Lisa Snowdon: I ate a jacket potato with beans and grated cheese every day for two years

The smell I associate with growing up in Welwyn Garden City is Nabisco's cereal factory. For years it made Shredded Wheat on an industrial scale and it wafted across town. It was nice – like a warm, cooking, comforty thingy.

At home the smell I remember is tripe, which Mum would boil up for our dog. It was absolutely disgusting. But there was this huge deep middle drawer in the kitchen, once the extension was done, which mum completely stocked with multi-packs of crisps, Maltesers, mini-Mars Bars and Milky Ways each week.

I'm the oldest of three girls. Dad was outvoted, hence his need for control at table. I've noticed this in friends who are dads – the desire to do dinner properly. Dad hated it if my sisters and I sniggered at table, but being told not to made us more uncontrollable. Sometimes, we'd only have to catch each other's eyes and it would trigger hysterics.

Between 14 and 16, I ate a jacket potato with beans and grated cheese on top every day for two years in the canteen at the Italia Conti school. I was very much a creature of habit then. The most exotic meal I'd make then was grilled spag cheese. That's spaghetti with grated cheese on top.

When I was 17, Dad used to say: "I'd much prefer you come home in the evening than be out with a Bargain Bucket." But I loved meeting up with friends on the wall outside KFC. It was our little place and it felt cool, glamorous and independent, sitting there sharing chicken and chips and a bottle of Blue Nun.

At 19, I was in Tokyo on a three-month modelling agency contract, living on my own. Big Macs featured heavily. Not only was the agency above a McDonald's but they'd give me a little map showing western food landmarks and instructions to "turn right at McDonald's". I was also eating cornflakes most nights. It was like comfort food, but bloody expensive – I'd buy three oranges, milk and some Kellogg's and it was somehow 20 or 30 quid.

Getting up at 4am to do Capital Breakfast on radio I make a smoothie, adding bee pollen and royal jelly. I don't take my own car, because I'd end up screaming at how slowly the garage door opens. I'll drink a litre of water throughout a show, but in the first hour of the show I'll sip through a big coffee, or Coca-Cola if I've got a hangover. Around 7am, I start on papaya, bananas, mango, fruit with almonds. By 8am I almost feel like a kebab and a beer, but I'll have salmon and avocado, chopped up with quinoa, tomatoes, asparagus and cucumbers. Of course I don't share: I'm a little piggy.

I get to work with Michelin-starred chefs on Channel 4's Weekend Kitchen. Angela Hartnett's roast chicken was completely salivating. Unfortunately Jean-Christophe Novelli had a little bowl of very hot garlic that dropped, bounced on the studio floor and flew up in his eye. It was in rehearsal, not live, but I thought: "Oh God, the chef's blind." I would like to just eat for a living. I really would.

Lisa Snowdon co-hosts Weekend Kitchen with Waitrose, Saturdays 9am on Channel 4