Love Vegetables wins at The Guild of Food Writers Awards 2025

On the hottest night of the year, I narrowly caught an over-packed train to London and did my best to refresh my mascara with the help of my phone camera after a humid day at work food styling Christmas dinners. (I recommend a breezy dress and plenty of chilled fizzy water when wielding a heat gun!)

I was going to The Guild of Food Writers Awards in a very refined building in Green Park because my debut book Love Vegetables was shortlisted in the Single Topic Cookery Book category. I had my money on either of the two other entrants, but I was extremely pleasantly surprised and shocked to win. The awards are judged by fellow food writers and books are shortlisted from a competitive number of entries, meaning that it feels extra special to be recognised by colleagues who I so admire. I was in the room with some of my writing heroes and heroines and before the ceremony began had a real sense of imposter syndrome.

We shot Love Vegetables in my home kitchen studio in Bristol over two sunny weeks a couple of Summers ago, and I wrote the recipes when my son was a baby; reconnecting with a creative part of myself that’s all too often inconvenient when a brand new person joins the household. He did love the Cheesy Curried Root Vegetable Pasties (p.110) when we started introducing solids, though.

Thank you so much to all the judges and the Guild for organising such an incredible evening, and for drawing from the book what I hoped to convey when writing it. Here are the judges comments, which were nothing short of absolutely thrilling to read:

With intriguing twists to her well-written, achievable recipes, Shepherd puts a new spin on vegetables to celebrate just how delicious they can be. Her joyful writing and refreshing style make readers fall in love with fresh produce. A book that is ‘impossible to flick through without stopping to ogle another mouthwatering dish’.