Welcome.

I have been threatening to make a blog for some time now. I have been struggling however to find a suitable theme, and wondering whether anyone would actually be interested in what I have to say. Themes have spanned from bad t-shirts, to Brighton, to art, to cooking, and I have bored Ben countless times with my plans of blog domination.

It is only with the coming of the New Year that I have vowed and began to take the baby steps into the wide world of blogging. And as for a theme, I have settled on the subject of cooking and my trials and tribulations as a burgeoning student cook.

I had never cooked, and never had any real desire to, that is until I moved in with Ben in July. The homemaker within was suddenly spurred into action and I began to plough my way through ‘the Student Cook Book’ that had hither to been accumulating dust underneath my desk. Night upon night I welcomed Ben home from work with my newest culinary conquest, with promises that from now on I would make supper every night. However, although it pains me to say it, by the beginning of the second year in October I had rather run out of steam, and recipes for that matter, ‘the Student Cook Book’ had been exhausted. I turned to the Internet for inspiration, which came in dribs and drabs, but it was mainly Ben who took up the helm and put the food on the table.      

Obviously my first steps into the world of cooking were not completely unnoticed, for Christmas provided a good haul on the kitchen front. Presents ranged from chopping boards to a set of knives, and not one, not two but THREE Nigella Lawson cookbooks. This has provided me with the perfect opportunity to dip my toe, so to speak, once again into the culinary world.

As a 21 year old student just moved into my first flat I am not equipped with the bread makers and food processors referred to in most of the grown up recipe books, but at the same time I have been left frustrated by the selection in Student cookbooks, that seem to think students are completely inept in all aspects of the kitchen, to the extent that they instruct, in patronising detail, how to make beans on toast, and other such mind numbingly boring exercises. I hope, through the course of this blog, to find recipes that fit to the students’ unique requirements, to find recipes that can be created in the most basic of kitchens and on the smallest of budgets, but that are challenging enough to create a truly tasty, fresh and balanced meal.

I won’t pretend to take any credit for the invention of recipes included within this blog, but the results, presented to you through photographs and words, are down to my own skill/luck.

And so it begins…