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Fashions in food come and go - remember Balsamic Vinegar? (Don't leave home without it. But what really affects those of us who love food are our own private loves and hates. Eels and tripe are my hates. My maternal grandmother was a cockney woman who often tried to educate my taste buds in favor of jellied eels and tripe with onions but she never succeeded. One look at the cup of snot that passed as jellied eels or one whiff of the bowl of white slop that was called tripe and onions and my appetite vanished for days.

The remedy is easy - I just never bother to eat them - but when it comes to everyday food, I've noticed myself becoming more faddy as I grow older.

As a youngster I ate whatever was put in front of me. My mother was an indifferent cook, but I didn't mind because I was never offered eels or tripe. Only at Grandmother's house could I be faddy about food. But at home, it was usually meat and veg, dishes my mother knew how to cook, or that practically cooked themselves. I started to discover food when I traveled abroad or went to dinner with friends. I even attempted some cooking myself and didn't do to badly.

When I moved to Australia and married, I knew it was time to get serious about food. My new husband loathed English cooking. I saw the look on his face when my mother invited us to dinner and said, ``the sweetcorn should be tender, I've been cooking it all day."

Brought up with somewhat finer culinary influences than mine, and a genuine devotee of Chinese food, my new husband steered me away from overcooked vegetables and strange food combinations, such as boiled pig's trotters and cabbage. We ate out a lot until I purchased my first Chinese cookbook, the Australian Women's Weekly Cooking Class, and learned to stir fry.

Then came the motherhood years, trying to balance healthy young appetites with an often shrinking food budget, and trying to keep our kids on a home cooked simple diet when fast food began to dominate.

The basis has always been fresh vegetables, often produced in our own garden - my mother was shocked to see us eating sweetcorn raw out of the corn patch - fruit, meat and fish, with pasta and rice. We made it a part of our food plan to introduce the kids to new foods whenever possible, and it paid off. When junk food was taking over the world, our kids were snacking on capsicum strips and celery stalks from the fridge. Breaking up a whole coconut was a treat, and there were squabbles over whose turn it was to drink the sweet coconut

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