I love my food, there’s no doubting that. I’ll never be one of these stick-thin types, a) because I have child bearing hips and b) because food has an important part to play in my life - growing it, cooking it and savouring it.

I come from a family where every occasion is marked by some sort of meal or foodie event. We’re a bit continental, in that our extended family often gets together and feasts. In the summer and autumn, a lot of the food we eat is home-grown, and tastes all the better for it.

I really enjoy cooking from scratch. In fact, I rarely don’t cook from scratch, unless I’m whacking something like a beanburger on. It might sound extremely tragic to those that are living high-flying careers, but cooking my dinner is a highlight of my day. Rich is far more experimental than me with his dishes -I tend to stick to my favourites (I could live on home-made soups for months on end) and cook them on a rotation. He went through a phase of making proper italian pizzas, the dough, the tomatoes, the buffalo mozzerella, fresh basil, baked on the back of a hot cast iron dish. They were stunning. He inspires me to try harder.

We both like to cook, so a lot of the time we cook our separate meals, which sometimes results in jostling and cries of “can you get out of the way!” and “oi, I need that pan!” or “do you have to stand there?”.

This summer I’m aiming to find interesting uses for all the produce at the Smallest Smallholding. I can’t wait until I’m able to walk a few yards, ponder over the vegetable patches about what to pick or pull up, and what I can do with it. At the moment though, there’s not a lot of edible stuff here, it’s all growing, germinating or yet to be sowed. I still have yet to master the whole productive year-round and storage thing.

Which means that at present, I am relying on the supermarket (bleurgh) for my ’scratch’ ingredients. Veg, passata, frozen peas et al. Farmer’s markets are thin on the ground, a bit like my cash situation. No cash, no food from the market or farm shop. The supermarket isn’t so bad at the mo, there’s a nice looking security guard there that I don’t mind ogling from afar, much to Rich’s bemusement (”…but he always looks so moody! You’re weird.”).

ANYWAY - I will finally make my point. Cash flow is crap at the moment, thanks in part to humongous vet bills, quarterly sky-high gas bills (despite our best efforts to be efficient) etc etc. So we are on a very very very tight, strict food budget. I needed to go on a bit of a diet anyway. 7 chocolate brioches, a few doughnuts, cookies, cakes and crisps later and I’m not exactly looking my best. Remember I have this school reunion to go to - I really don’t want to be the “one that got chubby”.

But being on a budget means that I am actually eating three GOOD square meals a day. I can’t afford the extras. So it’s like putting a little in and getting the maximum out. I don’t understand all this “I’m poor so I can’t afford to eat healthily” stuff. If anything, money makes me fatter! I have no self discpline when it comes to cakes, biscuits, bread and crisps.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 24th, 2008 at 6:12 pm and is filed under foodie, veg. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.