Homelife: Kay Town
Andrew Kay asks not who ate all the pies but who made them?
I love to cook. I love ingredients and kitchen equipment and entertaining guests with food and making friends snacks. I’ve never seen it as a problem and people seem happy enough accepting my hospitality whether it be a slice of cake or a seven course dinner.
Mr R has declared that, using my talent in the kitchen, I make everything taste like pudding. He doesn’t mean that everything is sweet, just indulgent. He has also suggested that I may have a bit of a ‘thing’ about feeding people.
Now I clearly remember an extraordinary documentary about people who are obsessed with feeding people. Some had gone to such extremes that their victims, usually willing, had become immobile. Some so large, that to get them out of their homes and into medical care, walls had to be demolished and cranes deployed.
“Some were so large walls had to be demolished and cranes deployed”
He was of course joking. I have no great yearning to increase the body size of my friends and loved ones. I simply love to cook and Iove to see people enjoying the food.
Of course it is genetic. My maternal grandmother was a cook and an entertainer. The larder was always full of goodies and the makings of a decent meal should unexpected guests arrive. And of course arrive they did, knowing that the cupboard was always full, even in wartime when rationing was changing the nation’s diet. Grandad was a butcher so I assume a little ‘bartering’ took place amongst shopkeepers.
My mother is the same. Her first question will usually be ‘are you hungry?’. And her cupboard is equally capacious and well stocked. She panics if there is not food enough for a week in the kitchen – with special reserves on top of that. So that’s where I get it from, and I am very glad I have it too.
Last week I had a cold, bad enough to keep me in bed but not so terrible that I did not want to eat. How grateful I was that the cupboards and refrigerator yielded enough produce to construct ample sustenance for a few days without having to venture out.
