I love food - it's a wonder that I can fit into trousers anywhere between a 32-inch waist and 38-inches (if one believes what it says on the labels). I love cooking and I love eating - in short, I love food for its own sake. What I cook and what I buy is not, for me, a lifestyle statement, a political badge, a gilded certificate of ethical beliefs - food is what sustains me and is undoubtedly my greatest pleasure (obsession, some may say) in life.
I'm unashamedly middle-class, although I think I would have made rather a good aristocrat - I eat lunch and dinner, not dinner and tea; I sit on a sofa (not a settee), in my living-room (not my lounge), and I go to the loo, not the toilet.
I discovered, back in the early-1980s, when I was training in cocktails, that I have a very good palate - I can imagine flavours and build up quite complex combinations in my head; I never thought to be exceptional and it is only with the passing of years and the transfer of that gift to cooking that I have accepted it is quite rare.
As I was not formally taught in catering - I studied Sociology - I do not find myself hidebound by tradition: a friend who is a very successful restaurateur, at the age of 16 or 17 told one of his catering lecturers that he (the teacher) didn't know what he was talking about and quit college. He's never looked back, and has been a tremendous inspiration to me over the last 25 years.
So, I've nailed my colours to the mast - now, to the excellent article on food and class in yesterday's Food Monthly, Observer, 13th March 2011. Louise Carpenter makes it very clear that this does not pretend to be an empirical study, it is little more than a series of vignettes, but no less illuminating for that. What I can't quite get my head round is this: the father of one of the families featured (2 adults and 2 kids, one of whom is vegetarian) is German (resident in the UK for 20 years), describes himself as "working-class", is said to be a "dinner lady" for a local nursery, and spends £178 on food in a week - £65 of that on meat for just 2 dishes: shin of beef on Saturday night and pork belly for Sunday lunch. Lovely ingredients, honest "peasant food" - the sort of thing that I buy regularly, but pay little more than £3 a pound for. I'm greedy and allow half-a-pound of meat or fish per person, so for six meals - remember that the pubescent daughter is vegetarian - my meat cost would be less than a tenner. Their meat cost, at that allowance, equates to £21.66 per pound. That's close on £50 a kilo! Just to pay their weekly food bills - nothing else - would entail a gross taxable income of more than £12,000. How, I want to know, do they afford it?
