The Staple Store Cookbook vol 01, #author Catie Gett

These recipes have been tested in real kitchens with blunt knives, crying toddlers, and zero mental bandwidth — and they still work.

Over 200 pages, 90 recipes and more than 100 photos. Printed in Naarm by a certified carbon neutral printer, on responsibly sourced and recycled paper with vegetable-based, toxin-free inks.

Author Catie Gett wrote this cookbook four times. Each draft, it got simpler — shorter steps, more accessible ingredients, a shrinking equipment list. By the final version, I had a book of recipes that actually work: not curated to impress, not pretending to be more than they are. Because that's how real people cook — with kids hanging off them, on tight budgets, with bandwidth that can't stretch to complicated meals that fall flat.

Gett a naturopath with 15 years of practice, from a food family, with years of professional kitchen experience behind me. For over a decade I ran The Staple Store — a health food shop that became a little institution built on minimal waste, whole food, and good people. When the cost-of-living crisis hit, instead of holding onto our commercial recipes, I started giving them away. The response told me everything.

People were hungry for Good, Simple, Clever.

STAPLE VOL 01 brings together the most celebrated recipes from The Staple Store archives alongside real-life health food hacks from this tired mama's kitchen to yours.

This cookbook is my love letter to food that nourishes without fuss. Health food that's just good food. Forgiving. Almost impossible to f*** up.

To connect with Catie .....
https://www.instagram.com/thestaplestore/
https://thestaplestore.com.au/
https://thestaplestore.com.au/products/the-staple-store-cookbook-vol-01-early-bird
https://www.instagram.com/catie_gett/?hl=en

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

It's good morning, Katie Ged. Welcome to Yellow Shelf, Katie. Hi. I'm so we both brought our prompt. I'm so happy to be talking to you. We're just laughing offline. Oh my god, I'm a pretty ordinary cook and I'm okay with that. Um, but your cookbook is for me and for people who probably wouldn't sign up for Mastership, or maybe they would, but it's this is real. Well done. Congratulations. The staple store cookbook. Tell us all about it.

SPEAKER_01 0:36

Well, I think so. Number one, it's like was designed for A to B. So A is if you have zero bandwidth, exhausted, and uninspired, to be a nutritional meal. So, like what I have to do is get you from A to B without and like breaking down whatever barriers to entry there are. So if it's time, if it's equipment, if it's skill, if it's money, like how do I like how do I get you a nutritious meal without like all of those those um pain points? Like knock them out of the park. And so that's what this book was. Like it was a sense, like initially it was a little bit more complicated and had a few more like, you know, I was in like this aspirational wellness bubble for 15 years. So I was like talking, like, oh, you know, we'll make this cake, but we'll make it with almond meal or hazelnut meal, or like we'll add like extra nuts and seeds in this to make it more nutrient dense, and you know, and I was like talked this language for 15 years, and then I started releasing our commercial recipes. So this is based off a health food shop that I had for 12 years, and when I closed, I'm like, I'm gonna release all of our commercial recipes online. Um, no, like in a cookbook, like just wait. So, like I closed it four years ago. I started writing this book, and then you know, we were online as well selling our products, and there was a there was um an economic crisis in Melbourne, particularly, like we'd been in lockdown for three and a half years, and then there was like inflation and land tax and everything. So it was we really we could feel it too. And I was like, okay, I've drifted from mission, which is to like make whole foods as accessible to everyone for everyone to love cooking and everything. And I was like, I've got to like close my business down, let's go back to basics. And I just pulled my car over and I released one of our recipes, it was our most profitable one, and um, it got picked up by Jennifer Garner, and then I which is amazing, and then so I woke up the next morning, had like 10,000 new followers, and but what happened from the flow and effect from that was I started getting emails from people all over the world and DMs saying that they're experiencing food insecurity and thank you for this recipe. And so I was like, oh, this is and I for the first time I didn't realize one, what exactly food insecurity meant, but also what um sorry, there's I didn't put my phone on do not disturb. Um there so I didn't really understand what food insecurity was and where who was experiencing it. And then when I started looking at stats, I was like, this is bananas. Like according to food bank last year's their their 2025 report, almost 50% of school aged children experience food insecurity. That is mind-blowing. And in Australia, where you expect, you know, like we're a first-world country, we don't imagine that this is a like a such a big problem. Yeah, and so it was like, I need to make another recipe, so I made it made another recipe. I'm half Irish, so I made a soda bread recipe. I called it magic bread. Soda bread you traditionally uses um buttermilk in Australia. Buttermilk is very expensive. And I was like, so the premise of buttermilk is that it uses lactic acid to react with the baking soda to make the bread rise. And I was like, well, we'll just swap over for acetic acid. My dad's a fine dining chef, so he taught us all about food science growing up. And so I was like, I'll just swap over for acetic acid. And so it was this magical bread, you make it with self-raising flour, vinegar, water, and salt. And this went viral. And then I it durations of it, and then Dawn French like messaged me and she's like, Can I please have the recipe for this? And I'm like, Yep, no problems, it's in your DMs. And then she's like, a little bit later, she's like, Hey Katie, where's the recipe? And I'm like, Dawn, it's in your DMs. And then she's like, an hour later, she had on her stories that she shared with a million people my bread, and she called it utter yum. It was like that I was like, I don't know. I know it's like, um, yeah, anyway, the vicar of Dibbly also writes this bread. But um, I and then I so I was kept writing and writing and writing, and then I did this video on Instagram. It was really tongue-in-cheek, but I was like, whatever, this is so I got a can of beans, rinsed them, put it in a saucepan, and then um a jar of pasta sauce, and I stirred it and I was like, dinner's ready. And this like broke the entire project open. It was like six months before we were meant to go to print. I had messages from all over the world, and particularly from single parent households going, thank you for making this health food. And then I was having people, people with chronic disease, people with disabilities working in care services, social workers that were like, This, like, this is groundbreaking. And I was like, Okay, all right, I get the mission. I went back and I rewrote the entire book in three months. And the idea was that like there was no high-speed blenders, there was no like difficult things, like there was no like 24-hour marinades, there was nothing. It was like, let's get you dinner as soon as possible, and like no barriers, and it just changed everything. And then the book has come out. We crowdfunded it in three months to write. This is the another really beautiful part of it. Last year, um, I actually lived below the poverty line as a single parent. Wow, and I was like testing all these recipes, so they have to be economical because I couldn't test them without them being economical because our free budget was little. Yes. But um, I just did a community call out and I was like, I need these recipes tested. Can these be tested? So there's the front page of the book is actually all these families that tested the recipes all over the world, including like actual chefs, other naturopaths, and they were they tested heaps of recipes for me. And it just meant that they were getting tested in other kitchens with people that knew less about cooking than I did, and that um were on tight budgets as well. And so we the whole premise of the cookbook was like, let's get you from A to B, but also like let's make these recipes.

SPEAKER_00 6:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:36

So like you can't, there's so much margin for error. You cannot, you can try really hard and not make a mistake. And like people will tell me, they're like, Katie, I misread this, it was meant to be half a cup, I put a whole cup in it and it still worked. I'm like, that's the margin of error that we have in this cookbook.

SPEAKER_00 6:51

It's kind of like I know, and it that your journey story around the this particular book is so intentional, and that comes across in the book. I mean, you've got 90 recipes, more than 200 pages. Like, yeah, I even went through this with my kids when the book when I received the book, and I was like, hey, let's let's agree on a recipe that we'll all eat. And we, you know, well, we landed at the roasted cauliflower, but it was a great start, and it was just simple and clever, and all the the intentional things that you want this book to be for the readers and for the you know what you need to do with your kiddos.

SPEAKER_01 7:31

This is my favorite one because it's like it kind of mixes science and cooking, which they are. And I actually read something this morning and it said it talked about um neurodiverse brains and how cooking is really important for them. And I was like, Oh, it's why I love cooking. I love getting in the kitchen, and it's like because you have to be completely present, yeah. It's a hyper focus activity, and that was I was like, Oh yeah, I get it. I get why I feel that I was safe with the kitchen. But there is um the cook the cake mix, yes, but there's a cake mix and you make your own cake mixes, which is really beautiful, so you can make them with them, and then you it iterates into 10 things. So there's like cookies and pikelets and different like cakes, which you add nutrients in by like adding fruit and nuts and seeds and and um and other ingredients. But the beautiful thing is is that like what will spin them out is that you would put vinegar in a lot of the cake mixes, yeah. And a lot a lot of the feedback I've got from mums is like, oh, they love it. It look feels like a science experiment. And I'm like, cooking is a science experiment, but um, yeah, it helps the cake prize. So that's um, yeah, we it I've had so much fun, yeah. And I think, yeah, there is, I just get like last night I put a recipe up and I'm like so on social media. I I so I I'm giving the entire cookbook away for free on social media as well. So like one page at a time, I just release the recipes, and I did for food security, and I did this cauliflower mac and cheese, which you should make with your children. Taken, yeah. And I'm like waiting for this recipe to go viral, and I put it up three times and it's got nut nut butter. Like when everyone's interested, I'm like, you have to make it, it's like a whole head of cauliflower. Because you know, like when you make a white sauce and you've got to make the roux, so you get the butter and the flour, and then you add the milk, and you hope it doesn't get lumpy. Mine always gets lumpy. My dad like is a French train chef, and I always mess it up. And so I started making this white sauce, which is like you boil a head of cauliflower and then you blend it up and you put flour in and milk and salt and butter. And I was like, Oh, if my dad saw this, I'd get in so much trouble because the whole idea of a roux is to cook the cook the flour so it doesn't taste raw in the roux, and I was like, Oh, I'm gonna be so much trouble if he ever catches me doing this. And then I was like, Oh, what if I use a potato? So you use two potatoes and then the potato. So I don't know, you know, when you make when whenever you make mashed potatoes, and everyone's like, use a ricer or like use a mash it, never blend it. It's because when you blend it, the starches change and it goes gluggy. But you want that in a white sauce, like that's what you actually want. So you like want this to be blended. So instead of making a roux, you just chuck potatoes in with the cauliflower, and then you just drain off the water, you add butter and salt, and you blend it. They see you're done. That's a white sauce, and you've hidden an entire head of cauliflower. It's so good, it's like I'm gonna do this.

SPEAKER_00 10:28

I'm gonna do this recipe, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna come back to you and let you know how it goes.

SPEAKER_01 10:34

It is genius, and then you just put toasted panko crumbs on the top. It's like it's it's so genius, and no one's run with it yet. But then last night, back back to the back to the a bit, I actually got inundated with family sending me pictures of their kids eating it. So they're like, it's not viral, but in our house it is, which is so great.

SPEAKER_00 10:55

Katie, well look, this has been one of the best interviews I've done. I I can talk to you forever. I want people to get curious about this because as you've shared, so much intention in the journey story to deliver this, you know, for what is all the right reasons.

SPEAKER_01 11:14

Thanks, my love.

SPEAKER_00 11:15

Yeah, and I I I I completely get that um from reading the the stories and the recipes, but obviously talking to you today. Katie, if we're watching anywhere in the world and we're curious about you, we're curious about the book, your website, Instagram, but you point us in the direction, I'll put it in the show notes to help people connect with you and the book.

SPEAKER_01 11:35

Okay, so uh there's a couple of really important places I'd love you to send people. Yeah. So there's if you send them to just at the staple store on Instagram, that'll you'll be able to get to everywhere. But I also write a free Substack, which I'd love I'd love your listeners to get access to as well. It is at the moment I'm doing a project called A to Z and it's free um like life hacks that improve your health. So I'd love people to jump on that as well.

SPEAKER_02 12:00

But I will yeah, if you go to at Staplestop, at the staple store, it'll take you to everywhere that I do everything.

SPEAKER_00 12:06

Well, I'm on Substack, Yellow Shelf's on Substack, so I'll tag you in. Everyone just needs to to follow and and get curious that way as well through Substack. God, Substack's good, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 12:16

It's so great. Do you know? And also I just love the play button. Yeah, I love that I don't have to I don't have to read the long as I'm always saying to people, like, all my mates sort of I'm like, did you read that Substack? And they're like, No. And I'm like, press the play button. It's all you gotta do.

SPEAKER_00 12:32

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:33

Like, someone else will read it. Yeah, it's a joy.

SPEAKER_00 12:37

Oh, Katie, thank you for for landing in my life to you know help me on my you know, uh, journey of being a good cook, goodish cook, good mum. Um you don't have to you know what seriously, like just just cooking with my children, I think is incredible.

SPEAKER_01 12:54

Well, do you know what you need to do is give your kids the cookbook so then they become the cook? Because your many wonderful things, you don't need to be a good cook as well, honestly. Like my this recipe book, though there's a section called wholesome hot mess, and it's because my mates call me a wholesome hot mess because they have a tagline for me, which is if KD can do it, I can do it too. So I am, yeah, it's simple, easy. You'll get it.

SPEAKER_00 13:23

Yeah, go to that chapter first. I will. And do you know what the thing about this book? My kids were flicking through it and my husband, but you know, they didn't stop. Do you know some cookbooks are like, oh yeah, okay, you know, but this one is, you know, it it's definitely a visual book as well. So I want people to go and have a look and check it out. Katie, have a wonderful day. Thanks for joining us.

SPEAKER_01 13:45

Thank you. It's also digital. So if people are on the other side of the world, we've got we have a digital book.

SPEAKER_00 13:50

I'll I'll put some links in for that. That's really handy.

SPEAKER_01 13:53

You're awesome, Joanna.

SPEAKER_00 13:55

I want to write another book so I can come back on. Do you know what? I'll be here whenever you're ready. No pressure. Thank you. Um, well, let's enjoy this one first. Let me get through some more recipes. All the best.

SPEAKER_01 14:07

Bye, my dad. Bye. Cheers. Thank you.