About

About me...

Born in 1964, with two parents who didn't know one end of a kitchen from the other!  Well, that was a start, at least there was no competition.  I was fortunate enough to be interested in food from a very early age.  Not eating it, unfortunately for my mother, but making it, creating, experimenting, trying new things new ways.  I did, and still do, devour cook-books whole, and now, with a Kindle, I don't even have to wait for them to arrive in the post!

My parents were convinced that I should have a profession, and whilst cookery had been ok at high school it most certainly wasn't why they sent me to college!  But there are ways round these things, correspondence courses, or just down right doing it while I was out of the country seemed to work well enough.

Trained at a school of Cordon Bleu cookery in France as well as studying Food and Nutrition in the UK it wasn't long before I was experimenting with the new goodies that started arriving in the supermarkets from the early 80's onwards.  Combined with a love of travel that accumulated new flavour experiences it fuelled my cooking.  I found I could happily sit back at a dinner table and watch silent people with closed eyes and grins savouring each mouthful.  Of course, when they got used to the idea of good food most of them went back to talking non-stop while eating and passing the odd compliment.  Either way I was always happy making other people happy.

I grew up next to Southall and went to school with beautiful Punjabi girls, whose mothers taught me a thing or many about food - like how to cook English food with an Indian twist.  It was my first insight into fusion and it was to spread through my life very rapidly.  In my home nobody could mistake the fact that I am widely influenced.  So much so that some people don't think I'm English.  Southall also provided a wealth of ingredients that most English cooks didn't even know existed and which still baffle many.

In November 2010, the 25th to be precise.  The day after I had signed back up at an amazing dojo, and the day before I was due to go to Amsterdam, my 9 day migraine finally became aphasia and being alone in the house and frightened I dialled an ambulance.  After that my memories are only patches of consciousness until I woke up, many hours later, in ITU.  I had been on life support after collapsing in casualty and stopping breathing.  I had suspected bacterial Meningitis.

As I now know it was in fact a viral Meningitis, and it was that viral infection which lead to ME - Myalgic Encephalomyelitis - an illness that is dismissed by some as being non-existent, or at best a little malaise that means you nap for a while.  They are so very wrong.  Myalgic means pain, and you get it from head to toe, in every muscle, joint, bone and fibre of your body.  Encephalo means brain or skull.  You get lesions on your brain and the brain stem that cause aphasia, confusion, lack of concentration, memory problems, loss of mental focus and generally make you feel like you should be in a corner wearing a cone marked D.  Myelitis is a term more usually related to Polio.  This myelitis is the rapid weakening of muscle with use.  I can pick up a cup once, maybe twice, the third time it will shake, the fourth time I can barely lift it at all and I'm likely to drop it.

Those are only the symptoms that go with the name, they don't include insomnia, sleep disturbance, micro sleeps, narcolepsy, muscle twitches, muscle spasms, palpitations, loss of balance, bowel problems, neurogenic bladder, the same symptoms as of low blood pressure with dizziness and fainting, disorientation, distress, depression, loss of appetite, confused taste buds, mouth ulcers, swollen glands, breathlessness and an overwhelming exhaustion the like of which I had never before in my life experienced.

It de-reailed my life completely.

Now I am rebuilding it, brick by tiny brick, bite by tiny bite, as I try to fight the ME and find a happy life again.