Oh how i am loving the bright chilly weather at the moment, its great to see the sun after so much gray and feel the bite in the cold air!
i have discovered a love of cooking this winter and it got me thinking about how my cooking habits have changed during the years. i come from a family of cooks, my mum was always baking something when i was young. The highlight of her baking year would be our harvest festival when she would bake our school center piece, it was a giant bread creation in the shape of a wheat sheaf ( a bit bizarre i know) and when i was very small i would be immensely proud carrying this giant thing down the church isle where it was surrounded by all the other children’s offerings of veg and tins of fruit! but i remember as i got older the whole thing became less cool until in the end when i used to secretly wish it would get burned in the oven or that I’d drop it on the way to school!
But now i have my own kids i get what mum was doing it for, that nurturing feel-goodness of cooking something special for your family or freinds brings out the domestic goddess in us all , there is no longer an anti-coolness about cooking something from scratch in-fact i think its now the opposite. Cooking seems to be everybody’s thing at the moment, with the very sexy nigella selling her wonderful brand of guilt free domestic bliss, i love the way she devours the food in her fridge at the end of each show!, its refreshing to see a sexy women on telly enjoying her food so much!
Oh all this talk of food has got me thinking of tea, maybe I’ll go rustle up a giant pan of toad in the hole. I can start the diet tomorrow!
Helen Fry
