My appreciation for good food I have acquired mostly from my darling mum who is an excellent cook (and who has passed her fabulosity of cooking prowess down to her most grateful children including my only brother who is an equally keen cook). As a youngster however, I have more memories of me observing and learning from my darling grandmother's exceptional culinary kitchen skills.
I recall my school days with delight when grandmother and poppa used to have us stay overnight with them on the occasions when Mum and Dad had a social function to attend. My sisters and I were able to catch the school bus home from our primary school, Mater Dei, to my grandparent’s front door, which I always so looked forward to, opposite the Ashgrove Golf Club here in Brisbane. Poppa was a very good golfer and I clearly remember him winning many raffles at the golf club and bringing these home to grandmother. These wonderful treats would include magnificent meat trays, copious amounts of alcohol, hampers of food etc. It was always an incredibly good experience being with my grandparents. Their house always seemed to have an aura of positivity and love (the same as life at home). Along with their love of home cooking and Pop's obsession with purchasing every new electrical gadget that ever came onto the market (he was an electrical engineer), there always seemed to be experimentation of each new cooking gadget he acquired resulting in something cooking on the stove or in the oven as we entered their loving home each visit. Both of them enjoyed cooking. Amazingly scrumptious meals would include roasts with homemade Yorkshire pudding (yes, I can make this myself too and have done so many dozens of times), Pop's famous Rhubarb pie, scones, apple pie, fabulous fish and chips, chutneys, grandmother's amazing bbq sauce which is a secret family recipe still to this day and a huge hit at all of my bbq's, to mention a few. Life certainly was and is delicious thanks to this love of cooking.
These feelings of the love of good food continued throughout my seconday school life when I was at boarding school in Brisbane for years 11 and 12 as Mum and Dad had moved to Mt Isa and hence boarding school was required. Again my darling grandparents always came to my starvation rescue, appearing at our school grounds each Sunday fortnight of the week-ends we had to stay in at school. They always seemed to arrive just in the nick of time and just as I thought I would be having to commence auto digesting because I could not stand the breakfast they served us that morning (which of course was ridiculous as the food they served at school was perfectly edible). There they were laiden with a plethora of gourmet goodies for we poor, starving boarders to get "stuck into" and consumed with joy! Always bringing along far too much food so some of it I would then distribute to other more junior boarders only because I could not have possibly eaten another morsel and as I am a good catholic girl, sharing is in the book of catholic protocol!
Of course I miss them terribly. Every time I cook fish (and grandmother was fabulous at cooking fish) I feel grandmother is there standing beside me observing me proudly and that is something I experience on a very regular basis and which makes my heart sing.
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