Food with Attitude

I'm a travel writer and the food is a very important part of it to me. Food, grub, nosh, tucker, cuisine – so many names, so many variations! Eat it running for a train, on your lap in front of the TV, or seated round a table, holding a conversation.

Boring!

When I was a kid meals weren’t a creation, they were a routine. Price, not flavour was what counted.

Sunday’s leftover beef was turned into Monday’s shepherd’s (not cottage) pie, then Tuesday’s meat pie. Sunday tea was sandwiches and a slice of cake while trying to listen to

Listening to the Radio

The Ovaltinies on the wireless in between the crackling and whistling.
We always sat round the table, which had a tablecloth on it. The cutlery was laid properly, not thrown in the middle. Salt and pepper was there and any jams would be spooned into individual dishes with a teaspoon beside it.

Stay at Home Mums

Mum didn’t go out to work (nor did any of my friends’ mums, except one, who was a hairdresser.) Her job was to run the house and do the shopping.

We didn’t have a car so she walked to the shops. Carrier bags weren’t given away so she carried a basket. She always put her lipstick on before she went out.

No Such Thing as Ready Meals

The plus side was that everything was freshly bought and home-made, not ready-made. No chemicals and no food allergies!

We didn’t have a fridge until I was 13. That was an exciting event. Home-made ice-lollies!

Oh for a Fridge

Food was stored in the pantry, unwrapped or under a net cover. I remember one terrible summer Monday when my Dad (the world’s slowest eater) was chewing his leftover chicken and spotted something on his arm. It was a maggot. Then he saw that his chicken was alive! Mum and I had finished eating. We looked down at our bones. They were crawling. Everyone stared at each other, then we all dashed for the Andrews Liver Salts. Sometimes I wonder what we didn’t notice. Well it did me no harm!

An Overseas Posting

When I was 15 Dad got a posting to Malta. I was dragged there kicking and screaming. (I’d just discovered my power over boys.) It was a new world of food. Until then I thought spaghetti was little tinned slimy things swimming in tomato sauce.

New Tastes

Although I never learnt to cook anything except a fried egg sandwich, I learnt to enjoy eating; my first thick steak, deep-fried cheesecakes, timpani pies for 1/6d, delicious cakes made with ground rice- lovely! We returned to England. I couldn’t afford to eat out any more. I had to prepare my own food.

Mum’s cooking had become more adventurous now that I’d left home! She’d learnt new recipes in Malta.

Remember Marguerite Pattern?

For my 21st birthday my parents gave me Marguerite Patten’s Every Day Cook Book. I don’t know why. I had no interest in cooking and I was thrown out of Domestic Science before I even started. (I was innocent, honest!)

One day I picked up the book and started browsing through it. It was full of pretty photos of strange things that I’d never heard of, like Fish Whirls, Hungarian Goulash, Melting Moments. (Even the names are delicious!) And when I read the ingredients I realised that I could produce them easily. I did, and they (usually) looked as good as, or even better than, the photos.

Impressing my Friends

My friends made approving noises and paid me compliments- a Sagittarian show-off’s delight! The more compliments I got, the more I experimented.

Eventually I realised that everyone willingly visited me, but I rarely got any return invitations. Tackling some friends, I asked when I was going to be invited to their house. They looked sheepish and said, “We can’t cook as well as you.”

I explained that the food didn’t matter. I suggested they cooked their favourite meal or got a take-away. I’d enjoy the company and being waited on. And it was their turn to feed me for a change!

Moving to Spain

We went to live in Spain. We lived in a large block of flats with Spanish from all over Spain. They all got to know that I collected recipes and they would summons me when they were preparing something that they thought would interest me, like espencado (a Valencian aubergine and pepper dish) pickled squid, Galician lemon bread pudding, and paella.

They never used cookery books. They cooked exactly the same recipes that their mothers and grandmothers had cooked. I soon knew more about Spanish cookery than any of them. They cooked regional recipes and I had recipes from all over the country!

The empty house next door to us had been left to a Spanish family who couldn’t sell it as it belonged to so many of them, so some of them used it at weekends. We were always invited to lunch. They always arrived on Sundays, swept the patio and prepared the paella.

Advance Preparation

One day I insisted that they came to us for lunch the following Sunday. It was all ready when they arrived; tiny open sandwiches, Coronation Chicken, jacket potatoes, salad, and a large watermelon scooped out and filled with fruit salad.

They were completely lost. They kept asking me what they could do to help!

Imitation is the Sincerest Form of Flattery

The next week they copied my open sandwiches and the fruit salad, which was flattering.

Eating Like the Natives

We were expecting friends one evening. I was cooking paella outside on the barbecue. When they were leaving home their Spanish neighbours turned up. My friend apologised and said they were going out for a paella. Her neighbours were horrified. “You can’t have paella in the evening!” they said.  “Why not?” asked my friends.“Because you eat paella in the daytime!” was the firm reply.

I never did find out why.

Lynn Funnell