The downside to my love affair with food.

Seventeen years ago, nearly eighteen now, my love of food and recipes really began. It all started when I told my Grandma that I was sick of cooking the same stuff all the time and I requested that she send me her veggi lasagne recipe. I never did get it and I’m even starting to wonder if it was indeed a veggi lasagne at all? I was a vegetarian for years for various reasons, I’ll tell you what though, I’ll be really disappointed if that lasagne wasn’t vegetarian, not because I would be upset for being tricked into eating meat, but because it was the best veggi lasagne I had ever eaten.. Anyway although she didn’t send me that recipe she did send me magazine recipes she collected for me (I still have them) and free booklets from newspapers, there were even free samples of recipes too – and so my collection began.

 For a little while I was collecting recipe cards in German, because that’s where I was at the time. Then I bought some magazines. In 2001 my mother left my biological father and she gave me a small collection of cookbooks, and my little collection grew a little more. I wasn’t allowed to try any of them though for several reasons, cost, ingredients he didn’t like or it interfered with his weekly set menu, and to double ensure it never happened he would do all the shopping. What he couldn’t stop me doing though was reading and I did read, over and over again, picking and choosing recipes that I wanted to try, recipes that appealed to my foodie adventure! I have had to wait years to get to where I am now, to be able to experiment in the kitchen, with fresh ingredients and recipes. I have my husband to thank for that, unlike the father of my children he has an appreciation for good food and an ability to try anything even when he doesn’t like an ingredient. Thankfully there is very little he won’t try and like me he prefers fresh or frozen over canned.

 I buy a few canned goods such as tuna, sweetcorn, baked beans, tinned tomatoes and that sort of thing, but I cannot abide canned or jarred veg like, peas, carrots, potatoes or green beans etc.. I think most things come jarred (I hate them that much my face is screwed up in utter disgust as I type) I like my veg to be cooked but not soft, there is nothing worse in my opinion, than putting food in your mouth and it disintegrates before you have even had a chance to chew. I am forever reading “best quality” or “the best you can afford.” From experience I know this to be true, better quality does for absolute certainty, mean you get better tasting dishes. Although to be honest it is that way with anything, cheap toilet roll and you are going to put your fingers through it when you wipe your bottom, unless you use the whole roll at once, cheap trainers? The soles fall off in a month, cheap batteries and your flashlight stops working in the middle of the woods, or your Xbox controller stops working in the middle of an online COD game. So why would food be any different? The answer is that it’s not.

 I don’t buy the supersaver items and I only buy certain store branded foods, it utterly depends on what I am going to do with it. There is still no doubt in my mind that proper Philadelphia is better than the store brand, but if I am going to make a cheesecake or a sauce, I’ll use the store brand, even in these instances there is no doubt in my mind that buying and using the Philadelphia brand would make it taste much better, but I am also a woman with a budget and I have to choose brands carefully. Buying store brands and supersaver are going to save you money without a doubt, so it is down to you  therefore, to decide where to spend and where to save. If I had the money and could afford to do so, I would always buy best quality brands, to ensure the best tasting food.