My Mum was a great cook. She managed to feed a hungry husband and eight kids every day. That is no mean feat! Amongst all of this, she found time to do special things. I don’t think I remember a time, apart from during Lent, when the house was without fresh baked cake. And way before it was popular, she was trying “foreign” recipes, gathering ideas from the other tuck-shop ladies, and shopping in out of the way, “smelly” delis.
These days whenever I make something for her for dinner she asks me how I got to be so clever. I have to laugh. I learnt it all from her, of course!
She had an old brown scrap book, into which she had written all her recipes. This book is now, sadly, falling apart, with many of the recipes incomplete.
A couple of years ago, at Mum’s 80th birthday, my siblings and I decided to start swapping all of Mum’s old recipes so we can gather together as many of them as possible. I am now typing them up in this blog so that we can find them. I also intend to include other family recipes – recipes from the extended family that have also formed an integral part of our food memory.
All these recipes are for sharing and for personal enjoyment. That means you can make them and share them with your friends, providing you do so with love. They are not to be used for profit (well, obviously you can make a cake for a school cake stall, but the recipes are our Intellectual Property).
I hope they bring some pleasure to you, too.
