I have been helping my dad clean up the house a bit lately, as he is preparing to sell it and move out this year. (The clean up conveniently timed with my return from the States...) I have lived in the house since I was 5 years old, until I moved out for college when I was about 17. Im slowly realising that over these 12 or so years, I didn’t part with a lot of belongings, and neither did my other family members. My hoarder tendencies constantly getting in the way of a desired minimal lifestyle.
This past Thursday, the 19th, also marked the 10th anniversary of my Mothers death. As I was cleaning the kitchen, sorting through cupboards of dish wear, cutlery and cookbooks, her presence found its way back into the house as I wiped about 8 years of dust from plates hidden away in forgotten places. I found some really beautiful pieces and wanted to catalogue them in some way as I rediscovered them. I cleaned and photographed each one, trying to remember the last time I saw these pieces in use. Memories that struggled to resurface. However, the last photograph above is one of more recent memory - my mother’s cookbook, or kitchen bible as I like to call it. I remember its very place on the kitchen counter many a times as I sat and watched my mom cook lunches and dinners. A huge Delia Smith fan, she used this book for everything cookery related. Nothing overly fancy, the cookbook served as a guide on how to cook the perfect anything; roast potatoes, mash potatoes, lamb stew, grains and pastas, and when we were lucky there was toasted rice pudding, flap jacks and fruit crumbles. Nearly every page is marked with notes and measurement alterations and little scribbles on the sides of recipes noting items myself or my brother wouldn’t eat. Picky children we were. Pages sellotaped in on top of other pages, you could make another book just from the notes. There is also beautiful illustrations and photographs to accompany some of the meals, which I believe were made long before there were such things as food stylists and prop stylists to help produce these books. The book itself was published in 1982 and I can certainty say it has gotten its fair share of use since then.
Now that everything has had its moment of glory again, on with the Feng Shui de-clutter-fest.