Comfort food

Home-made fish and chips.
🙂

Once again #1 son decided that time with his mates was far preferable to having dinner with his mother. I am slowly coming to terms with the fact that my little boy is a young adult with his own transport and his own life. I am very pleased that this has happened and I most certainly do not begrudge him the freedom that he is now enjoying.

My issue lies with the fact that he never knows if he is going to be home for dinner until around 5pm and will rarely accept an offer from me for a home-cooked meal a day or two in advance. No decision is made until he fields all the possible social opportunities. Unless it is really important and I make him put it in his diary, I cannot guarantee his attendance at the dining table.

It wouldn’t bother me so much if I was already cooking for 3 or 4 people, but if #1 son is not home for dinner it means that I am just cooking for one………me.

When #1 son was home for dinner regularly, I would make an effort to cook a proper meal, making sure that we were getting a healthy meal. Like all good mum’s it would be meat and three veg, or a nice vegetarian pasta, or a chicken and salad dish. But cooking for one can be a real downer, especially if you know that you will be doing the dishes by yourself as well. If you cook with it you have to clean it. So often I decide not to cook.

However………………

Sometimes I get that ‘bugger you’ mentality and decide to cook something really nice, just for me. Tonight was one of those nights. And I get a secret pleasure in knowing that when he arrives home later and the magnificent smells of my sensational evening meal-for-one make him question what I have had for dinner, I can tell him and watch his face drop as he realises what he has missed out on.

Sometimes it will be my favourite dish of eye fillet with scalloped potatoes and glazed carrots. Sometimes I will cook a mini roast dinner with a golden chicken kiev. Tonight it was fish and chips. A lovely piece of flake coated lightly in cornflour and shallow fried in the skillet accompanied by chunky hand-cut chips. A generous grinding of salt and couple of quarters of lemon off the tree out the back for seasoning and flavour………

Comfort food indeed. Delicious. (and only the skillet to wash)