How I plan to take Maternity Leave

Positive changes in the reality of freelance motherhood

Hey lovely Dinner Party subscribers,

This is a bit of a different post from me, but I wanted to talk to you all about how I am planning on taking time off when my first baby arrives in early September, and what that means for The Dinner Party.

TLDR: I’m soon taking 3 months of maternity leave, but I’ve worked really hard behind the scenes to ensure you get just as much value from your The Dinner Party subscription while I’m off. Read on to find out how, or scroll to the bottom to find out how to support!

So, the biggest change of my life is coming, and it’s important to me to share with you what that will look like for this community. And not to mention, I like sharing these little life updates with you all.

The Dinner Party is now over 3 years old, and I am unbelievably proud of the little online hosting haven I have built over here. There are over 400 recipes on this site. That is 4 cookbooks worth! Moreover, I am incredibly grateful for my paid subscriber base for supporting The Dinner Party and for allowing it to grow. Without you, none of this would have been possible.

If you didn’t already know, I am completely freelance and have been for a decade since leaving my life as a chef. As of right now, the paid subscriptions for this newsletter is my main source of income. I also make money through freelance food writing, my cookbook Good Time Cooking, content creation on my instagram, my work as a Food Stylist and more recently, as co-host of the very excellent Lunchbox Envy Podcast.

I realised in the latter stages of 2024 as we started trying for a baby that my maternity leave options were limited to say the least. It was a bit of a shock to be honest. I had always imagined a blissful 9 months off like some of my friends, bonding with my baby and soaking up that precious time. The reality is that for freelancers in the UK, both men and women, any parental leave will come with a serious loss of income at a time in your life when you need it most.

Before I go on I do want to acknowledge that I know I am incredibly lucky to be freelance, and to have been able to do it for so long, and that I chose it for myself. I also acknowledge that I chose to have a baby, and again I am unbelievably lucky to be able to so. But there is also a part of me that feels really let down by the system. The idea that self-employed people have to choose between earning an income (and keeping their businesses alive) or having no parental leave feels to me both unfair and stupid. It doesn’t make economic sense for anyone. Anyway. This is what we are dealing with. I promise you this rant is now over (I do not make my husband the same promise).

What does this all mean?

From the start of September, I will be taking 3 months off. My intention for these 3 months is to be as present with my newborn baby as possible. After that I will need to start working again, and how that will look I truly don’t know, but that’s a then problem. I am sure we can figure it out. Babies love watching their mama’s cook, right? What is absolutely for sure is that - The Dinner Party will live on.

I will still be posting 4 times a month, 3 paid posts, 1 free post.

How will I do that you ask? Well.

Here is my *MATERNITY PLAN OF ACTION* (insert trumpet blast here)

• Substack

  has a brilliant feature where writers can schedule posts. I am currently creating, testing and writing lots of beautiful, useful recipes for you so that you don’t miss me. Before I take my leave I will schedule them all to still come to your inboxes once a week, even when I am in the newborn trenches. Paid subscriptions will still be active.

• I will be inviting my favourite guest writers to take over The Dinner Party and share with you too. If there is anyone you would love to see a collaboration with, let me know!

• I will be active over on the Dirty Dishes Chat - answering your questions, checking in, discussing cooking hacks and tricks most likely while feeding. I’ll probably asking a few too myself. Do come and say hi, I would love to hear from you.

Having said all of this, to make this plan of action work I do need to make some fairly big changes with regards to my output on here, which I want to be upfront about.

For the last 3 years a month in posts has looked like this -

• 1 free Dinner Party a month = 4 - 6 recipes

• 3 posts for paid subscribers = 7 additional recipes.

This is, again, a choice I made. I felt like in order to grow on here I needed to be putting out as much content as possible and add value in quantity. It has been truthfully very hard to keep up with. I have realised that not many other food writers on here put out this much, for good reason, and I actually think some of my best recipes get lost in the long posts I tend to share. Not only that, but with a baby in the mix there is literally no way this would be achievable. So I am FINALLY going to start to abide by that excellent rule - Quality over Quantity.

*From now on I will be posting 4 recipes a month.* 3 paid, 1 free.

Paid subscribers will have access to the entire archive and will receive all additional content as and when I am back to full capacity. I love sharing my travel tips, kitchen kit, styling tips and gift guides just as much as recipes.

Recipes will still include as much information as I am wont to give, we know I love an over-explanation, me. There will be Dinner Party showstoppers as well as 15 minute dinners, weeknight seasonal suppers, and all that falls in between (lots and lots of pasta, most likely). From time to time I will put together dinner party menus from the archive with my trusty time plans so that you can still use this as an entertaining bible, with all your prep mapped out for you.

I’ve also made the The Dinner Party homepage a bit more accessible. I’ve created new tabs for the Recipe Archive, Dinner Party Menus and Travel. Hopefully it will mean you can navigate the site more easily and it will become even more of a useful resource for you.

The Recipe Archive in particular is hopefully WAY more useful. I’ve split it up into HELPFUL categories and you can skip right to the one you need most. So now we have ;

• BY SEASON

• BY DISH

• BY PROTEIN

• BY VIBE

These changes have been a long time coming, and I think it is going to be the right way for The Dinner Party to continue to be the best it can be while honouring the change in me and my life. After birth, I imagine I won’t be hosting nearly as much for a while. I want to make sure my recipes and writing are staying true to the person I am, or should I say, the person I will become.

So, I really hope you want to carry on on this journey with me. Your support right now means more than it ever has and I feel so lucky to be able to continue to share with this community.

How to support The Dinner Party -

• Upgrade to a Paid Subscription for access to over 400 recipes and weekly posts. Your support is what makes The Dinner Party possible!

• Give gift subscriptions - you can send a gift subscription to anyone! These are annual and enable full access to everything on the site - it’s a bit like giving someone 4 cookbooks worth of recipes.

• Chat to me and other subscribers! The chat function is actually a great way of getting more from the Dinner Party - if you’re looking for a recipe recommendation / dilemma / general query about the state of the world, myself or someone else can help you there!

• Recommend and share The Dinner Party to your friends and family.

Ok - that’s it from me for now. Thank you for sticking with me this far, it means more than you can ever know. I am so excited for what is to come!

Rosie x