thank you all for visiting my site. I hope you found something that might be useful to you. I have some recipes up on the site already that you can try at home. If you haven’t found any that you fancy please come back and check me out again. If you haven’t tried Filipino food before maybe I can interest you in wanting to learn a few Filipino dishes you can make at home. If you already cook Filipino food, that’s fantastic! I’m sure I have something unique that you might like to cook too.
There are now many Filipino restaurants, Popups & Supperclubs and food stalls in London and around UK. Which is fantastic because together we can all raise the profile of Filipino food here in the UK. Although setting up my Supperclub 6 years ago created the UK’s First Filipino Supperclub, I feel that I need to take Filipino food from my home into British homes! I watched a TV show recently called Million Pound Menu where a Filipino food stall BBQ Dreams won an investment. I’m so proud of them and I wish them all the best! But the presenter Fred Sirieix said something that really hit home for me. The British public do not know about Filipino food is and they still need educating about Philippines and it’s food. Since there are more of us now in London who serve Filipino food maybe I can take the role of providing recipes and videos for the British public to try cooking Filipino dishes in their homes. This way even if they haven’t traveled to Philippines or have a Filipino friend, they can connect with Philippines through food.
It was tricky re-branding something that has been running for some time and people already know to the point my name doesn’t exist anymore and I’m being called Pepe’s Kitchen instead of Mae. Haha! It took me weeks to pin down a name, I wanted something that has my name with it but I couldn’t really stick with ‘Deliciously Mae’ it just sounded wrong for me. Mr W joked that it sounds like I’m running a mail order bride service…haha!
I even messaged my sister in Australia to give me name ideas. I also researched around the net and looked at other food bloggers names. I put a list of names down and ran it past the Mr and eventually something stood out. I never thought that rebranding could be so bleh! But I had to keep telling myself that this is me I’m building so I’ll take as much time as possible. Growing older made me realize that sometimes some things run slower not because it’s not good but because it will grow into something much more beautiful that you had first imagined, which takes time.
I wanted Food with Mae to be completely different to PK aesthetic wise, I wanted the brand to represent me as a woman and mother while keeping it simple and fresh (or is it dope as the millennials would say!). I have two daughters, so it’s important that they see me as a confident, strong and a wise woman because that’s who I would like them to be when they grow up. Don’t worry I won’t start changing words like ‘woman’ to ‘womxn’…hahahaha!! Everyone is welcome here, sharing our love for food and family (occasionally gym talks too).
I love challenging and throwing myself in the deep end to see if I survive so I made myself do more work. I created an ECookbook for you of our favourite Filipino dishes. While putting the ECookbook together I finally learnt how to use my camera on Manual…I know what you are thinking. I have owned my DSLR since I started and I have always used Automatic….gosh I know! For some, it might not be important but our society demands that we have good photos, that’s it. I showed a friend my old website which was lovely and the first thing she said was…you need better photos (she’s a millennial). I knew exactly what she meant but I know food photography is a whole new ball game…don’t even get me starting with lighting! Though this time I told myself I need to learn the basics of photography i.e ‘Manual mode’ if I want better looking photos. But I’m so proud of myself for pushing it and learning new skills, I still have a long way to go but I’ll get there.
Both the Website and eCookbook have come along nicely. I actually surprised myself with how much I have achieved in a short time. I still have a long way to go but I look forward to learning new things along the way. The best thing about it is that you are also with me on this journey! Yay!
I’m so excited to cook with you all and to get you started. Grab your FREE copy of my eCookbook!