A to Z 2025 Challenge – Carol, Cars and Cooking

I confess I am not a great fan of autobiographies that begin at the beginning and follow a temporal path up to the present day – not that the person might not have some interesting stories, facts and opinions strung on their necklace. It just doesn’t appeal as a structure. On the other hand, in my last, extra year at school in Oxford, retaking an A-level and adding a couple more, I was allowed out of school on my recognisance and saw a fascinating Exhibition at the Modern Art Gallery. The Artist had laid out and photographed every single possession of a single person – for example, all the cutlery was laid out in one shot, all the shoes in another. This more thematic approach appeals more and although I am not arranging the objects which I have chosen to tell my story in chronological order, I hope that my writing will be sufficiently interesting to keep your interest Dear Reader, and that on the journey from A to Z, you will assemble an impression of my life and who I am…

Carol

Carol loved collecting glass artwork and before she died, offered a piece by way of a memento. I chose this perfume bottle with it’s prickly cactus stopper to remind me of how the little irritations that Carol was capable of feeling or giving out, could produce pearls…

“My sister Carol was a force of Nature!” This is how I began the eulogy to my late sister Carol when she died some 30 months ago. But you didn’t know her and as this is my memoir of sorts, and though I have hundreds of stories about Carol, I seek to write only about what Carol meant to me and the influence she had on my life so this is the merest selection…
An early incident that showed a strong and assertive side of Carol in relation to me, was an iconic image (within our family) – a coloured slide (cheaper in those days than prints) in which Carol is squatting on my plastic football and refusing to give it back. Photographed from above, Carol looks both defiant and cute, as do all children photographed from this angle, with enlarged heads and small bodies. Later, when our sister Helen was born, Carol assumed (or was assigned) the role of “difficult middle child” and with her flaming red hair, she also aligned with the cliché of combative redhead. But mostly we had a loving and mutually supportive relationship – one in which she was not afraid to speak her mind about what she believed best for me.
I recently learned the very appropriate meaning of the name Carol – ‘a joyous song to sing’ from a fellow poet’s piece on names.

Carol sitting defiantly on my football…

Carol trained in Community Arts and was an artist and poet as well as working tirelessly for the cause of refugees, Eritrean and later Syrian, using art to normalise the new lives of children, travelling to international conferences and in latter years, working each Summer with a Youth Club here in Bradford. Sometimes, during the ten years when we both lived in Ireland, I would assist her with face painting at some show or holiday event and the bags of equipment I kept for her when she was here in the Summer are languishing in the corner behind me…

My efforts on the left and Carol’s on the right – taken at Rosses Point with Knocknarea in the background.

Carol (and I) were inveterate collectors, and after her cremation, when it was agreed that I would carry half her ashes back to England to join my parents, her partner and I looked around for something suitable to transport them. This teapot was always my favourite from her teapot collection and now sits, relieved of it’s cargo, on the bookshelf to my left.

As teenagers, when in need of money, I sold various collections of mine to Carol – stamps for one – and she told me that I never stuck with collecting but nevertheless, was happy to purchase them… Carol was like a best friend who you could not bullshit and would always keep you up to the mark!

Another difference between Carol and I and which we shared the progress of when we had video calls, was our approach to shaping Jade trees -Carol (on the Right) preferred a grove of trunks whilst I am shaping mine as a single-trunked tree – I now have custody of both since she died…
My sister Carol – indomitable to the end…

I couldn’t close this brief sketch of Carol and my relationship to her without including her writing since she is in part responsible for my finding myself as a writer also. When Barbara and I lived in Ireland, Carol took me along to a writing group (in person group) and over the years since we would exchange poems and other pieces – here is one of her poems…

Dangerous Dreaming

Be dangerous and dream in this shit hole,
and when you dream,
dream big. Dream radical.
Dream sans frontiers.

Some decry dreamers
as if they were feckless,
ineffective, unworldly.
They underestimate the potential of dreams.

Dreams are powerful.
Dreams are strong.
Dreams are the first step to liberation,
To a new world of possibilities.

Dreams are essential, like breathing.
If you forget to dream, you might as well be dead.
Dreams are a way of staying alive,
even in a shit hole.

Dreams keep you in touch with yourself,
the way you want you to be.
So dream on, especially in a shit hole,
until reality catches up with your dreams.

Dream on, dangerously.

Cars

I have a love/hate relationship with cars! I grew up in an era when the different marques and manufacturers had distinctive styles – unlike today’s offerings where a few owners have grouped companies together, sharing basic substructures and where the cost of developing safety features like crumple zones, has resulted in a dismal similarity across the board. Furthermore, in my lifetime, the consequences of the unfettered growth of private car ownership and consequently, on the growth of cities and the colonisation of the countryside by commuters, the devastation of the planet, has become more than apparent in the form of climate change. You can read an article I wrote with a blueprint for changing our relationship with the car here. Still, I have a love of certain cars – now mostly vintage, for their flair and design…

My Grandfather – Arthur, who died before I was born, with an Austin Seven embellished with a splendid Art Deco lady on it’s bonnet. The Austin Ten was the first family car that my father drove us around in…
I particularly love Citroens, starting with this “Maigret” prewar beauty (photographed on a recent reunion of schoolfriends at The Shuttlewoth Collection where all the aircraft and cars are in fully working condition) but going on to the “goddess” – the Citroen DS – surely the most futuristic car ever to grace the roads. and what about the Citroen Pallas whose dashboard resembles that of the Starship Enterprise…
Another Citroen I would love to own – the iconic 2CV – a car with the largest sunroof, can be wound up to 70mph on the motorway, seats which can take out to be used as deck chairs and all the panels of the car can be changed using just a screwdriver… Photographed in Paris last Summer!
A beautiful two-tone VW Beetle – the old shape which I still prefer – photographed on a visit to Bayeux to see the Tapestry…

Cooking

A Sabatier carbon-steel knife I have used every day for 58 years…

My Mother was traditional in her view of gender roles, she stayed at home and my Dad was the breadwinner – furthermore, she declared that I did not need to learn to cook but my sisters would one day have husbands and so she taught them cooking whilst I merely watched whenever I could and leaned what there was to learn. Out of my sisters and I, only I have cooked professionally! When I left to go to university (a wife not yet in the offing) my parents gave me two recipe books “Cooking in a Bedsitter” by the journalist /writer Katherine Whitehorn, and “The Paupers Cookbook” by Jocasta Innes also a journalist and writer. My ambitions in cooking aspired to more than expediency and economy and so I added “A Book of Mediterranean Food” by the somewhat racy food writer Elizabeth David – a book and writer credited with changing the course of food in postwar England (I didn’t know about the racy bit back then but I am sure it would only have encouraged me to experiment both in the kitchen and beyond…) Books on Chinese and Indian cuisine followed and so I developed a kind of personal fusion style. I wrote more fully on this here as part of the Six Degrees of Separation meme. I will share from that piece, the other gift my parents gave me as I left for university – and if the cookery books were a little banal – the carbon steel Sabbatier boning knife, was decidedly high class and high maintenance! Carbon steel rusts easily and so you must clean and dry it immediately after each use… I have used this knife every day for fifty-eight years, it has seen me through two food businesses and countless meals and feasts…

My essential cookery equipment:- Top row, Airfryer, Pressure Cooker (InstaPot), Frying Pan, middle row – Take-away containers for use in the microwave, Pyrex measuring Jug, old-fashioned Measuring Cone, Microwave Steamer, Wok. Bottom left: knives including an old fashioned cutlery knife for spreading things, can-opener, a wooden spoon that was once symmetrical but has worn down with stirring, spatula, slotted spoon, soup-ladle, silicone spatula, whisk, tongs (my step-daughter converted me to the usefulness of tongs) and a grater.

Other food writing of mine…

All of my 2022 A to Z Challenge which was on the subject of foods that which can be eaten in it’s own right but also used as an ingredient…

A Lifetime Love

My father loved to cook a little but
gender roles made him the breadwinner
and not the bread baker.
My mother was a pre-feminist gal
refusing to teach her son to cook
unlike his sisters with someday
husbands and families to feed
I watched secretly –
absorbed the gist anyway.

On going to university
and facing the inevitability
of student self-sufficiency
they gave me a carbon steel Sabatier
a knife that sharpens beautifully
but must be cleaned immediately
else it soon goes rusty
I have worn it down every day of fifty-one years
– two food businesses and cooking daily
– now so thin it pares perfectly.

They also gave two books of recipes
The Paupers Cookbook and Catherine Whitehorn’s
classic Cooking in a Bedsit
sectioned One Ring, Two Rings and slimly
a Cooker for the very lucky…
I read and dutifully cooked a few
but though a lifelong love was born
yet who with a world of food to explore
would base their style on paucity

I added a book on Chinese cookery
whole, diced, steamed and stir fried
bought a wok and never looked back
spiced it up with the Penguin Indian cookery
And last but by no means least
found Mediterranean Food by Elizabeth David

Seduced by the sensual celebratory
rather than precisely noted quantities
Elizabeth David liberated me
as well as, I later learned
the married man she ran off with
travelling Europe and living on a boat
My mother would not have approved

To these three parents chosen
Chinese, Indian and Mediterranean
I must mention the American professor
of studies West African
she taught my roomie and I
Palaver Sauce and Jollof Rice
suffered our inept experiments with nicety
so when I moved near Brixton Market
I fell into a world of ingredients
from bitter, Cypriot, taste-acquired
lemon and coriander brined olives.
to stinky, dried, West African fish in baskets
– I never came up for air

My culinary philosophy –
read recipes with a pinch of salt
absorb, ferment, reuse, infuse
resist encouragement to cull your larder
treat every meal as an adventure
feed strangers, friends and family
and you will never lose.

© Andrew Wilson, 2024

Over at dVerse Poets Pub, sanaarizvi in Poetics invites us to explore the senses in Food Poetry.
I should add, to contextualise the above poem, that my Mother’s maiden name was Cook and my partner’s Mother’s maiden name was Larder – go figure…

A to Z Challenge 2022 Theme Reveal…

For my third year of the A2Z Challenge, I am reverting to one of my passions in life – Food! Two years ago, I only discovered the challenge on April 1st, the day the challenge started, so I had no time to prepare and plunged into the effects of the burgeoning pandemic. Last year, I decided to try and finish a novel and write around its theme – I didn’t finish it within the month but it gave me enough impetus to have finished it since and if any of you readers from last year want to read it – please let me know and I will send you a pdf.

DISCOVERY APPLE

The aspect of food I was going to tackle is ‘Foods that can be used as an Ingredient’ – so for example, Apples can be eaten in their own right as well as being an ingredient in other dishes. Tumeric cannot really be eaten on its own so it doesn’t make the list… There will be recipes of mine, links to other peoples’ recipes and odd food facts.

However, the world finds itself in a crisis due to the war in Ukraine and so I am going to add substantially to this theme – shades of the 2020 challenge when Covid was on the rise… Here are two things to consider -Ukraine is seventh in the league of worldwide wheat producers (but not for the next year). 50% of the Wheat imported into Germany, is fed to Pigs – it takes 7kg of wheat to create 1kg of pork. Imagine the price hikes coming down the line, from the price of wheat ‘feeding’ through to the price of pork (and other meats). What better time to consider choosing to eat more vegetarian meals. Note that I didn’t suggest becoming vegetarian, but at least increasing the amount of meat-free meals. There are other reasons for considering this, principally the Environment – less land use to grow all that food for animal feeds, less farting animals contributing methane to greenhouse gasses (methane is worse than CO2), less expensive, refrigerated transport of meat around the world. More grain for everyone around the world – poor countries in Africa will be hard hit by Ukraine being unable to plant this year, and not just wheat…

I have had in mind, for a long time, writing a book to be called ‘The Gradual Vegetarian…” I imagined a family where the progressive (probably) females in the house desired to go vegetarian for all the good reasons – ethical, environmental, health – and the (probably) males are resistant to the change. So the book would be vegetarian by stealth – gradually introducing recipes that give the lie to the idea that vegetarian food is bland and boring. Also, you don’t want to rush out and buy lots of new equipment and ingredients before you’re sure the change will take, so the idea of a book that gradually introduces vegetarian recipes, equipment, and ingredients, always seemed a good one to me and I am going to inject it into this year’s challenge…

There will be some jam recipes and so as a ‘taster’, I give my generalised method below, little wrinkles may appear with further recipes…

Making jam is simple, you need fruit and sugar in equal parts plus jam jars…

Making jam is simple, you need fruit and sugar in equal parts plus jam jars. Almost all jam jars these days can be recycled because they have a silicone seal inside the lid edge so you don’t need to mess about with acetate covers, rubber bands and waxed disks – unless you want to!

  1. Weigh the fruit so you know how much sugar to add.
  2. Cook the fruit in a large saucepan – some fruit needs chopping into small bits.
  3. When the fruit is mushed down, add the sugar and stir till dissolved and bring to a roiling boil.
  4. Take a spoonful of jam out and put in the fridge till cold, if you can draw your finger through the cooled jam and it wrinkles, you have a set – if not repeat until you do.
  5. Meanwhile boil a kettle, stand the jars and their lids on a newspaper and fill both to the brim with boiling water.
  6. Once you have a set, carefully empty the jars and lids and use a heatproof jug to pour the jam into the jars. Immediately screw the lids on tight. It’s good to have a couple of smaller jars in case there is some left over.
  7. As the jars cool down, you should hear a pop as the vacuum forms and sucks the lids in – then your jam is properly sealed and will keep forever! This whole process can take as little as half an hour…

I am trying to write as many as possible in advance so that I can spend more time reading other bloggers’ posts, connect with old friends and make new ones. I have had to come out of semi-retirement and go back to four days a week as the company I work for (Gelato and Puddings) – is moving to a larger factory so it is all hands on deck! But by April, I hope the worst will be over and I can put the effort in here…

There is a hard-working team behind the scenes of the A to Z Challenge and this year, Jeremy, the graphic designer responsible for all the badges and banners, sadly passed away, so the badge below is to honour him…