My earliest memories are of California, when my dad took a year's sabbatical at UCLA, and the orange and lemon trees seemed like things out of Dr Seuss.

There was a fantastic sweetshop in St Andrews where I grew up called Burns. My favourites were chewy lemon bonbons. My mother discouraged sweet-eating and, as a girl with brothers, one had to protect one's wares. So I'd squirrel away my stash in a shoebox in the wardrobe.

In Scotland, Dad grew courgettes which were the size of my leg. I'd step into the garden and it was like The Day of the Triffids. He was a physicist so maybe there was some nitrogen derivative being brought home from his lab.

My younger brother Daniel was born deaf. He just wouldn't try anything food-wise and I took pleasure in forcing him to try new things. I'd offer him hot chocolate and he'd make a screwed-up face. But I'd insist and then he'd have it and his face would light up and he'd become a fan for life.

After one of my parents' dinner parties, I crept to the kitchen and finished off a sherry trifle. I was seven or eight and I don't know whether it was the alcohol or the cream, but I became confused and barfed all over the stairs.

We used to go to a swimming club in Cupar (eight miles outside St Andrews) when I was young and we'd get fish & chips afterwards from a really good shop, but not be allowed to eat them during the 15 minute drive home, because we had to eat them at the family table, with forks. It was torture, them sitting in the lap, all vinegared and salted. So I just can't eat chips with a fork. It ruins it. You should feel a chip, like you should feel a pizza. Chips are infact one of my major vices in life. Even if I'm completely full I'll still eat chips. I think I've got a separate chip stomach.

I think it was Dad who gave me my nickname "Katy Custard", recognising my deep, positive and lasting relationship with it.

When I went to university I survived on jacket potatoes and pasta for three years. Long afterwards, I was on the dole and never ate out. When I received my first big cheque for my publishing deal, I ran to Marks & Spencers and blew £50 on lovely food.

I've been to Japan five times on tour and the food is crazy. Without a translator I've eaten what I thought was angel-hair pasta and it's turned out to be jelly fish.

In 2001 I went pescatarian… well, aquavore. Pescatarian sounds so wanky, so I say aquavore.

I stopped having meat after a two-pronged attack of an old chicken fillet and a petrol station ham sandwich. Recently I've become vegan, after watching a film called Forks over Knives [which advocates a plant-based diet]. Also, my dad dying while I was recording my new album sharpened my sense of mortality. But I've yet to find a sherry trifle made with soy custard and soy-based cream.

KT Tunstall's Invisible Empire // Crescent Moon is out now on Virgin