Happy 65th Mum!

Not only is it Mother's Day weekend, but yesterday was an important day for our family as it was my Mum's 65th Birthday!!! If you know your history then you guessed correctly that she was born the day WWII ended in Britain. In fact the story goes that my Grandmother was in the midst of giving birth while the nurses and doctors were hanging out of the hospital windows, banging bed pans together and revelling in the parade/festivities that were occurring down on the street!!! Therefore, as a child growing up in post-war Britain and in the south near Plymouth, rationing of food stuffs and economizing with what meagre foodstuffs you did receive were a common part of my mother's upbringing. Thankfully my Grandpa had a very productive vegetable garden so that my mother was raised on organic, fresh produce! Meats and cheeses, butters and milk were not as plentiful as one would expect in the breadbasket of England, as much of what they produced was sent abroad or to London. Luckily my Grandmother not only was a fantastic cook (like her mother before her who was a head cook for an estate home in Devon), but an economical one too. Although she had not heard of half the foodstuffs that I have available to me, what she did have was used judiciously and with amazing results. Due to the fact that my Grandmother was so efficient in the kitchen and preferred to work alone (a trait I see in myself), my mother did not develop a love of cooking. She is a great cook but does not enjoy the culinary arts in the way that I do. In fact Mum was horrified when I told her that I wanted to enter into the Culinary Arts program at George Brown - something akin to me stating that I wanted to run off and join a cult in Tibet!!!
Over the years Mum has become more adventuresome with her cooking and is always ready to try one of my new creations! Now if we can only get her to make her Cornish pasties more often.... Even if she doesn't share my passion for cooking, I have managed to spark a love of scrapbooking in her!

Happy Birthday and Mother's Day Mum!!! I love you!