BLOG: Just How Grandma Used To Make It

We recently encouraged our readers to submit their own blog entries and Mrs Pepperpot (we love that name) is our first guest blogger…

I have wanted to write about food for ages.

I love food, love eating, cooking and entertaining, but found it hard to get started, struggling to find the starting point.

What was different about me, and my approach to food, to eating and cooking? What makes me and my thoughts different, possibly interesting, hopefully worth reading about? I thought a good starting point might be going back to the start.

How we all see food, the preparation or consumption of food has got to be rooted in our childhood. I consider myself to have been amazingly lucky to be influenced by a wonderful lady, my Grandma.

She had worked in service in the 1920s, and seen how the other half lived in fabulous huge stately homes, the extravagant lifestyles and opulent dining making a stark contrast to her life both before and after this time.

After leaving service, this lady raised seven strapping sons and a daughter on her husbands very limited wage, managing the unbelievable task of keeping them all well fed and healthy despite rationing and little spare cash. Obviously I’ve only got family stories about when the boys were young, but I do have a wealth of memories from my own childhood; Grandma was still very much in charge of the kitchen.

She never really got used to not having a table full of men to feed, and simply could not stop cooking – but that was fine with all the family! Every visit would start with you being plied with cake, and end with your arms being filled with homemade pickles and chutneys and other goodies.

What was really important though, is that you’d also get the story.

The cake would have been made with some bargain ingredient from the supermarket, perhaps post Christmas dates for a date and walnut loaf; the chutney was the result of vegetables she’d been given or found cheaply on the market. Every day there would be a trip out to some store or market, and a hunt for a bargain, resulting in some wonderful aromatic concoction bubbling away on the stove or in the oven.

These goods would never go to waste; even with only two mouths to feed, there was a pantry with lines of jars, the dark brown of rich sweet chutney, bright yellow piccalilli, huge sweet jars she’d acquired from a local shop filled with her famous pickled onions, guaranteed to bite you back! A freezer, big enough for at least one body sat off the kitchen, and always held the homemade breads and cakes that an older couple alone would never get round to – all of them delicious.

There was one time I remember that really sums up the way that Grandma and the family saw food.

It was a regular Boxing Day family party, with probably around 30 or more family members of all ages, and a spread sufficient for probably double that!

In pride of place stood a huge, brown, glistening pork pie. “Nice bit of pie, Mum,” said one, “where did you get it from?” Came the reply “You wouldn’t believe how much they wanted at the butchers for a pie with nothing but a couples of ounces of meat in. So I bought two pounds of pork mince and made one”.

And it was wonderful!

Grandma cooked this way until shortly before she passed away, aged 100, though perhaps increasingly less often. Shortly before her death, she spent some time with my mum and dad, and one day, they left her at home while they popped out, briefly.

On their return, pans were bubbling, and kitchen surfaces covered. Grandma had found a fruit bowl full of oranges a little passed their best, and decided to make marmalade. They needed using up.

So what are the lessons – the ones that I have learnt and those I’d like to share with you?

  • you can make fabulous meals with anything and everything
  • don’t be afraid to use bargain foods to cook wonderful food
  • almost everything can be saved, preserved or frozen in some way, if you can’t use it immediately
  • often the things you can make have far more flavour and goodness than commercially produced versions
  • it doesn’t have to look like the picture in a magazine to taste great
  • and you MUST experiment with whatever is cheap and on hand “how do you think the best recipes got invented?”

                                                                If anyone is interested grandmas time in service, she worked at Sprotborough Hall before it was demolished, and contributed to a DVD about the hall shortly before she died, produced by Swinton heritage.

If you would like to submit a blog article on a food or drink related subject please send to james@approvedfood.co.uk

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