Can I offer you anything?

Hey. That’s me.

So what am I doing here then? Time for the ‘Manifesto’ post.

I’m in my twenties, I work in media, I love food — we got that bit. But what do I want to say?

Eating in

It’s struck me recently that most recipes we see only occupy the amount of time you’re actually cooking. There’s no mention of how much fancy equipment you need to do your chopping/stirring/slow cooking for you, nothing on how long it takes to wash up once you’ve created your masterpiece, and a mention of how difficult the ingredients are to find, let alone how expensive? Of course not.

There’s a lot of ‘just’ — you ‘just throw these things in the pan’ and you’ve got a delicious dinner. But sourcing and prepping those ingredients are just as much a key part of cooking as the photogenic part, so yes ‘just’ frying something is easy but without finding the freshest, tastiest ingredients and prepping them, you’re just not doing anything. It takes time, which many of us don’t have much of.

Few bloggers and food writers seemed to be relating to the generation who are currently growing up with apps promising to bring their food round for them, millennials pressured into working 50 hour weeks, people who feel like everything they do needs recording on Instagram, those who are getting more and more detached from the actual processes of cooking. People writing about it either are part of that generation but preaching to them about ‘clean eating’ and the ilk, or older than them and used to having different traditions around food.

So, here I am. I have no overarching health agenda, everything I cook (for a standard weeknight meal at least) is usually sourced from the ‘local’ mini supermarket, and budget and time are most definitely considered when I’m planning my meals for the week. I want to write about cooking as a whole, not just the Instagram moment.

Getting out there

But it’s not all ‘meal plans’ and ‘cost-cutting’, I’m also going to talk about the latest places I’m eating and drinking out and about. And that’s before we start on my wine habit.

Luckily for me, I get to sample a lot of London’s intense foodie scene through work and without boasting (ok, with boasting) I’m becoming the person friends come to for recommendations of where to go. I want to use that experience to help narrow down the best places to indulge when cooking isn’t on the agenda. There’ll be rundowns of places I’ve been and loved, and roundups of favourites on a theme.

But that’s just the start

I do also need to discuss my very poor ‘blogger credentials’.

I’m a writer by trade, yes, but not a photographer, which is a bit of a problem as blogs like this usually rely on stunning visuals. So, bear with me in that respect.

I’ve seen a lot of blogs that act more as a photo diary than a piece of writing — not that there’s anything wrong with that, but I think things will probably be the opposite over here. It might be fun seeing how my photography skills develop, but in the meantime, prepare for some READING.

Ok. More as it happens. I hope you all enjoy.

[Photo via Pexels]