Bitter-sweet home

It's exactly a week since, after approximately 30 hours travel from Japan, I made my sleepy way from Heathrow airport, via Virgin Pendolino and a lift from my sister in the new family runabout (a Ford Ka, with it's weird too-plasticky moulded dashboard and too-big plasticky black bumper), to my parents' house.

Now that I'm over the jet-lag, the reality of being in an even more remote countryside spot than my previous home in rural Japan (if I'm going by number of people I know here - zero - and stuff to do in the nearest accessible town - not a hell of a lot) is sinking in, and conspiring with a massive crisis about my career and future, to render me lethargic and unable to motivate myself to do just about any constructive thing. Thankfully, I have two aces up my sleeve to fight the inertia. The first is to do a mini-tour of Britain to catch up with my friends, who are now scattered up and down the country.

The second is using cooking to lift myself out of culture shock, while away some time, and hopefully make some people happy (I expect my greedy family will be the main benefactors). The aim of this blog is, in the main, to document my interest in cooking, which started when I wasn't tall enough to reach the kitchen counter, but has grown and grown thanks to my Italian grannies, my mother and father (experimental and self-deprecating cooks), like-minded flatmates at University, travelling, and two years living in Japan and coming across some of the most strange, delicious and meticulously presented food I have eaten in my life.