First real post, honest: an explanation of the title.

 Probably I ought to explain the title of the blog? To be honest, I’m fairly certain I ought to, or risk possible arrest...

In February this year (2021) my mum passed away (honestly, I’m explaining the title, not confessing something awful...) and during the grief and sorrow, of missing mum but looking after dad, and cooking in mum’s kitchen, I realised that the place I most missed mum was in that kitchen. Every where I looked was something that she had taught me to use, or a place I would sit or stand while she cooked and I watched or both of us cooked together, or her recipe books and folders of dishes that were part of her repertoire and had become part of mine.

So I started to look properly through her books and folders, and pulled out one that I’d been aware of, but hadn’t fully explored: her dinner party planner. She and dad had always had people round to dinner, and been to friends’ houses, but I hadn’t seen the whole picture. Mum had kept a dinner party planner, not just occasionally but thoroughly, and here in this folder was a record of everyone who had come, and everything she had served them...from 1967 to September 2019, when she first fell ill.

So, I decided to explore the folder, thinking about mum and dad and their lives, mum’s growing food repertoire and looking at how mum’s food reflected (or didn’t?) the changing food of the past 5 decades.

So...I’m going to cook my way through my mum’s life. 

I’m  going to try to create a dinner party for each 3-5 years of mum and dad’s entertaining, using mum’s recipes and books, keeping ingredients as near as possible to what was available to her, but placing the dinner parties in the context of mum and dad’s lives.

This blog will hopefully be my diary of that attempt!