What's it all about?

For as long as I can remember food has always played an important part in my life.

The consumed becomes the consuming. Early memories include a set of saucepans as a childhood toy, making fairy cakes in a baby belling oven in my primary school classroom, playing with the ends of pastry left over from one of my grandmother's fruit pies.

As I got older I would experiment and dabble with REAL food, I'd bake a cake for tea..there is something almost magical about taking three or four very simple ingredients, mixing adding a little heat and creating some delicious morsel - a sort of culinary witchcraft. Recipes such as Spag Bog and Chilli con Carne became old faithfuls, again very simple but in my youth these were considered the height of sophistication.

One less successful venture into culinary experimentation but no less memorable was into the world of hot beverages. I remember my brother and I reading on the back of a packet of banana milkshake mix that it could be served hot, in our innocence we opted to make up the mixture with cold milk as normal and then put it in the kettle and boil. My mother could not work out why her coffee tasted of bananas for ages after that. ( Sorry mum you didn't know about that one!)

In my adult life my tastes have broadened as has my ability and I find myself constantly musing about food and running through recipes in my head, sometimes you have to take a leap of faith and try it, more often than not things work out but as they say not to try is not to know.

With that thought in mind it was in 2007 that I opted to complete an online application for the next series of Masterchef. I really didn't think any more of it after pressing the send button, but some time later I received a call from the production team. Somehow or other I made it through to the filmed stages of the competition...but that's a whole other story!

Why 'A Stable Diet' - well these are the things that I like to cook after a day running around after 43 horses and 5 labradors, they may not be the healthiest in the world but when you do what I do you build up an apppetite and get plenty of opportunity to burn off the calories! A little bit of what you fancy does you good..both physically, mentally and emotionally.