Jax over at Making it up asked, amongst other things, what is the daftest thing you have ever been asked? Well, in amongst the usual “how will she make friends?” and “how do you do science/maths/other hard subjects?” one really stands out as the daftest ever question. It was asked to Aprilia not to me but she was so amused she shared it with me anyway.
How will you learn to cook if you don’t do food tech?
Seriously?
Here’s the rub though. My mum hated cooking, still does. Food comes out of boxes and cans with instructions for how to re-heat it printed on the side, but she was taught proper cookery at school. Her mum was one of those precious war time commodities – the mum who could feed an army of children on less than their rations (because, don’t forget, rations weren’t free food, you still needed the money to buy it, and that was in short supply then too!) and the contents of the veg patch. So my mum was rather hopeful that when I took “home economics” at school that I would come home with tea ready made for her one day every week. Instead of good cheap wholesome foods though, I came home with chilli and curry, neither of which my folks would eat, it was portioned up and put in the freezer to be defrosted a portion at a time every time they went out for a meal leaving me at home. There was lasagne, which mum did make an attempt at but again, most went in the freezer for my Friday night teas. The fish pie and cottage pie were edible at least but mash doesn’t freeze well so the half that we didn’t eat was brought back out for the next night’s tea too, because all the recipes served 6. Other than that it was cakes, sweet pies, jams, preserves, you know, all those things that win you ribbons at the village fair but don’t feed a family. The irony was that the theory side of these lessons was all about balanced diets and hunting for where the cheapest place was to buy all the veg I never learned to cook.
So when I moved away from home I was ill prepared to do much more than grill nuggets unless, of course, I was entertaining 5 friends….. My grandma took me fairly firmly in hand. There was nothing terribly inspiring but you know, soup is good, soup fills you up, is cheap, doesn’t contain sneaky loads of fat and salt. Likewise rice salads and stews. I was actually quite slim in those days! Marrying put paid to most of my cheap cooking as Duke is eternally suspicious of anything that isn’t wrapped in breadcrumbs or batter despite his mum being a fab cook and for some reason I decided it was better to eat his rubbish than cook 2 seperate meals. In reterospect, I should have stuck with the stews and left him to grill his own fish fingers.
So it looks like food tech, as it’s called these days, didn’t do much for either my mum or for me. I’d like to think that I can do better by my daughter. We plan the week’s menus together, write the shopping list together, quite often cook together. Our recipes are drawn from an eclectic mix of Tudor peasantry food, with a bit of gentry on the side, Hairy Bikers and Slimming World. In previous years we have grown lots of food but this year we failed rather spectacularly so our free foods have been limited to the raspberries and blackberries that have thrived on our wanton neglect. My aim for the next “school year” is to have her cooking a meal or two each week, preferably from scratch. Food tech hey? Yes, I think we have got that more than adequately covered.