So, this week marks ten years since I started Food with Mood.

I know what you’re probably thinking – this thing’s been going on for ten years, what!?

Yes, simmering away, quietly in the background. Never quite turning the gas up, flames high, demanding attention. The launch of Food with Mood (originally as a Tumblr blog before moving to Instagram and WordPress) coincided with an indie food revolution that was taking over Leeds. It was exciting and I wanted to tell people about it.

I became obsessed. I loved discovering new places and trying lots of new things. Street food markets, every weekend, became my natural habitat. When I wasn’t eating, I was consuming podcasts, books, TV shows, articles, attending talks and workshops on everything to do with food.

But I will be the first person to tell you I’m not a chef or a competent enough cook to inspire others.

Food with Mood was and still is about the stories behind food. It’s round-ups, guides to eating and drinking your way around a city, restaurant reviews and recommendations. And along the way, I’ve explored more long-form writing. Something I am better at than cooking.

Who do we write for? Ourselves or others? I want to write for an engaged audience because I want to tell stories and create a feeling of community. I’m always excited to post a new blog with an eagerness to share my voice, my thoughts, my feelings. Needing a purpose in life is intrinsic to being human.

But I wanted to expand my audience and truly make my mark; maybe I got greedy. I started submitting my writing to various outlets. Every occasion took a lot of time, energy and most importantly, passion. And each time was met with rejection. The first few are giddy because at least to be rejected is to know that someone still read your work. But when it becomes frequent, it starts to eat away at you. You spiral into doubt and question whether you are good enough, even good full stop, maybe you are delusional.

I started to lose the enjoyment in writing. My end goal was to be seen and heard. But feeling validated is the enemy of just being.

It’s easier said than done, especially in the age of social media but it can feel scary to just float with no destination. See where things go. It’s taken time to come to terms with this and there are countless prose and poetry I have written that will never see the light of day. But that doesn’t make them redundant. Like diaries they are a portal into how I was feeling and who I was, on that day, at that time in my life. And they are fascinating.

Like writing, when we cook for others, we want to impress. We want to feed, please, satiate, nourish, maybe even change people’s lives, leave lasting impressions and create memories. Cooking is an expression and sometimes it is a performance. It tells your story to a hungry audience. Eventually food turns into words when it becomes a recipe.

One evening, when I was by myself, I decided to make fresh pasta. With a rolling pin. It took hours. It was hard (sweaty) work and there was no reason or need to do it and it was for no one else but me.

It took me to another place and all that mattered in that moment was making this food. As I finally approached the crescendo of boiling pans, sizzling trays pulled out of the oven, last minute cheese grating, drizzles, mixing everything together, plating up, sitting down, it was showtime.

The curtain rose and there was no audience. There was no reaction. I savoured every bite, every word.