A Cooking Disaster. Again.

I’ve been blogging since blogging began. I’m so old I can remember what life was like before laptops and the internet. In the beginning of my life as a blogger I wrote about my books and my life in Ireland. I also wrote about the food I cooked, or cremated, or abandoned, or fed to the dogs when everyone else refused to eat it.

Gradually my writing life has taken on a seriousness it didn’t have before. It has gone from being a much-loved side-line to my main source of income. My now much reduced blog posts have begun to feature new books, my thoughts on book plots and characters. My cooking has improved too. I don’t know when I last filled the house with smoke due to a forgotten saucepan. Or the last time I heard the heartfelt sigh of one of the dogs when faced with congealed pasta, or cremated pastry in their food bowls. It’s been a long time since my children laughed so much at the awfulness of their supper that they vomited.

Now, indeed I’m a fairly competent cook. There was the unfortunate incident with the black, rock hard mess that should have been something delicious with Pork, black treacle and star Anais. And the chickpea curry that everyone said was wonderful, but definitely wasn’t. But for the most part I. Am. A. Good. Cook.

I can even prepare and make multiple dishes. A morning spent chopping vegetables and making curries, pasta and pies means extra writing time. As routine and goal driven as I am it gives me great pleasure to whip a few frozen goodies out of the deep freeze and know all I have to do is pop the food into the oven.

Now the awfulness has been taken out of cooking and I know that what I place on the table is more than likely to be eaten, I can actually enjoy myself and find that in stressful times, or when I have plots to work out, the mindlessness of cooking can really help.

I used the horrendously stressful time waiting for my foal to be collected to start the journey to his new life to prepare a few dishes. I chopped a vast quantity of mushrooms and onions, they became the basis for a lasagne, shepherd’s pie and a chicken and ham pie. Once the basics had been done with the mince, I focused on the pie. I boiled a ham joint, cut it into chunks, stripped a cooked chicken, diced the meat. The white sauce, seasoned with tarragon thickened to perfection. Together they combined to be a delicious bottom for the pie. Even the pastry cooperated.

At just the right moment the foal was collected. Acting like a horse way older than his few months he loaded into an unfamiliar trailer beside a strange mare and was on his way. I walked back to the house feeling like a bereft parent whose child has just left home.  I popped the pie into the oven. Life had to go on. There were tears. And a teeny, tiny glass of something bubbly for medicinal purposes.

The alarm sounded on my phone. I’ve learned to set it, rather than waiting for the smoke alarm to remind me that supper is ready.  I opened the oven. I’ve even learned to stand back away from the first blast of heat, rather than getting my eyelashes singed. There on the top shelf, in a dish, resting on a baking tray was the pie. Perfection. It’s crust just the right shade of golden, the chicken and ham filling bubbling beneath it.

I eased the tray towards me, put my oven gloved hands on the dish and then watched powerless as gravity caught the whole thing tipping it downwards, gathering momentum, bouncing off the door and onto the floor.

The dish shattered, pie filling spread slowly over the tiles, the perfect golden crust sitting on tip of the whole sorry mess. The dogs who would have loved the pie were denied it because of the smashed crockery.

At least the chips I was roasting were unscathed and there was something to eat. And, as we discovered, sometimes you just can’t beat a chip butty.