It’s a cliché (for a good reason) but is there anything more comforting than a home cooked meal? The kind of meal that allows time and space for deep flavour to develop, layer upon layer. In the same breath, I’m sure many of us can relate to the challenges of cooking from scratch when we are being pulled in so many directions and with so much complexity, especially when it comes to our food environment. The capitalist obsession with efficiency doesn’t help (sometimes processes are meant to be slow) but you only have to head to the plethora of indie markets across West Yorkshire to see the swarms of traders disrupting this with their thoughtful produce. That’s also why it was so refreshing to meet Ana recently!

Through her business Spoon & Straw, Ana wants to show you that food can bring us together when it’s made from scratch and you can connect with the person who made it. They make seasonal dishes that warm you up in the cold, like soups and hot chocolates, or cool you down in the heat, like ice creams and ice teas, and sell them at markets, to local suppliers or through their website. It’s the kind of food that works for people and nature alike and it’s just what we need right now! With an impressive 70 markets under their belt since launching in October 2025, Spoon & Straw have certainly had a busy year so I’m glad I got to catch up with Ana so close to their first birthday!

“The kind of comfort I got from my Mum’s home cooked food made me want to cook that way for myself, but also for other people.”

With Romanian roots, Ana grew up surrounded by big family feasts and home cooked meals that shaped her appreciation of cooking from an early age. Over the years, she developed a reputation among her friends and family for her abundant recipe book collection and cooking up a crowd pleaser like her ‘Spanish Potatoes’, inspired by travels across the world to places like Italy, Mexico, Brazil and Eastern Europe. Career-wise, however, food wasn’t always part of the picture. Ana spent 20 years as a scientist where she researched how stress and cortisol shape health across the life course. She was left at a crossroads after being made redundant from a job that she’d poured everything into. In this time of uncertainty and change, Ana leaned on the comforting properties of food as part of her recovery plan.

“I just thought, if you can dedicate so much of yourself to something and don’t have an opportunity to bring about meaningful change for people, then I might as well do what I want for myself and my family.”

By the time she’d cooked up Spoon & Straw, Ana had also been grappling with a personal journey around food and sustainability, making connections about what it means to her and the community around. Through years of allotmenting and especially since having children, she spoke of her increasing awareness of the legacy we are leaving for future generations in an age of climate emergency. Learning to grow your own food requires practices of patience and respect for the land, so much so that when you finally pull your precious bounty from the earth you’ll think twice about letting it go mouldy in the bottom of your fridge. You want to appreciate and celebrate it in any way you can! Ana believes in the value of teaching children food growing and cooking skills and is the first to shout about local groups working on this, like the wonderful FoodWise, Darley Street Market and Cook Stars.

With that in mind, Ana built seasonality and circularity into the core of Spoon & Straw’s model from the offset. She sources her ingredients from Surplus to Purpose, a Bradford-based CIC who rescue and redirect surplus food before it goes to waste to the people and communities who need it the most. This means flexible menus that challenge the idea that we can have everything all at once, contrary to the big business mindset. For Ana and in homage to her Gran’s way of cooking, it’s about working with what’s available. It’s undeniable how important this is when you look at the stats. We waste a whopping 10 million tonnes of food every year in the UK. That’s equivalent to £250 worth of food per person AND 30% of our total greenhouse gas emissions! (ref: Keep Britain Tidy).

“Support where you eat, what you eat, when you eat it. Seasonal, organic if you can, local growers, not these big corporate machines. Little changes add up.”

Moving beyond rigid menus is a win-win approach which not only saves time, money and waste but invites creativity in the kitchen. Spoon & Straw’s soups lead with comfort-forward flavour combos and add playful twists… like cabbage katsu, hot and sour chicken, potato-stilton-pear, creamy tomato or kedgeree. You can even personalise your Spoon & Straw soup, hot chocolates and ice creams at markets with a variety of different toppings. The fact that I could relive a favourite childhood memory (kedgeree was a family favourite!) with a Bombay mix topper brings me joy! This approach is working for Ana because people really value the opportunity to try something new and make it their own, especially at markets.

“I love experimenting and being adventurous with flavours… People at markets surprise me. They are adventurous. They like things they haven’t seen before and this brings me hope that people can change the way they eat for the better”.

I asked Ana what she loves about what she does and the answer was ultimately about connection, where food becomes a bridge between people and nature. Not only is Ana taking her commitment to lifelong learning seriously through her current enrolment in the UK’s first ever Regenerative & Sustainable Hospitality Course run by Farmacy, she is extremely generous with her time and energy in sharing her learning and promoting others. All the while practicing what she preaches through her pay-it-forward scheme where you can purchase a token to gift a soup for someone in need. She is really paving the way for her future dreams of transforming Spoon & Straw into a social enterprise for and by the community. They are currently hiring, so I urge you to contact Ana for the details!

“For now it’s just soup, but in the future I want it to be something that’s for the community and by the community.”

It’s amazing to meet someone as passionate as Ana who talks about the real issues that affect our food system. If that doesn’t make you want to try Spoon & Straw’s food, try it for the kedgeree (I know I will!).

Find Spoon & Straw at the following monthly markets across West Yorkshire (Bingley, Shipley, Saltaire, Otley, Meanwood Market, Baildon and Leeds’ Wellington Place) and follow on socials @spoonystraw for live updates. You can also stock up on soups directly from Spoon & Straw’s website for local delivery or purchase from Shipley’s Go Local Extra store.

Thanks Ana for your generosity and time, I’m excited to see where this journey takes you! x