I don’t know about you, but I’m that person who wakes up today and wonders what’s for dinner tomorrow. An unnecessary amount of my day is spent thinking about food. I love food. I love eating food, I love talking about food, I love (and it’s not weird), watching people while they eat their food (…it’s……research, not…weird, Jessica. Research). In fact, now that I think about it, the majority (and by majority, I mean all) of the significant relationships and friendships I have ever had were founded on food because, all the best relationships just are. And I feel like I don’t get to talk about food and eating as much as I would like, and it’s just not fair when I stop to think about it…which is more often then I’m willing to admit publicly.

The thing is, a love of food causes problems. You start to assume other people feel the same way you do, and it’s a nasty shock to the system when you realise this isn’t true. I once worked with someone who ate the same thing every day. Like, Every… Single… Day (plain boiled rice, boiled peas and half a boiled chicken breast), because food was a necessity and not something he particularly enjoyed or could be bothered to deal with. Deal…with. Like food is a chore.
I mean, who says that about food? Who?!
All these years later I still lose sleep over him.
It’s becoming a problem really.
I just…can’t.
But anyway, let’s get on with the list.

You know you love food when:

• Your attempts at dieting involve thinking intensely about the imminent diet while loading your shopping trolley with food and wondering why your diet has failed before you’ve even started it. Or…
• You actually commit to a diet (I hear this is possible?), then find yourself shame-eating a half-frozen pizza in the foetal position on the kitchen floor at 1:00am while hating yourself and questioning your life choices.
• You almost always turn savage cannibal every time you visit a restaurant with an idiot friend who doesn’t realise how close they come to dying because they couldn’t decide what to order. Its either a soup…or a salad not ‘which of your limbs do you want us to amputate’ Jessica. Read the damn menu before we get there Jessica, I WhatsApp-ed it to you for a reason. Tsk.
• You start to see food in random places. Trees look like giant broccoli…sand looks like couscous…those clouds floating by? Slow-roasted butternut squash on a bed of tomato & herb risotto…or you know, a cloud if you’re going to be fecking weird about it, whatever.
• You have more recipe books than friends and you truly don’t understand why this is considered a problem when you still have human interaction. You just prefer to spend time with your food books. Looking at them…talking to them…tenderly stroking the picture of the tiramisu on page 3…
• You get pissy because you paid 3 months wages for a gourmet meal and you get a portion smaller than a decimal. What’s with the rationing? Is there a food shortage in the kitchen? Cause if there is…there’s a grocery store across the street…I only mention it because I resent leaving a restaurant hangry. I’ll bring my own potatoes next time.
• You get pissy because you paid 3 months wages for a meal and you got a ‘deconstructed sandwich’ you had to put together yourself. I had to pay an exorbitant amount of money for a sandwich…wait for it to be delivered to my table…then I had to make a sandwich. It just seems like more unnecessary ways to postpone the eating. Also, I could have done this myself at home.
• You’ve lost weeks at a time watching food porn. And by that, you filthy minded person, I mean watching the Food Network.
• You don’t trust a food establishment which doesn’t have its lunch menu visible at breakfast. It’s like they’re not even trying.
• You have ‘unnecessarily strong and/or controversial opinions’ about certain foods and beverages. Now, I’m just saying, if you’re the type of person who puts crunchy things in soft foods (like ice-cream with sprinkles, or rice with cashew nuts), enjoys cheesecakes or brownies (which are the desserts Satan serves in hell), or eats water chestnuts (why? Are you stupid?), you should slap yourself in the face with a stick of celery. That’s not an ‘unnecessarily strong or controversial’ opinion, it’s just…Utopian, Jessica.

I guess ultimately, I just want to get along with everybody and share my food with them, but what I really want is to get along with everybody and have them say they’re not hungry so I don’t have to share my food with them, but apparently….apparently that makes you a bad hostess, and also ‘not the right person to be in charge of the cupcake table’ at your friends stupid bake sale even though you made the damn cupcakes and half…(oops, I mean all of every single  damn one of them) made it to the sale.
(Jessica).
Oh well.