From Lithuania with love: Nida Degutiene’s food career in Canberra.
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If you love Canberra’s food culture and spend your Saturday morning trawling the stalls at the Capital Regions Farmers Market on Saturdays, then keep your eye out for international food blogger Nida Degutiene.
Toweringly tall with a shock of short platinum hair, you can’t really miss her once you know who to look out for.
For the last 15 years, she has created an international career and drawn together her own community based around cooking while being the spouse of a diplomat and having to relocate every few years to an entirely new country.
Nida, who grew up in Lithuania and runs a successful legal consultancy business, has 75,000 followers on social media, attracts around 150,000 unique monthly users to her website. She has published four cookbooks, selling around 30,000 of them around the world and having them translated into four languages (holding the distinction of being the first Lithuanian author to have a culinary book translated into English by publisher Penguin Random House).
While Nida loves the life she and her husband Darius experience in the diplomatic corps, she has also found it to be an isolating and often unsettled existence of constantly relocating and finding new ways to connect.
But a love of food, sparked by her mother and grandmother’s cooking and strong Lithuanian culture, combined with her desire to keep friends and family in the loop, led Nida to write long and food-centric emails home, which would form the basis of her blog.
“The story of beginnings of my blog is somewhat unusual – I received it as a gift! When I relocated to Israel with my husband, who served as an Ambassador of Lithuania to Israel and South Africa, I was sending long emails to my friends telling them about my discoveries…Until one day I received an email from my truly creative friend Delija with the subject line “Christmas present”. That present, sent by email, was….. MY blog! Imagine – my friend came up with the idea, that I might enjoy writing a blog while I was living abroad, she created a title of my blog (Nidos Receptai – Nida’s Recipes), put a simple design on one of the available platforms and sent me one-page instruction how to log in and write the first post! At that time (in 2009) blogging was a novelty, I had no clue what it means, I did not follow any blogger at that time, but apparently my friend saw a potential in me…’Try it, if you won’t enjoy, you can always drop it’ she said. Then I tried and I got hooked!!”
Nida appeared on “Cook Up with Adam Liaw” on SBS Food with Melbourne chef Jo Barrett. Bucket list experience.
While outwardly glamorous, living the life of a diplomatic spouse has not always been easy, and Nida finds her food career connects and rewards her amidst the upheaval and uncertainty.
“For many spouses this is a joyful opportunity to have unique experience living in different countries, traveling, learning many new things, meeting new people. On the other hand, often though it involves a lot of sacrifice – the inability to pursue your own career, your friends and family which stay behind, and having to relocate every 3-4 years.
“Israel was my first experience living abroad in a role of a spouse of a diplomat, I loved it for the first 2 weeks, but after this I felt like I am in Hell… It was very hard to me to get used to the different pace, to the fact that you are not allowed to work, you do not go to the office every day (what I had been doing my entire life). Eventually I managed to find my answer to this situation: I completed MBA studies and I started writing my food blog in 2009, which required me learn new profession skills in food photography and writing.”
Her first cook book in 2014 “A Taste of Israel”, was awarded as the best book in the world by Gourmand in the Jewish Culinary category and was translated from Lithuanian to English, Polish and German.
When Darius was offered the position of being Lithuania’s first Ambassador to Australia it was “a dream from true” for Nida as she had always been obsessed by Australia and New Zealand and adored her time travelling here on holiday in 2019.
But when the couple got through Covid quarantine and arrived to Canberra in 2021, it was a bit of a shock.
“It was far from what I have seen in Sydney and Melbourne and Darius and I both thought that we arrived during some sort of local holidays and all people are gone, and they most probably will return to the city soon? It took time to get used to Canberra, but I must admit, we both LOVE it now! We both agree, if we were Aussies, we would have chosen Canberra as our home town and appreciate the space, fresh clean air, no traffic jams, always available parking, nice and super friendly people, lots of hiking possibilities and ideal environment for doing sports.”
Some of that affection may have to do with Nida’s childhood, growing up in the resort town of Druskininkai, surrounded by natural mineral water springs, pristine nature, and extremely fresh air.
“In a way Canberra resembles my native town, it feels like a (big) resort to me.”
Growing up, Nida always loved food and gravitated to the kitchen.
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“My mom and my late granny were amazing cooks, I trully was spoiled by the exceptional home-cooked meals each day (I always took it for granted). However, I was never encouraged to cook, I was not allowed, products were scarce, money short. So my real experience in cooking begun when I became a student and started living in a student dormitory.
“Since then the kitchen became such a happy place for me… I think I inherited so called ‘touch’ when it comes to cooking from my granny and my mom. I am addicted to culinary content – in particular cookbooks and have over 350 cookbooks in my own collection and it is ever growing. My books travel together with me always from one country to another as well as my culinary magazines.”
While in Johannesburg more than 10 years ago, Nida came across one particularly beautiful magazine. So overwhelmed by the quality and style of that magazine, she has maintained an international subscription between several countries.
That magazine?
Donna Hay.
“Donna Hay was my absolutely biggest influencer, I learned food styling and food photography from her, I was reading Australian content long before I even knew I will one day live in Australia. She is my Goddess so I can not tell you how excited I was few months ago when I met Donna in person – I was at her studio in Sydney, at the event of her new book launch! I lost my words because of how excited I was when I saw her in a flesh, I wanted to pinch myself. Until this day I have ALL Donna’s old magazines and of course all her books in my collection which are with me.
Last year Nida met her culinary hero Donna Hay. Total bucket list experience.
Since living here, she has acquired many more favorite celebrity chefs including Adam Liaw, the late Jock Zonfrillo, Danielle Alvarez, Darren Robertson, Julia Busuttil Nishimura, and she is completely addicted to Australian Master Chef, which she squeezes into her almost non-stop viewing of SBS Food channel.
When asked to narrow her food loves down, Nida nominates South Asian cuisines, notably, Japanese and Vietnamese food.
“When I travel and eat out I usually choose various street foods. If I cook at home -which I do most of the time – I travel across the globe…. European cuisines such as French, Italian, Scandinavian, Polish foods are very native and common to me, so if I want to challenge myself I dive into South East Asian world and I still need to follow recipes for those.”
Still, she misses Lithuanian dark rye bread, herring, and very unique fresh cottage cheese which has no such equivalence in Australia.
Conversely, when the posting is over, Nida will miss much about her adopted home “but for sure I will miss that special breakfast vibe when all places are packed on weekends for brunch and THAT smell of amazing coffee all around in the streets in the morning….”
