Welcome to my new blog

I love food. Or at least I think I love food. I certainly adore pizza and a few select pasta dishes. I like so-called trash foods such as burgers, nuggets, chips (fries) and all of their ilk. My palate is incredibly ‘child-like’ in places. The idea of eating curry or a Chinese takeaway used to make me want to cry (I’ll explain the melodrama below) and now I am able to eat both. However, pizza, pasta, trash food and two kinds of takeaway are not a developed palate, obviously.

I should explain now that I am a 27 year old man with mental health problems that affect me day-to-day with inconsistent levels of severity. Relative to actual huge problems that individuals and the world have, my inability to eat like an adult is not really that much of a problem at all. Thus when/if I am melodramatic about food it is more about my mental health than some giant fear of new meals. Food is a source of daily comfort for many people and the struggles of daily life drive most people to what comforts them rather than what they may need to be healthy and/or develop themselves. With daily anxiety and low mood issues, falling back on a burger rather than trying some new dish can be a matter of emotional survival, or at least it feels that way. Some of you who read this post will simply tell me to power through or get over it and just eat what I don’t like. Sometimes I am perfectly able to do that and sometimes I am not. The fact I am capable of this is why I have started to eat new foods. On the other hand I am often not capable of pushing through the anxiety surrounding food. I ask that any readers respect my experiences as valid and real.

However this blog will not be for those people who react negatively to my anxieties. It’ll be for those who’ll sympathise with my problems and my desire to improve my dietary range. People who love food in all its variations and want to see that joy spread. I’d like to be one of those people. I’d love to hear their recommendations and thoughts. As this blog will mostly be posts, unlike this one, which are about individual things I am currently trying, readers will know from my reactions what else I may like or want to avoid (for the time being). On the other hand I have multiple friends with similarly fussy diets. In fact I am the least fussy of the fussy people that I know. (Perhaps why I am able to do a blog exploring my own diet).

So I want this blog to also be a safe place to be for people who directly empathise with my food struggles. I note all the other people as fussy as I am are male, with one exception. I think it’s not unfair to say there is a degree of expectation put upon men to be into eating meat and potatoes more than anything else, whilst developing a more varied palate is considered by some to be a feminine pursuit. I heard gruff blokes refer to any food that isn’t meat and potatoes as “rabbit food” many a time. Men who replace dairy products are called ‘soyboys’ and less than Scientific YouTube pundits try to argue this staple bean will actually turn you into a woman.

So that’s my blog. I’ll be mostly eating a new thing, maybe more than once, reacting and sharing my feelings. My feelings may stray into discussions of mental health from time-to-time, but I’ll try and keep it light. Occasionally I may write on the gender dynamics I see around food culture if people like that sort of thing, maybe also environmental issues. If you read this and want to make recommendations, I’ll accept any and all suggestions. I have no issues with vegan meals, nor ones with meat and dairy in. I may refer to my own diet as ‘child-like’, but I don’t want anyone with a similar diet to feel I’d apply that standard to them. Sometimes I may use such lazy short hands when in want of a better description.

In addition to this blog I run one about media (films, TV, comics and literature, video games and so on) called Mini Media Bites. Have a look if that sounds cool to you. Here is my YouTube channel as well, which is about to undergo some major redevelopment.

I will also soon be developing a separate YouTube channel with my girlfriend Becky who is incredibly skilled at crafting and adept at baking. The plan at the moment is that she may do tutorial videos on crafting things of all different sorts and in addition to this we’ll do comedic videos where she tries to teach me crafting and baking skills. All of this will be linked to various social media platforms and in turn everything will be linked to buying things from us, or requesting Becky make a particular item. You should check out her Instagram page and her artist Facebook page to see what she can do, but I’ll also leave some examples below. Her Instagram is also full of pictures of our adorable cat Selina.

Thank you for reading and I look forward to our journey together.

I’ve not put Becky’s photos in yet as I’d have to get them off of her and check which ones she is comfortable being seen on my blog. Watch this space.