and so it begins...

I have been thinking for a few months now about writing my first food blog. My love of food is becoming more of an obsession in recent years. It's reached the point where I visualise my friends and family groaning at the sight of yet another photograph of my daily diet flashing up on their social network feed. It's time I took those photographs to feed the fellow 'foodies' out there.  I am from a family of food lovers. Often food is cooked and eaten together around the kitchen table. Music playing, wine flowing and I have to say it is a lot to do with my mum. 

My mother is a lover of Italian food after growing up with a family of Italians for neighbours. They gave her her first mushroom to taste, they taught her how to cook pasta and she watched them cook delicious tasting sauces they had cooked from scratch. This which was completely foreign to the food my Grandmother prepared. My mum grew up to be a firm believer of cooking from scratch.

My own story starts at around the age of 4 and it revolves around discipline. Preparing the daily family meal was usually when my mother found things a little too stressful. Dinnertime was when myself and my siblings would start squabbling. With a husband who would be still working upstairs (freelance illustrator) my mum would soon reach the end of her tether and would select a perpetrator to be dragged off to the kitchen and told to stand on the 'naughty stool' with their index finger placed over their lips. When I was 'the chosen one' I would soon stop snivelling and I would begin to watch the way my food was being cooked. This is when I feel I can pinpoint the very moment I became inspired.From then on (at an early age) I was shown how to use a sharp knife in order to prepare vegetables. Not long after I was preparing the odd family meal. I soon  became aware that I had a heightened sense of taste and smell to which my Dad would often select a 'secret ingredient' to put into his own cooking- to which I often guessed correctly.

Fast forward 25 years and I am constantly in the kitchen. The moment I awake, I am already day dreaming about what I can cook that evening. I feel excited when I can try new recipes I have created especially when I witness the enjoyment it can give to friends and family. Not only that but I also feel I have expanded my tastebuds due to my travels of Australia, Europe, South Africa and South East Asia. I have attended cookery courses in Thailand and Vietnam with the hope to try more. It is not only down to the cultures I have experienced but what is on my own front door- the array of restaurants now on offer and not forgetting the numerous of cookery programmes I watch and cookery books I read.

Food is, without a doubt, my obsession.