Blogger Spotlight: Ciara Attwell, My Fussy Eater

Created as an outlet to share her healthy food ideas and recipes, Ciara Attwell’s blog, My Fussy Eater grew out of the need to find a way to cure her three-year-old daughter of fussy eating syndrome. Sharing tips and treats with other parents to help combat fussy eating, Ciara provides a range of weekly meal plans with healthy and simply to follow recipes for breakfast, lunch and dinner. In this spotlight, Ciara who is our number one food blogger chats to us about the challenges of being a food blogger, her favourite recipe and how she likes to work with PRs.  

If you could describe your blog in three words what would it be? Healthy Family Food.

How did you get into blogging about food? About 3 years ago my daughter was a very picky eater. I began trying different recipes and techniques to encourage her to eat more healthy food and a wider variety of ingredients and then started to document the recipe on the blog.

What are the biggest challenges and greatest rewards of being a food blogger? The biggest challenge for me is definitely finding enough hours in the day! I absolutely love spending time creating and making recipes and then photographing them, or making recipe videos. But general admin, liaising with brands, website maintenance and social media all takes up just as much time! The greatest reward for me is getting messages and photographs from parents showing me the recipes that they have made from my site and their happy children enjoying them!

What’s your favourite recipe? It changes all the time! Currently I’m loving quick and easy noodle stir fries like this Sesame Honey Chicken Noodle recipe!

Name one ingredient that you can’t live without? Oats. I use them all the time and in so many recipes! Overnight Oats, Flapjacks, Granola, Energy Bites… they’re so cheap and versatile and super healthy too!

Where do you draw your cooking inspiration from? I get inspiration from all around – tv cooking shows, food magazines, food I’ve eaten in restaurants. Quite often I will eat or see something and immediately try to find a way to make it child-friendly!

Who would you consider a culinary icon? Jamie Oliver springs to mind simply due to the work he has done for children’s food and nutrition and school meals.

What do you think is going to be the next big thing in the food industry? Oh gosh, I always feel very behind when it comes to trends but maybe back to basics? We’ve had a bit of a food revolution in recent years and are no shying away from concepts like “superfoods” and “clean foods”, so maybe back to a more simple way of cooking and eating.

How do you like to work with PRs? And how can they improve their blogger outreach? Most PRs I work with are fantastic. They understand this new industry of food blogging very well.

What’s one piece of cooking advice you’d like to share with our readers? There’s no such thing as a bad cook. Everyone can learn to make a few simple and quick recipes!

You’re a popular food blogger, but are there any food blogs that you follow? I follow lots of other kid and family food blogs but in particular I love Eats Amazing. Grace has the most incredible fun food recipes and lunch box ideas. Her food always goes down a storm with my daughter!

What’s next in your career as a food blogger? I’m really loving making recipe videos so I’m hoping to grow my You Tube channel this year. I would also love to take part in more events and actually get a chance to meet readers face to face.