My Mum's Corned Beef Hash
It starts with marking anniversaries. First week without, first month alone. First my birthday, first of yours. Time passes, and you count two years, ten months and seventeen days of without. Eventually you realise that before you thought of life as moving forwards, but now you're moving from.
Today would have been my mum's 69th birthday. Today feels like a good day to remember her.
When someone you love dies unexpectedly, you don't lose them all at once. I remember waking up the morning after she died, on the floor of the lounge in Coventry.and wondering what I was doing there. Now, admittedly, it's not *entirely* unusual for me to not know where I am when I wake up. Too much travel and too many wild nights out have got me used to that. So I was having a moment of early morning woozy-snugglyness. And then I caught up to myself in the present tense and remembered she was gone.
With hindsight, these are some of the worst moments of all. I don't think the human mind is very good at dealing with sudden loss and tries to play tricks on you. I still have moments where I think, "I haven't spoken to Mum for a while, I must call her". The thing is. people don't disappear all at once. It's not as simple as they are here one day, and the next they are gone.
So after nearly three years, I am back from my place called grief. I don't cry every day anymore. I can hold more than one thought in my head at a time. People can mention their mums without me wanting to stab them, repeatedly, through the heart with a bread knife out of jealousy. I remember, with pleasure, the time I had with my mum, rather than raging about the time we won't.
As this is a food blog, I wanted to share a recipe of my mum's with you. I would go so far as to call it her signature dish. She wasn't a great cook, or even a good cook. Food wasn't hugely important to her. She was a war baby who spent her early years on rations and believed that the best time to put the Christmas sprouts on was sometime in early September.
We did share some food experiences. Grilled sardines and beer in Barcelona. The worst octopus in the world in Mykonos (shortly before she was bitten by a pelican). Years of my teenage vegetarian angst and arguments about whether or not I could eat a Kwik Save economy beefburger. And she baked a mean apple pie.
Anyways, here's how to make corned beef hash, Jo Edwards style. Serves three, with a side of mash potato (which is potatoes boiled and then mashed, no butter or milk to be added).
Take one onion. Chop and microwave on high until soft. Chop a tin of corned beef into small pieces. Open a tin of tomatoes. Mix tomatoes and corned beef with the onion. Cover and microwave on high until molten.
Today would have been my mum's 69th birthday. Today feels like a good day to remember her.
When someone you love dies unexpectedly, you don't lose them all at once. I remember waking up the morning after she died, on the floor of the lounge in Coventry.and wondering what I was doing there. Now, admittedly, it's not *entirely* unusual for me to not know where I am when I wake up. Too much travel and too many wild nights out have got me used to that. So I was having a moment of early morning woozy-snugglyness. And then I caught up to myself in the present tense and remembered she was gone.
With hindsight, these are some of the worst moments of all. I don't think the human mind is very good at dealing with sudden loss and tries to play tricks on you. I still have moments where I think, "I haven't spoken to Mum for a while, I must call her". The thing is. people don't disappear all at once. It's not as simple as they are here one day, and the next they are gone.
So after nearly three years, I am back from my place called grief. I don't cry every day anymore. I can hold more than one thought in my head at a time. People can mention their mums without me wanting to stab them, repeatedly, through the heart with a bread knife out of jealousy. I remember, with pleasure, the time I had with my mum, rather than raging about the time we won't.
As this is a food blog, I wanted to share a recipe of my mum's with you. I would go so far as to call it her signature dish. She wasn't a great cook, or even a good cook. Food wasn't hugely important to her. She was a war baby who spent her early years on rations and believed that the best time to put the Christmas sprouts on was sometime in early September.
We did share some food experiences. Grilled sardines and beer in Barcelona. The worst octopus in the world in Mykonos (shortly before she was bitten by a pelican). Years of my teenage vegetarian angst and arguments about whether or not I could eat a Kwik Save economy beefburger. And she baked a mean apple pie.
Anyways, here's how to make corned beef hash, Jo Edwards style. Serves three, with a side of mash potato (which is potatoes boiled and then mashed, no butter or milk to be added).
Take one onion. Chop and microwave on high until soft. Chop a tin of corned beef into small pieces. Open a tin of tomatoes. Mix tomatoes and corned beef with the onion. Cover and microwave on high until molten.
Labels: corned beef hash, grief, mum
posted by Suzi Edwards at Saturday, October 18, 2008
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