Growing up in Britain in the 80’s I had the pleasure to enjoy classic British comfort food, fish and chips, roast beef with Yorkshire puddings, bangers and mash, cottage pie, the list goes on. I have wonderful memories of sitting in the kitchen with my brother and my dad while my mam served us home-cooked classics, don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t all homemade and British classics, but the majority was, its something of a past time, sitting down at the table talking about your day while your mother finishes off the dish, the visual memory sticks in my head. I can still remember the type of pots and pans she used, the tablecloth, the glasses, and not forgetting the wonderful food we ate as a family. As much as I try to create the same environment around mealtime, we are battling against technology and the stress of having far much more on our plate (pun intended), OR DO WE?? did our parents not work as many hours as us? did they not work as hard? of course, they did, we just expect more, we have a higher expectation, we try to do more, we try to squeeze more in the day, and we feel we are harder done by.
I guess your wondering what this has to do with comfort food, well I think comfort food and my connection with British classics, have a lot to do with bringing families together at the table, sadly its a thing of the past, don’t be offended if you still eat like this, its just the majority of us don’t get to enjoy this, for some reason or other. I’ve started to look into what this type of food means to me and how I can bring back classics without feeling like your not feeding your family nutritious meals and giving the old recipe book the cold shoulder. Starting with Cottage pie, I’m going to replicate a classic and turn it into a nutritious packed meal you can feel good about and hopefully inspire the rest of the family to put down the phones and Ipads and sit at the table and enjoy it together!!
Check out this Cottage pie on my recipe page
