If you’re a foodie or a fan of reality TV, or both, chances are you’ve seen Michelle battle it out with Australia’s most talented, yet-to-be-discovered chefs.

For Michelle food is so much more than something you eat.  The whole process is an experience to be devoured slowly and with intention; deliberately observing and really seeing what’s before you, and then eating it meaningfully, making sure you fully taste every last morsel that hits your mouth.

All the senses are involved and eating is more of an experience than anything else.

She has always loved cooking.  Her senses were first alerted when she was living in shared accommodation whilst at Uni.  You know what it’s like, the madness of living in a house with oodles of others, living off two-minute noodles and coffee? Well, Michelle had an altogether different experience.  One of her house mates was learning how to be a chef.  Every day Michelle would come home, exhausted after a day of learning about the glory of being a physical education teacher, and her senses would be greeted with delicious smells which would later move to her taste buds.  It was a defining moment in many ways.

Many years later, after a stint as a PE teacher and another stint as a professional photographer who travelled the world honing her craft, she moved to the country, bought a bookshop and decided to give cooking a go.

“I’ve always cooked and had a love of food.  I have a real love of the entire food process — from growing things organically, to cooking with intention.  I like to eat the way that nature intended,” she says.

Michelle has always had a deep understanding of the concept that you are what you eat, but for her it’s more than just a dietary understanding.

“If you eat food that has been grown well, prepared well, shared well, it’s the ultimate shared experience. I like to put love into the food when I cook it, serve it and eat it,” she says.

A few years ago Michelle and her partner, Patsy, went on holidays to Hayman Island.  There Michelle took up the offer of doing a kitchen tour.

“I was so excited — was like a kid in a candy store. I had tears streaming down my face.  Who cries on a kitchen tour?  I was so excited and thought it would be so cool to work in a kitchen.”

Then she met a chef by the name of Tom Kime, and went with him and his cooking tour to Italy.  She and Patsy spent eight days with the group, cooking and drinking good wine.

“I came back from Italy quite inspired.  I was sitting here before Christmas and the ads for Masterchef came on the TV.  I saw them and thought ‘I want to be Australia’s first Masterchef!’  So, I filled in the form online, sent it off with intention, used the law of attraction thing, wished it well and let it go.”

The good news came just after new-year when Michelle was told she’d been selected out of 7,500 people, to be one of the 700 to attend an audition in person.

The auditions were difficult and exhausting, but Michelle was the first one out of the Sydney lot to get an apron, the much sought after entrée into the next round of the auditions — the final fifty.

In the Top Fifty week, Michelle and the others survived a set of tasks and challenges that included chopping onions, running around fish markets and cooking and creating delicious treats for the judges to taste.

She was one of the few who made it through to the Top Twenty.  She was on her way to becoming Australia’s first Masterchef.

But fate always intervenes and shows us that the universe has other plans.

Through a series of events that were really rather unfortunate, Michelle found herself facing elimination.  A cook-off took place in which she and the other two contestants facing elimination had to cook stuffed squid from a recipe. The judges had their work cut out for them, but in the end decided that Michelle’s journey had come to an end.  Unfortunately, she would not be Australia’s first Masterchef after all.

“I wish Kate had gone instead of me, but it didn’t happen that way,” Michelle says, with her usual accepting nature.

“I was in the house for three and a half weeks.  When I came back home, I had to start reassessing what I wanted to do with my life.  In the competition you do have the sense that you can be a chef and can do this, but when you come out that reality is much harder.”

But she’s started to make plans.

“I’ve been running cooking classes, and am looking to run food safaris on the south coast, pitching it to the gay and lesbian market.”

She asks me if that would be something I’d be interested in, having already guaged my interest in all things gastronomic.  I convey my excitement and wonder how good it will be to sit in front of an open fire, drinking good wine and eating good food in the dead of a freezing winter?

We get back to the spirituality of her cooking, the holistic way she lives with food.  She chants a mantra before she cooks and has a whole routine that keeps her grounded and centered.

“I cook with ideation and try to be at one with the food.  Cooking is a meditative experience.  I get into a zone,” she says.

For Michelle, food is the core of life.  She tries to eat with “alive” taste buds, with a sense of focusing on
the taste sensations in the mouth.

When I ask her how superstardom has changed her life, she laughs.

“I’ve been on my mountain too long, I didn’t know I was famous.”