An angel in the kitchen: My Passion for Food: Katie in the Kitchen

Every family has a food style. My thought in creating this blog is that we will then have a family legacy & resource of all that defines us in "things of the kitchen". I am not really a very good cook especially not a baker, I just have a passion for delicious, vibrant, interesting food that is good for the body but also satisfies the soul..our style.
This is the story of how our journey with food began.
The things I loved to play at most as a child were "playing house" & making miniature gardens & posie bowls. I loved the crisp clean cotton sheets at my grandparent's house, the smell of Pa's shaving soap & the shape of Nan's water jug & bowl in the bathroom; the taste of the first strawberries, the scent of feijoas & the delight of a fully ripe guava.. ooh & the aroma of guava jelly hanging over the old clawfoot bath & drip, drip, dripping through muslin into the bowl below.

There were hens in the hen house clucking away & an endless succession of fresh vegetables for dinner awaiting in the vege garden.
At 15 I bought a yeast cookery book with school prize money & subjected the family to endless renditions of all things made with yeast for a lengthy period.
I never forgot the experience of stopping at a "hippy" cafe in the Coromandel one summer in the bread making era & fell in love with "wholefood" right there & then. Soon after, I moved to Wellington to study & would arrive home with bags of all kinds of exciting foods from the wholefoods shop in Cuba Street, Ocean Commodities (the Chinese warehouse) or boxes of fruit & vegetables from the various fruiterers around the inner city.
When Anna was born in 1983 I joined Le Leche League & found myself amongst kindred spirits...wonderful women! One of the things that we practiced & taught was the concept of "wholefoods for the whole family". In later years I set up a fruit & vege coop & would go down to the local Hawera Turners & Growers bright & early to buy enough fresh produce for 9 families

When our children were still little I pondered what family traditions we could adopt that would be meaningful & "us". Every year the kids & I would make hot cross buns together at Easter..I loved the process & symbolism & that we always made enough to give away.

As I write this it is Easter Sunday April the 4th 2010 I have just picked up our very first feijoa this morning,shared the first ripe guava with Rob this afternoon, harvested a bowl of raspberries
& another of figs from our garden & a handful of hyacinth beans,visited the local Farmers' Market & returned home, bags overflowing with vibrantly coloured peppers, jalapeno chilis, shiny smooth aubergine, buttery kamo kamo, local July muscat grapes, avocados & the last of the seasons sweetcorn.