Cooking . Food . Hope . Recipes . The General
More Veggies Please
On July 24, 2022 by Speranza
I own more than a few cookbooks. I even maintain a small ‘vintage’ collection whose tomes often include amusing “household management” tips in the back. What is the point of this, you ask? Well, if the internet goes down, at least I will still know how best to whiten The General’s spats, while I’m jugging a few hares in the larder …
Anyway, the point is, despite all the recipes online (and a set of binders that house personal recipes!) I still struggle with how to cook with less meat. Although I really love veggies – not a huge carnivore at all – the main motivation is to do The Right Thing for our burning planet and now, frankly, my budget. But over and over by Wednesday I grow bored with tomato based dinners, anything approaching Tex-Mex or soaking cashews overnight. (I have tried, I am sorry – as a texture person I simply cannot embrace the vegan staple of “cashew cream.”) There is something about this putty-hued sludge that just makes me gag.
Cooking . Food . Nostalgia
Toast
On April 25, 2022 by Speranza
Can we talk about toast – just for a minute?
I never realized till quite recently (when The General was sighing about my “toast rules”) how particular I really am about this ubiquitous breakfast item. Or, how many times it has featured in my life from childhood to present.
Firstly, the way toast is prepared in the UK and the way it is done elsewhere is vastly different. Perhaps because the toast was traditionally fetched from a far off, frigid area of the house and often shuffled into a toast rack, (something I have always yearned for) somehow, the British toast often seems to end up on the coolish side. And, if the bread is thin and therefore tending to be crispy, I actually prefer this temperature: the toast is now a more solid vehicle for – let’s just say it – more butter (and Marmite!) and much less prone to collapsing into itself like other more pillowy, gummy breads tend to do. (Apologies to any ‘Texas Toast’ fanciers – but I.just.can’t.)
Of course, this is where my toast contrariness begins.
Cooking . Covid Times . Love . The General
You Can Leave your Ham On
On February 17, 2022 by Speranza
I overheard a conversation lately in which an exasperated older woman was sharing that she now avoided asking her husband any question, no matter how small, because of the endless, elaborate answers he supplied. “I mean, I just asked what time it was,” she sighed, “And he somehow started in on the history of how clocks are made …”
Being A Mum . Cooking . Frasier and Niles . Getting Older . Retirement
As Time Goes By
On October 23, 2021 by Speranza
Strange, isn’t it, that you can do something for years and then suddenly, for some reason it’s no longer relevant, no longer a part of your everyday life or no longer palatable and it stops. You no longer drive someone every Wednesday for choir or basketball for example or a tutor becomes redundant and then the entire experience floats away and quietly gets tucked in with the other bits of irrelevant mind jetsam.
And what of The Other Parents who were co-existing with me at this time in this weirdly middle class, parallel universe? Where are they now after sharing this peculiar bond? Why should I even care? But I sat beside them, making awkward small talk, warming my hands around a Tim Horton’s coffee I no longer wanted to drink, too self conscious (was this rude?) to read the book I had brought with me. We sat huddled together like this on rigid chairs that pinched my legs for years, watching our children tumble onto a mat (Aikido) all of us learning to count in Japanese as the Sensei shouted in loud piercing syllables: Ichi! San! Shi!
Then a rapid scurry for coats and shoes, the polite veneer of interest in one another falling quickly away and an obligatory: See you next week shouted over one shoulder.
Being A Girl . Being A Mum . British Stuff . Cooking . My Father . My Mother
Other People’s Hams
On September 22, 2021 by Speranza
I’ve been a food enthusiast for most of my adult life and I have even been paid regularly to write about it. I enjoy reading about the history of food, what other people are eating and of course how to make it myself. It’s especially fascinating to me how many similarities, world-wide, there are. For example, every culture seems to have their own version of a “sandwich.” I’ll leave you to ponder examples for yourself.
The interesting thing is that as a child I was often branded as a “terribly picky eater” and it was widely hoped that being subjected to school dinners in the UK – a militaristic, character building ordeal – would be “the making of me” and presumably, would sort me out once and for all.
But first, let me offer my own defence and perspective.