An inspired challenge while sitting on a rickety old chair, no wriggling!!

Greg and Katherine  from Rufus’ Food and Spirits Guide challenged me with this series of questions.  Actually, and thank you very much, I found this exercise a wee bit difficult.  But you guys have such a wry sense of humour!  Today I had to think. And as we know thinking is hard!!

However here are my humble answers to their searching questions.

What or who inspired you to start a blog.  Our little old fashioned  farm is called the Kitchen’s Garden because I grow food for the kitchens. I started  thekitchensgarden blog so that all my children and their dearly beloveds could pop in and see what I was doing any time they felt like it and might be inspired.   I live far far away from my grown children and we are in contact frequently but this way I would feel closer to them. I never for a minute thought I would meet so many other blog people and that so many of you would be interested in the farmy as well.  Pretty amazing. So from this simple idea a naughty blog monster has sprung!

And, I wanted everyone to see that you Can live a very simple life. That doing without  has more to do with the WITH than with the OUT.  (Does that make sense?) That dreams can come true.   Though sometimes it is not the dream you thought you were dreaming.  

John would tell you that he wants the blog to inspire us to take charge of our own lives. He wants people to know that they CAN save the barns, save the old houses,  live on the land,  grow your own food, be independent, be autonomous.  It is not that hard.  And it is not expensive if you take your time and use recycled materials. (You should see the heavy solid wooden door he came home with the other day, that he found on someone’s burn pile!!) But he would probably say all that using three words, plus a couple of grunts and much shaking out of the newspaper, as he is after all The Silent One.

Then, Tig the youngest son called from New Zealand and said  ‘Why don’t you tell us what you are eating as well, and write the old Mama recipes, so we can look them up.’

Then third son’s lovely wife called from California and said  ‘What temp do I cook the scalloped potatoes on’.

Then eldest son texted from Canada and said  ‘How long do I cook this big roast for anyway?’

And Senior Son said on our email chat ‘keep it realtime, talk about the small stuff. ‘

Sops said ‘ Do you want me to top up your wine?’

And Our John turned the page on his newspaper and said,  ‘Is the Oven still on for a reason?’.

And I thought.  Hmm.   And the Foodie Component to the thekitchensgarden  was the result.

Foodie Inspiration. My readers and the blogs I read  are masters at inspiration and Beautiful Daughter. She works in hospitality and is presently in London. She is a great researcher, reader and taster and is always calling me from somewhere in the world with a wonderful idea.   Though for some reason she often calls when she is putting on her make up and about to run out the door, so our conversations are quite delightfully mad with family shorthand.

Who taught you to cook?  Like most of us, my first introduction to cooking and feeding others, was with My Mother.  She taught me the basics.  She also experimented a lot in the kitchen which gave me the nerve to teach myself  more, deal with failures  and trust my palate.  She encouraged me to write the work down by passing on the old recipe books to me.

A food bloggers table you would like to eat at. (FIRST?) Rosemary’s table at Cooking in Sens, her food is so local (French), so simple, so beautiful, so healthy and absolutely, unapologetically beautiful.  Plus I think she might have a wine cellar.

Here I need to add that there are so many glorious cooks out there who visit me on the blog, and who I chat with almost daily on the webs,  who I long to visit with and cook with.  You know who you are! Yes, you.  I shall be naming names in a few weeks!

Best thing you have eaten in another country. I don’t know. I honestly do not know.  I have eaten so much good food in different countries over the years. The first one that springs to mind though, is a tiny restaurant right on the waterfront in Amalfi, Italy.  It was hidden away down the track to the marina.  The boats had just come in and I ate fresh, fresh bright eyed fish. I cannot even tell you what the fish was but it was a whole fish,  salted and cooked to perfection.  Nothing fancy.  I ate it outside, under an umbrella, with the gulls and a glass of something white and crisp  for company.  It was my day off so I was alone.  I often went there alone.  Actually I love to eat alone too.  I had been staying in the town  long enough for the waiters to know me,  so they had begun to make my food choices for me.  I was very spoilt.

Batter splattered food book. My own recipe book.  None of the pages are actually attached now, and I use the cover as a kind of manilla file.  There are recipes that have been touched with grubby fingers so often that the words have almost gone.  Often the recipes were written in the hand of the cook, on the night we cooked together, so you can imagine.

I am coming for dinner, what is your signature dish.  This really would depend on the season.  We will go for late summer.  Home grown grass-fed fillet steak, cut thick and  grilled over home made mulberry wood charcoal, with handfuls of green  rosemary occasionally thrown into the coals for scented smoke. Scalloped potatoes with freshly dug onions and potatoes and this mornings cream and fresh cheese, and a huge crisp wild green salad.   Beets poached and caramalised in butter and balsamic. Best you come in the summer when the gardens are producing, who knows what we will be picking.  We will eat outside on the verandah, surrounded in gardens,  and shaded by trees, so you can bring your dogs!

Kitchen Gadget from Santa.  Old Butter Churn. I really, really need a sturdy butter churn.

Guilty Food Pleasure. Refried mashed potatoes browned until crispy in butter. 

Reveal something about yourself that others would be surprised to know. I had to think for a long time about this one.

(big breath) I do not use recipe books.  (oh, you are not surprised?) I have bought them on occassion and have even been given a few, but I never use them. They sit in the library up in the loft unconsulted.  John has some Thai recipe books and he refers to them religously on his cooking nights. His food is delicious.   Mine is kind of free form.  Feeds develop organically in the kitchen, one thing leading to the other. Once when Sops the Beautiful Daughter was visiting,  John came in from work.  He looked in the fridge , then poked at the bowls on the bench,  opened the oven door, peered in then closed it,  sniffing his way around and said.. (wait for it)  ‘What’s for dinner?’

‘Oh, something weird,’ I said as I served up bowls and platters of  Greek salad, english roast beef, asparagus with Hollandaise Sauce (we were practicing a new no-fail Hollandaise Sauce that Sops had read about)  and humous.  ‘Everything she cooks is weird’  said Beautiful Daughter, gaily.  ‘Nothing ever matches.’  As she laid little bowls of hot sour apple sauce onto the table.

‘Sit carefully on those chairs,’ I said to Sops  as she sat at the table,’ they are old.’

‘Oh I know about you and rickety chairs’ she said, then turned to John” When the kids and I were growing up in New Zealand…..”  I tuned out as she revealed to John, her mother’s then new husband,  something else you did not know.  How as children, they had grown up surrounded in their grandparents and great-grandparents precious antiques.  I was a young solo mum with many children in a rented house.  For one reason or another, I inherited a few of the family things after my mother died, so we used to use a lot of antiques in our daily life.  The funny part of the story was that we could not afford to buy cheap every day stuff,   so we used the really really  good antique stuff.  My Mother had saved these dishes and silverware, and glasses and things to use when  we had visitors or on feast days. For Good!!   So ironic.

The kids and I used  silver salad servers with gold threaded through the ebony handles!  And wore beanies inside because we could not afford to heat.  We had an enormous solid silver spoon so big we called it spare plate and it was ideal for serving mashed spuds. We ate a lot of spuds – they were cheap.  We had short showers to save on hot water and our soap dish was Wedgewood.  Drinking milk out of crystal.  Macaroni cheese served in beautiful old soup tureens with delicate handles.  And the furniture was the same. Gorgeous. We all sat at an enormous solid oak table with ten tall carved rickety old chairs.  I never again kept the good stuff in a cabinet.  Actually I did not have a cabinet, who got the china cabinet? But we have wandered off the subject.

I am going to leave you there. I have received a few more awards and things just lately, which is so sweet, so I shall pass on to you some names of new-to-me  blogs to celebrate, after Christmas, when everyone has more time.  And at that time I shall challenge a few of you to answer these questions as well!

Now back to work!

c