Introducing our correspondent…
I am nearly 56 years old and I have been married for the last 34 years to Bryan who I met 40 years ago this weekend. I have two grown-up children and work as a secretary in a local law firm. I love reading, my garden, my home - dare I say it I’m about as boring as it gets.
I was born in the Vale of Belvoir from parents born within a couple of miles of each other, who in their turn were came from people born within a few miles of each other. The gene pool was slightly deepened by my maternal grandfather who settled in the Vale when he was posted there as Signalman in WWI and he originated in Yorkshire.
Dad farmed, not in a grand way, no one did in those days. He followed on from his father with no one ever even hinting that he might quite like to have a go a something else. My uncles and cousins farmed in the same low key mixed farming way of what is now a bygone era and my wonderful mother was a nurse. I forgot to say, I love to write! Jill Dewey, 2011
Jill writes:
Ladies, has this ever happened to you? Sounds like a 1950’s advert for stain removal, right? but nevertheless, a genuine question bowled out into the ether.
I have been through a drought. For a couple of years I just could not make a Victoria Sandwich worthy of the name. Sharing DNA with some seriously great cake makers, this was genuinely upsetting. I tried every permutation I could think of from the size of the tin to the brand of flour, the temperature of the oven and method i.e. the long way or Delia’s All-In-One. Some cakes were so awful I just binned them grieving the waste of time, electricity and eggs.
Growing up, it was taken as read that I could cook with some degree of competence from about the age of 10. Mum and Granny would fall about over Secondary School Reports displaying my straight A’s for what was then called Domestic Science. Anyone can cook, dear (and could her spelling really be very much worse). To be fair, my spelling still isn’t grate (sic) but it was years before I understood that no, not everyone can cook or more importantly, knows how to.
At the farm, Mum and Granny operated out of the Top Kitchen. Crucially, food was prepared and eaten in the same room and I absorbed what went on around me. Forty years on I can look down at my hands tying up a Christmas Pudding and realize I am looking at Granny’s hands doing the same thing. Kitchen lore decreed all vegetables and I mean all must be cooked for twenty minutes and newly baked bread was bad for you (again, sic).
However, never too old to learn, I was recently musing with a fifteen year old who said her Nan always weighed eggs first. This was a Eureka moment for me and seems to have solved The Problem. The gorgeous free range eggs I use vary in size from bantam to rugby footballs. Four eggs can weigh anything from 8 to 12 ounces (sorry, don’t do metric) and I was, quite literally, over-egging the pudding. I commend this simple tip to cyberspace. Weigh the eggs first then make the other ingredients correspond. Not exactly up there with splitting the atom, agreed, but part of my personal mission to get as many people cooking with confidence as I possibly can and to Grannies everywhere, Re-spect!
No comments have been made.