The Death of Retail Price

One of the most foolish beliefs I've ever had is that peanuts are healthy for you in large amounts. Sure, they're fine by the handful but not by the 2lb/1kg bag full. About seven years back I figured that I ate way too many solid meals whenever I had the munchies so I decided to bring home large bags of nuts and devour them in one sitting. Calorie for calorie I was pretty much eating chocolate. Assumptions don't just make an ass out of a person it can make a huge ass out of them. It could also kill; don't ever buy discounted sushi at the end of summers day, you're just asking for trouble. It took a while for me to finally try sushi and once I did I was hooked. Believe it or not I have never been adventurous with food, even these days I'm very cautious of whatever is on offer and more often than not will go with something safe than something new. Sushi was a huge step for me in that not only was I trying something raw but it was fish, which for the most part of my life had been a sacred ingredient due to my poor upbringing. At first I tried a sushi roll, then some sashimi, then some miso soup and it was all just amazing. Even though I was quite out of my depths as far as knowledge of the Japanese culture was concerned I did pay big dollars for good food whenever I had some to spare. However, soon after I discovered the stuff I was almost put in hospital after eating some stale salmon which quite literally poisoned me to the point where I felt like I was dying. The only other time I'd felt so terrible was the time I was poison by a bucket of KFC causing me to vomit inside the family car. Apart from that my stomach has been quite resilient against bad food. Oh, wait there was that one time with a chili burger...

My father introduced me to alot of things as a teenager, he even attempted to have me start smoking at a very early age, thankfully I was always an intelligent child who knew right from wrong and always refused no matter how aggressive he was. One of the things I submitted to easily was chili, it was one of those things that truly intrigued me since the overpowering pain shadowed any kind of flavour I was meant to draw from it. As it was slowly added to my foods in increasing quantities I began to realise that there was indeed a magnificent flavour behind the burning sensation. It was my very first addiction; often I would sneak into the kitchen and pour chili sauce on two bits of white bread and top it off with some cheese slices and try not to cry while it set my insides on fire. So, the more new foods I had the more I added the firey spice, whether it was a sauce, dry flakes or whole fresh or pickled red or green chillies. Then one day it quite literally disabled me for most of a week. The hamburger that I'd eaten before the pain began was questionable without the spice; I had bought it from a local Chinese milk store and their "beef" really didn't look like any kind of beef I'd ever seen, however since I didn't have a great deal of money I ate what I was given. A couple of days later I managed to crawl out of the bathroom. It would be quite sometime before I ate anything questionable again. These days I'm on and off with chili since it appears to cause bleeding ulcers every time I over indulge, well, I'm sure its an ulcer but there is always alot of blood and pain. Always.

My very first attempt at cooking was a major disaster. It was supposed to be a bolognese sauce but it turned out to be something so terrible I had to throw the pot into the trash along with its contents. Armed with a few dollars my father had given me and no recipe I bought all the ingredients I believed went into a pasta sauce, while I was right about most of the ingredients I absolutely failed with technique and managed to burn and under cook the food all at the same time. My excitement got the better of me and if there was anything I was taught as a child it was if at first you don't succeed don't ever, ever try again. So, I didn't. This led to one of the biggest regrets of my life; for the year or so that I was living with my father and his new wife I never once stopped to ask her how she cooked. Although I usually sat nearby watching her I foolishly let the technique and knowledge of a superior Turkish chef flutter by. To this day I'm yet to find recipes to the food she prepared, which is a tragic shame. These recipes were obviously handed down to her as a child and referred back to the early days of the post-Ottoman Turkish culture. It was because of her food that I realised that there is a great history behind the many kinds of foods in the world. Thankfully she has three daughters and they will all be taught one day to carry these pages of history with them. Although my sisters may never cook for me it makes me proud to know they will have some powerful knowledge behind their aprons.

A few years ago I made another attempt at cooking, making that a gap of about a decade between then and the bolognese disaster. It was a Westernised Indian dish that consisted of beef and a number of spices. Even though I had no idea what sort of technique I needed to be employing I created an amazingly powerful tasting dish. It was rich in colour and flavour. It was just perfect. But it was expensive, which brought a damper on the whole experience; even though I had long broke away from my poor family I wasn't exactly rich so cooking from scratch wasn't something I could do regularly because of the debt I was in and the lack of full time employment. At that point in my life I was living a soon-to-be-married couple and we often shared as much of the food and utilities costs as we could so thankfully I didn't have to eat junk all the time, however the year prior to that I had lived alone and managed to gain 55lb/25kgs which means I had enough junk in my system as it was. The reason I was so overweight was for the same reason my mother had blown up like a balloon, sadness had gotten the better of me and I began to over indulge in foods I actually believed were healthy. And even if they were I was eating an excessive amount. Ironically enough I was also committing welfare fraud whilst working part time and not declaring my income, so there was plenty of dollars to spare on the mountains of crap that I ate. This was the point in my life where I was eating so much that I had to lay on my back so that I could breathe. It was going to take a serious education to reverse the damage.

My mother and step father were a strange couple, for the first few years of their relationship they were deep in love, that was until my mother fell pregnant with my sister. It was all down hill from there. Not only did they both refuse to find stable employment but they claimed for single-parent welfare payments. Soon after my sister came into the world my mother fell into a deep depression and as a result began to eat and eat and eat. Considering we were poor it was quite a sight to see her and my step father gain so much weight. After the welfare office caught up with them they were forced to find another form of income so they endeavoured down a path of quick-rich schemes that ultimately fell flat almost instantly. One particular venture saw them buying whole cakes at retail prices and selling them in separate sliced portions. On paper it was a genius idea but as it turned out it was an ass backwards step that led to the break down of the entire family. The biggest mistake they made was allowing their confidence over-run logic; "purchasing" two massive chest fridges and stacks of cakes without even gathering information on a potential market didn't help, as far as they were concerned they would sell their cake to their fellow cult-church members and make a pretty penny. Soon enough they were left to eat all the left over cake in a bid to not have to waste it. I had only just reached double digits and still I was old enough to know that if that much cake was good for you we'd be eating it all the time. Oddly enough I refused more often than not.

This doesn't mean I didn't have a sweet tooth - being hungry was one thing but saying no to sour drops or soft snakes was just insanity. Although I refused to devour the mountains of baked goods I did all I could to get my hands on spare change whenever and however I could; back in those days any corner milk store had a lolly counter where you could confidently declare how much money you had and they dispense a mixed bag of lollies in exchange. To this day I still recall the one shop at Liverpool train station that I had to walk past every day that was dedicated entirely to sweet treats. One of the first things I did when I started stealing money was buy huge bags of whatever the hell I wanted from that shop. And it was stolen chocolate bars I relied on during my short stint of living on the streets. Then somewhere along the lines I drifted away from lollies altogether, instead I started smoking and drinking coffee and alcohol. By this point my palette had completely changed and sweet things weren't sweet enough and there was never enough salt. Many years ago I quit smoking and I never really noticed that enhanced sense of taste ex-smokers talk about, bizarrely enough that happened when I recently quit drinking coffee. As soon as I removed caffeine from my diet I could taste and smell things so much better. But that didn't really matter since I'd long eliminated adding salt or sugar to my foods, yet another reason why KFC style fast food is difficult to swallow. These days my taste buds rely on the sweetness of sugar-free lollies, chewing gum and soda. If only they could invent sugar-free chocolate that was edible.