THE STORY CONTINUES...

In the year 1950, Lindsay and Mavis had a daughter named Janice, who is also my mother. Janice was a sweet, obliging child who still claims that all she ever wanted was a duffel coat and desert boots, which she did eventually save up enough pennies for.
Here is a picture of the lovely Janice at the beach:


Mavis wisely decided she didn’t want little Janice to go through the same soggy orange cake experiences she went through, so she encouraged Janice to help her in the kitchen. Janice recollects her helpfulness in their traditional Sunday afternoon ice-cream making, where her special job was to beat the ice-cream by hand. Janice was delighted when ice-cream became commercially available.

As the years went by, Janice developed her skills in the kitchen under Mavis’ tuition. By the time she was in the now defunct teachers college, Janice had a reputation among her friends as an authority on fish fingers. Janice’s secret recipe is revealed here:


Fish Fingers

Ingredients:
I box frozen fish fingers
Processed cheese slices

Method:
Place fish fingers on tray. Place slice of processed cheese on top of fish fingers. Bake according to packet directions.


I must admit at this point that while Janice is no chef and has never claimed to be, she does come up with the goods every now and again - her roast lamb is the second best roast lamb I’ve ever had, and considering the best roast lamb I’ve ever had happens to be the best meat-eating experience of my life, that’s pretty good (that story shall be saved for another day, if I can ever put it into words). And she always strived to feed her family healthy food and regularly served up a hearty meat-and-three-veg like Mavis did.

So you can see, my family does not have a long and rich heritage of cooking. There are no secret recipes handed down through the generations, no heirloom cooking pots (although I do have an old yellow roasting pan of Mavis' which is terrible, everything sticks to it), no genetic lineage of culinary skill, but we make a go of it. And when I look back at the number of meals I ate in my mum's house and all the hours she spent making them, all I can really say is - thanks mum.