Food and other Monstrosities

Food and other Monstrosities

‘’The British Empire was created as a by-product of generations of Englishmen roaming the world in search of a decent meal.’’

Bill Marsano

A substance consumed to provide nutritional support for the body. Usually of plant or animal origin and contains nutrients, such as carbohydrates, fats, proteins, vitamins, or  minerals. Did Mother ever read the aforementioned sentence, he feared not. What of all the pummeling, scraping, mashing and boiling done in the name of producing dinner. Food was smashed into submission, denuded of any flavor or nutritional value, and for him his first memories of dinners were as endurance tests to check his tenacity to get through a mealtime served on the space out yellow table But which in his own deluded amnesia ridden mind were ‘’Good’’.

‘’Nobody cooks like your own Mother.’’ Thank God for that, he thought in later life.  I can go out and eat without worrying.  For instance, a potato was not a potato until it was peeled, washed, boiled until almost taking on the consistency of the water itself. Then it was duly mashed vigorously into a white, sticky globulous mass. This then sat on the edge of a plate like a huge blob of lumpy wallpaper paste.  Then there were imaginatively named greens, also termed potherbs  (pot!) vegetable greens, leafy greens or just disgusting. He knew them as disgusting.

Greens have a lot of vitamin K and fibre, and are also high in protein, iron and calcium. So all in all they were pretty healthy supplements to our heroes diet. Isn’t theory always good. In practice Mother’s greens were so overcooked that it would have been better to drink the water they were drowned in and throw out the leafy remains. Sadly the green leaves themselves made it to his plate. The taste, smell and texture of greens was abhorrent to him, but what did he hear?

‘’Eat up your greens’’, and ‘’You can’t leave the table until you’ve ate your greens.’’ Yes, I can, you just watch me! And Mother’s ‘piece de resistance’, ‘’ There are children in Africa who would love these greens.’’

Sod it, let them have them, he thought. But the ballbuster and the ace up her sleeve in this continual mealtime struggle was, ‘’ You won’t get any afters if you don’t eat your greens.’’ And that was it, time for afters in working class parlance. Desert for the more refined.

For him, afters was the only thing that survived the cooking process and passed muster in regards to Mother’s food. These concoctions were put in the bowl or dish before the curtain of political correctness and health, calorie intake and sugar obsession minded do-gooders poked their noses into everything. He savoured the round rough pastry that was smothered in sugar coated Kellogg’s cereals, that by turn were then drowned in a sea of Tate and Lyle Golden Syrup, which is basically a treacle. This was all popped into the oven, baked  until a glazed and hardened and then served with lashings of cream, ice-cream or custard. Sickly deliciousness personified.

Sundays. Sundays and food. Sundays before morning television. Not, truth to tell, did our hero find much of an edifying nature on the goggle box, anyway. Sundays without shopping. He detested shopping with every molecule of his burdensome body, but at least it was different to being at home on Sunday. Sunday with the impending doom of Monday ever waiting in the wings. Gnawing away at his mind, dog with bone like. Sunday and still too young to be allowed the freedom of going to the picture with his mates, and all the great fun messin’ about on the way there and back. Sundays when it rained. It always rained on Sundays. Always. Grey long tedious Sundays that stretched out before him as if it were a dull grey long toilet roll, forever unrolling its way down an endless set of stairs. Sunday afternoon often saw the family assembled in the front room  with the television switched off. Mother would put to good use, in her mind’s eye, a ready standby from her youth. Games. Family games. One such game which really helped to confirm that there was nothing, zip, zero to do in the whole of creation was ‘I spy with my little eye’ which would in full carry on with ‘something beginning with b, or h or c. Then the other family members would scan the room, for it had to be something in the room, and then rattle off a series of guesses. Well one afternoon the family sat down to Sunday tea with salmon sandwiches. Sunday was special and so was salmon. Tinned but still deemed worthy of a Sunday. It was of course accompanied by cucumber in a cosy white sliced sandwich. Tea was served from a teapot into cups and saucers, no don’t drink from the saucer, Father! Then French fancies. Moist square sponge cakes lovingly drizzled over by the machine that made them. Topped with buttercream and coated in fondant icing. They came in a choice of  brown, pink and yellow. Lovingly served in little dollies and containing only 30 percent sugar. Sickly deliciousness personified. Accompanied on the coffee table by Cherry Bakewell tarts, because Mother couldn’t bake well, Manor House sponge cake replete heavily dotted with sultanas, packed with sugar and if that wasn’t enough how about Angel Slices. Yet another sugar overdose, this time with fondant in pink and yellow, and a vanilla filling running down the length of the Angel. Such a sweet Angel. Mother had  found how to banish dreary Sundays. Bury them under snowdrifts of sugar, fondant and sultanas, and what the hell, more sugar.