cooking

I had a bit of a conversation on homegrown.org about home cooking and why people don't do it. The original article/post was quite interesting and I had recently been thinking the same. I came across this that made me 'lol' as the young uns say.

pumpkin-cheesecake-bars-my-own-recipe

Kristin specifically says "[Pictures are my own, & so is the recipe! No Copy & Pasting Here!]" but seeing as I find this whole page of drivel offensive I disregard her request. Honestly, this is not a recipe. Finding this page whilst looking for real inspiration made me feel cheated. What a waste of my time to put this out into the world. And then to linger in a tab on my firefox for weeks until I have gotten around to complaining about it. Kristin, you have angered me. And your cheesecake mess looks crap. So there.

I used this as an example of how people seem to have gotten lost down a side alley off the road to good food. In the homegrown discussion it seemed that the respondents initially wanted to participate but seemingly only to point out that yes they had also thought this and make some flaccid points about how it's ironic as modern kitchens are so well equipped. The lady that wrote the post engaged in the discussion, but then it fizzled out. I thought it was quite interesting. To be trying to understand what had gone wrong with the idea of food.

"I'm not necessarily sure the issue is one of complexity v's simple food, I think it's maybe more to do with understanding. I normally quite like jamie oliver recipes and had a quick look at a couple from the 30 mins. show and they do look terrifyingly complicated from the ingredients list but when you really think that yes, garlic/onion/chilli/olive oil are 4 separate ingredients, to someone who cooks regularly they would barely feature in the conciousness. They are just part of cooking certain types of food. So these plus a more unusual ingredient don't really add up to something overly complicated.
I do think that recipe books and shows reinforce the idea of following a set of rules rather than learning a general feel for what things go together." 

This was my point. But I would have liked to have gone further. After a trip to see my family at the weekend that left us desperate for some proper food, this has been amplified.

Firstly, my mum is ill and has been given some special reinforced milk and bottles of multi vitamin, anti-malnutrition drinks. Looking at these I feel disgusted. I feel disgusted that, to a certain extent, these space foods are all that my parents feel are safe and proper to deal with. They came in fruit flavours that have nothing to do with anything that grew in the ground. They are coloured and thickened and sweetened to make them appear proper, or some kind of twisted wholesome. But they came from the doctor. So they must me good.

Secondly, even outside the illness my mum has some weird flavour/taste issues. She mostly only like sweet and sour or plain semolina "the plainer the better" as the said when I asked if maybe she might like some jam or spices in it. 

Thirdly, even though my dad is doing a great job at looking after everything his cooking is "different" to ours. I think back to when he took over cooking when I was a teenager and he served up "pies" of baked beans topped with an egg, cooked in a pie dish in the oven. Or the near-week we had cauliflower cheese for every evening meal, each time getting more strange and separated as he pared down the construction method. We had frozen pizza, which personally (sorry dad, it was lovely of you to look after us and I mean no malice, we were hungry and we appreciated the food) we feel is a crime against eating. For dinner, beef and onions, plain potatoes, carrots and swede, which was nice, welcome but seemed so lacking of any wholesomeness or enthusiasm. This simple meal could have been so much more.

Fourthly (not counting another encounter with swede and carrots cancelled out with the roast potatoes cooked in the magic grandparents roasting pan) was the situation called tea at my grandad's house. This, as it always has been, was a selection of ham (or salmon as my auntie's influence showed) sandwiches, crisps and a huge array of mr kipling cakes and pies. Mini rolls. The finale being the chance to share with ralph the tradition of slicing off the top of the kipling pie with a teaspoon and piling in some clotted cream, topping it off with the dissected lid.

Not forgetting the encounter with utterly I can't believe marg.


I don't want to sound like a snob but this is so very different to how we normally eat. We buy vegetables and spices. We grow herbs. We love food. We cook.

But what even is a mini roll?