Join our Instagram takeover with Bo Porterfield of Bo's Kitchen

Meet Bo Porterfield of Bo's Kitchen who will be taking over our Instagram channel on 24th-25th March! Bo will be running our account for two days and she'll be sharing behind-the-scenes shots to show how she creates her fantastic photos, plus her take on vegan cooking.

You can also learn how to create your own stunning pictures with Bo's guide to food photography for Instagram.

Read on to find out how Bo comes up with her vibrant vegan recipes…

Sharing her colourful recipes and love of vegan food inspired Harriet ‘Bo’ Porterfield to create Bo’s Kitchen.

Bo’s love of food began at an early age. Her first words were “gone” and “more”, so it seemed only natural she’d pursue a career in the food industry! By day, she works for a food and drink delivery company, and in her spare time she develops recipes for her blog.

“I started the blog four years ago when I realised that I was taking lots of pictures for Instagram, but I had nowhere to put the recipes,” explains Bo. “It made sense to have an online cookbook.”

The technicolor recipes on Bo’s blog are both beautiful and healthy – and they’re all vegan, as Bo’s been a vegan for 10 years. “It was partly for health and partly for ethical reasons, but mainly because I wanted to see if I could do it,” she says. “I was raised a vegetarian and one day I was in a supermarket and just thought, ‘I’ll give it a go’.”

Bo’s stunning Instagram recipes reflect her eating habits. “Most of the food is cooked and eaten on the same day,” says Bo. “Today, I posted a beetroot mousse which I made this morning. Setting up a photo takes at least two hours, plus the time spent prepping the food. These days it takes longer because I’m such a perfectionist! It’s usually cold food rather than hot, although my boyfriend is sick of eating cold pancakes!”

Her friends and family love her food and want to come around all the time – non-vegans included. “I don’t believe in labelling vegan food, as people have certain expectations of what vegan food is like,” says Bo. ”Just give it to them without saying what it is and they usually love it.”

Try vegan recipes from Bo's Kitchen:

• Vegan cinnamon raisin plait recipe
• Healthy vegan hot chocolate recipe
• Raw hazelnut brownies with chocolate ganache recipe

Becoming a vegan forced Bo to expand her tastes and try new things. “For most vegans the biggest question is ‘What do you eat?’,” she says. “But it’s not difficult to get all the nutrients you need from vegan food.”

While Bo’s recipes are extremely healthy, she definitely has a sweet tooth – her Instagram feed is dominated by pictures of desserts, from pancakes to parfaits. “I used to be a huge fan of fizzy sweets and my friend called me Haribo, which was shortened to Bo,” she explains. Bo doesn’t eat non-vegan sweets any more, but aims to create “sweet, colourful food that’s good for you.”

“I dig anything that looks sugar-laden but isn’t,” she explains. “My food is all really healthy and there’s no downside to what I cook.” Bo often adds natural colourings to her food: spirulina for green, butterfly pea tea for blue, a pinch of turmeric for yellow, fresh beetroot or beetroot powder for pink, and to get purples she uses blackberries or red cabbage.

And she recommends shopping and eating with your eyes: “If you see something you like the look of then buy it. Fruit may be more expensive, but you’ll feel the benefit of eating more healthily in the long run.”

Check out Bo's Instagram account @bos.kitchen and visit her website to try some of her delicious vegan recipes.