Food is a challenge these days. Both for my oldest dog and for my mum.  My mum has a healthy appetite but she will turn her nose up at certain things. She will also completely forget about food. It is not high up on her list of priorities. When I announce, “dinner!” she will invariably look surprised at such an idea and either tell me she has already had it or that it can’t possibly be that time of day. Just prior to her going into hospital the last time, she had lost tons of weight. She was forgetting to eat. The kids had tried to remedy that by having pre cooked meals delivered which she just had to put into the microwave. But of course it was all very well having food in the freezer; she had to remember to put it into the microwave which she invariably didn’t.  Molly, my oldest dog, has another problem. She does not have an appetite at all usually; she is underweight and has got kidney problems. So it is important she eats. She is the best fed in the house. She gets a cooked breakfast of chicken, rice and an egg every morning and I stand over her while she eats, closely watched by the other two dogs who are on diets and only get one meal a day. The fact that both of them have their meals provided for them at regular intervals keeps their weight up. It also makes me more aware of food.

I am a vegetarian; my mum isn’t. Therefore cooking in my household consists very often of making two different meals.  I’ve experimented a little with food for my mum. Recently though I’ve come to the conclusion that if you follow a few simple rules then usually this works:-

• Rule one: make meals that she recognizes - things that she would have had in Scotland, for example, mince and tatties, fish and chips, tuna mayonnaise and corn, sausage beans and chips, that kind of thing. These are the safe foods.
• Rule two: make meals that are easy to eat. Having broken one arm which has never really mended properly and done something to the other, she has issues cutting things up. She doesn’t do knives. She can just about manage a fork. Meals have to be something that you cut up for her and don’t make her chase it round the plate.
• Rule three: if you find something different that she likes, stick to it -  the margarita pizza at the Fortress has worked a treat for many a lunch. Does for me too.
• Rule four: don’t get worried if she has the same things every week. I used to try and vary her diet too much which neither of us appreciated for different reasons. She didn’t know what was on her plate half the time and therefore wasn’t keen on eating it; I was running out of ideas for menus and spending too much time dreaming new things up. As long as she gets plenty of fruit and veg, protein and carbs which she does then I reckon that’s ok.

Going out to eat is a challenge as well. Especially here in Sri Lanka. The menus are not the same as in Scotland and even when you think you are playing safe by ordering something that has the same name as something in Scotland, it can easily backfire. For example ‘fish and chips’ on the menu in Unawatuna beach restaurants is not Scottish ‘fish and chips’. The fish is not in a batter, it is not cod or haddock, it is not bone free, and the chips are not big chunky chips covered in tomato and/or brown sauce, vinegar and salt. She can’t stand the thin chips you get here. So selecting from a menu is tricky. A club sandwich is your best bet if it is on the menu. In fact even ordering a drink can be a challenge. I now order tea – though I wouldn’t everywhere. Tea in Sri Lanka typically comes with milk and sugar. It’s not a Scottish cup of tea.  A pot of tea can work as long as the milk and sugar is separate. She doesn’t do water or really any of the fizzy drinks. Milkshakes can work – she has a particularly refreshing ‘banana cooldown’ at the Fortress.

When my brother was here recently he reminded me of the days when her three kids were teenagers and we all came home for long holidays from our various universities or colleges. Those days our house was the base camp for all sorts of friends. It wasn’t a big house but there were lots of mattresses that could be pulled out whenever extra people came to stay. And there was always tons of food for all. How she did this on her primary teacher’s salary is a mystery. At any one time there could be an extra 5 or 6 people to feed, morning, noon and night. We didn’t eat fancy of course. We just ate basic food but there was always enough to go round and pots of this that and the next thing could be added to to go further. There was never a choice of food. Whatever there was, you ate. And she did all the cooking. She had made a point of not teaching me how to cook on the grounds that I was going to get a good job and not have to cook. That was a bit illogical and luckily I did learn to cook on the job so to speak as a student while working in a vegetable factory in Holland where I was ‘the cook’. I used to ask the 20 people I was cooking for every day what they wanted, get their oral recipes, shop and cook, running across to the factory to ask what to do next in the more complicated meals. This was on a 3 ring gas stove so represented a bit of a challenge but it was one of the best jobs I have ever had. Now I can happily cook for 20 but 2 or 4 is rather daunting. And I’m not too keen on ovens.

So in a sense the wheel has come full circle. She used to decide what we ate, shop for it and cook it. Now she would have issues doing any of those things. I now do this which is still a bit of novelty for me since having spent so much time living on my own and answering to no one, I’ve never really had to give the whole areas of shopping and cooking much thought. So although I still succumb to home delivered pizzas more often than I care to mention, I probably eat much healthier now than I have ever done in the past because I’m having to be more aware of the food that goes in front of mum.