Setting the scene…
Our Dragons’ Den episode was about to air, and after months of prep there was finally nothing left to do but watch it go out.
We celebrated in the only way that felt right for Kip: a big house in Somerset, the whole team under one roof, a weekend of cooking together, eating outside and staying up later than we meant to. The setting was Heronmere, an incredible terracotta house above Blagdon Lake, with the lake in every window.
Setting the table…
On the day of airing – amidst the last minute website fixes and mounting nerves – we set aside time to down tools and mark the moment. Mindful Chef had sent the food, which took the one decision none of us had the headspace for off the table. The Denver steak went on the BBQ. The goat’s cheese gnocchi came out with hot honey spooned over the top, and vanished almost instantly. It meant the cooking was the good part rather than the logistics part – everyone in the kitchen at once, tasting, getting in each other’s way, carrying plates out to the terrace.
And it gave us a reason to close the laptops. We’d done everything we could; whatever happened now was out of our hands, and there’s a particular calm in that. So we sat down and ate, outside, in the last of the early-autumn light, the kind of lunch that forgets to end. At some point we wandered next door to The Seymour Arms, because it seemed rude not to, then drifted back in time for the show.
When the episode aired that evening we watched it together, folded into one room. Excited, relieved, and more than anything happy to be in one place for it after everything that had led up to this moment.
That was the whole point of the weekend, really. A full table, the best company, lunch that runs on into evening – it’s so much of what Kip is about. Which is the thinking behind this month’s Mindful Chef collaboration too: food that pulls everyone into the kitchen rather than leaving one person at the stove while the party happens elsewhere.
Their meals are built by chefs and nutritionists, genuinely good for you without you having to think about it, or compromise on flavour – good food, delivered to the door, ready to cook if you want to get stuck in or ready-made if the week’s got the better of you.
Get 30% off your first 4 boxes here.
Stay at Heronmere.
Sweeping views over Blagdon Lake through epic picture windows, a pub next door, space for 10 and just 30 mins from Bristol. Heronmere is the ultimate setting for getting the gang together.
