1/ How long have you been MamaBaking for?

The Tempe Mamabake Group started about 7 months ago. Our community has a very active Facebook page, and after doing a Mamabake with my mother’s group I posted a link to the website on the Tempe site. I thought it would great to do it locally.

Within about 15 minutes, one of our super organisers had set up a group page and was rapidly sending out invites!

2/ How many are you and where?

We now have 40 members! Tempe is an inner west suburb of Sydney, and we have a few members from neighbouring suburbs Sydneyham, St Peters and Marrickville. We work out places, times, meals and participants all on Facebook, and tend to average about 5 families each session.

3/ What’s the common bond you all share?

Tempe! I think it’s fair to say everyone involved is pretty passionate about our wonderful community and supporting each other, neighbours, our local schools and businesses.

4/ What are the favourite meals? Do you have a big batch recipe you could share with us?

I personally haven’t had a bad meal! Highlights have been chilli con carne, toasted muesli, sweet potato bread, the MamaBake Thai chicken meatballs and the Honey and Dijon chicken and a great Chicken, Barley and Root Vegie dish cooked from Nanny Bee’s recipe!

My boys (little ones and big one!) love my big batch meatballs – the idea of baking them in the oven came from Jill Dupleix and it makes them lovely and light rather than oily and heavy.  Go here for the recipe!

5/ How does MamaBake improve motherhood for you?

It improves motherhood for me by providing me with a local network of mamas! A recent example of the benefit of this was an occasion I desperately needed a babysitter, and was fast running out of options. One of my MamaBake friends volunteered. At 3pm my littlest man was still asleep, so another Tempe mama and neighbour brought my friends kids home from to my house! The system works, and increasingly I don’t know what I’d do without it!

6/ Do you have any food values you adhere to for the group sessions?

Our group has a fairly open policy to cooking I would say – nobody has been hugely prescriptive, although I think most of us stick to free range chicken.

A greater common value that we are agreed on is that what goes around comes around – we freely give our time to cook up care packages for each other or other Tempe community members in strife, because we have all got so much from our little community in the past, and we all know we will in the future!

7/ Why do you MamaBake?

I MamaBake because I love cooking! With 2 boys who are pretty adventurous eaters, and about 15 minutes to get dinner on the table on my 3 paid working days each week it works really well for us. That’s why I started anyway – I definitely keep going because I love cooking with my Tempe Mama’s!

8/ One tip for other Mamas thinking about MamaBaking?

If you’re nervous about cooking in front of people or in general, pre-cook at first. I personally prefer to cook at the MamaBake session to save (precious) time, but I think pre-cooking also has some real benefits!