Five years ago, I cooked my first proper meal.

It was a plate of scones. It was a complete mess, but I enjoyed it.

Then, two years ago, I decided to become vegetarian.

While I’d never particularly enjoyed meat, only then did I finally decide to cut it out of my diet entirely. I was happy, and looking forward to the future.

But last month, I started eating meat again.

For reasons I find difficult to explain properly, there was something about the restrictiveness of the diet that I just don’t like.

Not a Vegetarian is the story of my food journey, from a man who could burn his house down boiling an egg to someone who actively enjoys cooking and exploring new recipes. The story of my diets, from being a meat eater to becoming vegetarian and learning to eat meat again. But above all, it’s the story of food.

I came to Substack to share my newfound love of cooking and to (hopefully) teach others a thing about food.

Every week, I’ll try to share a different story from my food journey, from my great-grandmother’s pastry recipe to experimenting with creating rose hip sorbet (yes, I did that).

Some weeks, I may not be able to. Others, I’ll be practically tripping over myself to press the publish button.

But one thing’s for sure. I want you to be a part of it.

If you love food, or if you don’t yet, this is the publication for you.

I hope you’ll enjoy it.

Here are some totally unbiased recommendations for what you can read next.

• 🧑‍🍳 My cooking journey - My story of rediscovering a love of cooking and drifting through many diets.

• 🧀 Cheese, ketchup and chaos - The story of the first thing I ever cooked, when I was 6 with my grandma - cheese straws. Far too much ketchup but a lovely memory.

• 🍨 My panna cotta failure - The story of how I failed to make panna cotta three times and only narrowly managed it when I wrote this article.

• 🇳🇱 A trip to Amsterdam - Culinary recommendations from my trip to Amsterdam.

• 🍧 A week of sorbet, syrup, and slightly poisonous fruit - How I turned two kilograms of rotting rosehips in my garden into (very) icy sorbet.

• 🍅 Learning to love tomatoes - My experience as someone who hates tomatoes, and how I eventually changed my wicked ways.

• 🍞 It’s been 4 years since my sourdough starter died - My story of making a sourdough starter in the pandemic but eventually having to throw it away.

• 💣 My grandfather’s real-life memories of eating during the war - You can’t this one. All about how eating changed during WWII, told from the perspective of a real-life ten-year-old living in Derbyshire.