I heart...

...the modern world!

When my daughter was about 4 she asked Santa for an ice cream maker, God knows where she got the idea, but of course he came, he delivered and there it was.  

"Can we make ice cream now?" She asked, running into me with a tub of Ben and Jerrys from our freezer.

 

"No, no, Lovey" I hushed, " You don't put ice cream into an ice cream maker, you need to make the ice cream from scratch"

A couple of weeks later my mother rang me in a flap, Mary had gone down for a visit, and was given some money and when asked what she wanted to buy she kept saying to my mother that she wanted to buy 'scratch'.  My mother couldn't for the life of her figure out what the child was after.  I told her to tell Mary we would get some later.

So we did, later that day we bought 'scratch'... eggs, cream, honey, vanilla essence and sugar, and we made ice cream.  It was good but not long after that machine took up residence in our attic where it has resided ever since, our kitchen being too small to store everything - sacrifices must be made! 

Most days I buy scratch... the chances of me using preprepared sauces have halved since finding what can only be descibed as catgut in a jar of pesto, not that the chances were high in the first place.  I always bought pesto, I don't know why because home made is always nicer.  There are very few things that are not as good homemade as the shop bought version.  Well, funnily enough, except for ice cream... have you tasted 'Ben and Jerrys' Oat Cookie Chunk??

I have the time of course, I'm not working, I don't think I could do most of it if I was.  However I find it just as easy to melt a bit of butter and add flour, milk and cheese as I do to stir a powder into milk.  

The question is "Would I love cooking as much as I do, if there wasn't the safety net of "oh i don't feel like cooking lets get a chinese/run over to the shop there and grab a roasted chicken/take that lasagne out of the freezer"??

Would I love cooking if there wasn't such an amazing variety of produce for sale?

Would I love cooking if food was lasting only a day because there was no fridge to put it in?

I doubt it.  That is why I love the modern world, because on days like yesterday when I had a bad cold, and Joe wasn't too well either, I could relax on the couch while Bill ran across to the shop and brought home a big Steak and Kidney pie, peas and chips. 

Eating my convienient dinner I remarked how this pie wasn't a patch on the one we make here, and everyone agreed.  I must get that recipe out one of these days, I said.