Clutching forks and knives

Suddenly food has become a really big part of my life. I'm inventing new dinners from scratch in my head, then going to the kitchen and turning them out as if I've done each dish thousands of times before. I'm planning out a Christmas meal (of some sort. It may turn into a series of small Christmas snacks). I'm using the internet to research approximately eleventy-hundred different and unusual types of cookies. I'm surrounding myself with palisades of recipe books as I drink tea in the evenings. I'm taking aside the Englishman in my team at work to quiz him about how he makes fruitcake. And of course, being the time of year that it is, we keep on and keep on going out for lunch.

The key point about all this newfound foodology is that I actually have the time, now, to do it properly. If this is what it's like having a job and a life, I'm in.