History

Why I cook

My Mam was not a bad cook, she taught me lots, but here very English meat and two veg was cooked exactly to my Dad's liking, which was always my problem!  He liked very lean very well done meat, I love fat and rare meat.  I also like big savory breakfasts, which while a British tradition, was not what I grew up with i.e. cereal and toast.
So from a young (8-ish) age I started cooking, well assembling food and baking

Face salad:
Salad is a bit of a misnomer here, as in my childhood salad cam from jars, beetroot, red cabbage, pickled onions with cheese (one of the few good parts of my Dad's diet was strong cheese, he also loved chilli and mustard).  No idea why or how the face bit happened, as I am so un-arty.  Hair red picked cabbage, ears half beetroot, eyes pickled onions, mouth cut up cheese, this was the start.

Victoria Sponge – At some point around this time my Mam got an electric mixer with a stand and bowl and most importantly a recipe book.  Now I loved cake, proper little fatty boy but I didn't realise it was possible to make a cake, so following the recipe, trying both plain and chocolate recipes, obviously many horrible collapsed cakes, but plenty of success.

From then on until I left home at 18, I often cooked with massive variances in results, plenty of inedible and certainly nothing great, but plenty that would do and learnt the basics.
Moved to South Manchester then and discovered curry, never been to an Indian restaurant before, probably half a dozen Chinese takeaways in my life, no Indian, Thai or anything ethnic maybe went to an Italian once or twice...  Suddenly I'm in Rusholme, Bangladeshi heaven! Not only dozens of great restaurants and takeaways (Sanam, Abduls, Rusholme Chippy, Shere Khan) but fantastic shops for herbs, spices, olives, breads etc., as well as Kwicksave and one of the first Aldi shops in UK.
Shared living – I didn't realise until then that some people could not cook even the simplest things... Sharing a house with 7 other people and only 2 of us could actually make anything other than simple grill or fry.  Roasts, stews, sauces were a little bit of magic and helped me think I could cook, not great, not pretty, but good enough.
Twenty odd years later, working in a few countries and a bit of travelling, I cook almost every day and have a few fans (at least of my food)

That was a lot more food history than I thought I had.....