Every Saturday my friend WaxeWod puts a happy list post on her blog and asks her followers, should they feel inclined, to follow suit. I find it quite therapeutic, a way to look back over the previous few days, often realising it’s the smallest things that make you happiest. If I was to expand the …
Category Archives: Food Memories
Here’s one I wrote earlier
Clearing out a cupboard yesterday I found a long-since forgotten school magazine, dating back to when I spent part of my childhood in Malta. My Dad was a printer by trade and he’d gone out to Malta to help set up a print company. We were there for about four years and he still reminisces …
Carrot & Mango Cake
It would’ve been my Mother’s birthday today and I’ve no doubt at all if she was still here there would have been cake. The sweet things were always her favourites, I’m sure that’s where my indulgent streak comes from. She was one of those people who always looked at desserts first on a menu, making …
Coal dust, tobacco smells and Grandma’s egg custard
When I called my dad yesterday he told me he’d met up with his two surviving brothers earlier this week and spent a long enjoyable lunch reminiscing about their childhood days. Born and raised in a Yorkshire pit village, I know my dad left home at 18, which means the memories and stories shared over …
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These are a few of my favourite things.
Is there a food that makes you happy, even just thinking about it? This was the question my friend Alison asked her followers on Twitter the other night. My initial thought was ‘I’ve got so many’. So many that prompt a smile and a stirring of the taste buds. I could choose: A plate of …
The joy of group baking
Bake Off is done for another year. First, there was the expectation that like so many of our annual highlights, it just wouldn’t happen this year. Then a few brief weeks of anticipation once we’d heard it was going ahead. Followed by ten weeks of baking challenges that feel as if they’ve gone by in …
Discovering new flavours
I’m the person who often picks the dish he doesn’t recognise on the menu. The person who then sits wondering what’s going to be delivered to the table. Hoping for a new food experience, eager to be the envy of my dining companions, running the risk of leaving them thinking ‘will he never learn’. It …
A beetroot revelation
There aren’t many things I won’t eat, or at least won’t make an effort with, and now the list is even shorter after the revelation that was beetroot hummus. Up until last weekend, beetroot was a no go area for me. It’s an aversion which stretches back to childhood and the memories of horribly acidic …
Going back to Thurcroft
If these last strange three months have taught me anything it’s just how important the senses are, even when you’re not necessarily using them. How just the thought of a smell, a taste or the feel of something can bring back memories, taking you to a time or place you’d thought long forgotten. Much of …
Grandma so loved to bake
One of the great benefits of the creative writing course I’m taking is the opportunity to produce work in different styles and formats to those I would normally use. In a recent session we looked at writing a villanelle poem. If you’re anything like me a villanelle will be a completely new concept so I’ll …
David in the kitchen. 