Love of Cooking

My grandmother loved cooking!

Our childhood was filled with Nanny's cooking and baking, I especially remember her baking around Christmastime.  She would bake black cake, sweet bread, bread in abundance, since we shared with neighbours, friends and relatives in addition to visitors.  Nan would mix the batters in buckets, yup, no hand mixer or electric mixer, although that was used later, but still, this lady creamed the butter and sugar by hand - who in this day and age can say they did this by hand?  At other not so festive times, she would bake "hops" bread, coconut rolls, hot cross buns, which she started out by selling to the neighbours and tenants.  Oh, how I loved the coconut rolls - yum.

She was also not one to cook the same thing over and over, she was always looking for new recipes.  I remember there was a television program that came on in the early evening - Cooking with Sylvia - I cannot remember the title exactly, but Nanny would sit down and listen and write down the recipe if she thought it was interesting enough to try out.  She had many handwritten recipes folded into her two cookbooks.  She also clipped recipes from the newspapers, she found one not so long ago, for a fruit cake.

When I got married and started cooking on a daily basis, okay, not so daily basis.  Nanny would ask me what I cooked.  When I would tell her what I made, she was all too excited to find out how I made it, what ingredients I used.  She can out-cook, out-bake me any day, yet she was interested, excited even to chat with me about cooking and baking.  Oh, I remember once I got reprimanded by her for cooking hamburgers as a Sunday lunch - oh she was disappointed.  Sunday lunch in that house on Rapsey Street, and still is to this day, was special, some might even call it a feast.  Now I try to replicate that for my little family, because I know this is how Nanny would want it and she will be pleased.