The great French chef, Escoffier, is supposed to have said that. I wonder what he would have said about people who eat marshmallows.

I've been thinking about the food of my childhood and growing years as I rake the embers of my memories for illumination. (Sorry - couldn't resist that; no one's going to notice.) Generally I can't remember what I ate. I remember sitting on the cottage steps in the summer shelling peas and I can remember the peas, hot but barely cooked because they were so tender, swimming in butter in small amber glass bowls. Did we have anything else? I can remember egg and onion sandwiches and raspberry vinegar at beach picnics. Oh, I can remember eating Shepherd's Pie for lunch at the convent school I attended from age 5 to age 8, and thinking it was named for Jesus, the Good Shepherd. I remember my teeth stained blue from blueberry cobbler the day of a school recital when I had to recite "D'óu viens-tu, bergère?" and being so pleased because the shepherdess costume I wore was lavender blue and matched my teeth. Oh, and I remember "goutée" (or was it gouter?), the afternoon snack we littlest ones were given, particularly snow apples, with pink flesh at the core.

How is it I can't remember anything my mother cooked? I was 8 when World War Two began and my father, a doctor, was in it soon enough, head of a Casualty Clearing Station and gone, first in Canada, then overseas. My mother was a single mother for five years, holding everything together with reduced finances, somehow keeping up payments on the new, elegant house my father had bought just before war was declared. I look back on the food I remember best and have finally figured out that it was based on frugality. I remember enjoying lunch: little cubes of bread with milk and sugar, or rice pudding with raisins. No wonder I got fat. The only dinner meal I remember was chili con carne and I remember that because of the powdered chili seasoning I showered over it. (I didn't discover garlic till my twenties.) Of course, there was rationing, too. I do remember that Mother cooked liver and kidneys and sweetbreads and I still love them. I think they weren't rationed.

I should be. Rationed. For time, I mean. I'm sure you've had enough. (Does it trigger any memories?)

When I was a girl my mother would get mad at me for taking so long with the dusting - or maybe never getting to it - because I was reading. When I was a young mother I forced myself to give up reading for the sake of my babies so I wouldn't forget they were there. It's an addiction, reading, but now there's no one to scold me except me. My plans for today have totally disintegrated because I've been reading. I managed to make coriander pesto and mushroom soup, but I haven't done any work, have not completed my assignments for the day. The author of the book which held me captive deserves to be mentioned. Wonderful writer, Michael Crummey, and the book is GALORE, with lots of awards and nominations. Never mind them, it's a wonderful good read. I met Michael last year when I took a cruise, a circumnavigation of Newfoundland, because I wanted to see L'Anse aux Meadows, with Adventure Canada. Michael was on staff, as a guide and expert about the Rock, as well as navigator/driver of a sightseeing boat (not sure if it was a Zodiac) for our land excursions. He's in his forties I think, but he looks 12, well, maybe 17. And he is a wonderful writer, have I mentioned that? So I'm late for my blog, too, but it's not my fault.