Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose

I come from a long line of cooks. In my own lifetime, my mother was a cook, and her mother before her, and I have learnt from much from them. Of course, I am defining “cook” as someone obligated to serve up meals in order to preserve life. For my grandmother the advent of the domestic freezer, and shops catering for its use, was a revolution in catering, and the addition of a microwave opened up brave new worlds! I well remember the stacks of frozen pizzas, ten packed cylindrically in a plastic sheath, with which she embraced international cuisine. Très sophistiqué, oui?

My own mother’s greatest culinary innovation was “choosing tea”. In fairness, she was working hard and long, and for a period of my childhood would step away from work just long enough to put some calories on a plate for my brother and I, then disappear again, leaving us to remind her to come and put us to bed. "Choosing tea" was a plate on which all major nutrients would be placed in a format defined by the contents of the store cupboard and fridge. The recipe, and this is not the recipe I am offering you today, is broadly as follows:

Vitamins and fibre

1 carrot, peeled

1 portion of seasonal fruit – eg half an apple, three strawberries, a plum.

Fats and sugars

1 item from the following; chocolate biscuit, cup cake, slice of Battenberg cake, piece of malt loaf with margarine

Protein

1 mini sausage roll OR one slice of pork pie OR 1 handful of peanuts

Carbohydrate

2 crackers (preferably “Tuc” biscuits) with margarine and sliced cheddar

Calcium

1 yoghurt, fruit flavoured

Add other items to taste – examples might include Smarties, grapes, slice of ham, cucumber or additional sausage roll.

I have since attempted to offer my own children “choosing tea”, envisaging their delight with the smorgasbord laid before them, but autistic people do not always value novelty. Particularly when it comes at the expense of a proper dinner. Instead, I have provided my children with a father who can cook.

Of course, life was not always so time poor for my mother, and sometimes she would serve up a delicious concoction known throughout time as “Mummy soup”. I loved Mummy soup. Mummy soup was warm and savoury and smelled like home. Mummy soup had texture and body, it had colour and variety, and buckets of umami.

Mummy soup, let me warn you now, was not anomalous with the rest of our diet, but when I ate it, spooned out of classic soup mugs ubiquitous on British tables in the late seventies or early eighties and still sitting in my parent’s crockery cupboard today, I felt like I was warming my soul. Mummy soup was the meal I requested when hunger started to creep back in after flu, Mummy soup was there like a hand on the shoulder while I revised for exams, and Mummy soup built me up when I went into the world, failed, and came home smaller and sometimes wiser. I could smell Mummy soup brewing on the hob when I arrived home to lay my towering backpack down, damp inside and out, beside my muddy hiking boots, and Mummy soup was ready to serve after that post-camping shower that burned the wild from your skin. Mummy soup was solace, and grace and good, firm ground. I cannot give you one stand out, epiphanal story about the restorative, nourishing power of the Mummy soup, because Mummy soup’s heroism lay in its consistency. Quietly, humbly, when I needed it, Mummy soup was always there.

I was disinterested in cooking, but when I moved away from home to go to university, this was the recipe I asked for. And I give it to you now.

First, boil a kettle and empty one packet of dehydrated minestrone soup into a medium sized sauce pan. Packet soups containing MSG are preferable, but ensure that the soup is not a reduced salt variety. Pour on boiling water and mix until the powder is dissolved. Next, add one tin of cream of tomato soup. Place on the hob over a medium heat and add around 70g of dried macaroni to the mix (you will establish your preferred quantity over time). Stir frequently. When the macaroni begins to soften, drain 1 tin if butter beans and 1 tin of red kidney beans and pour into the pan. Stir until adequately heated through and serve.

It is many years since I cooked up a steaming cauldron of Mummy soup. These days the soups my partner prepares are made with broccoli and sweet potato, carrots and courgettes, beans and aubergines and peppers and celery and all that fresh goodness that, crucially, can be pureed down to a homogenous bowl of nutritious, child friendly uniformity. And he serves the soup into bowls, first for the children, to let it cool a little, then for us, and the rest into empty ice cream tubs to sit in the freezer for those busy evenings when he will come home tired, pull that tub out of the freezer and defrost it in the microwave before heading back out to work. These days I have a new hero. Quietly, humbly, when I need him, he is always there.

So I give you this recipe as a harbour, a touch point, as it was for me. It’s a simple recipe, not exciting or fancy or full of virtue, and it wont win any awards, but the constituents keep well in the cupboard. When you come home beat up, cold and drained, they’ll be there, smelling of safety, and tasting like acceptance. And if you try it, think of me, and I will sit with you in my fluffy socks and pyjama pants, just letting you be exactly as you are, and needing nothing more from you.