Food Food Food

I don't know where I got my love of food and cooking.  My mother was an ordinary cook, but we had home cooked meals every night.  Once in a while we might get a Chinese takeaway but I can remember only a couple of those times, and she might send one of the boys down for fish and chips from the Hollow sometimes, for lunch.  Our diet consisted of roasts, lamb and chicken (how she made one chook go around a family of seven is beyond me and chicken was special occasion food as well).  Corned beef, steak and kidney, tripe, brains, lambs fry (liver), rissoles, fish, macaroni cheese, lots of stews, lamb chops, rarely steak.  Always lots of vegies and often a homemade dessert, apple pies, bread and butter puddings etc.  I wasn't taught to cook, by the time I came along Mum had little patience for teaching anyone anything.  When I got married at just 18, I got myself a couple of cookbooks and proceeded to teach myself.  I have always been a book person, I taught myself baby care from books too!  My first husband was easy to feed and we kind of learned together.  I do remember going down to the red public phone at the corner shop to ring Mum long distance to ask her how to cook a roast.  We used to have daggy things like Apricot Chicken, remember that?  Some chicken pieces, skin on in those days, with a tin of apricots, a tin of apricot nectar and a packet of French onion soup.  We had one of those awful vertical grills that we got as a wedding present (burnt orange colour of course, it was the late 70s) and I'd cook chops and sausages in it.  Packet sauces, packet rice side dishes.  As I got older I slowly learned to cook the "proper" way.  I could make my own pastry, gravy most anything.  So my kids have all been raised with home cooking.  I am watching a show on tv with Jamie Oliver (who I previously couldn't stand) called "Ministry of Food" which involves him going into communities where people just don't cook, they exist on takeaways, and he teaches them how to cook.  It's amazing, and amazing to me how some people live.  He is just teaching them very simple basic recipes but what an incredible difference he is making to these people's lives.  One little five year old had NEVER tasted her mother's home cooking. 
I need to allow these two kids of mine to get into the kitchen more.  Josh watches the cooking shows with me so I know he's interested, and teaching him to cook might make him a bit less fussy.  In any case they need to know how to look after themselves when they no longer have Mum to do it for them.
For tonight I made Lamb Kofta with mint and garlic yoghurt sauce.   I made a great salad dressing from tahini, apple cider vinegar, lemon and lime juice (leftovers in fridge), EVOO, garlic, salt and pepper and a bit of Moroccan seasoning.  I'll make a salad from couscous, tinned chickpeas, red onion, capsicum, flat leaf parsley from the garden, and baby spinach.  So easy and so healthy.
We don't have takeaway a lot, although we ordered pizza last night as I was tired, as there isn't anywhere that does anything decent here so we're probably lucky we live in a country town.  I know we had it a bit more when we lived in Sydney, not too often, but more than here.  Since living in the country I've learned to cook Chinese food better than the dinky restaurants we have, (thanks Womens Weekly Cooking Class Cookbook), I do a mean Indian feast, I can cook Thai, Italian and Japanese food.  I'm still learning, and I'll never stop.  If home cooking is indeed dying out, then we need to do something to stop that happening.  Thanks to the teev and shows like Masterchef (which I don't watch), and cooking shows I think there is a new interest in cooking and creating great food at home. 

Lucky likes to sleep in very strange places.