Imagine being able to prepare a gourmet meal for your friends under the instruction of an expert cook, serve it in an informal friendly setting, then walk home, leaving all the washing up to be done by someone else. Friendly dinner parties in a homely environment where just you and your friends can congregate, are now becoming fashionable, but not all of us have the space to seat a dozen friends or the expertise to create the necessary dishes. Sandy Hellig, of Eynsham, is changing all that. I first wrote of Sandy in 1995 when, with great enthusiasm, she opened Cornucopia Deli, Eynsham, and provided the village with an establishment that stocked ingredients not normally available in the village. But times change.

During the past four years,supermarkets and Internet sites have increased their range of speciality ingredients at very competitive prices and, gradually, Sandy’s unique selling point became the home-cooked food she created daily and sold as chilled or frozen main meals that could be reheated at home. These became particularly popular with pensioners and people living alone.

But, as Sandy explained, the cost of the quality ingredients which added a special touch to these meals was also increasing. So in an ever-competitive market, with customers having less to spend and becoming very price-aware, her market began to diminish.

Add to these problems the daily grind of keeping a business floating, and Sandy began to reassess her business model.

There had to be another way forward — but what was it? How could she continue to provide good food to the village and how could she do this without working the 70 to 80 hours a week that the deli demanded.

She said: “I realised I was not getting any younger and had come to the point where spending more time with the family, friends and my garden was as important as running a successful business.”

After much thought, she closed the deli while she worked out an alternative, though naturally this move disappointed many of her loyal customers.

Gradually, she came up with an exciting new venture — Cornucopia-Cooks — which would enable her to supply meals to go, outside catering and just a little bit more. Her idea was to offer cookery classes which would cater for those who needed the guidance of an expert cook such as herself. She then incorporated the occasional dinner party into this plan.

Because she wouldn’t have to offer these every day, she realised she would be free to enjoy her family and garden and to sleep in now and again.

She said that on closing the deli, the joy of waking up when she wanted to without the pressure of opening a shop, and being free to take days off to do things that others do freely, proved worth their weight in gold.

She hasn’t started her cookery lessons yet. During the past couple of months she has been refitting the shop to create the right environment for both informal dinner parties and cookery lessons.

By arranging classes on days that will suit both her and her customers she will now have time to relax and time to enjoy teaching people to cook, and her life will offer that perfect balance which was missing before.

The classes she is already arranging for the autumn include: Pasty making, dinner party menus, and planning, seasonal recipes and lessons which are particularly pertinent to today’s world, such as using your leftovers and adapting your favourite recipes.

Because Sandy also believes that every young person should be taught the basics of cookery, particularly students preparing for university, she also plans a student survival cookery course and will be selling gift vouchers for this course that can be slipped into a birthday or Christmas card.

This, I think, will prove that perfect gift for a young person.

Although the shop is no longer open, she invites those who spot her working in the kitchen to pop in and discuss their dream dinner party that she can help them create.

You can visit her website www.cornucopiacooks.co.uk or phone her on 07551 876 285. As Sandy is now taking a well-deserved week off to potter in her garden and relax in her own home, this exciting new idea will not be getting under way until next week.