Never again, by Anna Celliers

Never again!

by Anna Celliers

I’m really battling with changing the way that I have always dealt with vegetables to suit my taste buds…

The advantage of having two married daughters (both good cooks when they feel like it!) is that I am no longer solely responsible for planning and cooking the traditional large family meals for special occasions. The work and cost of ingredients is now divided between the three of us – albeit not equally or fairly, since I still have to do the meat dishes, especially the old-fashioned chicken pie, glazed gammon and roast leg of mutton.

The disadvantage is that they always seem to be on a diet, or let me rather put it this way; they are on a diet during the planning stage of a meal, when we are arguing about which side dishes to include on our menu. On the actual day, when we all sit around the table to tuck in, I see no signs of willpower or restraint at all!

Since the epidemic prevented the family from gathering around the dining room table for quite a while, we decided to go big this year… The meeting we convened to decide on who is responsible for what was a loud and argumentative affair, as they brought along foreign-looking recipes and weird ideas. Today’s young are so intent on health and freshness, while I feel it can’t hurt to go overboard on just one day a year!

Their suggestions for vegetables were mostly of the raw or roasted variety, and containing vegetables that I do not think are compatible when layered together and smothered with fresh, pungent herbs. I, for instance, do not like the idea of pieces of pumpkin, sweet potatoes, carrots, large mushrooms, green peppers and pickling onions together in one pan. So I told them no, as I like my veggies to be by themselves and I also won’t have space in my oven for this dish!

My youngest child then relented and offered to make the pumpkin fritters I had on my list, but said that she was not going to waste time peeling a huge pumpkin and she was not going to stand around stirring the very sweet, buttery and rich caramel sauce I always make to smother them in. She would just buy already prepared pumpkin, and only apply a light dusting of cinnamon mixed with artificial sweetener. I replied that I heard that artificial sweetener kills the nectar-feeding birds, whereas I’m still kicking despite eating dozens of my unhealthy pumpkin fritters over the past few decades. So I firmly informed them that I would never again make my pumpkin fritters my way, so as not to jeopardise their health or jean size. I saw a little fear and longing in their eyes…

Other ideas were steamed green beans, cooked al dente and dusted with almond slithers. I started cackling, reminding them how they used to fight over my soft green beans cooked slowly in water with a chopped raw onion, potato pieces and a mutton chop thrown in too. Before mashing the whole lot together, I used to discard the chop and season the beans with large blobs of butter, white pepper and ‘that yellow spice’ . They were scandalised when they heard this, having never thought before to ask me how I cooked the beans they so loved. them (a bit miffed by now!) that pre-Covid was the last time they would ever enjoy green beans done my way – from now on it would be their way. I thought I detected some nervous twitches around the table…

The discussion about sweet potatoes did not go well either. My eldest said that although she always liked my sweet potatoes, she thinks we should just bake them in their skins and dribble them with a little balsamic vinegar and honey after cooking – she apparently heard about this on Facebook. I scoffed. Well, in that case, no more caramel brown, sugary and buttery sweet potatoes for you lot anymore! The eldest gave a deep groan and asked, “How did you manage to always get them so dark brown?” I replied that I was never above using a chemical compound to enhance the taste and look of a vegetable, so I always added a teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda to the pot while slowly cooking the sweet potatoes, and that I would rather not divulge the amount of sugar and butter I added afterwards. But I added they should not worry as we would from now on just eat them au natural.

There was a suggestion that we cut potatoes from the menu in favour of other healthier vegetables, and I quickly replied that I take it that they would then never again want a helping of my soft potato slices fried for ages in cooking oil with thick onion rings slowly caramelizing and turning brown? They used to love this. Suddenly there was a long silence in the room. The discussion about salads did not go well either. There was a suggestion of raw broccoli and cauliflower salad – some new-fangled concoction I could not get my head around. But never mind, I thought out aloud, I will in future only bake my broccoli and cauliflower smothered in white sauce and three cheeses with a dusting of paprika on top when I have no ‘guests’ around. My suggestions for copper penny carrot salad (which lasts for ages), potato salad with mayonnaise and condensed milk (also lasts for ages), slaphakskeentjies (pickling onions swimming in a sweet mustard sauce, which lasts for ages as well), and my cucumber ring set in greengage jelly were firmly wiped off the table. Well, it’s okay, I thought – they will miss these a few days later when nobody feels like cooking and there’s nothing to go with left-over gammon…

Then we got to suggestions for dessert, and my trifle with the red and green jelly, boudoir biscuits and Old Brown Sherry was also shot off the table. I was in despair hearing that it was to be replaced by something with healthy summer berries on top. I hate berries of all kinds (actually, most fruit for that matter) because they are so sour that they pucker my cheeks.

But, never one to give up completely, I am now practising to eat blueberries just as they are. I have found that if you leave them in the fridge to go way past their ‘use by date’ , they actually become sweeter and more edible, and they might just be a good substitute for the cheese curls I love so much as a bed-time snack.