The Garden of Eva, London (2026)

28/07/2026

I🎉 I'm really excited to share that The Garden of Eva's New Orleans Creole-inspired Tomato Jam has been awarded ⭐⭐ Two Great Taste Stars.

👩🏽‍🍳It was created not just for toast, but for the professional kitchen: as a glaze, pan sauce, burger layer, cheeseboard pairing, condiment, or shortcut to depth and complexity.

🏆Award-winning taste. Chef-level versatility.

🤝Now looking for the right retail and foodservice partners to bring it to more tables. Southern Living Nina Williams Mbengue

18/07/2026

Could the next great British hand pie have a Southern soul?

My recent cooking class at Mission Kitchen’s fifth birthday celebration featured a new The Garden of Eva creation - New Orleans Creole-inspired Tomato Jam. Twenty-four people made savoury hand pies with the jam as a key ingredient. The great .me — founder of Miso Tasty — came up with an absolutely brilliant idea. She suggested that I do a collaboration (thanks, Bonnie)! The more I thought about Bonnie’s idea, the more excited I became.

I sat down and sketched out ideas for a Southern-inspired range of premium hand pies built around The Garden of Eva’s New Orleans Creole-inspired collection, including mustard, tomato jam, and pepper jelly developed for foodservice. Part of my passion is to show how flavourful Southern pantry ingredients can inspire products far beyond the jar.

The vision isn’t simply another pie. I envision a range that combines wonderfully buttery and flaky pastry with bold Southern flavours. It would bring something comforting and distinctive, yet accessible to the UK market. I can see opportunities across hospitality, catering, and foodservice - from grab-and-go concepts and cafe counters, to premium food halls and seasonal menus.

I’m looking to collaborate with a pastry manufacturer, an artisan bakery, or premium prepared-food producer that enjoys developing innovative products that have strong commercial potential. If that sounds like your business—or someone you know—I’d love to start a conversation.

The best collaborations create great products that people remember!

17/07/2026

From the Garden of Eva Pantry: The First Jars of Our New Orleans Creole-Inspired Tomato Jam

Over the past several months, The Garden of Eva has become about much more than creating preserves.

It has grown to become an exploration of hospitality - how a table connects people, how stories are carried through food, and how regional food traditions travel and evolve over time.

Our New Orleans Creole-inspired tomato jam represents this exploration of hospitality. It’s not a sweet breakfast preserve. It’s savoury-slightly sweet, gently spiced, and inspired by the complex flavours of New Orleans. I love it mixed with cheese, cream cheese, and fresh herbs in hand pies, served on burgers instead of ketchup, mixed with meat pan juices and served as a sauce, with cheese, and alongside roasted vegetables.

I’ve opened a small pre-order on The Garden of Eva website.

Thanks to everyone who has joined me on this new journey - from the newsletter and cook club (another one is coming!) to the products themselves. It feels great to finally be able to share the first jars with you, especially since the focus for the jam is really food service.

I’m curious: what is the most memorable savoury preserve you’ve ever tasted??
Women In the Food Industry : Empowerment & Community Buy Women Built F:EntrepreBuy Women Builtness Britain Female Founders Rise | EntrepSmall Business BritainmFemale Founders Rise | Entrepreneur CommunityolivemagazineHonest Burgers

15/07/2026

I spent last Thursday afternoon and evening at Mission Kitchen, celebrating its fifth birthday. It was exciting to lead a cooking class for 24 people who attended. Together we made Southern hand pies using one of The Garden of Eva’s newest products: New Orleans Creole-inspired tomato jam. II’m really happy that people liked the jam! But something else struck me that was connected to what happened when everyone started making the pies. People arrived as strangers but were chatting easily and comfortably almost immediately. Past cooking experiences, happiness with the thickness of the dough, etc. all came up as they chopped fresh herbs, grated cheese, and filled the dough. There was lots of laughter and some misshapen pies. I felt joy in watching people enjoy the process of creating something together.

It was confirmation about the themes that have occupied my thinking for a little while now. I don’t want The Garden of Eva to just make products that sit on a shelf or disappear into the back of someone’s fridge. I would much rather make ingredients that become part of dinner parties, restaurant menus, family meals, picnics, and mid-day suppers.

I’m taking the New Orleans Creole-inspired tomato jam into foodservice production; the recipe was actually developed as much for chefs as for home cooks. I can see chefs finding ways to use it—in pastries, with cheese, in sandwiches, in sauces and stews, and alongside roasted vegetables. (For those who’ve asked, retail jars will be available in the next month or so!)

Taking several trays of hand pies of out of the oven last week was a good reminder of why I started this company. Food matters, obviously — but as important is what happens around it. Food is a route to something more than delicious ourishment. It’s a route to belonging.

30/06/2026

Burgers love our chow chow, a multi-vegetable pickled relish. Your burgers will thank us!! Chow chow is literally the salt and pepper of relish. It’s made from a family recipe - I learned to make chow chow from my Southern mom. Find it on our website.

20/06/2026

I don’t really like chicken breast, except for my version of chicken piccata.

And the secret isn’t capers. It’s a generous dollop of Garden of Eva’s New Orleans-inspired Creole Mustard stirred into the pan sauce.

The result is bright from lemon, rich from butter, savoury from white wine and chicken stock, and finished with the complexity of Creole mustard. It’s the kind of weeknight dinner that tastes like you spent all afternoon cooking. It’s perfect for when people drop by. After all, we’re about hospitality. 😀

I start by washing the chicken breast in lemon water or vinegar water. Yes, I know opinions vary, but that’s how many of us in the Black South learned to prepare chicken, and some traditions stay with you. Carla Hall says it’s unnecessary but I can’t help myself. 🤣

Season the chicken on both sides with salt, pepper, onion powder, and your choice of thyme, oregano, or basil. I use mixed Italian herbs.

Dredge in a mixture of flour, grated Parmesan (or Grana Padano or Romano), herb(s) of your choice , salt, and pepper. Brown in olive oil (I used Citizens of Soil — Extra Virgin Olive Oils EVOO - the Tuscany Edition) and butter until beautifully golden.

Remove the chicken and deglaze the pan with a splash of dry white wine. Add chicken stock (about a cup) and let it reduce. Stir in the juice of half a lemon, the zest of half a lemon, a heaping tablespoon of finely chopped capers, a clove or two of crushed or grated garlic, and then the ingredient that makes this dish pop: 1 heaping tablespoon of Garden of Eva’s New Orleans-inspired Creole Mustard. Let the ingredients simmer for about 5 minutes.

Return the chicken to the pan and cook through. I baste it with the sauce. Thicken the sauce with half a tablespoon of the seasoned dredging flour mixed with about 100 ml of water. Finish with a handful of chopped parsley.

Serve over rice or potatoes and spoon every drop of that sauce over the top. Grate a little more cheese over the top.

This is Southern resourcefulness meeting Italian-American comfort food—and proof that a good mustard belongs far beyond the sandwich.

What’s your favorite way to use Creole mustard?

08/06/2026

Terroir isn’t just for wine. It’s for people, too.

I’ve been thinking a lot about terroir—not the wine‑world definition, but the deeper one. The way land shapes people, and the way people shape land in return. That reflection took me back to my family’s place in Roanoke County, Virginia. We call it The Hill. It’s been ours since my great‑grandfather Jordan Holland acquired it, long before I ever imagined working in food or creating The Garden of Eva.

Years ago, some of us cousins wondered if The Hill could become a vineyard. We talked to extension agents, tested soil, learned about slopes, drainage, frost pockets—all the technical things. And yes, the land was technically suitable.

But what stayed with me wasn’t the vineyard possibility. It was a story about my great‑grandmother Amanda Dearing Holland. My cousin, Veron Holland — we called her “Vidi” — remembered Amanda picking rhubarb on the property and making rhubarb wine. That image—Amanda gathering what the land offered and transforming it—has stayed with me ever since.

Because terroir isn’t just soil composition or elevation.
It’s Amanda gathering rhubarb. It’s knowledge passed through generations. It’s understanding what grows where. It’s making something beautiful from what the land offers.

People are part of terroir, too. The recipes they preserve. The crops they choose to grow. The techniques they pass down. The wines they make. The memories attached to particular fields, trees, and seasons.

When I think about Southern foodways, I think about rootedness.

The Hill may never become a vineyard. But it has already produced something just as valuable: a family history shaped by land, stewardship, and memory.

That’s terroir in its fullest sense.

04/06/2026

The Garden Table - An Evening of Southern Hospitality

I can still see my father putting the pickled watermelon rind in the Waterford crystal bowl before guests arrived. They were always a showstopper. Pickled pole beans also made an appearance. Dessert was often a decadent pineapple cheesecake, with 5 packages of cream cheese - that detail always sticks in my mind - made by Mom and me.

Not a restaurant version of the American South. Not something reduced to barbecue sauce and clichés. I’m talking about the food I grew up around: sharp relishes, warm spices, pickled things, and dishes that travelled from the South to Brooklyn through the hands of an elegant Virginian woman.

What I’ve been doing across Southern cooking techniques and the condiments that hold so much of the flavour together has led me somewhere bigger: to a modern Southern pantry. A pantry system, really.

One that goes beyond preserves and condiments as things you open once and leave at the back of the fridge. I’m interested in jars and bottles that become part of how people cook: folded into dressings, brushed onto grilled fish, tucked into sandwiches, served with eggs, used with vegetables, meats, beans, leftovers - the everyday things that become better when the pantry is doing some of the work.

I’m thinking of creating a warm, open, hospitable table - a supper club for the people I think will understand it first: London food lovers, supper-club regulars, fans of Southern cuisine, people who enjoy intimate, story-led dining. Vibes.

I want to deliver something that is different from what you get in most restaurants - not a generic “Southern” menu, but a personal one. A table built around memory, technique, preservation, seasonality, and the way a good pantry can carry flavour through an entire meal.

DM or comment below if you’d be interested.

Photo - Daddy and me setting the table.

The Garden of Eva

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