Sunday 18th October 2020
Sitting at my kitchen table,
Decades of love scratched into its surface.
I flick through my favoured recipe books –
The chatty ones, like old friends sharing secrets over a cuppa –
Looking for something easy to bake with my daughter.
A picture pulls me back in time.
My mum, wearing her blue wrap-around apron, thumbing through her recipe book.
Me stood up on a chair at this very table playing with scraps of pastry,
Making shapes – something for Daddy, which, bless him, he would eat.
‘Be alright with a drop of custard,’ he’d grin.
Lardy Cake
Goodness, I haven’t had that in years!
Is it really made with pig fat?
The text takes me further back – tear-prickingly back.
It’s one of the very first kinds of cake –
Their daily bread exalted for high days and holidays,
Treasures of dried fruits, sugar and spice, and lard, of course, hidden in its folds
A traditional recipe from my neck of the woods.
There’s a lot of Hampshire hogs and hops around here.
My home county.
My hills and valleys,
Where my people have gazed for who knows how long…
Sitting at my kitchen table,
I run the heel of my hand up the fold of the book.
We’ll bake Lardy Cake.
Hampshire Hogs By Samantha Jayne Hunt Stacey
29 Thursday Oct 2020
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