Magnetic Pull of Food Destiny

Food has taken Sarah La Touche on a life odyssey – pulled her from merchant banking and legal publishing to establishing an internationally successful guest house in southern France and a loved restaurant in New Zealand.

It has harmed her health – then healed it again and now provides a focus and mission around which her life revolves.

She grew up with parents who loved food: sitting with her dad on the back doorstep eating oysters from a sack he had brought home from the pub; foraging for mushrooms in autumn woods or learning the power of herbs.

Later, living in Sydney, Sarah finished weeks working in banking with helping a chef friend in his restaurant at weekends. Back in New Zealand, running cooking classes and catering was fitted around work for a publishing company.

But then destiny caught up Sarah and photographer husband Denis and swept them away to Europe, settling them down in a tiny French village where – like those `new life in the country’ Brit TV shows – they pitted their all to convert a rundown 19th century home in the Languedoc region.

The result of years of sweat and toil was a gorgeous gastronomic guest house that hosted people from across Europe and the UK, as well as Americans and those from the Antipodes.

Sarah and Denis offered cooking holidays, wine tasting, market visits, picking wild herbs on hillsides, meals out in fine restaurants ... essentially sharing their deep and passionate love for all things French and food.

But 12 years of physical stress and business success took its toll. Sarah suffered chronic ill health and it took a local naturopath to guide her back to wellness.

 The journey meant cutting some of her most beloved foods – bread, cheese, meat – but also opened up a whole new way to see food in its ability to heal and adopt old fashioned ingredients like spelt and millet, plus delving into a yet deeper layer of food history.

Finally New Zealand called the couple home and they landed, not quite sure of what would come next. It turned into another food beginning, establishing Casita Miro, a vineyard and restaurant on Waiheke Island with a partner in 2006, and, for Sarah, taking up food writing and cooking assignments.

However by 2008 Sarah felt the power of food to heal poor health was something she could no longer ignore.

She and Denis sold their share in the restaurant and Sarah enrolled in the Wellpark College of Natural Therapies to study nutrition and learn “the science of physical nourishment” (www.wellpark.co.nz).

“I wanted to study nutrition in a way that looked both at the science and the holistic aspect of food,” says Sarah. She felt Wellpark's inner city campus with its profusion of gardens and combination of career and soul aspects fitted that perfectly.

“The French have a wonderful holistic relationship with food,” says Sarah, now a qualified nutritionist. “They love food, think about food all day long, enjoy eating. Learning how the body works and the biochemistry of nutrition on top of that was a fantastic thing.”

Now, as she eyes up studying herbal medicine for another skin of food knowledge, Sarah is leading clients on a condensed journey of her own food odyssey: showing them how good health and food is a lot more than carrot sticks and lettuce leaves.

“People should be lit up by food, it’s a way to express passion for life, it’s something to be enjoyed ... and make you well at the same time,” says Sarah.

“In France they love and appreciate food in the way New Zealanders have that relationship with coffee,” says Sarah.

Her beloved foods – cheeses, breads, meats – are back in her diet these days, but prepared and eaten in different ways and quantities.

Now Sarah’s passion is taking Kiwis into the soul of food and how it can tantalize – and heal – every kind of body. She calls it `living nutrition’.