Food glorious food

I'm a bit obsessive about recipe books, restaraunt reviews and food blogs, and I've just come across a website called The Skint Foodie. I'm still browsing, but suspect I'll find a fair few recipes to try out.

The basic premise is that you can eat well, luxuriantly even, on a budget. I discovered when I was utterly impoverished last year (and yes, I'm talking middle-class girl with a home to live in and no dependents impoverished, not single mum feeding a family of four on a pittance impoverished. I'm aware that I don't know I'm born), that I could feed myself for little more than I spent on feeding the cat, and she was living on own-brand crunchies. There was no joy in it, however, and I used to wake up in a cold sweat at night, desperately doing sums in my head to work out if the packet of pasta I'd just bought was going to mean that my electricity direct debit tipped me over my overdraft limit.

When my personal economy became a little more stable, I still had residual guilt about spending too much on food; especially as I was on a three-month preliminary probational period at the new job, and didn't 100% trust I'd make the grade (I'm still there, so I assume I did). This meant I tried to keep my spend down, and I now eat very well and happily on 20-25 quid a week. This can easily rocket though. Some weeks I want to treat myself to a big slab of really good cheese, or it's time to replace the olive oil, and I want to buy a decent one. This occasional extravagance doesn't bother me. I like good food, and I see it as a 'healthy' spend. What does bother me is when my shopping bill shoots up because I've filled my basket with crap: crisps, ready meals, big bags of sweets that I don't even want.

There is something the author of this site says about food and depression: "I can tell you that getting back into the kitchen, laden with fruit, vegetables, a slab of pork belly, a chunk of good cheese and a bag of espresso beans acts as a wonderfully restorative anti-depressant". I agree entirely. I find my eating habits to be such a good indicator of my state of mental health. As long as I'm cooking and eating proper meals, I know I'm fine. When I start popping ready meals or chips in the oven on a regular basis, I'm on my way down a slippery slope which leads to lying on the sofa stuffing my face with snackfood until I feel sick, because eating feels like the only way to alleviate that empty, anxious gnawing in the pit of my stomach, and I'm too overwhelmed with apathy and self-loathing to feed myself properly.

It's been a good few years since I've been that bad but, as someone who has suffered from depression their entire adult life and longer, I think it is important to find ways of loving yourself (yes, haha, you know that's not what I mean) and, for me, as a foodie, one of the best ways of doing this is to sit down to a proper meal, which I've taken time over. That is time devoted to caring for myself. As is the five minutes at the end of the meal, which is devoted to telling myself "You've had enough now. Stop eating". I'm working on that bit!