The monotony of a long term cook

Putting the last candy sweet, acid bright lick of icing onto a showstopper challenge cake, lifting a glass cloche to unleash a puff of fragranced steam, watching a swoosh of rich jus being painted, just so, onto the pristine white of a porcelain plate. These are sights that I cannot get enough of on my television screen.

The Great British Bake Off is must-see viewing for all the family, and I can be found, surrounded by a squirming sea of boys, glued to the soggy bottoms whenever the series airs. The orgasmic groans of Gregg Wallace as a particularly delicious pudding melts its way down his throat have me in paroxysms of joy, and don't get me started on Heston's Feast. When he crafts a jelly baby out of ox's blood and angel's breath (or something equally implausible) I can hardly contain myself.

Which is why it surprises me how dull I find cooking nowadays. You would think that someone with shelves bulging with bright ideas from Nigella and Jamie, a monthly subscription to Good Food Magazine and a family-sized belly to prove my enthusiasm for the consumption of food would enjoy the process of the creation of food more than most.

It was not ever thus, once I did relish whipping up a delectable feast for lovers, friends and sometimes, at a push, even family. I remember my first serious relationship, which spanned my late teens and early 20s, was measured in grand meals I would cook for our unappreciative young friends. They would happily live off Pringles, booze and huge chocolate bars, but was determined to be 'grown up' and host sophisticated dinner parties replete with herb-crusted lamb and lavender-infused panacea.

Perhaps it should come as no surprise that, old before our time, that boyfriend and I reached that stage of boredom with one another that wouldn't usually hit until mid life crisis years and split up when we were just past 25.

It was with a real sense of abandon that I threw out my aprons and matching dinner sets. For a good year I subsisted on Kit Kats, Special K and vats of white wine. While I am sure that I paid the price internally, that divorce diet of hedonsism and self neglect was ideal in terms of slimming me down ready to find my next catch.

Part of the attraction was that my new man helped to restore my deep affection for food and we spent our courtship enjoying romantic meals a deux and lovingly crafting meals for one another.

Then along came children. At first this did little to abate my culinary activities. I remember the night I went into labour I had just put the finishing touches to a chocolate bread and butter pudding ready for a dinner party that weekend. The arrival of a newborn put paid to the party, but we did enjoy the pudding, warmed up from the freezer, some months later.

When it was time for solids the neat, blonde, neon-white smiling Annabel Karmel, nestled herself between the quirky charm of Nigel Slater and the haute cuisine of Gordon Ramsay on my book shelves.

I learned what a mouli was for, and why it should be avoided at all costs, and could find my way to the butternut squash section of the supermarket with my eyes closed. My fridge was soon clogged by icebergs of tiny cubes of frozen mush. Meal times became a fraught battleground as I tried to persuade my son that he would not die if he let a mouthful of courgette pass his lips. I lost, as he is quite right, these are the Devil's vegetables.

This was perhaps the beginning of the end of my love affair with cooking. After spending hours pureeing and mashing all manner of exotic fruits and vegetables, wasting time that could so much more profitably have been spent, slumped, asleep, in front of the TV, seeing it tossed to the floor without even being tasted was soul destroying.

Fast forward through years and years of serving up teas of fish fingers, pizza, pasta and chicken nuggets to an unappreciative audience of children and my romance with cooking has been cremated. Every night I wrack my brains as to what to feed us all that will be nutritious, tasty and easy to make. I fall back on staples that are dull and do little to excite the appetite, but I have neither the will nor the inclination to try harder.

I thought that when my husband took over cooking duties when I went back to work things might improve, but within a month he had that same rabbit caught in headlights look when asked what was for supper.

I used to wonder why my mother said that my grandmother's fondest wish was that they would invent a tablet you could give children that would fill them up and provide them with all the nutrients they needed. Now I know just what she meant and hope that some bright spark will make her wish come true.

Annabel Karmel's feet of clay

My first experience of weaning was coloured by the primary bright pages of Annabel Karmel's bestseller, The complete baby and toddler meal planner. She alone is responsible for me staying up till all hours pureeing butternut squash and sweet potato.

It is her fault I wasted vast sums of money on a mysterious mouli device, which I could only find online from chi chi cookery store Divertimenti. Despite the expense, I used it once and then threw away its many complicated and dysfunctional parts in disgust after spending an age squishing potato through its slits, only to end up with a teaspoonful of goo my son promptly spat across the room.

My fridge was full of individually frozen cubes of veg and my son was inducted into the religion of healthy eating following her plan to the letter. He was stuffed with spinach and broccoli and not allowed a taste of fruit until he was well and truly inducted into the cult of the vegetable. I cooked every meal he ate and carried them around in little plastic pots which had a rebellious desire to spill all over my change bag at inopportune moments. I tried in vain to force the gallons of milk she recommends into my lactose hating boy, and as he grew older I fiddled with his food turning every pizza into a smiley face, every sandwich into a tempting shape.

My god I worked hard for that woman, and how was my toil repaid? Well my son is now six and his favourite food is chicken nuggets and potato Smiles, just like pretty much every other six-year-old I know, whether they were weaned on Wotsits or organic parsnip puree. So forgive me if I am a little disgruntled at all that wasted effort.

But this isn't really my gripe with AK, for while she may have caused me much personal pain, what really gets me is the way that the woman who pioneered the home made movement, who had us all stuck in the kitchen steaming, chopping and pureeing, now seems happy to slap her jolly logo onto any old box and call it healthy.

She has already endured a scandal earlier this year, when it was revealed that her Eat Fussy range of ready meals (I ask you, is that not sacrilege enough?) had more salt and sugar in than most grown up nosh in a box. But that hasn't stopped her selling her name to Disney pushing crisps and snacks (albeit healthy ones) at our kids in Mickey shaped packages. Or from slapping it on the kiddie grub served at Thorpe Park, Chessington World of Adventure and Thorpe Park.

That's not all, the lady is happy to lend her name to toys, cookery products as well as an ever expanding range of baby and children's cookery books. Given the acres of print she has devoted to weaning babies you would think it was a complex science, not just a process of shoving goo into their mouths until they are old enough to smear it over themselves unaided. All of which culminates in them all opting for burgers, chips, bolognese, pizza or chicken nuggets when given the choice.

Of course none of this would be a problem if what AK was producing was up to the high and admittedly delicious standards of the recipes she peddles, but as well as salt and sugar-gate, I notice that some reviews of her products online are less than glowing. I was looking for a mat to put under my twins' highchairs and was tempted by Annabel's bright red mess mat, until I read the other customer reviews. Both were devotee's of Annabel's books, but panned the mat as little better than a plastic bag, which at £9.99 is unacceptable.

Then I opened my fridge to see the box of teddy bear pizzas I had bought to try out on the twins had expanded to twice it's size. Puffed up like a fish in fear of its life, it looked like a toxic health hazard and I am too afraid to open it for fear of what might spew out. Of course this can happen to anyone, and may be down to poor handling by the supermarket who sold it or any number of other factors, but I'm afraid I saw it as indicative as a guru grown too big for her boots.

No one can blame AK for cashing in, but her penchant for slapping her name on any product that will pay for the priviledge whilst also polishing her halo as a champion of healthy eating for our enfants rather sticks in my craw, as I am sure would the pizza if I were brave enough to unbox it. It's a bit like Gordon Ramsay striding around provicial kitchens sneering at their poor provisions in Kitchen Nightmares, whilst happily microwaving bought in ready meals at his own pubs.

Perhaps I am displaying that horrible British trait of knocking someone for their success, but I do think that if you put yourself up on a pedestal, or your name of a veritable pyramid of ready meal boxes, there's always a threat of someone spotting your feet of clay.