loving with food

My mother used to love us with food – which was ironic because when my brother and I were small, she couldn’t cook. She’d make a picnic for any journey over an hour and cooked breakfasts every morning until I started secondary school.  A few years and a divorce later, she got a job as a housekeeper for a farmer who ate fruitcake for breakfast.  She spent a month practising; the birds in the garden were so fat they couldn’t fly when she left.

In my second year of university I decided to learn to cook. My then boyfriend’s mother had given me a cook book and I spent my grant on ingredients. My skinny boyfriend and waif- like flat mate gained weight that term and I spent quite a lot of time freezing in and outside phone boxes ringing my dad ( yes my dad!) for cooking advice.

Anyway I am now a good cook and, although I would never knowingly have started to love with food, I do. My Mum was very ill last year,I went to look after her for a week and cooked and cooked; filling her freezer. My friend’s dad had a stroke last summer,  I made her an apple pie, because I know it’s hard to eat when you’re to- ing and fro- ing. When my sister in law had a major set-back, I made her a beef stew, because I thought she wouldn’t feel like cooking.

When I had children, I followed my health visitor’s advice. I cut out salt and I made sure they had food from all the groups; including fruit and veg. I put home cooked meals in front of them even the evenings when I work and do they sit and eat without prejudice? Do they heck! They are fussy eaters! They are much fussier than I ever was. Maybe I have given them too much choice, but I do know they could happily live on sausages, toad in the hole, pasta, Bolognese, pizza. Eldest will not touch peas, middle child will not touch sweetcorn, some evenings I cook the corn and peas together and dish up, then watch them sort out the corn from the peas and swap with each other.  

I have to make their packed lunches because when my husband does it he gets it wrong and they complain and come back hungry. Eldest has plain bread, but will make sandwiches if you put cucumber and tomatoes in a bag, middle child will only eat bread and butter, youngest child will eat ham or cheese sandwiches, but eats in whatever order she wants.  None of them like wholemeal bread, much. They all like crackers. Eldest will not eat bananas or raisins and they all want different flavoured crisps.

There have been times when I say, “That’s it! You will eat what’s in front of you!” But they are more stubborn than I. They go hungry. I suffer from mummy guilt. You see, I do love with food.