Happiness is a warm kitchen

Thank you, Gabi, for proofreading this for me

Happiness is a warm kitchen

I was in my ‘happy place’, my kitchen, baking with my daughter Rachael. Rachael is 11 now and I am so happy for her that she will know a world so different to the one that I grew up in. She won’t suffer the way I have. She will never know the difficulties I faced growing up in a man’s world, looking like I do.

I found an old cherry stoner in a charity shop. I’d seen a video of one once on YouTube, so I recognised what it was and paid the trivial sum that they were asking for it. It had inspired me to try making fresh cherry pie again. I’d tried making one before, and I hoped that I had learnt some lessons from that attempt. I had painstakingly removed the stones from a kilo of cherries and then simmered them with sugar to make the pie filling. The juice that came from the fruit made the filling watery and it didn’t seem like I could boil the liquid off, so I ended up adding cornflour to thicken the filling. That made the juices thicken into a kind of cloudy paste that tasted fine but didn’t look like the glossy sauce from the tinned cherry pie filling. I asked my mother about it and she suggested using arrowroot, so I had a tub of arrowroot now to try.

I’d bought two kilogrammes of cherries, because I wasn’t sure how much there would be left after the stoning machine had done its business. Also, I love cherries and Rachael likes cherry flavoured things. I think the main reason she doesn’t tend to eat fresh cherries is because she’s too lazy to deal with the stones. Maybe she will feel different about ‘seedless’ cherries?

The stoner is insanely efficient, two cherries at a time drop down the parallel chutes into the business end, you pull the lever and the spiky ends of the curved prongs push the stones into the bucket and the stoned cherries are ejected into a separate hopper on the upstroke of the prongs. Rachael eyes the machine but the sight of the fearsome spikes convince her that this is a job for me.

It is slow and methodical work. Mechanical tedium. I expect Rachael to get bored and ask to watch her latest Disney movie but she seems to be fascinated that food can be made from stuff that grew in the dirt. She also thinks it's funny that I have an apron on that matches hers and that we are doing things together. I haven't had enough opportunity to spend time with her in recent years. When she was tiny, just after we brought her back from the hospital I did so much more for her. Her mother was ill and couldn't bear to look at her some days. So, I changed the nappies, sterilised the bottles, rocked her to sleep again in the night, dressed her, bought her cute outfits in Asda while I pushed round a trolley with her in her travel seat.

I felt like a single mum then. Rachael's mother was just, gone. From both our lives. Almost from the first night, it was just the two of us. Rachael's mother would leave the room if either of us were there.
Rachael's mother left a few weeks after that and I haven't seen her since.

After that, it was like a switch had been thrown in my heart and every day my maternal instinct grew stronger. I'd never even thought what a maternal instinct would feel like, well I wouldn't, would I?

Work was very understanding, at first. My mum helped a lot. But she worried that I was putting my life on hold to look after Rachael. She urged me to find another woman to be her mother, but she didn't understand how deep my bond was growing.

It seemed like no time at all until Rachael was at nursery and then playgroup, making friends. I felt isolated because I wasn't like the other mums. It was hard when Rachael missed out because the other Mums didn't want me there… I force myself to stop that train of thought, which sounds easy but is the hardest thing in the world. Try NOT thinking of purple elephants. So I look at my beautiful daughter and think happy thoughts.

Still, that's all in the past now. Rachael started her first week of secondary school and she wanted baked goods for the sale this weekend, so, we're baking in the kitchen.

Rachael 'helps' me roll out the pastry and I show her the 'trick' of rolling the sheet on the rolling pin and then unrolling it onto the pregreased pie dish.

I blind bake the base with baking parchment and baking beads. Rachael fills the time while we’re waiting for the cooking timer to ring by telling stories about her new friend ‘Poppy’ and all her older sisters.

“I haven't seen my sister for such a long time,” I tell her.

“You mean Auntie Chloe?” Rachael asks.

“Yes, she’s the only sister I have!” I reply with a laugh “She married Uncle David and moved to the other side of the country. I do miss her…”

“Why don’t you call her?” Rachael asked simply.

“Er…” I replied, “You know what? I can’t think of any reason not to call her right now! Let’s put her on speakerphone while we bake”.

I found my sister's number and rang it, putting the phone on speaker on the worktop near Rachael.

“Hi Chloe,” I said when she answered, “it’s me.”

“And me!” Rachael said cheerfully.

“So, no rude words!” I said with a smile. If Rachael was listening then Chloe was less likely to swear at me.

“What are you guys doing?” Chloe asked.

“We’re in the kitchen!” Rachael said.

“We’re baking for the school bake sale,” I explained.

“Ha! I can just imagine you in your pinny, with flour on your nose - you’re so f__flipping Mumsy,” Chloe chortled.

“Well, we do both have aprons on, because we are baking, in a kitchen and not silly!” I said hotly.

Rachael and Chloe laughed at my mock outrage.

“We’re making cherry pie!” Rachael said.

“From scratch” I added “with fresh cherries. I found an old cherry stoner and got it working.”

“Argh! Why would you tell me that!” Chloe said, “Now all I can think about is cherry pie and how I can’t get one as nice as you will make!”

“You could make one yourself?” I suggested.

Chloe laughed “There’s only one domestic goddess out of the three of us, at least until Rachael gets a little older!”

The timer chose that moment to go ‘drrrrring!’ so I took the pie base out and got ready to spoon in the filling. I gave Chloe a running commentary on what I was doing as I did it.

Once I had the filling in, and the lid on I got Rachael to help me decorate it with cut out leaves around the vent hole I cut in the middle. Then I brushed a wash over the top and we sprinkled a little caster sugar and put the pie back in the oven. I set the timer and got back to making chocolate sponge cake mix for fairy cakes.

All the while we were telling Chloe what we were doing and she was getting more frustrated that she lived so far away.

Rachael was giggling at Chloe's mock frustration.

"Why don't you invite Mum round?" Chloe asked.

"Oh yes! I can tell her about my new school!" Rachael said.

"How much fun would it be for Grandma to sit and watch us work? She worked in a kitchen for years. Plus, she'd want to join in and show me how to do it right and there's only room for two cooks in this kitchen because one of them is small!" I said.

"I am NOT small, I'm a big girl!" Rachael said.

"Besides, Grandma is already coming for Sunday dinner tomorrow, so you can tell her then," I said.

"Yay!" Rachael said, clapping her hands.

"How are things with Mum?" Chloe asked.

"Chloe!" I said in a low warning tone. Chloe knows, or she should know, anyway, that there are some topics I don't like to discuss in front of Rachael.

"Superficially everything is fine," I said, "and she's always delighted to spend time with her favourite granddaughter." I smiled at Rachael.

“Hmph! I’m her only grandchild!” Rachael said, “and it’s a dreadful burden… when am I going to get a sibling or a cousin?” She heels a hand to her forehead at the tragedy of it all.

“Bwah!” I said, “Where did that come from?”

“Oh, just a conversation with Grandma,” Rachael said loftily.

“What about you, Aunty Chloe? Any prospect of a little cousin for me?” Rachael asked cheerily.

“Er, what the? NO!” said Chloe.

“You could always adopt…” Rachael said, “Being from a single-parent family hasn’t harmed me… much!”

She smiled at me. The little imp.

“Until now!” I growled menacingly.

Rachael squealed with laughter.

“It’s given you a warped sense of humour!” Chloe said, clearly not amused.

“I’m sorry, Auntie Chloe. I’ve been teasing Alex about Poppy’s Mum - we could all be one happy family then…” Rachael said.

“I don’t think it works that way,” I said, “besides, we don’t even know if Poppy’s mum like people like me…”
“Why do you never call Alex ‘mum’, Rachael?” Chloe asked.

“Oh! I do! At school, with my friends, of course I do! It’s just, at home, it got confusing when I talked about ‘mother dearest’” Rachael said. The bitterness she had towards her mother was not something I had taught her.

She turned to me and said, with absolute sincerity in her blue eyes: “I love you, Mum!”

She held her arms out to me and I hurried to hug her, she was stood on a box to help her reach the kitchen work surface, so she was able to throw her arms around my neck. I just held my daughter and dripped happy tears with a huge smile on my face.

This was my happy place.