Becky Bakes…

Somewhere, at the back of a high cupboard, I have a book called “Listeria Hysteria”. It’s with “Panic Nation” and “You are what you eat”. Where are these books? I’m not sure. But Listeria is a dangerous bacteria causing Listeriosis and is particularly dangerous to pregnant women, young children and the elderly. Quite where elderly kicks in, I’m not sure so I’d rather say people over seventy whose resistance might be reduced. Listeria has been found in a number of foods but this time it’s blueberries and seems to be the ones grown in Georgia, USA. Blueberries are useful fruits as they have a mild flavour and are good eaten raw but equally good when put into muffins, as they pop and create pockets of juice. For now, though, I think we need to be watchful – look at the label and check where they were grown. Stay safe peeps xx

We’ve had such a busy week. Just now I realised that it’s so important to have those moments when nothing much is happening and even this afternoon I spent time with a friend just sorting through buttons. Why? you might ask… well my Macmillan group was given yet another jar of very old, stale fastenings. Not just buttons, but snap fasteners, and suspenders with hooks and eyes. We never know what we’ll find and many of them smell nasty, so today they were washed and rinsed, dried in the sunshine before we started sorting. Lots were thrown away – broken, damaged or plain dirty. But the action of trawling through them is quiet and relaxing – just what we needed after such a busy week. 😉

Goodness me, it’s hot. It’s a lot hotter in South Carolina though and we’re able to keep an eye on the temperature there as we have an old friend from Lexington staying with us. She’s become an intrepid traveller spending a week in Kent, visiting London, Whitstable and Canterbury before taking Eurostar to Paris – and now in sunny Felixstowe. So of course we took a trip to Norwich yesterday, lunching at Bread Source and wandering the cobbled streets. She missed out on macarons in Paris so we sampled a selection for dessert last night. Today the National Trust will entertain and inform us at Sutton Hoo. Catching up with her family news has been a joy – who knew a farm with horses and chickens/hens could have a vicious rooster?! He attacked so many people, old and young, that he was finally(summarily) dispatched. I’ll spare you the details, but could he have been plucked and eaten, or would he have been a tough old bird? We shall never know 😉

Looking back I’ve always been fascinated by food, whether “helping” my mother or Granny in the kitchen at an early age or being transfixed by Miss Hobby, my first Cookery teacher. She was of the jolly-hockeysticks brigade who had a very sensible way of teaching. She left the High School and Mrs.White arrived, with tales of her husband and his motor bike. Then we moved house and I met Mrs. Maltby and Miss Gatley who took an instant dislike to me and declared I’d never make any good of myself…So a variety of influences by the time I was eighteen. Fast forward to life today and the influencers now seem to upload videos to tik-tok, strangers, yet widely admired by the young people of today. Parents no longer seem to have any input, rather having become sidelined and declared old-fashioned. We have a wealth of experience to share and some wisdom too, so take a moment to consider who is the best person to ask. x

A couple of news items caught my attention this week. The first is the proposal to offer free school lunches to all children whose families receive Universal credit in England. That’s great as long as the quality of the food is taken into consideration when the costs are looked at. Let’s not go back to re-heated pizzas and Turkey Twizzlers! The second item is a bit more complicated. Essentially we’re being told that obesity should be blamed on the highly processed and refined foods that we’re all presented with. Apparently we can’t be bothered or don’t know how to make wise choices to cook with fresh ingredients. Bring in Henry Dimbleby – the champion of Cookery in schools. He rightly pointed out that many schools don’t offer Food Tech/Home Ec/Cookery in schools at all and they get away with that because OFSTED never look at those lessons. Absolutely true. I know this from experience. I’ve prepared for inspections just like all other subjects, yet never has an inspector crossed my threshold. I even invited one in, as he passed by, but he declined to come in. Bring back proper Cookery lessons so that consumers understand about their food – but train the teachers too! (That’s another story….) x

Not clouds, but cake tins. This week I caught sight of a celebrity chef taking a baked cheesecake out of its’ tin and the amount of crumpled paper hanging over the edge of the tin was not just untidy but an unnecessary waste. Lining a tin needs to be done accurately and may well involve the use of a pencil and a pair of scissors. It just isn’t clever to take a sheet of paper and ram it into the tin in a haphazard way. Lining a tin for Brownies this week I sat the tin on the sheet of greaseproof which was slightly bigger all round, then marked each corner with a small pencil stroke. Take the tin off the paper and fold the paper on the pencil marks making firm creases. Lift it and lay in the base of the tin, raising up the sides and putting extra creases in the corners to give a snug fit and create a paper tray. It’s worth doing a good job to get neat edges, but I have to confess to being a convert to ready-made liners for loaf tins 😉

We’ve just come back from Norwich – a place we like a lot and, of course, people we like a lot too. I had my picture taken with Paddington Bear and delivered cake to the Cathedral (Emmaus House to be precise), had lunch with a young friend and discovered mutual friends and colleagues with Canon Aiden, causing great amusement along the way. But it’s “that” day – the Friday before half term… no wonder there was so much traffic on the road as families set off for a few days away. In my last school it was Sports Day and one of my responsibilities was to make sure the staff’s thirst was kept at bay. They’d had early lunch so weren’t hungry, but a massive batch of scones was always appreciated as they consumed their refreshments. Now, of course there was tea and coffee, but we also had iced tea and another similar beverage of a similar colour which would be served from a ceramic jug as opposed to a glass jug. Are you with me? There were strawberries floating in both of them to help with the deception 😉 Sports day always went well…. Our house move coincided with it one year and so I had to find someone to cover for me so I could at least be home by lunchtime. Thankfully I found a willing volunteer and that year it rained – nobody wanted cold drinks, just coffee and tea, so the cold drinks stayed in the fridge! Phew 🙂

My first experience of France was when I was 15. My parents agreed that I could take part in an exchange organised by my school and the Educational Interchange Council. The plan was that we would host a French girl for three weeks, then I’d go back with her and stay in her home for three weeks. Well… she was a chain smoker with a heaving bosom, aimed right at my brother. He swiftly went to stay with a friend 😉 We coped – she wasn’t impressed by London or Cambridge, or our caravan. So worried were my parents that, since we didn’t have a phone, an emergency recovery plan was set up where my father worked and someone would come and rescue me. Thankfully that wasn’t needed and I’ve lived to tell the tale! ‘O’levels, ‘A’ levels, College and marriage happened and the French Government Tourist Office published a little book of cottages to rent – “Gites”. So we took my parents and had our first holiday in Normandy, sampling bootleg Calvados while chatting about the Turin Shroud – me translating everyone’s comments. You couldn’t make it up, could you? Since then we’ve stayed in so many Gites that I’ve lost count. We love it and it’s the only country I’ve ever wanted to live in and still would, given the chance. So we’re just back from the Vendee in Western France, bringing more happy memories and several recipe ideas which you’ll see in the coming weeks. x

The revelations about pouched baby food astounded me this week. To be honest, I haven’t given it a lot of thought recently as we’re not in that territory ourselves, but to read that some pouches of the puree contain more sugar than a can of fizzy drink was shocking. The manufacturers claim there’s no added sugar so why not change the ingredients to low sugar foods? Not only that, the age recommendations aren’t correct. They are labelled as suitable for babies of four months plus, when actually babies should be having milk only, until they are six months old. There’s something unpleasant about watching “goo” being squirted into a baby’s mouth – it’s not far away from seeing cats being fed from tubes of food. I know parents are busy, but we were all busy and managed to feed our children with foods preferable to these. There. Rant over 😉

We drove past a local farm and spotted the spears gingerly showing themselves. Not many, but maybe they’d been picked early that day. It’s been in the shops for several weeks, but from far away places. It seems Suffolk farmers are famous for growing this crop which is traditionally only available for a few weeks. After that it’s left to produce enormous fronds of fern which look beautiful. When we moved into our house many years ago I found some growing amongst the shrubs, but only when the fern had reached above the other plants. We cleared that bed and planted more, but that’s now exhausted. There are a number of ways to use it – boiled briefly, steamed, griddled, roasted…it’s great cold as well as hot, mixing with leaves and herbs to create a rather more exotic salad. There’s a bunch in the fridge at the moment…maybe griddled tonight ? 😉