Food

Food has such a symbolic value. You don't need to know what the symbols mean, but, a feast can be like looking at the pictures in a magazine. A gossip magazine especially. You don't need to know the words to understand what's going on. The pictures are everything.

If you see a cake with candles, you know it's a birthday. If you see a Turkey, you know it's Christmas. If you see pancakes with sugar and lemon, you know it's Shrove Tuesday.

We always celebrate with food. I guess we always mourn with food. Food and our lives are as inextricably linked as fish and the see or birds and the air.

Do we eat a huge dinner on Christmas day because it's Christmas? Or is it just an excuse? Of course it is, but it is a celebration. It's also a celebration of itself. Stuffing yourself with food on Christmas day is just as traditional as opening the presents, the tree or singing carols.

That's celebration for you.

Of course, the opposite to that is that we also mourn. And I'm not thinking about a wake, here. We mourn our overindulgence over the Christmas period with dieting. All over the world, right now, people are living on salad leaves, melon and brown rice. Where's the fun in that? There is none. Of course, it's easy for the social commentators to tell us all that dieting is ridiculous, we're sheep and we'll all put it on again, but still we diet.

This January is the first in many years that I have not been on a diet. I feel empancipated.

I had a laparoscopic fundoplication about three months ago. The results are fabulous, but I still have a very small appetite and can't really eat anything too stodgy.

I would love to sit and eat a whole Tiramisú to myself, but I just can't. I would love to have a jacket potato with beans, but I can't. There is still so much which is off limits to me, it's unbearable. However, the things that I do eat make me feel joyous and in a celebratory mood. I adored the boiled egg I had this morning. It was amazing, so much so, that I sat staring at the empty shell for a couple of minutes in awe.

Now, I started to think. Sometimes a dangerous thing, I know, but not today. Am I, in my conscious mind,experiencing, because of my predicament, what we all feel, well, what most of us feel in our subconscious mind every time we eat something? I think perhaps so.

Food is a wonderous thing and should not be something we use to celebrate an occasion, event or date, it should be celebrated for itself, even the most mundane of dishes. So next time you sit down to a plate of egg and chips, think about what you're eating, think how fabulous it is and celebrate it! Food is wonderful!