When Oliver launched into 'Where-er-er is love' - all small, blond-haired, blue-eyed, rosy-cheeked and suitable Dickensian...- I remembered that he (she) was suitably attired in off-the-internet-peg shabbery (it being cheaper than the charity shops around here) and shoes with holes in that would have made Dickens proud. I had, of course, been trying to make the school shoes last until the new term, without success, and the idea of buying new winter shoes at the end of the Summer term simply went against the grain. It was only when she came in complaining that her socks were wet and that she could see right through the bottom of her shoes that I thought I really ought perhaps to do something about the situation in the interests of good mothering.
Sophie did splendidly in the role and I was touched deep inside as you are at these special moments. I remembered her older brother Chris playing the same part nearly twenty years ago, and feeling the same way. He, of course, looked a remarkably well-fed little orphan. I toyed with the idea of putting him on a bread-and-gruel diet and keeping him out of the sun, so he could get a little more 'in character' (as so many Hollywood superstars do to extreme these days), but he had the rather distressing habit of bursting into tears if dinner was half an hour late - always the am-dram, our Chris.
I am reading a very interesting book at the minute: 'First Bite - How we learn to eat' by Bee Wilson. Apart from showing how our food habits take hold in the first place, it is interesting to see how food habits might be consciously changed to include new or previously hated foods - such as your boiled eggs and my cooked carrots (both throw backs from an era of forced feeding). I am considering the options as David is growing all kinds of things which fill me with horror - such as Brussel sprouts. I have been wondering whether it would be sacrilege to try and stir fry them or something.
The idea behind Bee Wilson's theory (well, distinguished scientists' and nutritionists' theory anyway) seems to be the sustained practise of eating tiny tastes of the offending food, carrot, boiled egg, or whatever. When you have overcome your fear of confronting the said carrot, and taken one tiny bite for perhaps thirty days in a row, then you may come to love or at least tolerate the little blighter sitting next to the potatoes on your plate, without having to make a space between the two in case of contamination: One can spend a whole lifetime not entirely growing up, it seems.
Living inside a pocket well of hills - or so the Peak District often feels - means that there are quaint little cast iron telephone boxes being preserved all over the place, whereas elsewhere in the country they are being ripped out, taken to salvage yards and sold to smug city dwellers to plant in their gardens as 'features'. The reason for this is, as every distressed Duke of Edinburgh student will tell you, that there is virtually no mobile phone signal around here for miles and miles. Often when I am out, sprinting down the main road through Longnor (which serves as motorway for this area of the Peaks), I encounter two tractors going in opposite directions with young lads in them both illegally holding mobile phones to their ears at just the right point when a break in the hills makes reception viable.
They are cutting and tossing hay at present. The last couple of weeks every farm was at it flat-out, all hours, and fields tinged with the haze of wild red grasses were scythed and rolled into rapidly-covered polythene cylinders. The gardens and hedges are as lush as I have ever seen them. Chlorophyll oozes from every branch or stem but there is rain damage to the roses (though their water-coloured petals still look beautiful to me) and the peonies have been weighted down until they can no longer hold out and admit defeat. I crunch into fat raw gooseberries claiming to be eaters. They have not turned pink as yet but they are sweet-enough for me. Perhaps they will make their way into a fool before long. Gooseberry fool is perhaps my most favourite of all. A strange fruit, the gooseberry. You rarely see it for sale in shops, yet it grows well and is plentiful. It freezes well too, if time is short. I am leaving mine on a little longer to see if they will turn pink. Perhaps I am just in a hurry for them. The days have been rather dull of late. Perhaps they need the promise of sun to ripen.
I am making your 'Currant buns' (page 236), which are more like little pastries containing fresh blackcurrants, served warm and slathered in cream (any excuse is good). My main reason for turning to this particular recipe is actually the wealth of blackcurrants from last year still lurking in the freezer when this year's crop is virtually ripe for picking now. Somehow there is always rhubarb and blackcurrants left in bags each year. In years gone by I made lots of jam and it would have gone then. But as we eat more healthier these days and jam consumption has plummeted, I found I was making it just to give away - which is fine - but ultimately there are many more mushrooms I'd rather stuff.
Full-fat cream cheese is added to the pastry to enrich it and the pastry is glazed with egg and dusted with caster sugar. It is a Summer treat and I have two little girls on their way back from school who might appreciate such a treat on this 'unseasonally' sunny day (or so it seems this rather wet Summer we've been having).
Broken into; the midnight berries gleam in their coat of syrup and the tide-line of purple haze against the wave of cream, is just begging to be played with and swirled, like the edges on the shore.
Ah, Summer; a time for relaxing and contemplating the essential things in life...
Love Martha x
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