FEBRUARY
Food is one of life's pleasures, according to the adage. My first experience of how intense the enjoyment of it can be was after giving birth to my first child. In the hours and days which followed, my taste became vivid. My hunger was voracious My thirst was capacious. The taste which had been insipid most of my life had mutated into a suspicious, misleading sense at the beginning of pregnancy and now bloomed into a colourful, living entity, beckoning me to consume and be nourished.
The cup of tea the midwife gave me soon after giving birth is imprinted on my memory like Proust's madeleine. In the quiet dim light of the night ward, my safely delivered baby sleeping beside my bed in one of those funny plastic cots on wheels, I relished its piquancy. The cup, the saucer, it's heat and lovely bright colour, their beauty heightened no doubt by my ecstatic state after 18 hours of labour, gas and air and pethidine, but my intense enjoyment of such things took a couple of months to wear off. I can try to summon it, but it's only a memory.
Alongside this pleasure, the anxiety about what I ate remained. What to eat has now become a public debate, but endeavouring to be vegetarian is still a minority preoccupation. Two decades ago, for me, trying to remain healthy without meat whilst pregnant seemed at best tricky, in the eyes of Grandma and the midwives, it seemed to be positively negligent and it filled me with angst.
My preoccupation with what to eat has continued to take up alot of my time and energy. Although my children have grown into fine healthy young adults, I still wonder what to serve up at mealtimes. I even worry about what to feed our hamster and dog!
Yesterday was Shrove Tuesday and I was wondering whether anyone would want pancakes. I had some lemons and I'd stocked up on caster sugar, but my tin of Tate & Lyle syrup looked suspiciously black around the rim and I find that it's out of date. I also only have wholemeal flour and I remember the bran in it sometimes makes the mixture a bit lumpy. I text my daughter " do you want pancakes?". She's on her way home from college and she's usually ravenous but she's a bit sugar-conscious. Her reply "YeeeeeeaY !" spurs me on.
I can never remember the recipe for pancake batter, so I go to my trusty source; " The New Art of Cooking" published by Stork margarine circa 1970 and our text book for the cooking element of my Domestic Science GCE. I see it recommends 4 ounces of flour, 2 eggs and says you can use half a pint of milk or half a pint of milk and water. Interesting. I also consult my Cranks Recipe book published 1985 just out of interest and see there's a recipe for buckwheat pancakes which involves replacing half the quantity of flour with buckwheat flour and lists only 1 egg. I bookmark this for future reference and stick with the traditional recipe :
4ozs Flour
2 Eggs
1/2 Pint Milk
I seive the wholemeal flour to try to get rid of some of the bran, but as I only have a metal seive I use for draining rice, the bran falls back in. I mix it in nonchalantly and break the eggs into the middle of it. I've decided to use 2 eggs as we rarely eat them and I know they contain Methionine, an amino acid that's essential for life, but difficult to get in the right proportion.
I pour a bit of milk in and start gently beating the mixture. This usually starts off promising but as I add the rest of the milk, lumps can form. I decide to add the milk in miniscule quantities and stir as quickly as I can in-between. This seems to do the trick today. I even have enough strength in my arm to beat it thoroughly for a couple of minutes and it does look to be of the thin pouring cream consistency the book says to aim for.
When she comes in, my daughter's a bit disappointed that I've already done the mix. It seems she wanted to have a go, which is a first ! I think about teaching her to cook a few things before she goes off to uni and put a good dollop of butter in my best frying pan just as my son comes into the kitchen. Both of them are wracked with horror. They object to butter. This is one of the many drawbacks to having an open-plan kitchen/diner in my opinion. In our other house, I was safely ensconsed in our seventies-sized kitchen where I could secretly sneak any nutritious ingredient into their food, then pass it through the serving hatch to them. Now every ingredient is on show. I am a fan of butter but I've forgotten why and so ignore their protestations. When it comes to them having a go, they each put so little butter in the pan that the mixture sticks. I make a mental note to look up what's so good about butter. We squeeze our lemon wedges and sprinkle the caster sugar and I think about maple syrup. I know this is packed with magical nutritonal properties so I make another mental note to look this up. As we enjoy our slightly burnt, slightly lumpy but very sweet pancakes, other lists form :
TO BUY : TO LOOK UP: TO COOK:
Proper seive for flour Methionine Buckwheat pancakes
Maple syrup What's good about butter With maple syrup
Buckwheat Ditto maple syrup
The cup of tea the midwife gave me soon after giving birth is imprinted on my memory like Proust's madeleine. In the quiet dim light of the night ward, my safely delivered baby sleeping beside my bed in one of those funny plastic cots on wheels, I relished its piquancy. The cup, the saucer, it's heat and lovely bright colour, their beauty heightened no doubt by my ecstatic state after 18 hours of labour, gas and air and pethidine, but my intense enjoyment of such things took a couple of months to wear off. I can try to summon it, but it's only a memory.
Alongside this pleasure, the anxiety about what I ate remained. What to eat has now become a public debate, but endeavouring to be vegetarian is still a minority preoccupation. Two decades ago, for me, trying to remain healthy without meat whilst pregnant seemed at best tricky, in the eyes of Grandma and the midwives, it seemed to be positively negligent and it filled me with angst.
My preoccupation with what to eat has continued to take up alot of my time and energy. Although my children have grown into fine healthy young adults, I still wonder what to serve up at mealtimes. I even worry about what to feed our hamster and dog!
Yesterday was Shrove Tuesday and I was wondering whether anyone would want pancakes. I had some lemons and I'd stocked up on caster sugar, but my tin of Tate & Lyle syrup looked suspiciously black around the rim and I find that it's out of date. I also only have wholemeal flour and I remember the bran in it sometimes makes the mixture a bit lumpy. I text my daughter " do you want pancakes?". She's on her way home from college and she's usually ravenous but she's a bit sugar-conscious. Her reply "YeeeeeeaY !" spurs me on.
I can never remember the recipe for pancake batter, so I go to my trusty source; " The New Art of Cooking" published by Stork margarine circa 1970 and our text book for the cooking element of my Domestic Science GCE. I see it recommends 4 ounces of flour, 2 eggs and says you can use half a pint of milk or half a pint of milk and water. Interesting. I also consult my Cranks Recipe book published 1985 just out of interest and see there's a recipe for buckwheat pancakes which involves replacing half the quantity of flour with buckwheat flour and lists only 1 egg. I bookmark this for future reference and stick with the traditional recipe :
4ozs Flour
2 Eggs
1/2 Pint Milk
I seive the wholemeal flour to try to get rid of some of the bran, but as I only have a metal seive I use for draining rice, the bran falls back in. I mix it in nonchalantly and break the eggs into the middle of it. I've decided to use 2 eggs as we rarely eat them and I know they contain Methionine, an amino acid that's essential for life, but difficult to get in the right proportion.
I pour a bit of milk in and start gently beating the mixture. This usually starts off promising but as I add the rest of the milk, lumps can form. I decide to add the milk in miniscule quantities and stir as quickly as I can in-between. This seems to do the trick today. I even have enough strength in my arm to beat it thoroughly for a couple of minutes and it does look to be of the thin pouring cream consistency the book says to aim for.
When she comes in, my daughter's a bit disappointed that I've already done the mix. It seems she wanted to have a go, which is a first ! I think about teaching her to cook a few things before she goes off to uni and put a good dollop of butter in my best frying pan just as my son comes into the kitchen. Both of them are wracked with horror. They object to butter. This is one of the many drawbacks to having an open-plan kitchen/diner in my opinion. In our other house, I was safely ensconsed in our seventies-sized kitchen where I could secretly sneak any nutritious ingredient into their food, then pass it through the serving hatch to them. Now every ingredient is on show. I am a fan of butter but I've forgotten why and so ignore their protestations. When it comes to them having a go, they each put so little butter in the pan that the mixture sticks. I make a mental note to look up what's so good about butter. We squeeze our lemon wedges and sprinkle the caster sugar and I think about maple syrup. I know this is packed with magical nutritonal properties so I make another mental note to look this up. As we enjoy our slightly burnt, slightly lumpy but very sweet pancakes, other lists form :
TO BUY : TO LOOK UP: TO COOK:
Proper seive for flour Methionine Buckwheat pancakes
Maple syrup What's good about butter With maple syrup
Buckwheat Ditto maple syrup
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