Eating My Greens

My mum is an incredible baker. She makes, hands down, the best apple tart I’ve ever eaten. Any time I’m out at somewhere for a meal and apple pie is on the desert, I tend to order it, just out of curiosity, but it never even comes close enough to make me sad it isn’t mum’s. And it’s not just apple tart, though that will always be my favourite. Buns, sponge cakes, trifles. She bakes Christmas fruit cake for half the village. She’s even done wedding cakes for cousins and neighbours. 

When it comes to desert, I grew up well fed and spoilt for choice. 

But I also grew up hating broccoli and Brussels sprouts. I thought steak was dry and chewy, made slightly more palatable when fried with onions. We had weekly boiled ham and cabbage until we were old enough to rebel.

As a kid, I hated potatoes. I hated them boiled or mashed. Roasted was acceptable, but they only got made for Christmas or Easter dinner, and I adored mum’s turkey and ham special dinners. 

So, imagine my surprise when I learned that you can cook steak to varying degrees, and medium was delicious, until I had medium-rare, and it was even more delicious! The joy in discovering you can roast broccoli and Brussels sprouts, and that they were flipping delicious like that! Imagine my cognitive dissonance when, as a grown man in his late 30’s (or possibly shortly after…) I cooked sprouts for the first time and ate most of them straight off the oven pan with a spoon, just horsing them into my mouth while I waited for the rest of the meal to finished cooking. 

Potatoes are delicious boiled with a few cloves of garlic, and mashed with a lot of butter!

In the Before Times, I made broccoli for some friends who very clearly accepted them with the polite side-eye glances of people who did not like broccoli at all, then asked for more five minutes later. Roasted, with soy sauce, ginger and garlic. 

I love my mum. I love her deserts and Christmas dinners. 

But I love my roasted veggies, and so does Claire. What about my kids? Not subjected to boiled mush, do they enjoy crunchy veggie flavour bombs?

Not a fucking chance. The little bastards won’t touch them, and scream if they find any on their plate. 

I’d be upset, except, more for me! 

Thank Ya Kindly, Ma'am

Let me tell you the tale of the Ryan Family Kids.

It all started way back in the halcyon days of 1998 when the eldest Ryan, young, dashing Denis moved to Cork to attend college. Instead of returning home once his education had been completed, he remained there for the next twelve years, finding a lovely Limerick girl that didn't stab him and "hooking up with her", as the kids call it today. And so began what would be called in the family history books as "The Great Exodus". In 2001, his brother Philip moved to college in Limerick. He then fled to the great land down under, Australia in 2006 or so, from where he has yet to return. The youngest of the Ryans wished to work with animals, and so, following her dream, Margaret-Ann moved to England to study in Bristol. Stephen, the youngest of the three brothers, finding himself at home with nothing to do, decided that the best thing for him was to pack up his Xbox and move to New Zealand, the land of grass and sheep. So, rather like home then.

Suddenly realising he was the only one of the Ryan Kids left in Ireland, Denis looked at where he was. He had a job he loved, but the pay wasn't great. He had, without a shadow of a doubt, the best friends in the entire world. But the itchy feet that had befallen his younger siblings had now afflicted him. Denis' wife too, the fair and beautiful Claire, had an urge to travel, brought on by a combination of poor management at work and poorer management in the nations government. Together, they made a pact. Canada would be their destination. A land rich in many things, but three above all others: opportunity, trees and endless wilderness to dispose of the bodies of their enemies.

Back on the family land in Killea, the people of the village jokingly questioned of the Ryan Kids mother. "What did you do Kathleen? They've all left". Smiling, she shook her head and claimed she did not know. But she did know. She had taught them love and care, compassion and courage, faith and the belief in a better world. She had shown them glimpses of how incredible that world can be, and encouraged them to be free, to live and to explore.

And so, one by one, they traveled to the four corners of the globe to spread her lessons to everyone they met.

And the world lived happily ever after.