I love food.

It is really that simple.

I don’t mean that I love it in the sense that I am always eating. If you loved to play a game, would you be playing it 24/7? No, but when you did play it you would enjoy it to the full. That is how I love food.

I enjoy the smells of food cooking and how they change as ingredients heat up or interact with other ingredients. I love the changes in colours that arise from cooking. Watching something as simply as onions change from white and palest green to a dark, caramelised brown. It’s hypnotising.

When you see the ingredients on the plate in front of you, – the raw egg, crisp vegetable, grains of salt, uncooked beef – transformed into something so vastly different… That is the magic of food. That is the wonder of it.

Lifting that first spoonful to your lips, sensing the heat coming off the food, smelling it, you feel the anticipation rise. Your mouth waters. You want it. You stomach gurgles in expectation. As soon as it hits your tongue, you become an active participant in that foods journey. Regardless of if you helped in its creation or not, you are now the vessel for the story of that dish. The textures play on your tongue. Hard and soft, cooked and raw, slimy and brittle.

It’s amazing how five flavours can be so very different when they play on each other. Sweet, bitter, sour, salt and umami. Each mouthful presents itself, awaiting your approval or displeasure. When one flavour is just the smallest bit out of balance with the others it is so very noticeable.

And this is why I have chosen food. The journey from infant to the grave is constantly crossed by amazing, and not so amazing, food. It seems wasteful of me to not share my experiences with others, in the hopes that they might share theirs with me. I want to show people that fast food chains are not the places to get their food, that there is so much more out there that deep fried, flavourless food. Our lives are so full of food, does it not stand to reason to revel in it and enjoy it to the full?