Spicy News

My creative journey

I have always been creative.  I learnt to knit when I was nine, I remember making very complicated jumpers from my dolls, I also remember being given a tour is so machine with some dolls clothes patterns.  I remember making a dull stress and being amazed at the shape of the sleeve is a wonderful toy, and I remember having fun with the patterns and the fabric.

My stepmother correct.  She is used to make my sister and I matching outfits I remember a particular dress that had pink gingham with little cherries over it and a small Peter Pan collar the great thing about this was that when I grew a little and grew out of my dress.  I always had my sisters to wear.

My Nan used to crochet, she used to make the most wonderful bedspreads, although the wall she used was anything she could get for free.  So the colours were a little bit unusual.  I regret now that I didn’t learn to crochet from her, but I enjoy it now.

My attempts at craft as a child were not all that successful.  I remember making a Florence doll from the Magic roundabout, I remember she had the most wonderful shoes. However, when I got to secondary school.  I had to make an awful school top, I ended up making a real mess of it and had to get my stepmother to help me. She was so impatient.  I think it put me off for a long time.

When I was around 18 I was given a cross stitch kit that somebody had finished with and they started a long love affair with Cross stitch. I made the children some wonderful cross stitch birth announcements.  However the problem I have found with Cross stitch was that it was difficult to know what to do with it once you had made it.  Framing in those days was very expensive, and people did not appreciate the Cross stitch patterns made into cards.  I think I eventually gave up when I went back to full-time work.

I decided to try my hand at sewing, I found a fantastic machine in a second-hand sewing shop, my ground gave me the money to buy it.  The machine had so many different cartridges.  It could do so many different decorative stitches that I began to be very excited about making my own clothes.  I enrolled in a dressmaking class at the local school, but the problem with it was that so many people were doing the class.  I used to spend nearly all my time waiting for the teacher.  I tried making a skirt on my own and it ended up looking horrendous.  It was a complete disaster!  Fortunately, I had a very special friend, who encouraged me to go round her house every week and we would make something together.  This was a fantastic way to learn how to sew.  I shall always be grateful to my friend Pat helping me start a passion that has continued, for over 20 years! I remember making my daughter, some very pretty outfits. I still have that sewing machine, a Viking, which is still in good working order, in fact, my daughter has been learning to sew on it herself. I expect my Nan and is really pleased! 

I received lots of book tokens for Christmas, having dropped lots of hints!!! And I bought the book The Gentle Art of Domesticity by Jane Brocket. This is a wonderful book, very inspiring. One of the things she talks about is the way my generation seems to have been robbed by the Feminist movement, it seemed that the simple pleasures of homemaking were something to dispise.  these attitudes have left alot of women these days with this problem. Being a stay at home mum in England is very difficult. Everyone assumes you watch TV all day! Having small children at home keeps you very busy and I know that when I was at home I felt guilty if I sat down, so therefore I very often did not have a break.

I was reading the Waitrose food magazine today, and there was an article from a guy who basically wrote that women were bad cooks! I must admit I found it very amusing to compose a response, so I thought I would post it here!

Dear Sam,

Thank you so much for your article ‘Father knows best’ in the November issue of Waitrose food magazine,  I haven’t laughed so much for ages!

While your wife is a member of the female population, I was amazed your article assumed that your experience of your wife’s cooking was a complete representation of women everywhere! May I point out that I, like a majority of women, do not spend my time caring for children so I have lots of time and energy left at the end of the day for gastronomy! What surprises me is that you have reached your age, (before your decision to be the world’s best chef) unfamiliar with the kitchen. Presumably you have  a woman to thank for feeding you all these years?

Not only do you make sweeping statements about women in general, based on your experience with your wife, but you also presume that because your friends compliment you on your culinary skills you are therefore a great cook! As anyone knows, well brought up people always compliment the person who feeds them, they keep their real comments for the drive home! When has a friend ever been relied on to tell you the complete truth when they know it will hurt your feelings?

You then point out two reasons why women aren’t good cooks: they do not follow instructions nor do they deviate with a little experimentation. Well which one is it? You clearly can’t have both ! Either you follow instructions or you do your own thing? And speaking of which, it may be good to experiment – marmite in chocolate mousse would be an example, but would it make you a good cook? Would your guests thank you for it?

Then we move to multi-tasking where you really do show your naivety, darling, making a meal is one task, yes even making roast potatoes, Yorkshire pudding and laying the table. A woman can usually do all these things whilst consoling her broken hearted best friend on the telephone, dressing a toddler’s grazed knee, putting on the odd load of washing, making a shopping list and helping (motivating) teenagers to do their homework! All of which I have done whilst making a roast dinner, which just sits helpfully in the oven for an hour or so. Of course I notice you did not include in your article clearing up after the meal, which, if you are the same as other male cooks I have had experience with, you have used every pan, spoon, jug and any other gadget in the kitchen. I wonder if while you were cooking this meal your wife was looking after the children? Let’s look at the multi-tasking examples you use, read maps and drive through Delhi, well that seems to me to be the same thing , as for flying at Mach 2 and doing your trigonometric equations you should realise that you don’t say flying a plane at Mach 2, so therefore one can only assume you are still only doing one thing at a time! Once again your idea of multi-tasking seems to be a little misguided!

Now we come to the point about our (or rather women’s) relationship with food, let me just say the word chocolate! No woman views chocolate as purely fuel! Yes men are greedy but they do not have the same relationship with chocolate as women do. (a generalisation I know) but many women of my acquaintance, (if it is good for the goose it is good for the gander) would gladly go without many things in order to eat chocolate!

Finally you made the naive mistake of suggesting that cooking at home was the same as cooking in a restaurant!  We all know this is different, Michelin stars are therefore not a good indicator of which sex is better at cooking, it is like saying men are better at football because no women have won the FA Cup! It is ridiculous! If you believe that you should cook restaurant gourmet food at home all the time, then you would be seriously heading for a heart attack. Restaurant cooking is totally different, even Gordon Ramsay would agree with me there. As for women cooks, well let’s just say three names, Nigella, Delia and the first TV celebrity cook, Franny Craddock. I will take you up on your offer of a meal, as I am not a member of your family or a friend, I would at least give you an honest opinion of your cooking!

Looking round my local Waitrose store today, I notice that 80% of the customers were women, I asked myself therefore why Waitrose would wish to alienate such a large group of customers with such an opinionated poorly researched article? Then I noticed the editor of the magazine was male now what a surprise! I wonder if he would be balanced enough to print my response?

Yours

Suzie Smith

Well, I will let you know if they publish the response! I enjoyed writing it.