There's No-one Like Your Mum

Last year Sam and I hosted a Mothering Sunday extravaganza and threw a dinner for Sam's mum, my mum, and my Grandma. We decided to go for a re-run this year and, naturally, I decided on a menu composed of dishes I'd never tried cooking before. However there was a traditional theme: what is known in my family as a 'Grandma tea'. When my cousins and I were little, we were often treated to a spread put on by our grandmother which would include ham sandwiches (with and without mustard), egg and bacon pie, salad, cheese scones...and then chocolate buns (the wrappers would be scraped clean with fingernails and teeth), tea loaf, fruit scones, and often a hot pudding like apple pie. So as the supper was all about family, and would be graced by Grandma, this was an homage to those meals.

Sam has found himself lumbered with a lot of washing-up of late as, due to this project, I have been doing a lot of cooking. This is not fair, so this weekend we decided to cook together for our mums (and of course my Grandma)--Sam made sausage rolls, a first for him. (See pic. of his huge hands in a tiny bowl.) I didn't make these so I can't count them in this challenge, but the difference made by picking nice sausage meat and constructing your own rolls from it is huge. They are a light-year away from the ones made from entrails and fat that you find in supermarket freezers. 

Grandma makes a mean egg and bacon pie--or, as some would have it, quiche--and, despite the pastry I would have to make, I wanted to cook one. Although I had promised not to use James Martin amounts of fat, I did use an actual recipe of his for the second time. Even though I treated this pastry very nicely (it was well cosseted, got to relax twice, and was blind-baked) it still somehow split, and so the underneath was quite gooey by the time the finished pie was served. (I also dropped a rolling pin on it before serving.) Grandma still reigns as the queen of this dish! However, it tasted good -- most importantly, everyone had seconds.

I turned again to the Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook for my next recipe. (If I am boring you with all the recipes that come out of this then fear not, the number of recipes which I haven't tried from it is now very small!) I made spinach and cheese muffins. The only fat in this recipe was cheese, and the mix looked incredibly dry (presumably there isn't much liquid in there because of all the water in the spinach). As I looked at it in the paper cups, I thought 'please, please don't fail me when I'm trying to show off for the grown-ups'. Nothing from this book has ever gone seriously wrong, though, so I shouldn't have worried. They were ace AND for the very first time in my life my efforts looked like the picture in the book. I'm still happy about this.

I'm never very sure how portion sizes in recipe books are worked out. I made a lemon surprise pudding for afters and, because of issues with the size of my dish, I made half quantities, in theory only enough for three portions, sadly, there weren't any leftovers, but I don't think we'd have wanted any more. The result was a surprise to me as well as everyone else, as there was no picture on the webpage. I won't include a photo: if you're not sure what it is, and want to make it, it can be a surprise for you too. This is an easy peasy recipe (even more so with a food mixer) that produced a light citrus desert which went very well with clotted cream.

Family meal times are about much more than feeding people. They are about laughter, teasing, catching up, and showing you care with your cooking, whether it's a special dish made with expensive ingredients or some pasta with sauce out of the jar. And I think that the Sam and Sally tea hit the spot.