Kāren Barnes, Chopping onions, editing delicious., and why the craft of food writing matters

As a five-year-old, food writer, editor, educator and mentor, Kāren Barnes remembers watching her mother peel an onion and thinking, "I'll never be able to do this". That fleeting moment shaped her learning to cook, and as a young teenager, she made Saturday night Flemish beef stew and lemon syllabub for pudding for her family. These are signs of the determination and hard work that thread throughout this fascinating podcast. Kāren’s earliest food lessons came from her mother, who had spent formative years as a governess to the American ambassador in Moscow during the height of the Cold War. Those dinners introduced flavours from around the world into a south London household, and they left Kāren with a set of practical skills she leaned on when her mother passed away while Kāren was still a young teenager She describes that teenage life that included shopping at supermarket Safeway, batch-cooking for the freezer and volunteering to cook for a grieving family from church. Those weren’t just acts of kindness — they were formative practice. The result: a food writer who writes from experience, not from an imagined glamour. That practical outlook explains why Kāren still prizes recipes and tips that help people feed themselves affordably and well. Kāren’s career moved from staff rooms to independent publishing. She still mentors, teaches and hosts events, and she runs a Substack newsletter — KB’s Kāren Barnes Joyous Things — where she tries to combine reviews, guides, product suggestions and cultural pieces. Her advice to aspiring food writers is to live a broad lived experience; read widely; practise writing relentlessly; and use Substack to learn the craft because it’s a democratic place to experiment. She’s honest about what’s lost since the old office days: “water-cooler” learning, day-to-day osmosis and the kind of informal mentorship that used to happen while waiting for coffee. Kāren is also realistic about money: she accepts that food writing rarely makes anyone wealthy, and that the new creative economy requires combining writing with teaching, mentoring, occasional commissions and events. It's a fascinating listen.