The diet, The cookery programmes and me

Its been ages since I was able to sit down and write something for my Blog, apart from being very busy i thought that by not writing about food constantly i would be able to stop thinking about it and therefore stop eating so much of it. As I should have concluded before, this has not happened! although i have halved the amount I bake (and therefore eat)  I did not stop.

Now it's the time of year when some lovely cookery programmes have come back on TV and there I am of an evening drooling over recipes that although I probably couldn't manage to make so successfully myself , I have a sudden and desperate need to try.
Am I the only person who sits in front of these programmes craving what's being cooked on the screen? I assume not or they (and subsequent books, websites etc.) wouldn't be so popular.
I do wonder if I am the only person who suddenly (despite eating earlier) finds them selves starving and looking through the fridge and cupboards for something-anything, to satisfy this urgent need?

I know I probably shouldn't watch what has become know as "food porn" amongst my friends and myself but just like 'those' men who search their computers for something to satisfy their own porn 'need's' I do the same.
I search the internet looking recipes (thank god for Google) I am on the mailing list for numerous celebrity chefs, I have 'liked' loads of food related pages on Facebook-so much so that the advertising that now appears next to all the things my friends, old school friends and random people I haven't seen in years are getting up to is ALL food related and yes I do click on them!! I follow chefs and food programmes on twitter and get so excited when one of them messages me back.
I spend evenings texting other like minded friends about the programmes we're watching on the TV because I know they feel the same way!.... Some are worse!

Enjoying food is not a problem as such, and home baking and cooking is enjoying a much welcomed and needed revival helped by these luscious cookery programmes. I once knew a women who despite having two children and a husband to provide meals for couldn't cook anything if it didn't come out of a packet and at a push needed water adding to it, when I asked whether she would like to learn how to cook something herself she looked at me as if I was mad and just said "why?"
It's nice that I don't have to feel guilty about cooking things from scratch, (I was always amazed that people would say but Tesco do a frozen version that you just shove in the oven for 25 minutes, do you want people to think you have nothing better to do than cook?)
I don't think I have set the women's movement back 50 years by not only enjoying cooking things myself but occasionally doing it so well others like eating it. I don't think Emily Pankhurst would be standing there bashing me over the head with a 'women to vote' sign, blaming me for the inequality of women.

Is there a down side to being obsessed with cookery programmes.... well yes if you eat everything you cook you end up like me considerably heavier than you were before and its expensive! to buy all the ingredients to make a dish from scratch costs more than double the pre-packaged supermarket equivalent but oh-my-god does it taste better! Sometimes when pushed for time or cash I have bought some of 'those' products and wonder if there would have been more flavour in the cardboard sleeve I removed before cooking it than there was in the food its self.

So I have continued to buy my much loved and used cookery books, I wont hear a bad word said against Mary Berry, ( I want to be her when I'm older) and will just have to get down the gym to try and work off some of that cheesecake.... but ooooo a new cookery programme.... about cooking with less calories but not having to resort to tasteless lettuce and starvation..... and it's not presented by a stick insect with perfectly manicured nails that you just know has never eaten carb's in her entire life and would probably break if you chucked a bag of frozen chips at her... The Hairy Bikers have heard my silent plea and come to help me.... now where can I buy that cook book?