Some interesting things that encouraged us to persevere with Soup Kitchen when we had no idea if it would work or not:

Annabel and Thomasina met while Tommi was working at Villandry in summer 2003. Annabel contacted Villandry about a design charity project, Can of Gold. In her initial letter, she grossly mis–spelt Thomasina’s name, a sin which might have been inexcusable had the design on Annabel’s letterhead not been so beautifully done. The golden can twinkled and a beautiful partnership was formed.

In December 2003, Tommi and Annabel both met friends of Hugh Fearnley–Whittingstall (tommi in Mexico City and Annabel in London) who helped them to get in touch with him (Hugh then proceeded to help write the introduction, attend book events, put us in touch with his agent and publicist, and become the champion of Soup Kitchen).

Arriving at the London Book Fair, March 2004, clutching a few photographs and a list of chefs, we had no idea what we were doing. We stumbled into meetings with the ‘right’ people and showed them our ideas. Had we not left with a list of eight publishers interested in our book and a succession of meetings and appointments planned we may never have kept going. It was only after we received our first publishing deal that we both realised neither of us had a clue what a royalty actually was.

Having spent three months trying to reach Jamie Oliver for a recipe, we ran into him at La Fromagerie in Marylebone, where we were having a Soup Kitchen meeting and he was filming. We talked to him, and showed him our material, and he was delighted to give us a soup recipe.

Having spent an equally long time trying to track down Gordon Ramsay, Thomasina bumped into some friends at the ballet one night whose son’s ex–girlfriend turned out to be Gordon’s PR girl. A year later, Annabel and Tommi attended a launch of a book about 4 chefs (of which he was one). Keen to meet Gordon to talk about Soup Kitchen but lacking in schmooze, and not wanting to harass the poor man, they decided to beat a retreat when he walked the length of the room, came up to Annabel, put his arm round her, gave her a kiss and said ‘Hi, how are you?’ (It was a case of mistaken identity, but provided the perfect introduction opportunity) Half way through the book, our photographer started working with Gordon Ramsay on another project.

Shortly after we signed our deal with Harper Collins and started working on the book, we realised that our publishers and graphic designers daughters were best mates at school.

Sitting in the pub one day at a friend’s leaving do in Clapham, Annabel turned to the guy next to her (he was called Chris) only to find that he was working on the production at Harper Collins and his current title was Soup Kitchen.

Sitting in a branch of EAT one day for a meeting, we were introduced to a man named Oliver who had come in for a juice and a croissant. He offered to help in any way he could with Soup Kitchen and asked us what he could do and whether we’d like to use one of his restaurants? It was only after he wrote down his name and mobile number for us that we realized that it was Oliver Peyton.

We were having difficulty reaching Delia Smith, but a friend of Annabel’s brother, Nigel Worthington (the Manager at Norwich City Football Club), spoke to her on our behalf and a week later 2 recipes arrived with a letter from her.

We were struggling to reach Ken Hom who is based in US but Tommi met him at a cookery demonstration she had been invited to by a journalist at the Independent (who she met in Mexico City). He was delighted to supply a recipe.

At our first meeting with EAT, Annabel discovered that the owner, Faith McArthur was from Vancouver (where Annabel was about to go on holiday) and that her brother had gone to the same college, Regent College in Vancouver, that Annabel’s boyfriend was studying at at the time.

Oh, yes and last but not least (there are so many more, we could go on for days with these kinds of bits and bobs), half way through completing the book, Thomasina entered Masterchef and proceeded to win, making her a superstar chef in her own right.