All Passion Spent!

Passion fruit husks

Today I spent the bulk of my computer time sending out my articles to article sites - a laborious and repetitive task, that is eventually rewarded by increased amounts of links out there in cyberspace, beckoning people and search engines to our websites and boosting their page rankings. Basically you attach your author biography to the article with a link to your website in it and anybody can use the article for their sites for free as long as those links go with it. Your writing isn’t repaid in monetary terms but in the increased visibility of your site.

As I stood over the stove this evening, head thick with a cold, desultorily stirring some chicken and carrots into a stir fry, again, because I couldn’t think of anything more inspiring that the children would eat, I pondered the wording of my article biography that I’d been mechanically pasting onto all those articles: ”..and is passionate about food.” If only they could see me now! I’d never felt less passionate about food. I thought enviously of those real food blogs like CookSister, where they experiment with new flavours, revel in their cooking and photograph it attractively before tucking in. Years of feeding children have dulled the edge of that passion, at least that’s how it feels on a coldy, autumnal evening. Shopping once a week at a supermarket doesn’t quite compare with browsing a market in France or Italy for seasonal specialities and how I wish I could sample the temptations of London’s Borough Market with a bottomless purse and no kids in tow!

Having had that little grumble, let it be said that I now do a mean Sunday Roast and the smell of new bread from the kitchen is pretty enticing right now, even from the depths of these culinary doldrums. Plus I take heart from the archives of my family history books. Apparently my brother and I were taken across the Channel to France for a summer holiday in Brittany, aged about 3 and 5. We refused all foreign food provided by the hotel, including the roast beef that was usually our favourite at home, because French Roast Beef wasn’t the same as English Roast Beef....