Meet Sonia

When I was growing up, my mum and dad cooked everything from scratch and food always tasted so delicious. My dad put a lot of Italian influence into pretty much everything he cooked and we used to have really tasty Italian food at my grandparents' house when we visited them.

Now I have a family of my own, my other half David does all of the cooking as I just never had the confidence to be able to. I can throw together things from the freezer for the children, but they do get bored by chips/pizza/nuggets and so do I.

As well as having our own three children, we are both full time foster carers and have lots of different children staying at our house. I suppose I have always found it easy to rely on David to cook, as I always felt I needed peace and quiet in the kitchen for me to cook as I used to get so stressed whilst doing it.

When I saw the advert for the Lorraine show, I jumped at the chance to get some help. Mainly I think I needed my confidence boosting, to make me feel it was all right to have a go and learn as I went along. It has definitely opened my eyes as to how much fun I can actually have cooking and I really enjoyed the experience.

Since the show I have started to offer to cook, something David is still getting used to. I would say David still does the lion's share of the cooking but I am getting there as my confidence grows. I made a cake recently which went down well, and was great because for some reason David doesn't seem able to bake so that made me smile.

I have also started doing a meal plan for the week, finding simple recipes that don't look too scary and then trying to add my own touch to them. It is work in progress, but I am improving all the time. It does give me a huge amount of satisfaction to see the children clear their plates when I have made the dinner. Thank you so much to Lorraine and the team.