Food Blog of the Month: Mrs. Thyme

Each month, Mathallen focuses on a food blog that we find exciting, delicious and inspiring. The food blogger of the month will then be both a main guest and writer on our website, and will share experiences, experiences and tips from Mathallen every week in the relevant month. 

Get to know the food blogger of the month better – Mrs. Timian

Mrs. Thyme (Marit Røttingsnes Westlie) is the marketer who moved from Oslo to Rakkestad in Østfold and who found that she didn't want to spend her life commuting to the capital. "I can bake," she thought, and that's how her little food adventure began. Now, eight books and hundreds of food columns later, she still lives by the philosophy that good and simple food are one and the same thing. Mrs. Timian is a food mediator of uncomplicated, unfussy and immensely good food!

How long have you been a blogger?
I have had Mrs. Thyme for a little over 6 years. Before that I had a website where I posted recipes.

How many blog posts do you publish on average per month?
I post about 3 new recipes a week plus every Sunday I post a blog post where I have suggestions for a weekly menu for the coming week. In that blog post I have 7 dinners, 1 cake or dessert and 1 recipe for yeast bread. All of those recipes are already on the blog, but are put together to fit one week.

What do you want with your blog?
I want to inspire people to make delicious and tasty food, cakes and pastries from scratch. For me, it is important to use ingredients that can be bought all over the country, and I think it is important to give good explanations of how the food should be made. And that is one of the things I get the most positive feedback on too.

What was your most popular blog post about?
I have a recipe for a chicken dish called "The heirloom chicken» and it has been the most popular recipe on the blog for several years. It's called the Heirloom Chicken precisely because it's a recipe that you inherit. You know when you have guests and they just HAVE to have the recipes before they go home.

What is your favorite dish that you make yourself, and why?
I really enjoy baking yeast-raised bread. And I also enjoy making and serving food on many plates. Like when I roasted lamb shanks this Easter. Then I baked pita bread and served it, and made hummus, aioli, gaucha sauce, raw fried potatoes, salad, and found lots of good olives. In other words, the kind of food that you can sit and snack on for a long time!

What is your favorite raw material, and why?
I almost think I have to answer wheat flour to that. With wheat flour you can make delicious cakes, fragrant yeast pastries and you can cook dinners with it. And then there's something about how something as "dead" as wheat flour can become so alive and good when it's treated the right way.

What is your favorite restaurant, and why?
I rarely go out to eat at restaurants. It's mostly because we live in Rakkestad in Østfold and we have two children and a hectic life that means we don't get out as much as I would like, but all four of us love to eat at Skur 33. It has a lovely atmosphere and great food. I like restaurants that are quite relaxed in style.

Now we have a super lovely cafe, deli, and thrift store here in Rakkestad called Fru Blom, and I'm there almost every day they're open!

Can you name one of your best stories related to the blog?
I think I have incredibly nice followers and most recently today I received a message from a young lady who said that with my recipes I had cured her fear of the kitchen. After she discovered Fru Timian she has started cooking more and more from scratch, and now at Easter she had served dinner to her in-laws for the first time without being nervous beforehand! She had used one of my recipes and she had received a lot of compliments on the food.

Imagine that readers bother to send me messages like this. That makes me so incredibly happy and humble. I am incredibly lucky to get messages like this ticking in every now and then.

Want to get to know Mrs. Timian better? Visit frutimian.no, and stay tuned to our website in the coming weeks for more exciting input from Mrs. Timian!