A throwback (re-edited) blog post from the original site first wrote in 2015

Cooking is it a chore, or is it pleasure, or is it something you don't do? A "woulda, coulda, shoulda Beverley Knight" concept of cooking.

Do you use the don't have time ethos or do you use cooking to de-stress?

Does your palate desire and require fine flavours, quality ingredients, or do you prefer the bland or processed flavouring?

I am of the favour of cooking, cooking daily its part of my therapy, a bit like exercise. Still, I do do the cooking I just never get around to fitting in the exercise routine*, and if I'm honest, I'm not highly opinionated if you choose not to cook or cook. I just know what I like, what I want, and I don't want a ping of a microwave, cardboard tasting and sensation feeling dinner.

I don't want to read a list of ingredients that are not letters, I want to revel in the names, the origins, the providence (bit fancy pancy currently but really knowing where your food comes from is part of the story). The ability to link other ingredients, create a new recipe, ad, omit, create a dish that makes you salivate as you prepare. I am currently working on a cookbook and will start by adding a recipes tab from next week to start my recipe Rolodex offering to share with you.

Joy Of Food: A Gourmet’s Guide to Eating and Cooking, I get pure pleasure ,the calming kind, therapeutic not the other kind (that would be odd wouldn’t it?) ,from chopping and preparing ingredients, the mise en place, for a dish as much as eating it. I'm writing this and realising this really does border on 1970s Joy of Sex which I have just googled. It was subtitled a Gourmet’s guide to lovemaking! Something I didn't know. Well my book would be a Joy of Food, need to add here that this is not about sex, just the enjoyment and joy in its simplest terms being gained from cooking ...this post is going in the wrong direction. Also researched the Joy Of Cooking and it is one of the United States' most-published cookbooks. It has been in print continuously since 1936- so it now on order! Let’s check this one out and also add it to the burgeoning Cookery Library.

Let's resume normality .... I must also say that I love eating out, I also like the odd takeaway (if I know the owner and they know me!). I have had many dodgy meals I would prefer to forget, some questionable night out eating, and all add to the Joy of Eating and Cooking. Please experiment, get it wrong, be confident, make it up, or be precise and follow the recipe, eat out, eat-in, just keep trying to use local fresh food, use butter, use salt of the high quality you can afford. My biggest advice is whatever is the central part of your dish using the highest quality of ingredient you can afford and substitute some of the other ingredients for cheaper options, and it will transform what your cooking.

Insight into maybe another post.......Food Education - I'm on my soapbox. One thing I am passionate about to the extent of soapbox stylie, tannoy using, flag-waving, placard making, is that children should be fed home-cooked, natural, unprocessed food. The education of children on food is critical, obesity for some is medical, but we can make a difference for our children, as an adult, they make their own choices our role is to give them the options to choose and cook, but this is another post to come and one I am happy to argue my case. I have no intention to antagonise or create battle just like to hear the opinions of others, their views, their thoughts it grows your mind and makes you think a little more which I personally find a growing experience, you may you may not. I am just a food-obsessed lover of cooking and the pure ecstasy of eating real lovely food.

Reference or for discussion listen again. Radio 4 had a truly excellent review of food, ready meals, from the Radio 4 Food Programme, February 3rd, http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03sr7f or use BBC radio 4 listen again and see what thoughts this provokes if any?

*since this was originally written I walk 8-10 miles a day so i fit both in now! Go me.!