Beginnings....

Ok I didn't cook today, well I made an omelette for my daughter, and french toast and bacon for my son for their breakfast, but they spend this evening with their father and his much loved daddy fried chicken, or shepherds pie, so I took a rare opportunity to go out with a great friend and eat someone else's food -green pepper spiced Thai beef, and very wonderful it was too.
But, today a photograph of myself and my paternal grandparents reminded me of one of the two strands of where my obsession with cooking-and eating-began. My Nanny was the most special person in my life when I was little. Visiting with her meant we were going to eat later, and that meant making both my brother's and my own favourite dessert, custard tart for him, and lemon meringue pie for me. My Nanny came from an era where a Kitchen Aid would have been tutted about as an unnecessary extravagance, and probably would have not been affordable for much of her life. To be honest, even if the money had fallen magically into her lap she would have spent it in far more practical manners benefitting many rather than herself. However trivial details like this did not deter women who had stared Hitler in the eye with a steely glint in their own, whilst raising families and making ends meet. So I was handed a small whisk, the necessary egg whites in a bowl, and encouraged to whisk whilst I told Nanny all about what had been happening in my, I see in hindsight, probably terribly dull life. Whilst I chatted she calmly, and almost without any seeming effort, prepared the rest of a roast dinner for twelve, did three loads of washing and knitted parts of a jumper for one of her grandchildren, the whole time making me think I was the most fascinating creature in the universe. And so I learnt that if you whisk long enough and hard enough egg whites change from slightly glazed gloop into a magical dreamy cloud. I was shown how to beat the sugar in, a tablespoon at a time, until the cloud took on some thickness, then we gently folded( get me! I just knew I had to make the metal spoon do a sloooow figure of eight) the rest of the sugar in. Now sometime in the meantime a pastry case had magically apppeared ( two actually, one for the custard tart, one for the pie), another example of the fact that multi-tasking  is not a modern inventionconsisting solely of being on facebook and twitter whilst conversing with real people and working. Then and only then was I allowed to mix the box of 'lemon meringue pie filling' with hot water until it had thickened. Whether by osmosis, or just plain common sense, my Nanny instinctively knew that when you place the still warm filling, pile on the uncooked meringue, and then place the whole pie in the oven you avoid the 'weeping' of meringue and filling as the heat of the filling cooks the meringue placed directly on it. The pie would emerge lightly browned, the swirled tips slightly darkened, like they were used trimmed candle wicks, and would be left to cool where all could see, before being eaten for dessert by all of us. I never thought the process of making the pie was arduous, or time -consuming. To me it was a way to emulate one of the most wonderful women I had ever known, and to do what she could, the time I spent in the kitchen with her was special, I felt like what I imagined a 'grown-up' felt. (I was wrong, but that is the wonder of  childhood, all adults know the secret of being great...or so we all assume). I am human, I do have days when cooking seems tiresome, but I still find it magical, to cook something and then share it with people I love and like. And one of the reasons is those mornings spent in a kitchen where I felt loved, and capable.