L20 REPRAZENT

There are many things I like in life.  I like red wine and good whiskey (preferably Laphroaig).  I like long train journeys and leopardprint. I like lounging around in hot baths reading good books.  I like Miles Davis’s Some Kind of Blue, the bands Mogwai, Can and the KLF, Krautrock,  electronic music which has lots of bleeps in it, pretty vintage dresses, quirky pieces of jewellery and dancing like an idiot in grotty basement clubs in inappropriate footwear.  But above all of these things, I love food.

Indeed, you could say that food is a bit of an overriding passion of mine – which is a good thing considering I try to make a living out of writing about it. By day, I work as a freelance food & drink Journalist, writing for publications such as the Manchester Evening News, the Independent and the Guardian, and acting as the Food & Drink editor of the popular blog Domestic Sluttery.  By night, you can usually  find me in my kitchen, attempting to follow a recipe I’ve scribbled down from one of the numerous food blogs with a ladle in one hand and a (large) glass of wine in the other.

So. If I’m so busy writing about food for money, why on earth am I now blogging about it for fun? Well, firstly it’s for purely selfish reasons. November is NaBloPoMo (aka National Blog Posting Month), the ugly stepsister of the much more challenging NaNoWriMo (aka National Novel Writing Month). Whilst I like a challenge as much as the next person, I have neither the time or the inclination to write a novel in a month (I’d like to pretend that it’s because I’m really really busy, but mainly it’s just because I’m really really lazy).  So I’m taking the easy route by trying to write a blog post each month – and if I have to write a blog post every day for thirty days, it’s probably best for me to stick to writing about what I know best, namely, food.

Secondly, I was getting a bit fed up of reading food blogs whose writers were based in London. No offence to all of you London food bloggers out there, you’re a talented lot, but as time has gone on I have started wondering why I couldn’t find many which were written by authors who, like me, live in the North West of England.  After all, it’s not like the area is some kind of culinary wasteland where the highest form of haute cuisine is a Gregg’s Steak Bake. Manchester is overflowing with wonderful restaurants, quirky cafes and farmers markets showcasing the best of Lancashire produce. Whenever I wander around Liverpool, I’m often spoilt for choice when it comes to places I can sit down and scribble down my thoughts over coffee and homemade cake. Events such as the recent Manchester Food and Drink Festival are always massively popular – so why aren’t more Northern types knuckling down at their laptops to write about the best and worst of Northern cuisine?

Hence why I am (for better or for worse) sticking my oar into the fray and trying to write about my culinary adventures around Manchester (where I’m originally from and where my family are based), Liverpool (where I live with my boyfriend, a belligerant  Communist Scotsman who refuses to eat vegetables) and everywhere inbetween. I can’t always guarantee that it will be coherent, but I will at least try and make it tasty. I’ll talk about the things I like to eat, and the places I like to eat them in. Oh, and there will probably be some recipes as well, all of which I’ll attempt to make in my small kitchen and document via the medium of slightly wonky pictures taken with the camera on my Blackberry. (I am many things, but alas, I am not a photographer).

So yes. Pull up a chair. Pour yourself a glass of wine.  Slice yourself a slab of cake. And let’s begin.