For the love of food

I really do spend a ridiculous amount of time thinking about, shopping for, preparing and eating food. It doesn't help that the people around me enthusiastically share my love. No one I know ever suggests meeting for a drink (unless we're going to a restaurant inside a pub, and then it's just to kill time until dinner), it's always for a meal, or at least coffee and cake. And I love sharing food, I much prefer restaurants where at least some of the meal is shared. Individual meals only lead to plates being passed around so everyone can try what everyone else is having anyway. The only time I don't believe in sharing is when it comes to dessert. In my experience, the kind of person who suggests sharing dessert is generally not a dessert lover. And as well as not understanding what's so wrong with the suggestion in the first place, the non-dessert lover will often want something I wouldn't dream of ordering - usually involving rhubarb or rice or basil or some other ingredient that has no business being in my dessert. Then there is all the thought I have to put into the actual rules of sharing. Once I've eaten what I consider to be about half, do I leave the rest for the other person, even if they don't appear to be particularly interested in eating it? If I do leave half, how long should I wait before asking if it's okay to finish it off? Should I even ask at all, or just keep eating until it's gone and let them deal with the consequences of their poor decision to share with me? And what was that interesting thing someone just said? I was far too distracted by my dessert sharing conundrum to pay attention to the conversation at hand. I'd rather just give them some of my own dessert than deal with the angst of sharing. The other thing I don't really want to do in a restaurant is cook my own food. Things like Korean barbecue always seem like a good idea at the time, but it's never particularly fun or satisfying in the end. Eating out is about having someone else do the cooking (and the washing up, for that matter), I don't really get the appeal of doing it for myself and paying for the privilege.

Since being on holiday for the last few weeks I've become increasingly aware that any trip out of the house almost always ends up involving food in some way, regardless of what I went out for in the first place. A visit to the hairdresser becomes a stop at my favourite cheese shop on the way home. Deciding on a movie is more about whether I should go to that theatre near the great deli or the one near that bakery than it is about which film to see. It doesn't matter what I'm doing, good food and where to get it is never far from my mind. I pore over cookbooks, mostly looking at the pictures, and occasionally reading recipes for dishes I'll never cook. I have even been known to look up websites for restaurants in other cities or countries just to check out the menu and imagine what I would have if I were to eat there. And the only time I have ever "forgotten" to eat was while on holiday in New York. I was so busy gawking in wonder at everything that I had to be reminded to stop for food by my rumbling stomach. Of course it didn't take me long to figure out where to find the good stuff, which admittedly wasn't hard in New York. But for a little while there it was quite exciting to get a tiny glimpse of what it must be like to be a naturally thin person who isn't obsessed with food. It's hasn't happened before or since, but it was fun while it lasted. Well, except for the not eating part, that wasn't fun at all.