Milla, MasterChef and me.

Hi Milla.

It's Mom.

Now that you're almost 10 months old - and such a chubby bundle of naughty deliciousness - I've been thinking about the dark days of eight months ago, when I was drowning in the quicksand of post-natal depression and believed I would die there. My, how my life has changed since then.

I'm not going to go into all that now (and anyway, there's my looong article on it coming out in the March issue of Living & Loving magazine), but what I did realise recently was that MasterChef helped to save me. Seriously. It did.

In those scary days, I was afraid of everything. Getting up. Going to bed. Getting dressed. Not getting dressed. Staying home. Leaving the house. Even the television terrified me, because most series, shows and movies made me anxious or afraid, or both.

Enter, MasterChef Australia (Season 2): the one thing on TV that wasn't angsty. So, your Dad and I watched it every single night. Literally. For about 80 episodes. And I never once felt scared.

For this reason, I am very sentimental about MasterChef. It makes me feel safe. So you can imagine my delight when I cottoned on to the impending arrival of MasterChef USA. Dad and I diarised it, PVRed it, and settled down with brisket sarmies to watch.

But it was crap. CRAP. Like Dr Phil meets Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, set in the kitchen. Blech.

The judges are asshole-wannabes (except old Gordon Ramsay, who's uncharacteristically kind), the contestants are all emotive back-story (weeping wives, sad tales of woe, tears, snot...) and my psyche is nowhere near as fragile as it once was. I want more.

We watched Boardwalk Empire instead.

The reason I'm telling you this, angel child, is that there are things in life that will feel 'right' for you based on what you're going through at the time. And there'll be different things that you need at other times.

So try not to make rules about what you like and what you hate, because you may change your mind.

May you be open-minded. And a good cook.

I love you.

Mom x