Jeanie Lau was born in Ipoh, Malaysia. When she was young, her family ran an imported foods specialty store and wholesale outlet. Her father would import exotic food products and the best and freshest fruits from all over the world. Her love of food started at a young age when her father would take the family everywhere to eat, so they could try all sorts of cuisines from many different cultures.She emigrated to Australia when she was 19, to study in a business college. The rest of her family emigrated to Australia in 1972. She worked in the Sydney Stock Exchange before travelling overseas. When she returned to Sydney, she took up a role in an insurance company. It was then that she met Eddie, who was living in Canberra and working as a clerk in the Commonwealth Public Service at the time. After marrying Eddie, she moved to Canberra, where she worked for the Australian Bureau of Statistics.In Canberra, "pot luck" dinners with friends and neighbours were a frequent affair. Over the years, Jeanie has developed quite a reputation for her cooking and baking, with friends and family often requesting recipes. She loves to cook for others, and even held a weekly cooking class for her work colleagues for a short time. Her two children, Colin and Katrina, were born in Canberra and she took a break from work to raise them. In 1985, Eddie left the public service and the family moved to Sydney. Eddie was then involved with the family food business and later decided to go into the cafe business. Jeanie's family, her brother Bernard, sister Jenny, brother-in-law and nephew, have owned and run a number of food outlets, restaurants and cafes in Sydney for over 40 years. Her father-in-law had a Chinese takeaway since the 1960s. Once reunited in Sydney, big family dinners became a weekly event where 10-12 of them would all come together to share food around one large table.More recently, she became a grandparent and retired from working in the food industry (though she's still been known to start baking at 4am in the morning). When she recently turned 70, her family thought the best gift for her would be to document all her treasured recipes. They did this by creating a cookbook full of memories and good food, to pass down the generations, especially to her grandchildren.
Katrina Lau Hammond was born in Canberra, Australia, into a family of food lovers. As a child, she often played near the family restaurant in Sydney, and sometimes, even served customers. Her mother showed her how to bake and cook when she was a child, giving her a confidence in the kitchen at an early age. Her fascination with food continued into high school and later university, where she studied food science and marketing at UNSW, including a year at the agricultural college UC Davis. She worked in the corporate world for a number of years as a food technologist in quality assurance, product development, and food safety; as well as in sales and in marketing, but always in the food industry. When the creativity and travel bugs wouldn't stop biting her, she quit the corporate food world to return to school. But this time in a French cooking school in Paris, to learn to become a pâtissière and boulangère. She worked as a pastry chef and baker in Paris, London and the Netherlands, before returning to Sydney with her husband to have their first child. She then worked part-time in her own business as a food technologist, pastry chef and food photographer. Her second child was born shortly after and since then, she has run the cancer gauntlet non-stop for almost 5 years. In that time, she has occasional creative sparks, like the idea that turned into this project. And another that resulted in a children's picture book about cancer, called The Village, to be released in August 2021. She is currently living with metastatic breast cancer and receiving ongoing cancer treatment, but is determined to see her mum's book completed and being shared among family and friends.
