Roy Edmunds: Feeding the soul and the stomach

With mouth-watering Christmas recipes in the glossy magazines, She Who Knows has been inspired back into her kitchen apron - with, of course, my encouragement.

Last weekend her star creation was ‘flat bread’, baked in self-raising flour with Greek yoghurt and coriander, flash fried into a thick, soft bread. Eaten with tzatziki it was delicious! I came home early from my afternoon at the local, just to relish this appetiser treat.

After both Hunter’s Chicken on Saturday, then roast pork Sunday, we enjoyed her filo apple pie, densely rich in fruit with mixed spice beneath the most flaky pastry, sprinkled with icing sugar – yum!

This was where my considerable contribution came in – I peeled the apples. No, don’t scoff at my efforts! There were two big cooking apples and a pair of sweet, green ones.

Since I’d forgotten we had a peeler and corker in a bottom drawer, it took almost half an hour. There was a time we could all peel efficiently, specially spuds, but today the chips come in frozen packets.

As a child I’d ‘help’ mother on baking day for, like washing day, every household had one.

She let me make small, open-topped tarts riddled with pastry borders around different jams – what a mess!

Still, it was fun. Nowadays some retired mates even boast of their cake-baking prowess.

The kitchen truly is the heart of the house on such days and, with Jack Frost breathing down our necks, I’ll be encouraging She Who to repeat previous winter triumphs – like seafood and spinach pie or a macaroni,tomato and potato one . . . bring it on, I say!

* Books by Roy – novels and humorous memoir - are on Kindle or in paperback. Visit royedmonds-blackpool.com or Waterstones.