here, taste this, you'll love it.

'But now old friends are acting strange, they shake their heads, they say I've changed, well something's lost, but something's gained in living every day' - Joni Mitchell, Both Sides Now

I'm going to stay with someone this weekend and I was thinking today about what to take with me and all I could think of was food.

'Why don't I stop and get that fab strawberry cake from the bakery up the road' and then,

'Prosecco is wonderful, let me get a bottle' and it didn't stop there.

Soon I'd bought most of the inside of Parti. Then I started thinking of what I could make to take with me. Like I can actually plan to make food to take to someone else when I have a family to cook for as well and a new job starting on Tuesday? Hello?

What actually happened, subsequent to buying all the snack supplies in Amstelveen, was that I started to think about the way I perceive the relationship between food and affection and how inextricably intertwined they are for me.

I grew up with my grandmother for a lot of my childhood and she only ever expressed her affection via food. She baked, she cooked, she made you clear your plate to show that you loved her back. As a result I was a hefty kid.  It also made me into one of those very same sorts of people. A 'let's feed you to death and you'll know that I care' kind of person.

'Try this chocolate covered nougat.'

'Have some of this, it tastes fabulous.'

'Try this - you'll love it.'

And the disappointed look when the other person doesn't love the thing you love, and the way they backtrack when they see your crestfallen expression and they say 'well, it was nice really. I quite liked that. I promise.'  .

I cooked spaghetti and meatballs for dinner tonight after I haven't really been cooking for a long time. Well, I haven't been cooking as in haven't been cooking all of the really intricate stuff I used to make. It's not surprising that they're called 'labours of love'.

Tonight's meatballs were bought instead of laboriously home-made. The sauce was my own, tomatoes, red wine, basil etc. It wasn't complicated as food goes, but I'd taken my head out of my ass long enough to cook so I was pretty pleased with myself. Then we're at the table and one of the boys takes a bite of one of the meatballs and says 'well, I don't really like this that much but I'll eat it because it makes you happy, Mama.'

I had to contain my sudden knee-jerk horrified reaction. Horrified once because he said it wasn't nice and I made it, dammit! and horrified twice because he said he was going to eat it all because it would make me happy.

He was going to eat it anyway because it would make me happy!

How sad is that and what am I doing to my kids? Setting them up for a lifetime of food being the way to express their emotions? Isn't this how you get eating disorders? (That was a rhetorical question.)

So, just how did you enjoy that cupcake? Please, have another. No, I insist! What do you mean you don't want one? What do you mean you're full? Oh my god, you don't love me. I'll just curl up and die. Right NOW!