Hello everyone.

I’d like to take another break from my favourite recipes to share my thoughts on food.  I make no apologies for loving food and enjoying cooking, but growing up I had a mixed relationship with the act of preparing a meal and the ideals I felt I must live up to.

Growing up as I did in England during the 1970s, 80s and 90s I saw quite a few changes in what we ate and the way food was treated.  When I was a small child Great Britain was on its knees economically and I know my parents, like many, struggled to put food on the table.  While price fixing by the newly formed supermarkets ended in the 1950s the change from imperial currency to metric caused chaos as consumers often saw the price of everyday items suddenly leap up.  My parents’ answer, at least in part, was to invest in a greenhouse and small allotment plot so there would always be fresh fruit and vegetables on the table or frozen for the winter.  A familiar memory from my childhood was Dad suddenly appearing with an overflowing trug of whatever was ripe for picking and my poor mum having to drop everything to prepare and store it.  We all appreciated it though, and nothing beats the flavour of a carrot newly pulled from the ground and washed in the pond water, or a pea popped fresh from the pod.

A taste of childhood

We grew up eating fairly simple food.  Cheaper cuts of meat were turned into delicious stews, and there was always a roast on Sunday that allowed for ample leftovers for a second meal.  Pudding was often fruit and custard made with Bird’s custard powder, or maybe a sponge pudding. Later I remember fish fingers, chips and Heinz spaghetti hoops in tomato sauce maybe with blancmange or Angel Delight for pud.  At some point my mum managed a miracle and convinced my dad, a strict meat-and-two-veg-no-foreign-muck kind of guy, to try Chinese food, and a Friday night or Saturday lunchtime treat was born.  These were the days before fast food invaded every High Street; my village had one fish and chip shop and one Chinese, both of which were take away only.  Eating out in a restaurant wasn’t really done except once in a blue moon if we were on holiday.

Yet as I entered puberty it seemed the food was growing up and stating independence too.  The boom of the Thatcher years lead to the growth of wine bars and nouvelle cuisine, all fancy flourishes but not exactly a hearty and nutritious meal, and these changes started to be reflected in the cookery shows on TV.  I remember Delia Smith and her very practical meals, but I also remember “Masterchef” where three very middle class people, usually men, tried to be as pretentious as they could while still putting something edible on a plate.  It was worlds away from what Mum was making. I also remember she had the most amazing Chinese recipe book I have ever seen.  Every dish was beautiful, the pages were decorated with exquisite Chinese art, and there was no way of buying 95% of the ingredients to make any of the dishes at home; it was a thing to drool over and then order in a take away rather than a practical book to expand your repertoire with.

In my teens Mum insisted I learn to cook the basics, and as I’d often hung out in the kitchen chatting and trying to help but probably getting in the way, I found it reassuring to think I was carrying on the tradition of providing for a family.  When I left home for university I could make several minced beef based dishes, I knew how to roast a chicken breast and make a few of the things I ate at home.  I’d already learnt the basics of home budgeting and while my friends were spending a fortune on microwavable meals I was buying fresh vegetables and stretching a couple of bits of meat to last all week and only spending £5.  There was also a shift again in TV cooking, as shows like “Ready, Steady, Cook” encouraged creative budget cooking, while chefs like Brian Turner and Gary Rhodes went in for very hearty traditional dishes that seemed to be a lot of hard work and often a bit on the pricey side for a student or family with kids to feed.

It was when I got my first home that my problems started.  Suddenly I wasn’t just cooking for me, I was working full time working long hours in pubs and restaurants and having to cook for a boyfriend as well.  I stopped cooking regularly because I was working so many meal times, and I became terrified of messing up even the simplest of meals.  What if I burnt it?  What if I gave him food poisoning?  What if he just didn’t like it?  To be fair, I don’t think he had any idea the pressure I was putting myself under; I certainly don’t remember him saying anything specific to me and he was more than capable of cooking meals himself, but I somehow felt it was my duty to cook for him when I could and that I was somehow a failure because I couldn’t do it properly.  I used to watch Jamie Oliver in his trendy London apartment picking herbs off his windowsill and making his own pasta and perfectly cooking a weeks worth of wages in steak and knew I could never achieve that.

After that relationship broke down, and with a mortgage I couldn’t afford, I ended up helping Mum and Dad buy a bed and breakfast and moved in with them to help Mum run it.  With one of my brothers still living at home anyway, Mum automatically took on the duty of cooking an evening meal for the four of us, but after a while I felt guilty that I wasn’t pulling my weight and, with Mum on call if anything went wrong, I started to cook again.  Suddenly I wasn’t just cooking something to stop myself from being hungry, I was providing a delicious meal for the whole family.  As someone who has always loved food, Mum helped me to try new methods and ingredients, and we would often be in the kitchen together with one of us acting as helper to peel veg, stir sauces or top up the wine glass.  Cooking became a joy, and I took pride in the day my dad ate pasta for the first time just because I’d made it.

Mum taught me one piece of advice that changed everything: you can nearly always rescue something if it goes slightly wrong, and if it turns out to be horrible or beyond rescuing there is always a take away.  You have no idea how much the pressure lifted when I realised that!  There was only one occasion where I so horribly ruined a dish that mum’s idea of rescuing it was to tip it in the bin and send Dad out for some Chinese, but we laughed about it and I knew what I’d done wrong so it wasn’t a total waste of time.  I started going to farmer’s markets and falling in love with fresh seasonal ingredients, and the local fishmonger was a source of delicious inspiration as we’d see what had been landed just around the bay at Brixham and get the best deal on something we’d never tried before.

Cookbook shelfie – the folders also contain recipes

I eventually moved in with a new boyfriend, but this time cooking wasn’t an issue.  He could hold his own in the kitchen and with my new confidence I enjoyed not just cooking for us both but eating together while chatting about our day or watching TV.  Mum had helped me master the art of the Sunday roast, and each week I’ve always done just as she did and not just turn out a delicious meal but also found something yummy to use up the leftovers.  This chapter of my life has seen another cultural shift in TV cooking with a re-emergence of traditional dishes and homely cooking.  The likes of Nigella Lawson and Nigel Slater aren’t fancy chefs with Michelin stars; they’re food lovers who have a joy in cooking yummy food either for themselves or their family.  Even Jamie Oliver has kids now and is more about good wholesome food, though maybe it’s also my confidence that makes the thought of making my own pasta a less daunting task than it once was.

Moving to the United States I realise just how lucky we are in the UK right now in terms of food.  In terms of labelling, E numbers and additives the USA is about 15 years behind us.  Fresh fruit and vegetables are often very expensive, organic is exceptionally so, and most of the meat is adulterated in some way.  High fructose corn syrup is in many processed foods, and I include nearly every brand of bread in that.  Seriously, why do Americans eat sweet bread?  Eating out the portions are double what they should be and are often so heavily salted it becomes the dominant flavour and ruins what could have been a nice dish.  The truth is a lot of Americans seem to have lost the ability to cook a meal from scratch, though there is a fight back against this just as there has been in the UK, but when it is cheaper to feed a family of four at a fast food outlet than it is to buy fresh ingredients and cook from scratch you can kind of understand why.  Unfortunately this is being reflected in unprecedented numbers of people suffering from diabetes, cardiovascular disease, heart attacks and obesity, and I think if attitudes to food don’t change then we are heading for a disaster.

It’s not all doom and gloom for my diet while we live over here.  Living in the Florida panhandle I discovered the joys of shrimp boils, smoked tuna dip and pulled pork.  I’ve eaten crawfish étouffée and gumbo in New Orleans, and San Diego had the best Mexican food I’ve ever had, and these dishes are now becoming part of my repertoire as my diet reflects my life experiences.  Now as I watch Jamie Oliver foraging for mushrooms, read a Nigella Lawson cookbook like a delicious novel or watch Nigel Slater making a fantastic meal out of leftovers or  custard-filled profiteroles for friends I am indeed inspired by the sheer joy of watching food-lovers cooking and knowing that I really could give that a go and probably make it work, and for that I thank all of them.  But most of all I thank my mum and my husband for giving me the confidence to keep trying.

I have a board on Pinterest just for recipes and foodie stuff.  If you want to check it out you can find it at https://www.pinterest.com/witchhazel74/food-drink/

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