“What’s for dinner?”
For years, those three words were the soundtrack of Julie Goodwin’s life. They arrived without fail every afternoon from a hungry chorus of three growing boys and husband Mick, as school bags thudded to the floor and homework was dug out.
If the answer was lasagne, a pork belly roast dinner, a barbecue (especially if it was accompanied by a potato bake) or Caesar salad, it was all smiles.
These days, dinner time with her adult sons looks a bit different.
“It’s like trying to herd cats,” Goodwin says. “There is genuinely no ‘typical’ night at our place. Sometimes it’s just Mick and me, sometimes Joseph, who still lives at home, is with us.”
Some nights their granddaughter is perched at the table. Others, the whole gang has popped in to be fed. Those are the best nights, Goodwin says.
“I can never be quite sure who is going to turn up,” she says. “Plans change, and that is exactly why I wrote Home For Dinner. Sometimes I have to pivot from feeding two to feeding an army with very little notice.”
Dinner conversations have evolved, too. The jokes and spelling practice have made way for talk of work, life and, often, mental health, which her sons discuss openly, knowing the family is there to support them.
Beyond her grown-up brood, life has changed a lot for Goodwin since audiences first met the home cook on the inaugural season of MasterChef back in 2009.
She released seven cookbooks, had more stints on reality TV, including Dancing With The Stars, and worked in radio. In 2024 her memoir, Your Time Starts Now, showed a different side of the celebrity cook, revealing she had been in a mental health unit during the worst year of her life.
Since then, she has worked to build a toolkit she can lean on to be happy and healthy.
“Non-negotiables include good sleep, a manageable calendar, time with family, and meditation,” she shares. “Other tools include time in nature, exercise, time for creativity, and good food.”
Family has always been at the heart of everything she does. And with this latest cookbook, Goodwin wants to pass on her vast wisdom about feeding a family — and an evolving one, at that — and make it simpler, so the focus can return to sharing a meal.
Alongside the crowd-favourite recipes, some of which we’re sharing in STM this month, there are tips on shopping and prep, plus the all-important process of cooking for meals that happen in shifts around work, training and a social life.
“It’s for the household that is undergoing change, the household that is busy sometimes and empty at others, the household that values good food and nutrition and gathering, but needs a way to make it enjoyable again,” Goodwin says.
Home For Dinner by Julie Goodwin, $49.99, published by Penguin
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