On Tuesday I rang in sick from work and spent most of the day in bed. Being ill when you’re an adult is nowhere near as much fun as when you’re a child. My abiding memory of being ill as a child is a bottle of Lucozade with the crinkly, orange wrapper and a damp, slightly grey flannel being applied to my feverish brow. An image that could have come straight out of an episode of Life On Mars. The modern adult equivalent of the Lucozade bottle, for me anyway, is the duvet, a pile of magazines and my iPhone.
In between struggling with a throbbing head and a compulsion to vomit, I spent the day snoozing, reading magazine articles and wallowing in nostalgia. One article, describing people’s food memories of home-made chutney and hand-written cookbooks, reminded me of my own childhood food memories, my Grandma’s cooking in particular. Like her mince and Yorkshire puddings, such legendary puddings that rose to perfection and stood towering in proud peaks, something I’ve never been able to replicate. Or the dried peas steeping overnight, ready to be made into mushy peas. The fish and chips we’d have every Friday without fail from the chip shop that is now a Chinese takeaway. Or the bacon sandwiches, such incredible bacon sandwiches. I can still taste them now, which is ironic considering I'm now vegetarian. The bacon sizzling under a hot grill and the sandwiches dripping with butter, that she kept in a dish by the fire. And the cherished monthly visits from the insurance man when the ‘best cups’ would come out with the Mellow Birds coffee and the Abbey Crunch biscuits, laid out on a plate. Or her freshly baked scones, hot and fluffy from the oven, oozing with melted butter.
By comparison, my mother has always been a somewhat reluctant cook. Despite her fascination for programmes on the Good Food channel - The Barefoot Contessa being a particular favourite – my mother is a functional rather than an inspired cook. My childhood memories are of baked cheese pudding on a Saturday night in front of the telly, waiting for The Generation Game to start. Or the shop-bought battenburg cake that I wasn’t that keen on, preferring to peel away at the marzipan coating to get at the pink and yellow sponge squares underneath. Frozen, re-constituted, re-heated, freeze-dried, processed food that defined everybody’s memories of food for anyone who grew up in the seventies. Findus Crispy Pancakes, Arctic Roll, Angel Delight, Dream Topping, Heinz Sandwich Spread, tinned chopped ham and pork with pickle or salad cream on white bread, Smash with baked beans and sausages, Heinz vegetable or oxtail soup. That's what I ate as a child. I tried Angel Delight a while ago, to see if it was how I remembered. It tasted just like 1976.
Usually, the first thing I look at in the magazines I buy is the recipe section. On this occasion, I flicked through the recipe pages looking, without much enthusiasm, at the recipes for ‘lazy lunches’ and ‘simple suppers’. Forgive me if I sound too much like ‘a Northerner’ but I’ve always been a little bemused by the use of the word ‘supper’. When I was a child, supper meant cream crackers and a piece of cheese or a couple of Digestives on a plate before you went to bed. Not a bunch of rocket on a crab salad with a mango salsa dressing. Let’s keep it simple, people. It’s breakfast, dinner, tea and supper. You know where you are then…