So I went to Mum's on Sunday for lunch. There were ten attendees: assorted siblings, partners and children, nieces, nephews; but they weren't all there at the same time. They were kind of coming and going, if you know what I mean. That's how it is at Mum's on Sundays.
She was a child of the depression, a teenager through the war, a bride in the 'fifties and had seven children into the 'sixties. That's a lot of baggage. Oh, and a lot of cooking.
For that generation, the frugality learned during the depression and the war never really went away, and this was enhanced by the economies of scale required to feed baby boomer children, all mixed in with the explosion of supermarket convenience products during the 'fifties plus a sprinkling of the exotic items brought in by migrants in subsequent years.
Then there was the 'seventies. Thankfully, mum never really got into that decade. It just kind of passed by with the food on her table being from the earlier eras.
Time is everything with Mum's cooking - as much time as possible. You will never get food poisoning at Mum's, because she cooks everything to within an inch of its life.
So there's a baked tuna casserole on the table. Nice and crunchy 'round the edges. Nice and crunchy on top, with all that cheese. OK, so you and I wouldn't cook it that long. But it's good! That cheese-and-tuna-bake aroma, you can smell it turning into the street, let alone pulling up the driveway.
Next there's the corned beef (silverside). I knew this was coming out - the hot english mustard in the little crystal dish and its tiny serving spoon on the table gave it away. And the smell of cabbage.
The corned beef is piled high on a huge platter, surrounded by the potatoes and carrots that are all boiled up together with the meat. The cabbage comes in a separate tureen, steaming in its delicious juices complete with peppercorns, cloves and whatever other spices Mum puts in.
In fact, everything goes on the table at once. There was a rice dish - kind of like a risotto of the 'fifties - made with chicken stock and about 10% soup noodles added to make it all slippery and unctuous. It's amazingly good but I've never seen a recipe for it in a book.
There's other stuff as well, like an old-fashioned tomato, celery, lettuce and radish salad with some cubed cheddar and quartered hard-boiled eggs. And a plate piled high with bread - already buttered! If you want unbuttered bread, you have to put in a special order!
A bowl of nuts and dried fruits sits on the table, just in case you want to, like, graze in between stuffing yourself with corned beef and tuna bake.
Mum does come out with some weird stuff occasionally - although with a combination of vegetarians and rabid meat-eaters to feed, I guess she does have to compromise. One time she dumped a huge baking tray of lasagne on the table, announcing, 'This is vegetarian lasagne, but it does have meat in it, right over here,' pointing to one corner of the tray.
Dessert. It's a bit of an afterthought. Mum is exhausted from figuring out the main courses. She does stewed apricots (off the tree) with ice-cream, which is nice, of course; sometimes a rice pudding with sultanas and that delicious creamy nutmeg vanilla crust on top; or maybe an cinnamon apple bake kind of thing with pouring cream.
Sometimes she just buys supermarket cheesecakes and stuff like that to suffice. She always forgets to take it out of the freezer soon enough. 'It's still a bit frozen in the middle,' she says, helpfully. Be careful, or you'll break a tooth on a rock-solid slice of Sara Lee.
I guess it's no different to a typical Sunday lunch in most peoples' extended families. The conversation jumps around all over the place, the phone rings (it's my sister running late), someone leaves the door open and next door's ginger cat (Max, who thinks he belongs to Mum) walks in ...
And Mum just won't stop urging people to eat. Like ten times she asks me if I've had some more of this or that. It's very annoying. Plus she never actually seems to sit down, running around like a mad woman fetching things out of the oven, pouring drinks, trying to defrost the cheesecake, asking about how all the children are going at school ...
I washed up. What's a dishwasher?
She was a child of the depression, a teenager through the war, a bride in the 'fifties and had seven children into the 'sixties. That's a lot of baggage. Oh, and a lot of cooking.
For that generation, the frugality learned during the depression and the war never really went away, and this was enhanced by the economies of scale required to feed baby boomer children, all mixed in with the explosion of supermarket convenience products during the 'fifties plus a sprinkling of the exotic items brought in by migrants in subsequent years.
Then there was the 'seventies. Thankfully, mum never really got into that decade. It just kind of passed by with the food on her table being from the earlier eras.
Time is everything with Mum's cooking - as much time as possible. You will never get food poisoning at Mum's, because she cooks everything to within an inch of its life.
So there's a baked tuna casserole on the table. Nice and crunchy 'round the edges. Nice and crunchy on top, with all that cheese. OK, so you and I wouldn't cook it that long. But it's good! That cheese-and-tuna-bake aroma, you can smell it turning into the street, let alone pulling up the driveway.
Next there's the corned beef (silverside). I knew this was coming out - the hot english mustard in the little crystal dish and its tiny serving spoon on the table gave it away. And the smell of cabbage.
The corned beef is piled high on a huge platter, surrounded by the potatoes and carrots that are all boiled up together with the meat. The cabbage comes in a separate tureen, steaming in its delicious juices complete with peppercorns, cloves and whatever other spices Mum puts in.
In fact, everything goes on the table at once. There was a rice dish - kind of like a risotto of the 'fifties - made with chicken stock and about 10% soup noodles added to make it all slippery and unctuous. It's amazingly good but I've never seen a recipe for it in a book.
There's other stuff as well, like an old-fashioned tomato, celery, lettuce and radish salad with some cubed cheddar and quartered hard-boiled eggs. And a plate piled high with bread - already buttered! If you want unbuttered bread, you have to put in a special order!
A bowl of nuts and dried fruits sits on the table, just in case you want to, like, graze in between stuffing yourself with corned beef and tuna bake.
Mum does come out with some weird stuff occasionally - although with a combination of vegetarians and rabid meat-eaters to feed, I guess she does have to compromise. One time she dumped a huge baking tray of lasagne on the table, announcing, 'This is vegetarian lasagne, but it does have meat in it, right over here,' pointing to one corner of the tray.
Dessert. It's a bit of an afterthought. Mum is exhausted from figuring out the main courses. She does stewed apricots (off the tree) with ice-cream, which is nice, of course; sometimes a rice pudding with sultanas and that delicious creamy nutmeg vanilla crust on top; or maybe an cinnamon apple bake kind of thing with pouring cream.
Sometimes she just buys supermarket cheesecakes and stuff like that to suffice. She always forgets to take it out of the freezer soon enough. 'It's still a bit frozen in the middle,' she says, helpfully. Be careful, or you'll break a tooth on a rock-solid slice of Sara Lee.
I guess it's no different to a typical Sunday lunch in most peoples' extended families. The conversation jumps around all over the place, the phone rings (it's my sister running late), someone leaves the door open and next door's ginger cat (Max, who thinks he belongs to Mum) walks in ...
And Mum just won't stop urging people to eat. Like ten times she asks me if I've had some more of this or that. It's very annoying. Plus she never actually seems to sit down, running around like a mad woman fetching things out of the oven, pouring drinks, trying to defrost the cheesecake, asking about how all the children are going at school ...
I washed up. What's a dishwasher?
This is perhaps my favorite of all your posts. I love to go back and re-read it, just for the nostalgia of a big family Sunday lunch.
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