When I was five, mother would have a picnic ready after school. She would take just me and my twin sister up the lane and spread out a rug and we'd have sandwiches and fairy cakes. And it was just the best meal and fun ever. Because mother was a terribly overwrought woman it was the only time she'd be really carefree. I remember it happening often, but in reality probably twice.

I have a memory, from age nine about, of seeing my father walking across the frosty lawn at eight o'clock on a December morning with three geese draped over his arm, necks broken, like he was carrying an umbrella.

I still use the knives and forks that I used as a child and my mother, grandfather and great-grandfather used. My children would say I'm prone to be tyrannical about food and laying the table and consider my 6am breakfast routine and ritual obsessive to the point of ridicule. When feeling benign they'd say I'm like a fussy old woman and when less generous that I'm just absurd.

At boarding school I was hungry 24 hours a day. The only thing that was plentiful at meal times there was tea. At the end of one term a teacher gave out prizes, of quarters and halves of Mars Bars, but the very very best prize was a whole Mars Bar. This was almost excess beyond comprehension. One just didn't know how to handle it.

It was a complete culture shock when I met my wife Sarah. We went to the cinema and she bought toffees and I savoured the first she gave me, while she ate them quickly and often. I was shocked rigid by that.

If anyone does a big food shop nowadays, I have to put it all away. Because everything has a place and I love looking at the shelves and seeing them ordered. Which, again, is the object of great derision.

I often eat cakes while my fingers are caked in soil. This morning I let the chickens out, rooted around, did things in the greenhouse, pulled weeds and took an apple from the tree and ate it – and biscuits. Absorbing a healthy amount of dirt builds your immune system. When I was a dustman it didn't put me off my sandwiches.

The first time I made a meal to impress a girl was in Aix-en-Provence, in 1974. It was in a little flat in Rue Portalis which I shared with a Swede. Whatever it was it worked.

I was a waiter at Joe Allen's restaurant in Covent Garden for eight months in the early 80s. Out of 15 waiters, only one other wasn't gay. I recall a night when I was very ardently courted by Danny La Rue. But it's a blur.

I'm a great believer in trying things, so I've eaten witchetty grubs, a mountain frog, ostrich and alligator. I like tongue, I like brains and tripe. I've never eaten an eyeball, but I think both morally and practically that if you're going to kill something you should try and eat all of it that's officially edible.

Sarah's rhythm is to have a meal at 11am and another at 6pm, so lunch is one of the great incompatibles of our relationship. She could never understand my yearning for lunch, although we've, er, discussed it in the past, both exasperated with the other's failure to empathise.

When our jewellery business went into receivership we avoided bankruptcy by selling our houses and possessions. I was on the dole for the whole of 1992 and with three young children and grossing £124 a week there were plenty of times when we had enough potatoes and marmalade for our children but not for us too. I had a craving at that time, not for walnuts, olive oil or flapjacks, but for wine and tobacco roll-ups, to release me from the situation.

The most expensive meal I've ever had was last year at The Fat Duck, celebrating my son's graduation – £300 per head, good fun, it gave him pleasure, but it was a performance and nothing to do with food at all.

What I'd want for my very last meal would depend on whether I was sharing it with Sarah or not. With her - as I know she'd like it - I'd be happy with wild salmon, a good oat cake and a very good bottle of champagne. But if it was on my own, I'd be happy with my breakfast, of yoghurt with stewed fruit, a poached egg, toast, home-made marmalade and a cup of tea.

The Home Cookbook by Monty & Sarah Don is out now, Bloomsbury, £25