Mother's Day

Good eating very often boils down to who you're eating with and, having had Sunday lunch with the extended family today, the simple roast beef dinner I had was veritable feast.

Beef, Roast Potatoes, Celeriac and Swede Mash, Carrots, Peas, Yorkshire Puddings, Gravy, Broccoli and Sprouts. Written like that does the meal I've had no justice. This was simple, high quality family feasting. Beautifully tender beef from the butcher with a rich, juicy gravy swaddling fresh, vibrant vegetables. In my mind, there really is no better meal than a roast dinner.

But what makes a roast dinner that extra bit special is that ultimately it is a family eating ritual. You don't really eat or make a roast for one. And being surrounded by all the family and, most importantly, my mum, makes that ordinary list of meal components into something very special.

The roast dinner as a celebration of the family is mostly a celebration of my mum. Thinking of all the Sundays that my mum has toiled away, peeling potatoes and cutting up carrots, makes you realise how lucky you are to have had a childhood where you were always well fed.

I think most of us would argue that our mum is the one who makes the best roast dinner. Maybe it is partly sentamentality behind this, but the foods we are bought up on are inevitably going to shape our tastes and attitudes as we grow older so the Sunday dinner we were given is always going to be how we define it as an adult.

My love of food would possibly be non existant (or at least severely tempered) had I not been so lucky to have a mum that always experimented and tried new things. So many of her recipes are my all time favourites. Her roast dinners, her rice pudding, her moroccan tagine, her homemade burgers and her chilli con carne would all make it into my top meals and I still look forward to every time I am fortunate enough to get to eat one of them again.

My mum always encouraged me to try new things (I remember first trying Indian food at the age of 7 as I pathetically took the scraps from my parents' takeway) and the fact I really cannot think of any foods I dislike is testiment to having been raised in a house where the kitchen really was the heart of the home. So to all the mums out there who have kept us fed and watered so well for so long, cheers!