Winter Of Content

On the cusp of motherhood and off the back of a whirlwind year, Chelsea Winter opens up about finding love, having faith in the universe, and what the future holds

- Phoebe Watt

Heavily pregnant and surrounded by unpacked boxes in an unfurnished house in the Bay of Plenty, you wouldn’t necessarily expect Chelsea Winter to be a picture of contentment. Yet this is exactly how the bestselling cookbook author and former MasterChef NZ winner describes her state of mind since moving into her new home with partner and celebrated wine-maker Douglas Renall a few days before our interview.

“Sitting there together and gazing out at the Mount with this sense of peace all around us, we both feel like we’ve arrived at the start of a new adventure,” she says.

Having already made herself at home in her spacious new kitchen – whose tranquil outlook is, like every other view in the house, as yet unobstructed by blinds – she’s happily anticipating a not-too-distant future where the bulk of her days will be spent experimenting with new recipes and preparing home-cooked meals for her family. Never mind that at present, a lone Swiss ball provides a single, awkward place for visitors to perch, or that until a bed is purchased, she and Douglas are camping in the lounge on a mattress in front of the fireplace. “If you can’t see the perfection of the moment, you’re standing too close,” she says, her ‘words to live by’ seeming also to point to the low-lows and high-highs that made the past year the most challenging, yet rewarding, of her life.

It’s fitting that Chelsea has flown up to Auckland for our cover shoot on the eve of her 35th birthday. Sat in the makeup chair and cradling the bump, which she may have just accidentally revealed to be housing a baby girl (“Those are both pretty names…” she thinks aloud at the mention of two female colleagues), one wonders whether, on her previous birthday, she could have imagined how much would have changed between then and now.