It is suddenly clear that compromises must be made and that earlier niceties must give way to a more forced, real companionship. My new flatmate, Lewis, and I seemed to be on the same page with most decisions. But it was the olive oil that threatened to divide us like, well, oil and water.

Standing before the array of glistening bottles, I made plaintive but ineffectual claims for the visually seductive choices. I wanted the deep green liquids, not the murky yellows; I wanted a cheesy image of olives languidly chasing vines in a Tuscan villa. I reached for a tall, conical vessel and slid my fingers around the cool base, wistfully imagining adding small splashes of the nutty fluid to fresh pasta while Lewis was looking, and larger spoonfuls when his back was turned.

Meanwhile, Lewis was methodically calculating the cost per millilitre of two equally dull bottles.

So here we were: Ephron versus Tarantino.

And it continued past the condiments aisle. We bickered about how much rice to buy, until Lewis dropped the five-kilogram sack into trolley with a definitive thud, punctuating our conversation.

When I declared, “We’ll need polenta,” Lewis cocked his head to the side and quizzed me.

“What’s polenta?”

“A grain. Like…maize.”

The truth was, I had no idea what maize was or wasn’t, or whether it was similar to polenta. But I figured that, while Lewis was likewise unaware, I was free to fabricate where necessary.

Lewis raised his eyebrows slowly, but said nothing. I presumed his silence equalled assent so I happily placed the canary yellow crystals in our cart.

Our differences soon became starker. While Lewis smirked and shook his head as I reached for soy milk and organic free-range eggs (I could hear it ringing in his ears: ‘PRETENTIOUS! WANKY! SNOB!’) I was baffled by his hunger for saffron and massaman curry and cardamom pods (and then it echoed in my mind: ‘POT! KETTLE! BLACK!’

It struck me that traversing these glossy supermarket aisles together was an intensely personal thing to do. I had only really known Lewis for two months, since January when we had begun our house hunt. And now, now I was confiding in him, making him aware that I liked to stand by the stove as I grilled haloumi and peeled it from the pan, absorbing the overwhelming salty punch as my teeth squeaked through the cheese. He would now know that I loved plain bagels but detested blueberry; that I disliked tuna in oil; that I did not care how processed and jitter-inducing Oreos and marshmallows were, because I liked to pull the chocolate sandwiches apart absentmindedly and smoosh the fluffy, sticky mallow between the layers.

I suddenly thought that choosing an entrée from a restaurant menu was a perfectly normal thing to do, an activity I would approach without trepidation.

But this endless piling of cans and jars was deeply private. The food we eat at home is entirely of our own choosing; it is not simply the elimination of the other four appetizers. We are free to make rich, chewy brownies and guiltlessly scrape half of the dough from the bowl with our forefinger. At home, we can prepare pasta at 2 am if the mood should strike us (and indeed, in a stupor of overconfidence and insomnia, I once made fresh middle-of-the-night gnocchi, rolling the elastic mix until it made thick, uneven ropes). At home, food is yours, it can be your pleasurable little secret.

It did not occur to me that in the coming months, I would do all sorts of personal things in front of Lewis: ironing my shirt underwear-clad, sing Christmas carols in the shower though I knew he could probably hear, cry over Grey’s Anatomy as he made cups of tea.

No – in this moment, I knew only that it was absurd to attempt to explain that when I saw bell-shaped pots of blackberry jam, my first impulse was to buy cream cheese, too. Lewis would never understand the satisfying squelch my lips made as I bit through the toast, spread thickly smooth cream cheese and gelatinous blackberry jam. He’d never reconcile the twin flavours in his mind, or know that the saccharine, powerful burst of inky berries could taste even better with the half-bland, half-tart white paste. He’d just widen his eyes and turn the corners of his mouth, as if I’d told him I was planning to dress as a Teletubby tomorrow, the red one.

But this is the very essence of ‘at home’ food. It needs not be understood by anyone but the consumer. ‘At home ‘food is yours alone, a secret treasure to be enjoyed in exactly that way.