Hello and welcome to the page where I bang on about myself a bit! I’m not going to rush this so take a seat, put the kettle on, grab the biscuits…
I’ve always been into eating. As a child I was the kid who showed you up when I came for supper – eating everything and asking for seconds when you were poking green beans round the plate and asking for ketchup. You didn’t poke or ask for ketchup? Great! We can be friends.
Unfortunately, no-one in my house growing up liked cooking- sad face. It’s ok, they loved me loads and I had toys and was very happy and perfectly well fed, don’t feel bad for me! My Aunty Liz however, does love cooking, and is blinking good at it too, and I think she (and her daughter, my cousin Dawn) first gave me the idea that you can actually make things that taste good at home, without being stressed AF and peed off about cleaning up afterwards. I hope my mother doesn’t read this because that bit is completely about her.
Anyway, fast forward a few years, and I took a few simple staple meals with me to uni – not for me a diet of toast 4 times a day, interspersed with cheap beer and the occasional instant noodle. Since then I have slowly but surely added to my repertoire of dishes, but also got to a point where my spare time to make dinner is mad short, and I don’t have a lot of cash to splash on restaurants or meal planning services.
I create, copy, adapt and sling together dishes for all parts of the day, year, season, plus the occasional cake or bake, pick the occasional bottle of wine or beer out to match, (not that occasional actually. Quite frequent really.) and when I have the space for a liquor cabinet and some cocktail brollies, I’ll get a few Del Boy style cocktails on the go as well. Oh and sometimes, if the stars align and I can find the right footwear, I even go foraging and brew up a hedgerow wine or nettle beer (so far all nettle beer has been disgusting but I’m hopeful for future batches.)
In summary, I love eating and drinking yummy stuff which is reasonably priced, mostly really easy to make and doesn’t break the calorie bank or that is likely to cause health issues (most days anyway. I’m not a robot) If that sounds hard, stick with me, join in with what I do and see if it works for you too.
Of course, I’m not completely driven by my tastebuds! That would be gluttony and I’m more of a Gourmand-Lite if anything… Also in my life are my.. what do you call your live-in boyfriend/fiance in your mid 30’s when you don’t want to say boyfriend or fiance? His name is Matthew so let’s just go with that. Anyway, there’s him – he doesn’t cook much but he does very much enjoy eating what I put in front of him, and he tends to pay if we eat out so that works well. I can’t forget the small cat, Coco, who isn’t that into food apart from cream (she’s a walking cliche), oh and she LOVES anything curried, particularly green beans. Weird. She also loves to sleep on or near my face at night, and is extremely generous with her fur. Here is a picture of all of us eating curry.
What else can I tell you?? As I’m self employed as a jack of all trades, I am at work a lot. And what is wonderful is that going on Pinterest for hours at a time counts as ‘work’. As I tell Matthew anyway.
Currently the two of us are on a bit of a fitness kick after putting on a bit over the summer while we travelled full time around England and Wales in our caravan-of-love. Which I creatively called ‘Cara-vin’ because we also love ‘vin’. But I’ve covered that already.
So, join me for all things delish in life, food, drink, restau