Photography: Emily Chalk
On Monday nights in a rural North Canterbury school kitchen, Jo Seagar is just one of the boys. You’ll find the beloved Kiwi cook surrounded by 20 or so blokes as she teaches them to make basic, affordable meals, while dishing out a bit of dating advice and retrieving accidentally discarded veges from the scraps bin.
Here, she is not Jo Seagar the nurse, grandmother, bestselling author or a famous chef off the telly. Instead, she’s their mate, volunteering to lift others and create better futures.
“It’s become more than cooking,” smiles the down-to-earth 71-year-old.
“It was only supposed to be 10 lessons and yet now after almost a year, it’s turned into a social club like Men’s Shed, where instead of hammers and nails, it’s about eating. “I’ve got a 22-year-old solo dad having to cook nutritious food for his kids. And an 89-year-old whose wife suddenly died and he hardly knew what the toaster was, let alone an oven – yet now he expertly whips up Thai chicken curries. “We talk about anything from what kind of flowers to buy for that special woman in their lives – because red roses are a bit passé and naff when fresh violets or a huge bunch of pink peonies would be far more on point. It can even be things like how to update their wardrobe,” she laughs.
Cooking from the heart
“We have a lot of fun. Last week, we did ‘Greek night’, where I showed them how to make souvlaki and baklava. The funny thing was, I had them all grating cucumber and then squishing it into a sieve to make a tzatziki dressing. “But when I turned my back, they’d thrown the grated cucumber out and only kept the liquid.”
These classes, coupled by a frustration at the lack of basic cooking skills in our communities, has inspired Jo to get back in front of the camera for YouTube series Let’s Get Cooking.
Created in partnership with Food Secure North Canterbury, she wanted to show people how to make budget-friendly meals while reducing food waste.
“You don’t need kitchen gadgets,” she says.
“If you can’t measure out half a cup, then I say, ‘Just imagine half a peanut butter jar!’”
Giving back
Giving back and serving others is part of Jo’s DNA. Her own upbringing on a Hawke’s Bay farm saw her parents often inviting several strangers for dinner. She quickly inherited that ability to make friends and feed people too.
“I believe the nicest words in the English language are ‘I’ve made this for you,’” says Jo.
“Feeding others is more than just fuel. It’s something from the heart. “In my small community of Oxford, we look after our oldies. Some of them are struggling and reach for a packet of soup with little nutritional value, so excess food donated from supermarkets is turned into meals for them. “We have a commercial kitchen at the fire brigade [where Jo’s husband Ross, 66, is a volunteer fireman], so a group of us make veg soups, sweetcorn chowder or fish pie. “We were given half a side of beef brisket recently – and pensioners can’t do anything with that – so I cooked it for three days and made gorgeous little pies. A sack of flour became pitas.”
A full-circle journey
For the past 30 years, Jo has also been a Patron Ambassador of Hospice New Zealand. It’s a role she describes as coming full circle. During her nursing days, she brought a lot of babies into the world – “and now I’m helping care for them during their other big transition.”
Two decades ago, her father died at home under the care of the South Auckland hospice. In April, she lost “her darling best friend and bridesmaid” Trish Craig to cancer as well.
“We met 50 years ago when I nursed her at Auckland Hospital after she had her leg amputated as a 20-year-old,” remembers Jo.
“She was my patient, but was also a fellow nurse. Since losing her leg, she became a New Zealand Paralympic alpine skier who competed in the 1984 Winter Paralympic Games. “It’s been a huge loss in my life because Trish was always there with me through it all.”
Jo trained as a cordon bleu chef in London and Paris. After returning to New Zealand, she became a charge nurse at Princess Mary Hospital (now Starship), but left the profession to open her own restaurant in Auckland with a business partner.
A love story begins
It was here that Jo met Ross. He flatted with one of the waitresses and covered her shift one day when she was sick. This year, they celebrate 40 years of marriage.
“Ross and I are probably the only people who have ever gone to the Chatham Islands for their honeymoon,” she quips.
“He’s a tricker. He told me it’s the groom’s job to organise the honeymoon and that we were going to a Pacific island. Of course, I had all the sarongs ready, thinking we were going to Fiji, Tahiti or Hawai’i. “Well, it was almost a short honeymoon when I found out it was the Chathams! But actually it was divine. I loved it.”
Jo and Ross have since visited the Chatham Islands many times. Jo’s life-long passion and determination to succeed no matter her interest is what propelled her into television too, even after the powers that be deemed her too “large” to be on screen in 1997.
“I pitched my idea but got the reply, ‘We’ve done Hudson and Hall and Alison Holst – we’re not going to air another food programme like that during primetime again,” she recalls.
“Eventually, I went in again and had another meeting. They said, ‘We love your idea of country cooking, but how do we put this politely… We can’t see a large person hosting a food programme and actually have a 22-year-old aerobics instructor in mind.’ “I wasn’t offended. I just got on my high horse and told them, ‘I want to do real food for real people.’ I convinced them to let me present it. I thought, ‘I’ll show you!’”
Her TV success
Real Food for Real People became the highest-rated TV show at the time, where Jo’s passion and humorous approach endeared her to the nation. The series was followed by Jo Seagar Cooks, bringing the chef known for her “easy peasy!” catchcry to a wider audience.
“Oh, I loved it,” she reflects.
“I’m a bit of a tart with affection for the camera. And viewers liked that I didn’t cook anything complicated. I really don’t like recipes that have more than six things in them. “Then TV started getting very advertorial and I wasn’t prepared to sell my soul to large food companies. So I actually made a number of programmes that were sold to the Food Network in the United States but were never shown here.”
When asked who her favourite cook is, Jo immediately lights up and answers Julia Child. In fact, she subtly tried to channel the unpretentious American chef while filming her popular TV shows – “I felt she was on my shoulder – well, at least her tea towel was!” (Yes, wholesome, law-abiding Jo once stole Julia Child’s tea towel and now has it framed at home.)
A brush with Julia
“I had gone to a food writers’ conference in Texas, when someone introduced me to her and she said, ‘Jo Seagar of New Zealand, well, I never!’” says Jo, imitating Julia’s distinctive accent perfectly.
“I almost went into a full curtsey! She was doing a cooking demonstration with [Kiwi celebrity chef] Graham Kerr for a live PBS show and I had queued all night to get a front-row seat. At the end of the cooking demo, the people in the front row could go up and have a taste. “I was helping clean up when Julia’s tea towel accidentally fell in my bag. It just went flip, straight in! It was the tea towel she’d had around her neck, so it still smelt of her [Elizabeth Arden’s Bluegrass for anyone wondering] and had some lipstick on it. It’s one of my pride and joys.”
Like Julia, Jo has never been one for airs and graces. Today, we’re at Auckland’s historic Alberton house for our Woman’s Weekly photoshoot. Jo waits in a side room, inspecting the Royal Albert china.
“Look at me sitting here like Lady La Di Da!” she chuckles.
Passing it on
But the one thing the culinary guru has always been strict about is manners. Jo and Ross adopted their children, Kate and Guy, as babies. The pair are now in their thirties. Along with their five grandchildren – Leroy, 14, Lucas, 13, Lincoln, three, Sally, three, and newborn Brodie Guy – they’re passing down the same family expectation that manners aren’t “optional”.
“I love spending time with them. The older two boys enjoy whipping up waffles with bacon for us for breakfast. I’ve taught them old-fashioned etiquette like placing the table napkin on their lap, putting a plate in from the left and clearing it from the right, and that we don’t start eating until Granny starts. “Gosh I sound like the Queen!” she laughs. “But I actually like feeling older and wiser. One of the joys of ageing is that you do have some experience to impart.”
Jo’s new series Let’s Get Cooking is free to watch on the Food Secure North Canterbury YouTube channel.
Viewers can subscribe to be notified when new content drops. Watch on youtube.com/@food securenorthcanterbury4572
