The first post...

It's got to be said, food is the significant other in my life, given how much attention I give to it.  My relationship with food could have gone either way - whilst my parents are adventurous eaters, my maternal grandparents in particular were the meat and two veg-boiled-within-an-inch-of-its-life types.  For my grandparents, what was important to them was having sustenance at regular times.  Naturally - they were both from working-class families, and grew up during the lean times of the 1920s and 1930s.  They also endured 14 years of rationing during the Second World War and the reconstruction of Britain in the 1940s and 1950s.  Getting food in you was the priority - not faffing about with flavours and textures as I might.  My parents were the typical postwar baby boomers, who by the 1970s were eating their prawn cocktail and drinking Blue Nun, but also branching out into paella, curry and beyond.  I picked up their journey through food by getting myself down the motorway to London at the first opportunity to go to uni.  


There's something to be said for finding yourself young and impressionable and living with people from all around the world.  After passing out in a flamboyant and dramatic fashion in my uni canteen and a b*ll*cking from my GP about eating properly, I put a renewed effort into learning how to cook.  Gone was the Smash the consistency of Play-Doh, in was making stir-fries from scratch.  Add to this mix new friends from across the globe, and my interest was piqued.  Being friends with South Koreans led to the discovery of kimchi and seafood stews; a Columbian flatmate taught me how to make dulce de leche.  Greek friends introduced me to a world of moussaka and salads I had never even dreamed of.  When we were flush, we'd go out to Greenwich to the Mexican/Tex-Mex restaurants or the noodle bars; and we'd also rustle up stuff at home.  The die was set.


Although it's not the main area I research for my day job, the role of food and its consumption in modern Britain is something that fascinates me.  For many Britons today, food is a fuel, a means of getting yourself from A to B, from B to C and back home.  There are Britons who go hungry in order to feed their kids, and then other people who are malnourished because they don't know how to cook properly or what foods are better for you.  Then there are the likes of me, who have the luxury of living in a city which indulges their desires for satisfying a basic human need with trips to restaurants and buying all manner of weird and wonderful ingredients.  Food is more of a fetish for me - in my world, Observer Food Monthly is to me what top shelf magazines are to others.  Love him or loathe him, Jamie Oliver has done a good job in getting these issues back on the agenda.  And there's another story about globalisation and cultural tourism, in which we in the West are able to have exotic fruit and vegetables all year round and to pick from a wide array of culinary traditions as our whims dictate, perpetually tying people in poorer countries into the capitalist system.  Or just to be in the privileged position in which you can be shown new foods by people from other countries and cultures.  I'm not planning on unravelling this this evening in one little post, but it is a fascinating subject and one I'm going to return to, in amongst reflections on restaurants and what I've been putting together at home...