Time is a casual concertina. Cartwheeling summers falling like ripe plums insterspersed with the winter treacle of wet socks and cold hands. Playing with bricks, knights and superheroes, into the buggy, out of the buggy, games matches and playdates, cosy bathtimes and bedtime stories on repeat. Spag bol, always spag bol. Childhood in the beat of a firefly’s wings.
Everyone measures time differently. For some it’s in races won, exams endured, candles on a birthday cake. For me, it is suppers at our kitchen table. Chick Fric and Tomato Pasta, Green Risotto and Roast Chicken. Then, bolder: Summer Rolls and Black Dal, Fattee and Satay.
All of a sudden, here we four are, perched at the edge of the kids’ adulthood, hoping like hell that as they take flight, their wings are broad and tough enough to soar. But hold! Because, yikes, I have not handed over on the cooking yet. Part know-it-all, part greedy eater, I have held on tightly in the kitchen, tsking and clucking and taking over. Whilst I grumble about the work, I appear not to want to give it up.
So how much of it do they really know how to do, our two? Do they know the difference between sweating and frying an onion, and why it matters? What a bread dough feels like when it’s ready to bake? Why bother making at loaf at all? In fact, why bother cooking anything from scratch when you can find it ready for the oven, bish bosh and back to life. I must ask, later.
In the meantime, this is the place I will gather it together. That patchwork of recipes skills, hacks and tricks that that make up a cooking life. I’ll never be a tik tok-er, so words and pictures (when I remember) will have to do.
Because every time I pick up a knife and wipe down a board to cook something, I feel like it matters. Cooking is an act of love and also protest. But mostly? Because it means that people I love will gather at our table, and that is what matters most of all.
(And Kate? You know who you are. Yes, there will be recipes, just not every time.)