pandemain

Until January 2009, I did not cook. I ate food (often with a vengeance), I enjoyed food, but I couldn’t be arsed with the making of it. My university days were a haze of jacket potatoes with beans and cheese, domino’s pizza and subway sandwiches, with the very occasional mince-based creation thrown in for good measure.

In January 2009, I found myself away from uni and away from my parental home. I was living, for the first time, in my own home, with my own man, and his own very hungry tummy! So, I donned my metaphorical apron (we do have a real-life one, but I’ve never been very taken by it), rolled up my metaphorical sleeves (and probably my real-life ones also), and plunged right in at the deep end of domestic godessliness.

In the intervening year and a half between uni and moving out I had been living at my parents house. My mum is a fairly indomitable culinary force, and despite frequent observations regarding how little help she received in the kitchen department, always seemed fairly loathed to give up her spot as head-chef. Thus it was that when I came to leave the fold, I had a) put on a stone, b) gained an insatiable appetite and c) forgotten any of the mince-based dishes I might have invented at uni.

Cue a few weeks of cack-handed cooking whilst trying to keep the phone attached to my ear and a mammoth mobile phone bill and quite frankly is it a surprise the profits of our local pub/eatery went up ten fold!

Twasn’t until I chanced upon a copy of Delicious Magazine, at the cafe next door to where I worked that I had my food epiphany. I was a grown-up now, so able to make what I wanted, when I wanted and exactly how I wanted – what could be more fun than that! That very evening I made macarons, the next night cookies, then bread, cakes, pancakes (lots of pancakes), eggy bread,  fry-ups, stir-frys, curries, warm salads, cold salads, nacho’s.

I haven’t stopped since.