Party politics are quite upsetting. I've been a member of the Labour party, the Green party, the Women's Equality Party, the National Health Action Party and now I'm not a member of any.Collection: Equality
Food is such a basic need, a fundamental right, and such a simple pleasure.Collection: Food
But I know that trying to black out my past with oblivion will just damage my future. I made the decision to stop running from my fears, and to walk slowly and deliberately towards self-nurture, self-respect, and better mental and physical health.
My parents tended to cook big batch food because there was always the possibility that other children would turn up with their carrier bag and shoes and we had to gently bring them out of their shells.
I was working with the fire service in a job that should have been a job for life, with career progression, with a pension and promotion, and within a year I was sleeping on a sofa under a section 21 notice being evicted from my home and not eating or four days.
I spent 18 months with the furniture parked in front of the radiators, cooking as quickly as I possibly could to use the least amount of gas and electricity. I unscrewed the lightbulbs in the hallway, unplugged everything at the wall so not even the LCD display was blinking away on the oven.
My bark is far, far worse than my bite.
I wear Doc Martens leather boots, so I'm not a vegan. I am a vague-one.
It took 24 years for me to harness my autistic traits into something useful, and I have grown to regard them as a kind of superpower. Cooking, to me, is akin to algebra, and my mind a pocket calculator.
I live in a world where I want everyone to be able to put beurre blanc on the table for dinner.
For some people, pronouns are a very important part of how they identify. I completely understand that. For me, I have more of a looser interpretation.
Even in my genre, cookery, just look who gets on the television. Jamie Oliver, Gordon Ramsay, Nigel Slater. All very nice men. All white middleflclass men.
I think as much as people moan at things like award ceremonies, it gives people role models. It provides real positive reinforcement that you can be who you are and still massively achieve.
When I was born my parents lived in a flat so small that it now legally can't be rented out as a dwelling.
I've had success, but I'm still haunted by the fear of being hungry. Once you've lived it it never leaves you.
People nag me about my weight, my cooking, my tattoos, my hair, my sexuality, everything. I can deal with all that because I'm still doing my job and I kind of like myself.
As a kid we would eat moussaka with mash. We had a real fusion of two cultures that no-one has dared to fuse since.
You don't see very many Irish-Cypriot pop-up restaurants kicking about!
I never learned to cook, so I've got no rules. I'll put things together just because I think they belong together.
And I'm autistic, which means I can be hyperfocused but also all over the place at the same time. I think I'm very lucky to have found cooking because it's the one area where a brain like mine really thrives.
I remember going on adventures with my older brother and, when I was 11, being allowed to go to the corner shop alone, and filling up a bag with penny chews, Fruit Salads, Bruiser bars and Black Jacks.
I have a surprisingly large appetite anyway and I don't drive, I walk everywhere, I don't sit down at the moment and I pace the hallway when I'm on the phone. I think that if I didn't eat large amounts of carbs and cheese I would wither away into a husk.
If I've learned anything in the last seven or eight years it's that my career flies by the seat of my pants and that every time I'm booked for something, I'm ill, and anything - like a TV opportunity - I treat as my last ever one because it's maybe my swansong.
Food poverty comes in two strands. The first is not having enough money to buy food for yourself and your family. The second is poverty of education.
Actually if you were to buy a bag of dried lentils it would cost you a couple of quid. Some people don't have that to spend in the first place. And not everyone wants to eat lentils.
Because I'm in the media quite a lot now, everyone assumes that everything is fine. People forget I sleep on a mattress on the floor with my son in a house I share with five other people.
Until people realise benefits doesn't mean scrounger, and austerity isn't a fun middle-class way to grow your own vegetables, there's still a lot of work to do.
When I was at my lowest point I had a lot of help from charities, food banks, to see me through so it is nice to start to give something back.
I had such a run of bad luck that you lose faith that good things are going to happen any more. I still don't answer the door because I went through so long expecting it to be a bailiff.
I'm very careful with the money I have, I pay myself the living wage, and I try to save the rest, because if life has taught me one thing it's that you never know what is around the corner.
I left home at 18, I thought I knew everything. It was fun for a while and then it wasn't fun any more.
Tinned food can be cheaper than buying fresh stuff. Things like tinned carrots, tinned potatoes, mushy peas make a good base for a soup.
I think the thing about cooking from tins for me that I really enjoyed was... the convenience of it, the slight entertainment side of it. Just the surprise of being able to crack open a couple of tins, pour them into a pan, and 15 minutes later you've got a fantastic dinner on the table.
If you consider each individual tin as just the building block for a larger recipe, it doesn't really make much difference whether it comes from a tin, or whether it's fresh because it's just being used in a lot of other things.
You can pretty much make anything with a base of tinned tomatoes. If I don't have tinned tomatoes in my cupboard, I start to panic - it's a genuine thing.
I'm publicist, patron of nine charities, creative director, food consultant, recipe developer - and mum.
I was a young mother with a dependent. I went from nice flat and fire service job to cold and hungry with a child. I lived rough for two years, with six months relying on the food bank.
Don't say things about people that aren't true... because there are consequences for that.
I was a bit of an accident really - I certainly didn't set out to write a cookbook or three. I didn't have a plan. I was unemployed, writing a blog about local politics and a few recipes, and it was more successful than I could ever have imagined it to be.
I can be wildly enthusiastic and want to try to do everything that I feel would be useful and educational and beneficial - but I've crashed and burned a few times.
Working 90 hours a week is easily racked up when you're self-employed and rely on portable tech to do your work; your train journeys, toilet breaks, leisurely walks, bedtime, can all become 'working hours'. Reclaim them.
I think I'll be around as long as there is a market for simple, basic, non-intimidating food.
My politics are food-related - food banks, the living wage, zero hour contracts - and my food is political.
All kids are fussy eaters - they go through phases where they'll only eat red food or they just want to eat porridge. With fussy kids, the best thing to do is use what they do like and work around it.
The thing with my recipes is, I don't have hours to faff about in the kitchen. My recipes are all 15, 20 minute, chop it up and stick it in the oven.
Learning to cook at school gave me the confidence to experiment in the kitchen when I left home in my late teens - I wasn't intimidated by it.
After you've cut back everything else, food is the last to go. I didn't mind putting an extra jumper on if I had food in the fridge. It was the point where I had an extra jumper on and no food in the fridge that I realised things had gone badly wrong.
I know that I can cook well on a low budget so I can't really justify spending a fortune on food.
The last time I celebrated a special occasion, I hashed together a paella with some chicken, some frozen veg, long-grain rice, chilli and a shake of turmeric for colour - and it didn't disappoint.
I'm well-known for saying unsayable things.