Perhaps it is a sign my destiny is now to grow plump and pot bellied.

But the time has come to contradict claims I made when, even though I was certainly more certain, I was undoubtedly less wise.

It is this: eating rocks.

The definition of happiness is a mouthful of melting lamb.

Hmmm, lamb.

Doesn't come cheap. Good food hardly ever does – especially at the moment. Not unless you're a G8 leader discussing food shortage problems.

But a nice chop – hint of garlic, cooked in onions, served with veg and a red-wine gravy – is worth its weight in however much gold the butcher demands for it.

If you want inexpensive, try beans on toast, Pot Noodles, pasta sauces and fish fingers with chips. Not all at once, obviously. Not unless you're really peckish.

Once I did want inexpensive. It was all I wanted from a meal.

Buying food seemed a little like paying council tax or university tuition fees, a waste of good money but something which needed doing to stop council nobodies, education officers, or in this case the Grim Reaper – hassling you.

How foolish the young and skinny are.

Food is not just a lifeline, a nice pork pie is life itself.

If once all my spare cash went on records and experimental albums, which I suspected I wouldn't like but was always delighted to find I did, now it is splashed in eating houses and on experimental dishes I suspect I won't like but am always... well, yeah. Same thing applies.

Eating is the greatest thing ever invented. Ever.

It's more social than dancing, more hedonistic than drinking and more fun, I can only imagine, than doing drugs.

My current house guest understands this.

She understands it so well she, correspondingly, doesn't understand how a freezer, a microwave and a Findus macaroni cheese work together. Indeed, she understands it so well she makes me understand a freezer, a microwave and a Findus macaroni cheese don't actually work together.

I've gone cold turkey – or, rather, hot chicken, and a whole batch of other fresh food stuffs – on ready meals, tinned goods and anything from Tesco's own range. They have been replaced by home-cooked curries and lasagna. Just like tequila bars have been increasingly substituted for Mexican restaurants during evenings out.

Eating is the most fun you can have on your own. Or, actually, with another person.

Leo Tolstoy agreed. He said for most people there was nothing quite like the contentment experienced when well fed and drunk and with loved ones. But, then, he'd already slid well into middle age by then.

Still, you can't fight your destiny. At least I'll have plenty of good food while I'm going along its path.