The Life of Pie

On recently being invited by Hubby RC to read his rather numerous blogs going back several years, I couldn't help but notice, how food fixated so many of them were. We are,it seems,a family of foodies. My son will practically,every day call me on skype from uni,when he sees I'm on my laptop. The first thing he says is,"Guess what I had for lunch today?"Or maybe I ask him what he's going to have for tea.Our love of food is not the huge consumption of mass produced processed rubbish that you see on diet shows.The ones where they claim they didn't realise that consuming ten times the calories their body requires,would make them fat.
Ours is more of a fascination from creation to perfecting a recipe.My nan was a great cake maker and I would watch as she beat the mixture by hand, then folded, then baked and voila. Perfect light sponge cake.I was determined to master this skill.My nan was an honest critic.The day she told me the sponge I had made was exactly right, I knew I had cracked it.I went on to make apple pie like my mum,scrambled eggs like my dad and soon I took books from the library learning about food from abroad.
 When Hubby RC and I first lived together,he was in the middle of a love affair with chinese cookery.Ken Hom was his teacher at first. For a present for his birthday,we went and got all the spices and equipment he needed. We ate nothing but chinese food for months as he tweaked and perfectd his craft. For three months we used only chopsticks. When we were invited to a friends for dinner during this phase,we were both lost when confronted with knife and fork,they had become so alien to us.There was the vegetarian phase. Back then recipes were hard to come by if you wanted a "normal" meal, or they would contain strange and expensive ingredients that were only found in specialist health shops.We lasted a month and it was awful.So awful in fact that as I am writing this I asked Hubby RC about it.He had erased it from his memory (trauma of lack of meat), and recalled it with an "urgh" and disheartened "yeah".
 Our love of Italian food has lasted for years. Last Christmas Hubby RC was very excited with a new pasta machine I got for a bargain in a sale in a very posh kitchen shop. We have since added ravioli moulds. The hunt for premium 00 pasta flour had begun, the kitchen perioically becomes Papa Rock Chef's Italian pasta factory. The kitchen table is covered in flour and strips of pasta waiting to be rolled, simmered and sauced.
 Tonight we are up late planning the light buffet lunch for FIL's wake. There will be many elderly relatives, so flair has to be restained. Simplicity is the order of the day, small savoury sandwiches, pastries, quiches all made with dentures in mind. This will be followed with cups of tea with small butterfly cakes,little squares of brownies,cherry bakewell tarts etc. The dogs are hoping that MIL,who thinks all dogs are only moments away from starvation,will be seated somewhere near the chipolatas or the tiny slices of pork pie.Well the last cakes are cooling on the racks, Tomorrow we will shape,add cream,sprinkle icing sugar and they will turn into butterflies.