When my grandmother Kate died, the eulogy I delivered at her funeral revolved entirely around food, of course.
My grandma Wendy died Sunday morning New Zealand time. A strange thing to happen on our very first night in London. We were lucky to be with our wonderful London whānau.
Wendy isn't having a funeral, and if she was having one, I wouldn't have been there to give a eulogy but when I think about Wendy, and the memories I have of her, so many of those are bound up in food too.
After-school afternoon tea at Wendy and Bob's place was usually a couple of Cheds crackers, always spread with "marge" and topped with a slice of Colby that was cut from the block kept in a yellow Tupperware container using a cheese slicer, and more often than not a "cuppie cake.” Wendy always called them "cuppie cakes.” She cooked the Edmond’s cupcake recipe, always used paper patty pans, always iced the cupcakes and topped them with hundreds and thousands or chocolate hail, and stored those in another, round, yellow Tupperware container. I loved those afternoon teas. They were such a treat, and felt so luxurious by contrast to the Marmite sandwich and two plain Girl Guide biscuits that Kate would give us.
Dessert is the thing I remember most about dinner at Bob and Wendy's. There were either ice cream sandwiches, made using those slices of Tip Top vanilla ice cream sandwiched between pink wafer biscuits, or brandy snaps (always store bought, filled with cream) or cinnamon oysters, another Edmond’s recipe for little cinnamon cakes that would be slit partly open, filled with whipped cream and dusted with icing sugar. I loved Wendy's cinnamon oysters and loved how in her better years she would always make them for me on my birthday. I liked having them in lieu of a cake. I thought that was quite sophisticated, but I liked it even more when there were cinnamon oysters, and a cake.
Bob was often responsible for cooking dinner when he was still alive, but after he died Wendy had a rotation of two meals she'd cook if she was having us over - fish and chips or a roast pork dinner. It was always palpable how relieved everyone was when we arrived at Wendy's and discovered fish and chips was the dinner she had decided on. Wendy, like Bob, always crumbed her fish and she always bought gurnard. Her chips were always ones straight from a freezer packet, and we always laughed that without fail she would cook plenty of gurnard and only about five chips per person, despite the chips being the cheaper part of the meal. There was always a salad to go with the fish and chips that came served in a plastic orange bowl with matching plastic orange salad servers. Wendy liked orange. Her salad bowl and servers matched her unmistakably orange nail polish. Wendy loved Paul Newman salad dressing.
Wendy wasn't the best at cooking what she'd call "a lovely pork meal.” The meat was often dry and she'd usually rope Dad into cooking all of the vegetables for her. At least she seemed to manage a few more roast vegetables than she did chips. She loved having us round for dinner though. She loved the company and having her people together. And it was a sign that she was well and in a good headspace when she invited us round.
The other thing I remember about dinner at Wendy's is that she always had bottles of the same wine - Five Flax Chardonnay. I'm sure she must've found it on special at the small New World down the road from her and filled her wardrobes or garage up with the stuff. There really did seem to be a never ending supply. Even though it was pretty mediocre, I liked that unintentionally Wendy ended up with a house white.
Wendy was an amazing baker. More of a baker than a cook, if you will. In her heyday she would deliver Tip Top ice cream containers to our place weekly filled with Afghan biscuits (which you're not allowed to call them now), Belgian biscuits and Kiwi biscuits. Wendy's Belgian biscuits were always sandwiched together with raspberry jam, iced with white icing and sprinkled with pink raspberry jelly crystals. Kiwi biscuits were chocolate chippy biscuits, but Wendy always called them Kiwi biscuits. She made the best peanut brownies and the best Louise cake, which was her mother Jean's recipe. I also remember her making Cornish pasties - little pastries filled with a beef mixture, best eaten straight from the fridge.
Wendy made a good bacon and egg pie, too, though the last of those that she made for my parents she made using sweet shortcrust pastry by mistake - a sign that her days of cooking for herself and others were numbered.
Wendy had a penchant for making dips that were nothing more than corn relish or chopped up gherkin stirred through sour cream - the height of sophistication in the early 1990s and the source of much amusement to us now when we flick through her old handwritten recipe books that I've inherited. I’ve discovered multiple carefully written lists of ingredients and sets of instructions - not that they were really complex enough to warrant a recipe. She was one of those people who had serving-ware with different compartments for chippies and dip and vegetable sticks and nuts. Those plates were a mainstay at family Christmases, and so were Mallowpuffs that she'd ice with a little bit of white icing and top with a Jaffa and two spearmint leaf lollies to look like little Christmas puds with holly on top. I always felt like Wendy cared about making Christmas special for us when she made those little treats. I could tell she got joy out of spoiling us.
When I was eight we spent 13 weeks in the UK and Europe with Mum and Dad, mostly based at Bob and Wendy's place in Reading. They had several stints living in the UK. Wendy would take my sister Tess and I on regular outings to The Oracle which was the big shopping mall near where they lived. In the year 2000 Nandos was new and exciting. Wendy and Bob took us there lots for Peri Peri chicken and chips for dinner. And we'd go to this other place for Knickerbocker Glories. I thought it was so cool having grandparents who did those things with me. I also have a lot of enduring memories of Wendy cooking chicken kievs for dinner.
Wendy wasn't the most adventurous of eaters. She was the type of person who'd always order Eggs Benedict when you took her out, and who a had a soft spot for a panini but I'll never forget the time she adored the fermented tea salad that she ate at Rangoon Ruby on the night of my graduation, and the time I took her to a Japanese restaurant in Wellington and she was quite chuffed with herself for eating a teriyaki chicken donburi. Perhaps she was more adventurous than we gave her credit for.
The later years of Wendy's life have been sad. I won't go into that, short of saying that it's sad we've not had the pleasure of seeing her get joy from cooking and baking for her family.
When Wendy was still happy pottering in her kitchen she was generous. She showed her love by doing things like giving you that little sprinkle of jelly crystals on your Belgian biscuit that really was quite unnecessary, but actually just so necessary. Sometimes a little flourish is important. Wendy taught me that.
I love having the memories of Wendy being busy making treats because they were the times when she was so well, the times when she was her best version of herself - kind and caring, prone to spoiling you as her way of showing her love.
Wendy is entirely responsible for my love of Cheds crackers, my inability to say no to a small cream filled cake (even though I'm not much of a sweet tooth) and my unwavering willingness to quite happily settle for the house white.
She's been a lesson too, that you don't need the flashiest or most adventurous and sophisticated food to have a good time and feel sated. I think that people who like food as much as I do, and who have this obsession with constantly eating the best, need that kind of lesson.
I've missed for a while having conversations with Wendy about food, and sharing handwritten recipes with her. I've missed pottering in the kitchen with Wendy and raiding her fridge to cut slices of Colby from the block. I will miss that all even more now she's gone. But I love that there are things that will always remind me of her. I'll be drinking a glass of the house white for Wendy tonight. And painting my nails orange the next time I get a pedicure. God, I might even go and find a Nandos in London.
Rest in peace dear Wendy. You'll be happier now. And say gidday to Bob.
Cheerie. X