Eighteenth Day of Advent: Food

Okay, enough with the mushy stuff about how much my friends and family mean to me. It’s true, they do, but today I am being a little more prosaic and blogging about another great love of my life – food!

Yes, I admit it. I am a girl glutton. I love planning meals, cooking them, eating them, talking about food, reading foodie blogs or snuggling up in bed with a good recipe book. Nigella is my favourite food writer because her recipes suit my style of cooking, and because she uses language so beautifully. Nigel Slater is also brilliant, and I love Sophie Dahl, Lorraine Pascale and Ainsley Harriott too. 

Today is a particularly good day to blog about food as I had a normal family breakfast (toasted and buttered fruit loaf, since you ask), and then an end of term lunch out with my friend (buttermilk chicken burger with slaw) and then that same friend is babysitting tonight so husband and I can have a romantic dinner a deux (assuming I can get the children to bed and to sleep on time, and I have room left after my indulgent lunch). We’ll return the favour and one of us will sit for her daughter tomorrow night so she and her husband can have a date. It’s a good system.

A lazy lunch out, followed by Anna breaking up early for the end of term, means today’s is also going to be a very brief blog indeed. Sophia is currently having a nap – probably far too late for my goal of getting her settled on time tonight – and Anna is chilling with a bit of telly, but I don’t think my window for writing is a very large one. Plus, if I do have a limited laptop the not insignificant fact that the Boden sale started today is also competing for my time!

Sometimes, normally when looking at holiday photos or being unable to fasten my jeans, I wish I loved food a little less passionately. Or at least chocolate, chips, cheese, pasta and rice a little less. But by and large I revel in it. I make an effort to eat healthily in that I try and eat lots of good stuff and pack the veg in, but I refuse to feel guilty about enjoying sugar, fat, carbs or whatever the villain de jour is as well. After all, we pretty much have to eat three times a day every day of our lives, so surely it makes sense to ensure it’s an activity that makes us happy?