My Grandma was a good cook, all the traditional cooking. Her steak and kiddley puds and pies were legendary as was her strawberry jam. I know she would have approved of the changes I made with her pud to make it even better.
She encouraged me and taught me jam making. I can feel her looking over my shoulder when I make preserves and nodding encouragingly.
But I am mainly self taught. I remember thinking, when young, when mum put the dinner on the table that there had to be better things to eat, and there were.
I learned to cook in self defence and could cook a full roast dinner when I was 11. Since then I have read extensively and practiced. When I married, I would stop at a book shop on my way home from work buy a cook book that inspired me and work through it. Practising on Mr Bee.
And I am still a sucker for cookbooks.
As for the boiled bacon, well she knew about eating boiled bacon so thought she would do some but didn't know how to do it. It tasted of nothing, it was tasteless, and slimy and came with a white scum
Think Butterflies, Wendy Craig, and you have my mum. She even looked like Wendy Craig.
And to keep the topic, one winter festival the cake she made had icing that could not be cut!! We tried everything to get through that ruddy icing to no avail. So in frustration she gave the whole thing to me in January with the words, 'here if you and your fellow girl guides can get through it, you can have the ****** thing. So being the hungry bunch we always were, we turned it upside down and scooped the filling out. The cake wasn't that bad. but the icing was harder than concrete.
