hot cross buns.

I have been asked to include feelings in this final blog. Feelings about my mother not cooking and about the relationship between mothers and food in general. Now those of you who know me are aware that I am emotionally dead so this is no easy task.
Food memoirs such as Nigel Slater's Toast tell his story and convey his relationships with his family through his memories of food. Television programmes such as The Mary Berry Story do a similar thing, and Mary reminisces about her mother's cooking, even recreating some of her recipes for the show.

I thought I would use these as inspiration in an attempt to convey my own feelings (if I could muster any up) about my mother's lack of cooking.
Although my mother never cooked, I never went without food. Both of my parents worked so I was looked after by my wonderful nan and grandad.

I would have 'home dinners' at school rather than a packed lunch or school dinner (lunch time is for eating, not socialising) at which time my nan would prepare a home cooked meal. Well, home cooked to an extent, pies and such were always pre prepared but she would cook vegetables and potatoes to go with them. This meant that when my mother got home from work she could make me a simple sandwich or my brother could do a little bit of pasta for us, nothing fancy, just a quick tea. Nigel Slater describes a similar situation in Toast. "[Mother] found it all a bit of an ordeal, and wished she could have left the cooking, like the washing, ironing and dusting, to Mrs P., her 'woman what does'" (2). Nan was my mum's Mrs P but she did the cooking too. I never really had any feelings about this, it was just the way it was and I didn't know any different. Slater, seems to sympathise with his mother not enjoying cooking too, describing it as an "ordeal" for her, which it was for my mother too. Only she just opted not to do it. I quite enjoyed my lunchtime trips home. I'd eat a nice lunch, watch Bob Monkhouse host Wipeout, wash my face and clean my teeth (probably the only child in the school who did this) and return to school feeling full and satisfied. I remember being disappointed when I started senior school that I was no longer allowed to go for 'home dinners' and was forced to stay at school with a packed lunch, prepared by my mother and often including mouldy sandwiches. Many times I would be halfway through a roll or sandwich (filled with what seemed like an entire packet of ham) and someone would point out the green fur growing on the other side of the roll that I had not noticed. "Oh well" I'd say, picking it off. My mother had taught me well.

Evenings were made up of the 'every man for himself' rule. By this time my brother was away at university so did not need to be fed. My mother would want her dinner the moment she came in the door from work and my dad would be home fairly late (not that late, about 8 o clock but that was a ludicrous time to eat according to my mother) so we would all prepare our own ready meals and eat by ourselves with the company of the television or the newspaper. On a Saturday evening dad cooked dinner and periodically we would receive a Sunday roast cooked by my mother (but this was a rare occasion as she would become very stressed during the preparation of it). Again, I never really felt anything about this arrangement. I fact, I quite liked being left to my own devices.
Slater's mother seems to feel the same about Sunday lunch: "the scullery is hot enough to melt lead. though to be fair most of the heat is being given off by my mother, who finds Sunday lunch a meal too many. Her hatred of it is pure and unhidden. She starts to twitch about it on Saturday afternoon." (50). Although my mother didn't even give it enough thought to "twitch" about it the day before, her hatred of it was most definitely "pure and unhidden."

The smile is fake. She hated every minute. 

Nikki told me that when her mum didn't cook, both her and her sister cooked instead, turning it into a competition. I had no such desire. Well, that isn't strictly true. I wasn't really allowed. This was for two main reasons. The first, being that I am rather clumsy. If it can be walked into / tripped over / broken, I will walk into / trip over / or break it. Mum doesn't like me being in the kitchen by myself because she thinks I will "burn the house down". (Just to let you know, so far when I have cooked, only minor injuries have occurred and no trips to hospital have been necessary, just a few plasters and bandages). She still doesn't like me cooking. Last week there was a burger in the fridge which I was going to cook. However, mum asked that I didn't do it until she got home, the grill pan is dangerous you know. Whole house could go up in flames! Being the rebellious seed that I am I chose to ignore her and cooked the burger to perfection.
The second reason that she doesn't like people cooking is the clearing up involved. One residing memory of childhood food was when mum was going to be late one evening so my brother and I cooked chicken and pasta. This involved using both the grill AND the hob, something which seemed an insane move to my mother. I remember her returning home and being absolutely livid. "WHY HAVE YOU USED THE GRILL PAN AND A SAUCEPAN? YOU DON'T NEED BOTH!" Yes, how foolish of us to use more than one cooking appliance at a time. We laugh about this now but she hasn't changed.

She does however cook more now she has retired. After watching The Great British Bake Off Easter Masterclass, she was even inspired to make her own hot cross buns. We did the together and at each stage mum would actually show enthusiasm and ask to shape the buns or glaze one row.

Us actually cooking TOGETHER!

However, at each stage she would also rant about the washing up and what a palava it is. When we had finished (they were delicious and smelt amazing by the way) mum said 'I still think it would have been easier to go to M&S and get two packs for £2." Some things never change.

The finished buns.

When I was younger, I would bake with my nan. Usually during the holidays when mum had to go into work and my other nan and grandad were busy, or sometimes if I had an INSET day at school. Mum would drop me off at nan's house and we would spend the day baking fairy cakes. I never rally remember making anything else. Nan also used to make people's birthday cakes. A lot of effort would go into the decoration, a briefcase for my dad, a football pitch for my brother, but sadly, nan made these cakes quite in advance. So they were dry. Very dry. Nice flavour but you needed a drink with it. Nan did however make wonderful madeleines, although not the shell shaped variety. Nan's Madeleine's were almost come shaped cakes which she covered in jam and rolled in coconut. My mum loved them and used to be a bit miffed that she "never made many madeleines and they were the best ones! Loads of the other ones though!" My overriding memories of these baking days were not the madeleines. I instead remember eating inordinate amounts of raw cake mix and having to go next door to ask Marge for some salad cream to go in my tuna for my sandwich. I never did understand how people can eat tuna dry, straight from the can.

Nan with a rather dense looking cake.

So really, I don't feel I missed out at all in childhood by having a mother that didn't cook. I was always well fed. I helped with the shopping. I even had a go at baking. All be it none of this happened with my mum, but we'd do other things together instead. When I was younger we'd always watch Coronation Street in bed together (the only thing I was allowed to stay up for) and my mum would always read a story with me before I went to bed without fail. I do not remember a single night where we didn't read together. As I got older, we would sit at the table together, her doing her work for school and me doing mine. We had mother daughter time, just not in the kitchen. Yes, sometimes it would have been nice to have home cooked meal, but M&S ready meals are pretty good! And you were never waiting around for hours for dinner to be cooked, it was always there, ready whenever you wanted it in three minutes flat (we never bought the oven cook ones - only the microwave. The disappointment on mum's face if she bought an oven only one by mistake was indescribable).
And now, finally, mum is actually starting to cook more. Both my dad and myself are utterly bewildered by it. She has continued to buy herbs, but she actually uses them before they meet the same fate as basil from my earlier blog, AND she uses them in the food rather than to fragrance the kitchen. She has willingly(ish) cooked for people coming round for dinner and we now have a collection of recipe books actually in the kitchen rather than on an unreachable shelf in the study. In Toast, Slater's description of how his mother kept her cookbooks reminded me of my own: "the spineless Aga Cookbook that lived for the rest of the year in the bowl of the mixer" (3). However, our cookbooks weren't spineless, in fact, their spines were perfectly intact.

Mum's new collection of cookbooks

We even cook together now, such as the hot cross buns and my birthday cake. It took twenty one years but I am finally cooking with my mother. The thing is, I sort of prefer cooking by myself and always tend to get a little bit ratty with mum when we cook together. Mum is very pernickety and has to do everything exactly by the book. She has to thoroughly wipe down every surface before we put anything on it (even though its already sparkling clean - those of you who know me are aware that my house is like a show home, people question whether we actually live there it's so clean). She also makes a big fuss about cleaning up afterwards. I prefer to just get on with the cooking. Near enough the amount suggested is fine. I'm happy to wash everything up rather than fill up the dishwasher.
I'm not too worried though. I shouldn't think she'll keep this cooking lark up for long.

rhubarb.

Today, I thought we would start with a game. It's called "Guess What Mother's Cooked" and is often more challenging than you would think.
Up first, this bowl filled with a questionable substance. Here's a hint, it smells like burnt cheese on toast.

As an extra clue if you're struggling, this is the saucepan it was cooked in.

It's rhubarb, obviously! The sad thing is, this isn't the first time that rhubarb has met this fate in the Harvey household. You see, Mum loves rhubarb. But as we have learnt from this blog so far, she does not love cooking. This week, she decided to buy some fresh rhubarb to cook and happily (ish) stood in the kitchen, peeling and chopping her rhubarb. About half an hour later a sad and dejected looking mum wanders into my room. "I burnt my rhubarb" she said sadly. "I was really looking forward to that and I burnt it. And I broke the saucepan." Periodically for the next 30 minutes she would wander in and out like a child who has lost it's favourite doll, lamenting the loss of her rhubarb. I felt a bit sorry for her really.

However, mum has never really been one to take pride in the actual cooking or presentation of her food. As you've probably gathered, she's not a huge cooking fan. Many a time have we been presented with burnt or overcooked food. Food poisoning is never something that I have to worry about from mum's cooking. Cancer from the carcinogens from her burnt food perhaps. But not food poisoning. Mum doesn't like to use timers, partly because she doesn't know how the timer on the oven works, but still. Her motto is "when it's burnt it's done". A good example of this would be when mum cooked chicken once. Just chicken. Three breasts wrapped in tin foil so they look anaemic when they are finally pulled from the oven. These unlucky chickens didn't make it to anaemic though, they bypassed that and went to well and truly burnt. Did you know that when chicken is cooked for long enough it will actually go red? Mum will usually attempt to eat whatever in edible meal she has presented us with but even this was beyond her. "I suppose it is a little bit chewy" she said. (Ps, on reading this blog to her, she just reminisced: "I remember that night. It was crap.")

In Toast, Nigel Slater describes his mother making peas and it reminded me of the lack of effort akin with my own mother's cooking: "My mother emptied a cellophane sachet of dried peas into a pan of water. There was never any mint or butter. Sometimes she even forgot to put salt in the water." My mother never put salt in the water. Actually, she never put salt in anything. Slater seems shocked at the thought of not seasoning food. Mum on the other hand said "if you want salt put salt on it yourself. The only things I salt are beetroot and chips."

It's not just the actual cooking that Mum doesn't bother with, presentation isn't exactly her strong suit either.

This was a casserole she cooked the other week. Here, I admit, I'm being a bit pernickity, but some chefs wipe the edges of their plates.
For dessert however, mum really went all out on the presentation.

That's fruit salad with a rhubarb and custard dessert from M&S on top, for those of you not familiar with that dessert classic.
While chefs dedicate chunks of their cookbooks to the presentation of their foods and others dedicate entire books to the subject, Mum merely shrugs it off and slaps it on the plate.

Even when presenting the most basic of foods, Mum adds her own personal touch: "I always like slap my hand down on a sandwich when I make it. And it always makes me laugh. I think it's because I don't really want to make the sandwich."

Last night, we watched The Great British Bake Off Easter Masterclass together and Mum decided we would try to make hot cross buns, and perhaps the chocolate custard tarts ("but we'll buy the pastry, why on earth would you bother to make it?!").
This is the entire thing, I couldn't find any short clips on YouTube. I'd recommend watching it though, partly just because Paul Hollywood is a bit of a silver fox and partly because I wish Mary Berry was my nan. And the show itself is pretty good too.

Even though Mary and Paul make the recipes seem really easy and enjoyable and emphasise the point that kids could help with a lot of it, demonstrating how easy it is, mum decided she didn't want to try most of them because they were "too much of a faf." The hot cross buns seemed easy enough but the rest of it, well, why would you bother doing all that?! Mary and Paul work together and take the viewer through each recipe, step by step. The tricker points are then repeated by the voiceover at the end of each recipe to really give the viewer confidence and highlight the difficult parts, of which there were very few, making the recipes seem simple and look delicious.

We also watched The Great British Menu (BBC2 were having a foodie night).

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01rmn1n/Great_British_Menu_Series_8_Finals_Fish/

These chefs are the polar opposite of Mum. Obviously, they are attempting to win a competition, Mum is only attempting to keep us alive so presentation is not as key in her cooking. The pain staking lengths that the chefs go to, emphasise the importance of presentation. The potato cage (which my clumsy fist would have gone straight through had I tried to pick it up) or Tom Aiken's scallop dish which even had the waiters dressing up show how much people care about the presentation of their food. Having watched the rest of the series, it is clear that presentation that doesn't demonstrate a HUGE deal of effort drastically lowers marks. Part of me would like to see my mother on that show. Just for the judge's reactions.

As per usual, I'm getting a bit off track. The main point of this blog was showing the emphasis that chefs put on the presentation of their food and the care they take in cooking it.
Mum bothers with neither of these ideas and even after watching chefs present beautiful dishes, Mum would still prefer to continue slapping sandwiches.

cake.

When I began making these blogs, I made a video of mum talking about her 'speciality' dessert - Gateau Moya from the recipe book "Clockwatcher's Cookbook" by Anne Dare from the 1970's, purchased for £1.95.

Bear in mind this was made the same day as the initial video in the blog so again, I can only apologise for what she is wearing. I have since confiscated it.

As challenging as this recipe sounds, mum has never actually made it for me. This is because she once made it for my dad for his birthday but he had already eaten in the day so didn't want it when he got home. She vowed never to make it again and has been true to her word. This was about thirty years ago.

Mum insists that the recipe asked you to "get an M&S sponge cake" but I felt sure this couldn't be right, especially as the book wasn't even from M&S. The recipe instead asks for "1 cream and jam filled sandwich (fresh or frozen)" (64). So I guess mum was right to an extent, a home made cake was not a key ingredient. The title of the book, "Clockwatchers' Cookbook" tells us that this is not the kind of cookery book for someone who actually enjoys preparing a meal. The inside cover note confirms this by stating "One eye on the clock and a meal to prepare? This situation often detracts from the enjoyment of eating a meal." The focus is put on the "eating" of the meal, not the preparation, something that is unusual in a cookbook. Dare's cookbook is all about cutting corners and saving time, something else that is not often seen in cookbooks.

For as long as I can remember, these have been the sort of birthday cakes I have had. Throughout the years, I have made my way through pretty much all of the birthday cakes that Marks and Spencer sell. However, as a surprise for my 18th birthday, my mum actually baked me a cake. A real one. And it was surprisingly quite good!
Forgive the unflattering photo.

A giant cupcake made by my mother's own fair hands. And she vowed never to do it again.

At the beginning of this blog, I wrote about Jacqueline Wilson's novel Sleepovers where a girl, Daisy, bakes her birthday cake with her mother. This seemed to touch my own mother and she promised that we would make my 21st birthday cake together as it was a 'special occasion'. She spent weeks researching cake designs and after settling on a penguin (a fabulous choice) she searched through pictures on Google to find the perfect one. About a week before my birthday she asked to do a "trial run." I refused. It's a cake, not a show. We purchased new cake tins, mixing bowls and spatulas. We even bought fresh flour rather than the bag that was in our cupboard from 2009. 

My new mixing bowl. Which I was abnormally excited about.

For the penguin, we decided to do a chocolate head and arms and vanilla sponge body with jam and buttercream, all iced with regal icing. We used the same recipe book that inspired the dinosaur cake you saw in my earlier blog, but our results were slightly more successful, and we really did it as a team!

Mum beating the eggs and sugar, which she was a dab hand at!

Before and after. They looked like proper cakes and weren't burnt at all! It was a miracle!

The finished product. Which was pretty amazing. Sadly there was only really me and my mum around during the day on my birthday and we didn't have an appropriate box to put him in to take him to dinner (yes I know I'm referring to the cake as a him, do not judge me) so nobody really saw him. Nor did I blow out a candle. But we had the cake. Which we had made together, as mother and daughter. 

We didn't get this recipe from the "Clockwatchers' Cookbook" this time though, we used "Kids' First Cook Book" which mum loved and said she had also used at school because it was clear and had good pictures. I have had this book since I was about 7 and have always used it for cakes as well as biscuits and other basic recipes, even now. 
We only used that for the actual cake mixes though, the design and cutting and assembling of the penguin we did BY OURSELVES. Because we are culinary geniuses.

The book is aimed at children and so is full of step by step pictures that clearly demonstrate what to do. Each recipe includes "life-size photographs" of all the ingredients needed as well as the "cook's tools" required. 

This is what my dinosaur cake was supposed to look like. Considering I did it by myself, I think I did a pretty good job.
The layout of the book is very clear and everything is labelled, helping even the most incompetent of cooks prepare simple things. 
The instructions themselves are very simplistic: "Draw round the cake tin on greaseproof paper. Cut out the circle and put it in the tin. Stir the lemon juice into the milk. Put the butter and half the sugar into the mixing bowl and beat it until pale and fluffy" (16). With these simple instructions, it is hard to go wrong. Where most cookbooks would say "line the tin," this book tells you exactly how to do that, yet still manages to not sound patronising. To make up for the simplistic instructions, the top of each page has a small paragraph about the recipe, for instance, "No birthday party is complete without a surprise cake - so here;s how to make a wonderful chocolate cake that tastes delicious!" (16). Again, because the book is aimed at children the language is fairly simplistic, but these basic adjectives manage to convey an enthusiasm for the recipe to readers, young and old.

Although the "Clockwatchers' Cookbook" has long been shelved, my "Kids First Cook Book" will still be used in years to come.

So for the first time ever, I have actually cooked with my mother. And it wasn't that bad. Mum just said "I really enjoyed the day" and looks sad because I haven't said the same.
I kid, it was nice to feel like I had a normal mother. Even if it was just for the day.

fishfinger macaroni cheese.

Yesterday I went to the cinema with my mum because I don't have any other friends. Because I didn't fancy a gallon of popcorn for about twenty pounds, we opted to pop into Sainsbury's first to get some sandwiches to sneak in (which made mother rather nervous.) We were greeted by a poor selection. 
"A duck wrap? Or a prawn sandwich?" I asked.
"OH! We could share! Half a duck wrap and half a prawn sandwich!" my mother replied excitedly.
Begrudgingly I agreed. In my mind, prawn sandwiches and duck wraps do not really go together (perhaps you disagree.) However, my mum loves to 'mix and match' foods. She has concocted many a meal out of the most random selection of ingredients under the name of "Pot Luck Dinners." A few personal favourites (that I have actually eaten) include salmon fishcake and pork pie (if you wish to recreate this dish, buy a pack of two M&S salmon fishcakes and a pack of two Melton Mowbray pork pies (no other brand will do) and simply put them on a plate next to each other. Voila. Dinner is served.) Another favourite, which inspired the title of this post, was macaroni cheese with fish fingers on toast. One evening when searching the fridge for dinner, we were greeted with one macaroni cheese ready meal and very little else. Mum suggested the good old standbys of ham, jam, and fish fingers, so we decided that one person could have a fish finger sandwich and the other would have macaroni cheese. Dad would have to "make do" i.e have some cereal. As she was putting the meal together, an idea struck. "We could share both!" my mother cried with delight. Erm...ok...A normal person eating this (well, as normal as you can be if you've actually chosen to eat this combination of foods for your dinner) would probably eat them separately  Perhaps a small fish finger sandwich to start and a macaroni cheese main. But not my mother. She served up both dishes together with a beaming smile. As one. Macaroni cheese on a slice of toast with three fish fingers sticking out of it. Yum.
Don't think that these are just one offs, when we didn't have any food in or if we couldn't be bothered to cook. Pot luck dinners were a staple throughout the week. Even if there was enough food for us each to have a ready meal, mum loved to mix and match and share different dinners.

I was struggling to think how I could link this to literature. I thought about the kinds of concoctions that mum had created and it just made me think of the kind of things a young child might present to their parents had they attempted to cook dinner. A quick flick through a few Jacqueline Wilson novels confirmed this idea. 
"Secrets" tells the story of two girls, one rich, one poor, who both write diaries and become best friends. Treasure runs away from the council flat she shares with her mum and nan to secretly live in the loft of India's luxurious house. India scavages food from her kitchen offering Treasure a "bag of goodies" (184) containing "Kettle Chips...Olives [and] Chocolate raisins" (184). 
Similar meals can be found in Wilson's novel "The Illustrated Mum." The novel is about two girls, Star and Dolphin, and their mother, Marigold, who has mental health issues. Due to her illness, Dolphin and Star are often left to fend for themselves. One morning when her mum is still in bed, hungover, Dolphin "grabbed a handful of stale party snacks" (149) for her breakfast. Star relies on older boys buying her McDonalds while Dolphin stays at home with Marigold eating "raw cake and unrisen cake and burnt cake until [she] felt sick." (41).
Although it doesn't talk about strange food concoctions, Wilson's "Dustbin Baby" describes eating beans for dinner:

"Mummy couldn't manage meals now. She didn't seem to eat at all, she just drank endless cups of tea, taking it black after we ran out of milk. I ate my breakfast cornflakes straight out of the packet. I ate a lot of school lunch because we were just using up all the tins of baked beans in the cupboard for tea. I had baked beans on toast, and then when we'd used all the bread in the freezer I simply had baked beans. When Mummy just sat and stared into space I ate the baked beans cold." (62)

Many of Wilson's novels explore difficult problems that children can face such as alcoholic or abusive parents or parents and carers with mental health issues. These problems often cause the children in the novels to be badly cared for, often left to fend for themselves. The food Wilson describes is often junk food or the kind of combinations that children would eat when left to their own devices. To a child reader, these dinners would seem brilliant, a combination of all their favourite things, but to the adult reader it is clear that the children are neglected or improperly cared for. 
As I've said before, my mother was not incapable of cooking, nor was I badly cared for, she just hated cooking. A lot. 

I Googled "pot luck dinners" in an effort to see if anybody else ever created these kind of extraordinary meals. They didn't. But it turns out that pot luck dinners are actually a real thing and people host pot luck dinner parties. Further research on potluck dinners told me that they are a dinner party where everyone brings a dish, unplanned, and you eat the concoction that you have. Not quite as strange as mum's concoctions though, generally the guests are assigned starters, mains, sides etc. 
Clearly pot luck dinners are a bigger thing than I was aware of. Oprah Winfrey dedicates an article on her website to help you create "No-Fail Potluck Dishes Everyone Will Want the Recipes For" http://www.oprah.com/food/Potluck-Recipe-Ideas-What-to-Bring-to-a-Potluck-Dinner 
There are also several books which are completely dedicated to potluck dinners such as "Crowd Pleasing Potluck" by Francine Halvorsen or even the children's book "Alligator Arrived with Apples: A Potluck Alphabet Feast" by Crescent Dragonwagon (yes, that's her real name. There's a story behind it similar to Phoebe's name change in Friends). 

Although Dragonwagon's book makes potluck dinners seem appealing, I'm still not entirely convinced.

After I finish a blog post, I always read it to my mum. Partly so I can show her just how ridiculous she is, partly because she doesn't trust me not to embarrass her on here. After reading her this one, she said "Oh I really enjoyed that macaroni cheese and fish finger one. They really went well together." No mum, no they didn't.
She also INSISTS that other people eat dinners like that. I disagree and think it's only my crazy mother that comes up with those things. If you have meals like fishcake and pork pie, please add a comment telling me so my mum can feel a little better about her eating habits.

potatoes.

This is currently what is in our fridge, i.e. very little.
My mother is not great at shopping. It's always been a little bit of an ordeal for her. For as long as I can remember, Saturday morning has been shopping time. Originally  this was because she was at work during the week. However, now she has retired, she has become one of those irritating old people who do their shopping on a Saturday morning when all the busy working people are trying to do theirs. In her novel, Heartburn, Nora Ephron discusses her mother's shopping habits: "[Mother] would get into her 1947 Studebaker and set off for a day in the aisles." (23). In a similar manner, my mother, my nan and myself would get in our car and head off for a morning (which usually went into the afternoon) at Marks and Spencer. We would head to the wonderful place that is Lakeside to find our nearest one. We would leave before it opened and often be waiting at the door, eager to start our shopping. The morning would begin pleasantly, we would get a coffee and a teacake for breakfast. However, things would soon turn sour. The first issue: trolleys. Marks and Spencer are so fastidious about their trolleys (this is not just a trolley, this is an M&S trolley) you have to pay a pound to get one. Being the disorganised person I am, actually having a pound coin is usually an issue for me, but this was not the problem my mother encountered. She had her pound, did her shopping but then, after loading the car, she could not retrieve her pound. This irked my mother somewhat and the customer service department at Marks and Sparks received a weekly ear-hole-bashing from my mum who was too exasperated from the rest of the shopping experience to return to the store to get her money back. Eventually, customer services became so sick of my mother's persistent phonecalls they suggested we just go and ask for a trolley without the coin. Simple. However, the huge queue at the customer service desk usually added an extra 20 minutes to the shopping experience, transferring the trolley exasperation to the start of the trip.
After the initial stressful experience with the trolley, the actual shopping could commence. I would accompany my nan and help her do her shopping (which involved spending hours looking at cheese and flowers only for her to buy exactly the same twenty four products each week). In hindsight, I think nan would have been fine and I should have accompanied mum.
In this video, Mum discusses her shopping techniques, favourite supermarkets and worries about being sued for bad mouthing Iceland (Iceland, if you're reading, don't sue my mother please.)

Theme weeks were a common thing while Mum was at work. As discussed in the video, there was the week of potatoes (parmentier potatoes, new potatoes, regular potatoes, two pots of ready done mash, chips, rosemary potatoes and potato gratin in case you were wondering if there even were eight different types of potatoes available to purchase). Then there was yoghurt week. Twenty nine yoghurts for three people. And I don't even really like yoghurts. Mum thinks that now she has retired, this sort of thing no longer happens. However, I looked in our other fridge and discovered thirteen yoghurts and seven different types of cheese.

And a LOT of vegetables.

Oh, and some mouldy ones.

Why we have so much cheese is anyone's guess. Someone probably said they liked cheese about three years ago and mum has been buying it ever since. If ever we tell my mother we liked something or commented that a meal was nice, we will then be fed that for the rest of our lives or until we tell her otherwise. If we like something, it doesn't quite mean we want to eat it every day for the rest of time. Ephron explores this issue in Heartburn: "[Mother] developed passionate and brief attachments to new products. One month she fell in love with instant minced onions. Another month it was Pepperidge Farm raspberry turnovers." (23). The abundance of yoghurts in our fridge is an example of this. 
However, this is exacerbated by the offers available in supermarkets.  Muller Light were on special in Waitrose, and the Greek style ones (as mum explain in the video) are very cheap in Iceland. Mum is a sucker for an offer. Even if it means we end up with 29 yoghurts and eight types of potatoes. 
Walking through Marks and Spencer, I am bombarded by red signs offering various deals across their food ranges. So I started to think, was Mum really to blame for her terrible shopping habits? Or was it Marks and Spencer and their abundance of red stickers? As Mum explained in the video, I am "not good" at shopping because I do not tend to become suckered into these offers whereas Mum will buy three times the amount she needs because it has a red sticker. (I will confess, today I was suckered in. In our local M&S you have to pay £1 for the car park but can reclaim it if you spend £5 in store. I had spent £4.64, just buying what I needed. But because I wanted the £1 back, I bought a bag of sweets for 75p, taking me over the £5. The sweets I purchased I did not need, nor do I even like, but I felt I had to spend over the £5 because I wanted my £1 back. Which I proceeded to waste on the sweets. Vicious cycle really.) I asked a couple of other people if they were swayed by offers in supermarkets and the majority of them said yes because it seems like such a bargain at the time. Yes, until you end up with eight packets of potatoes. Then it's not such a great idea.



Red stickers are EVERYWHERE. 
Before I'd even got through the main door I was greeted by this plethora of offers:

Just past the door and I can only assume that M&S in Upminster had had the grape delivery for the entire south east and needed to shift them with the help of their handy red stickers:

The main offer this week, however, was their Dine in for £10. Their website offers a lovely 'menu' in an attempt to entice customers.

The use of this menu format gives part of the 'restaurant experience' missing from eating at home. Speaking to the lady on the till, she told me that Dine in for £10 is extremely successful and it gets customers in the store, prompting them to then buy more things (enter red stickers).
The appetising pictures of the foods and wide selection offered, as well as the extraordinary cheap price tag of £10 tempt customers into the store. Naturally, we bought one.

I looked at some of the offers in store and found this:

The sticker says "Buy one get one half price," yet the label says "2 for £6." Marks and Spencer are clearly getting so carried away with their red stickers, they have lost track of their own offers!

As you can see, the offers are everywhere. There is no escaping them. These marketing tactics convince gullible people like my mother that yes, she really DOES need six cartons of orange juice and thirty two yoghurts because it's just such a good offer. 
I feel like I've become side tracked on this blog, ranting about red stickers and what not. Apologies to those of you who made it this far if I bored you. Pop to M&S and reward yourself with something, chances are it'll be on offer.

frankfurter.

This week, I thought I would look at the way we shop for food. Mainly because my mother is terrible at it so I thought that might be amusing.

Mrs Beeton (yes, her again) highlights the importance of sourcing your food properly and gives direction for selecting the choicest of meats, fish and vegetables as the start of each of her chapters. In the section of "Household Management" entitled "The Mistress," Beeton states that "In marketing, that the best articles are the cheapest, may be laid down as a rule; and it is desirable, unless an experienced and confidential housekeeper be kept, that the mistress should herself purchase all provisions and stores needed for the house. If the mistress be a young wife, and not accustomed to order 'things for the house,' a little practice and experience will soon teach her who are the best tradespeople to deal with, and what are the best provisions to buy. Under each particular head of FISH, MEAT, POULTRY, GAME, &c., will be described the proper means of ascertaining the quality of these comestibles."

For my family, Mrs Beeton unfortunately got it wrong. It was not desirable for the mistress of our household to purchase all provisions as she had no clue what to buy. I will explore the way my mother shops nowadays in my next blog (I am sure you're all on the edge of your seats), but this week I will go back and see how she remembers shopping as a child in the 1950's and whether it is really my nan who should shoulder the blame for me having to suffer with "Yoghurt week" (more of this in my next blog, see, you're getting more and more eager to read it).

Mum dressed more sensibly for this week's video.

She also removed the tea bag from the used tea bag tray by the kettle just in case anyone zoomed in on the video and judged her for the "mess" in her kitchen before she would let me start.

Yes, you did hear right. She doesn't think 10 frankfurters in one sitting is a lot. And yes, I witnessed her enjoy a frankfurter with a cappuccino. That's not even the worst combination she has concocted. 

She forgot to add how upset she was when it closed. 

Although most people don't tend to focus their shopping memories on free frankfurters, Mum does raise the point that people used to have to visit several different stores, or at least several counters in order to collect the food they needed. While watching The Mary Berry Story this evening, she alluded to this notion, stating that she used to "buy olive oil from the chemist." Mum was brought up in the 1950's, when Britain's food industry was returning to normal after rationing in the war. A quick Google search of "food shopping 1950s" produced a few educational videos, giving guides to 50's housewives on how to complete their weekly shop. 

my50syear.blogspot.co.uk is a blog in which an American woman relives food shopping in the 1950's.

Although both of these guides are American, many British cookbooks alluded to the importance of being a thrifty shopper. Dusting off our old yet untouched cookery books, I discovered St Michael's Cookery Library book of "Family Meals" by Elizabeth Seldon. Seldon states that "by planning a week's menus in advance your shopping expeditions can be reduced as well as the time you spend in your kitchen." Seldon goes on to state that "as we spend a quarter to a third of our income on food, it is well worth using time planning meals and shopping economically."

Over the decades, the way we shop for food has drastically changed. Many high streets are without local butchers and fishmongers as supermarkets exploded on to the scene offering everything that a housewife could possibly need, pre-packaged for her convenience. So perhaps it is not my mother or my nan who I need to blame for the random shopping my mother produced, but the supermarkets themselves. Had she had to queue at each counter, she would perhaps not have requested 29 yoghurts in one go (that's right. Twenty nine yoghurts in one shopping trip. I was going to save that gem for next week but as you got to the end, consider it a treat).

Ps, basil's not doing so well.

I think he needs to go to herb hospital.

basil.

Yesterday, I came home and found this in the kitchen.

(it’s basil)

For most of you, that is probably not a particularly odd thing to find in a kitchen. However, in my kitchen, its probably about as peculiar as buying a beefburger and finding it's actually made of horse...oh wait...scratch that. I asked my mother if she knew what she’d bought and she proudly told me it was basil. I then asked if she intended to cook with it and if so, what was she planning on rustling up(at this point our fridge contained cheese, some out of date ham, milk and several jars of pickle, so what she thought basil would add to that concoction I have no idea). “No…,” she said sadly. “I just thought it would make the kitchen smell nice.” Well. You can’t fault her practicality I suppose.

Herbs seem to play a huge part in cooking. Well, in most cooking, not so much the cooking that happens in my house. I have vivid memories of watching Jamie Oliver in his early days of The Naked Chef pulling herbs from his window ledge herb garden. Although I couldn't find that clip, he has since created a nice little film on herbs:

Jamie Oliver is enthusiastic about pretty much everything, but he seems to really love those herbs. He describes basil as "the most incredible herb." My mum described basil as "smelly." Not quite the same enthusiasm there. In fact, Jamie seems to neglect the "smelly" properties of basil and focuses on the more practical aspects such as the fact that "It makes you salivate more and it helps digestion" and that it's "delicate to eat." He informs us that rosemary is an anti-depressant and herbs have been used for thousands of years to kill bacteria showing us the versatility of herbs, and he enthuses about how easy it is to grow a herb garden. Elizabeth Gaskell's "Cranford" shows the healing properties Jamie talks about. After her sister dies, Miss Jessie is given "a basin of delicately-made arrowroot" to calm her down.

Although Jamie is probably addressing adults, there are lots of websites and videos promoting making a herb garden as something fun to do with children. A quick search on youtube threw up a video from a user called 2kidscooking. Once you get over the fact that they insist on calling them "urbs" instead of herbs, the kids and their mum actually give some very detailed instructions on making a herb garden. 

The kids seem really excited to plant their herb garden and although this family clearly do this kind of thing a lot, it does make it seem like an easy and fun way for a family to bond over food.
Another website ( Ready for Ten ) states that "Children and herbs go together like strawberries and cream." All these enthusiastic phrases and comparisons and videos of happy children really promote the idea of using herbs to bond with your kids.

There's even an old television show from Michael Bond called The Herbs.

My favourite character is Constable Knapweed.
According to the reliable source that is Wikipedia, "Each character was the personification of an herb. It is said that Bond used quotes from Nicholas Culpeper's 17th Century book, Culpeper's Complete Herbal, to find the herbs whose botanical traits he could best reflect in the individual characters." Although the show doesn't really educate you about herbs, it probably got children interested in herbs and was something they could watch with their parents. Even if they didn't learn anything, the stories are nice and there are some good songs, so at the very least households across the nation would be full of children singing about herbs.

Clearly, herbs are a good food for parents to use to entertain children, from cooking with them to making your own herb garden to singing songs about them.

In the words of Jamie Oliver, "herbs are where it's at." Unfortunately not in my house. For now, that sad little basil plant that sits on the window ledge is the closest we will come to having a herb garden.