{ Mu'Mu }

You Really Aren't Home Until....

You've spent a good few hours baking several things to go in tins and infusing the whole house with the smell of baking victoria sponge cake...

Scenes From My Kitchen

I'm not a natural 'foodie'; to be honest, the topic of food and meal preparation bores me beyond endurance, and if there is any job I would gladly give up in an instant it would be that of food provider.

I have spent the majority of my adult life living on toast and sandwiches; not because I am incapable of cooking, but because I just don't want to. It just seems that the energy expended in cooking the damn meal and cleaning up after it far exceeds that which is contained in the meal itself. And I have never been able to get excited about food. I just don't get it. Food is fuel which you shove in your gob to prevent the agent of death from taking hold. I have found that the worse food tastes the better it is for you and, worse, chocolate isn't even a food group.

Mealtimes are something I struggle with. Maybe it is because nobody likes anything I cook and pick over every morsel like they are conducting a forensic investigation determining just what the hell this crap on the plate in front of them is. Maybe it is because we have one male who considers anything not ruined by chili and tumeric or deep fat fried a non-food and ergo inedible; one male who likes only burgers; and one midget male who has a passionate loathing of bread, rice, vegetables, anything green, anything red, anything that began it's life as a seed or anything beginning with 'p'. When, exasperated, I asked him one day he DID want to eat, he emphatically announced, 'cake!' (is there any doubt he is my child?).

But even though I hate mealtimes and have an indifference bordering on the pathological towards food, I DO try to remember that mealtimes are more than just the food.

Sitting around the table as a family is something that can quickly be forgotten about in a quest for peace and expediency, especially as we all seem to have different body clocks when it comes to hunger, but there is something so fundamentally fulfilling about breaking bread together, that even though I can never get excited about food, I find myself getting quite passionate about having a family around a table together. It is the only thing that gets me cooking - the thought of a nicely laid table and the people I love around it talking. And one day, they may even eat my food.

That might be a good feeling too.

What meals are you cooking? Any recipes that you'd care to share? I really need some simple and tasty options!

Rising

There is something deeply soothing about starting the day with bread making. The rhythm of the kneading, and the zen-like state it brings about can zone me out and restore inner calm. The waiting for the rising also demands a patience, for you cannot rush an ingredient like 'time to rise'; and it's within these imposed waiting times, when I feel wholly present, that I am more than a little bit glad that I took the time, made the effort, overcame my tendency for convenience over home-made.

In a way I cannot really describe I feel completely whole.

Weekending :: Season Opener on Putting Food By

From my sister's apple trees - enough pie filling frozen to do us for a little while, kicked off with the first Apple Crumble of the Season. T'riffic.

Weekend Snapshots

1:: Making

2 :: Baking

3 :: Bonding

4 :: Chillin'

5 :: Knitting

6 :: Sitting

What was your weekend like?