Close to Home Greek Food Toowoomba

01/10/2026

Getting closer and closer to a big announcement for Toowoomba 🙇🏼‍♀️🥳❤️‍🔥

In the meantime, I’m spending my days thinking about what makes a community feel like home. What makes us choose to stay, to go, to come to a place and invest in it. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

What parts are worth protecting, what parts are worth reinventing,and who gets to make those decisions?

A town is so much more that the businesses it’s home to; it’s so much more than the ownership of buildings, the buying and selling of houses.

Toowoomba is the place I was born. I lived away for over a decade, and my homecoming wasn’t some old trope playing out: it makes sense to want to live near family, be with people who know the context of how you grew up, who have the same bone-deep love of how huge the full moon rises over the lip of the range.

Since I returned we’ve seen an explosion of new people move to the area. What a gift, to have so many people see our town with fresh eyes, and bring experiences from other places to add to the pot and help make it more liveable. I love knowing that we’re in the midst of an absolute reinvention.

01/10/2026

This summer I’m hosting cook-ups and cooking classes in southeast QLD. What would you like to learn?

🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝

The joy is in the journey: cooking can’t be taught in a single written recipe. We don’t know what we don’t know - but more importantly, the most skilful people I’ve come across are often the most humble.

Yiayia would always scoff when we probed her for her secrets. According to her, she wasn’t doing anything special. She was just doing something that she knew how to do. In our eyes she had perfected it all: keftedes, kourambiedes, paximadia, brown butter pasta with just the right amount of cheese. The truth of it is this: she worked her whole life feeding family and cooking for family restaurants, and through that relentless repetition she learned:
How ingredients behave
What she liked best
Alchemy

It’s simple, really.

28/09/2026

What I lack in answers, I make up for with candles!!!

One of my most consistent practices since I started beekeeping is an unexpected one: I light candles at breakfast, lunch and dinner. I light candles in place of electric lighting. I light candles for the extra wishing that they bring.

Consider candles this Christmas - their impact can help keep beekeepers in business, and create pathways into the industry for many more.

✨🕯️🐝

https://chuffed.org/project/onemillioncandles?utm_campaign=campaign&utm_id=019fc781-a693-7630-8064-afe08bd8919b&pdm=url_copy

28/09/2026

Honey is the most magical treat on earth! And beeswax is an impressive by-product of the honey we harvest.

Beeswax burns slowly - you get amazing burn time per gram compared to other waxes. It imparts the most delightful caramel notes when burned, and is said to calm and cleanse the air.

Through the Million Candles Project, I’m setting out to make and sell one million beeswax candles. By honouring this age-old tradition of candlemaking, we can all throw our support behind beekeepers in a very real way.

🕯️🕯️🕯️🕯️🕯️🕯️🕯️

25/09/2026

TOMORROW/ SAT MORNING //SPRING CELEBRATION // HONEY FIRE SALE!!!! 🍯🌟🐝 🍯🌟🐝 🍯🌟🐝🐴

I’mhypedareyouhyped?!?!?!

I’ll be popping up all morning at Starlet - Creative Hub [tomorrow] Saturday 26 September!!! 10am - 2pm

It’s the perfect balm to missing our monthly pop up Greek cafe: meet new people + it’s a great chance to explore Toowoomba’s newest collaborative arts space. Bring a creative project, enjoy the space, help me clear out my honey stores before the fresh spring harvest.

I will bring some stencils + paints + a few blank shirts. Feel free to BYO shirt, tote, hoodie etc + paint your own wearable art pieces.

It will be wonderful!!!

25/09/2026

BREAKING NEWS: I will be popping up at Starlet - Creative Hub tomorrow for an impromptu cafe + craft day! Come down Saturday 10am-2pm. I’ll have baklava, sweet little spring layer cakes + paint-your-own-protest-shirt bar

23/09/2026

Spring in Toowoomba gets me so nostalgic! Or is it just my allergies making my eyes sparkle…?

It’s seven years (7!!!) since I moved to queensland. As we get ready for a Very Exciting Announcement, we’re taking a stroll down memory lane and sharing some clues about what’s next for our business.

NBTHIS IS NOT A PR STUNT! i hate surprises! buuut we’re still finalising some details + I may burst if I don’t get to tell someone soon 😂 So, deep-dive into my 2019 camera roll for some no-context content + see if you can solve the riddle.

Come for the Greek sweets, stay for the sneak peaks, am I right?!

23/09/2026

LUNCH ARCHIVES//
Yiayia’s table, c. 2016
toowoomba. queensland.

31/08/2026

Last weekend we celebrated Mrs Jam's Pantry most magical 55th turn around the sun, a year of monthly events together, plus over 20 pop ups since I started! This was likely the last pop-up in this format, at this location for a while.

Thanks to all the magical many who have come along, once or many times, whether to say a quick hello, hang about or help pack up. It’s been the balm I’ve needed during some really hard times, and it’s been such a joy seeing how many connections have come about as a result. Special shout out to my magnificent Mum Toula Elliott who has been the bedrock of all my grand ambition 🌸🪩

I was hoping we would have a Big Announcement ready to confirm today, but these things take time. Instead we will all have to wait with bated breath to find out where to next ✨🌼

30/06/2026

Amazing to see a local business travelling the nation 💚✨