Good food equals love, bad food equals…?

Last week would probably count as one of the craziest of my life, up there with packing my belongings in my car and driving across Australia with a guy I’d only known for a few months… luckily 11 years later he ended up becoming my Permanent Dining Companion –PDC. So I got a good thing out of that craziness, but I am still trying to figure out what good thing I got out of last week… and trust me it wasn’t a foodie experience, though perhaps it was meant to be…

Without going into all the gory details (you can read about that on other blogs –just google!), I realised the cold hard truth about my relationship with food. Apart from thinking about it for a living, I treat good food, the food I feed myself, family and friends, as evidence of my love.

For example, if I was to have you over for dinner, I’d plan a meal that I know you would like because of your personality, i.e. a busy person, with not enough hours in the day would appreciate a 12 hour braised dish. A friend that doesn’t get out to as many restaurants as they may like (god, who does!!) may enjoy a reproduction from my favourite restaurant.

Good food, takes thought and love to get right. I also realised that the food I feed myself allows me to be me; if I eat well, frequent my green grocer and fishmonger, chat at the bakery and get enough exercise I feel well, healthy and satisfied. If I don’t… well last week will happen.

So, I spent the week in Sydney as a guest of a fancy television production company – yes, you can no doubt work it out – one that is making, what I thought was a cooking show for amateurs.
Fantastic I thought as I applied, a chance to talk about food to a wider audience than PDC, my friends, work colleagues and you my beloved Eating with Jack readers. (ok yes, I do talk about food a lot, but thought this may give me the opportunity to talk with more(!) people about more(!) food)

But the sad truth was that I have never, for longer than I can remember, felt more dis-attached from food than when I spent that week in Sydney, supposingly working on a food program.
I think I have worked it out though, there was no love; we ate badly, doing long very boring hours, doing no exercise apart from frequent toilet runs (to cut the boredom!) and just felt like cattle bussed in and out, with very little contact with the outside world. And wait for it – shock horror – no phones as well!

Now, you may well blink and miss my presence on the program when it goes to air in a few months, as no doubt I was not interesting enough to cry and freak out for the cameras, or slice my fingers open with a knife or throw hot oil down my chest (a great plan though, now thinking about it! ;) But since this is my food blog and I like to share with you the stories about what I eat, I chronicled my meals at the stone face of reality tv… so here it is (but remember if you want to apply next year – and why not, you may have that certain little something more than me - make sure you byo everything!)


Day 1- Sunday
Breakfast out with PDC, before he ships me off to the airport at 10am
Economy airline food, “no thanks but can I have some water please”.
A post briefing beer at a local pub, as I watch some of the younger ‘contestants’ hoe into a bucket of KFC. The food snob in me is already out, but if I’d known perhaps I would have stashed a piece for dinner the next night!
Early dinner/late lunch at Spice I am, you can see my post from last year here and soon I’ll post images from this experience, needless to say as good as its always been.

Day 2- Monday
Rise at 5.30 to preen for the cameras, breakfast to be served at 6.30 before the bus departs at 7am. Well what a debacle for the poor hotel. Obviously they hadn’t been told that 50 plus hungry anxious people would be arriving for breakfast at the stroke of their opening time.
Very little food on display, no plates and bug-eyed staff running around. I’ve been there, I felt sorry for them and grabbed what I could and headed around the corner for a coffee from a chain store. (1st out of character foodie experience of the trip…many more to come) Mental note to self, must remember that I am in Sydney and ask for strong, warm lattes at all but a few known ‘safe’ destinations.
Lunch served in our little retreat room was the best of the week. Individual lunchboxes, with mountain bread wraps, frittata and Caesar salad. Served with a very large basket of debaucherous chocolate bars of every kind, enough softdrinks to sugar high a primary school and a basket of fruit that was barely replenished during the week. An urn for instant coffee and tea bags in paper cups sat in the corner mostly unused.
After lunch I headed down to the internal café (unfortunately run by the same catering company) and ordered my Sydney latte (ie “a small, strong caffe latte, just warm please”) not scaringly bad but a life plummeting jump from my usual Wall 280 one everyday.
Dinner was a disappointment in many ways, especially the thought that they were feeding us so we could keep filming; the hotel was not a likely destination anytime soon. As we queued into the room we were offered “lamb, or beef curry” on closer inspection, as I stood aside, the options were actually labelled ‘lamb rogan josh’ and ‘beef curry’ so much for choice. Two very similar dishes, served on plain steamed rice with under-done carrot and zucchini chunks in a plastic takeaway container. I looked at mine with despair, ate the cubes of brown meat in brown sauce, the crunchy, unseasoned vegetables and pushed the rest aside. The basket of chocolates and lollies doing its evil work on the room, as kit kats and cherry ripes replaced the bland dinner so many people pushed aside. As a martyr to this blog, I selected the other meat option as a taste comparison, ate the dull vegies and made a cup of plastic tasting tea. From the highs of lunch and the first day of filming to the lows of dinner and many more hours in the studio to come, we finally departed for the hotel at 12 midnight, a cheeky 17 hours under-our-belts for the first day. A kitchen worthy effort.

Days 3-6 to come. Including a small victory in the lunch room, many, many more lollies. Oh and wait for it... what did the judges eat while we ate this? And a hopeful contender for my dish of the month.

Next installment in a couple of days. Promise.