Mum's Lamb Roast!!!!!

I don't know if anyone else can categorically report that they can remember exactly what they ate every week night for their entire schooling experience (less the one term of boarding when our parents deserted us to travel abroad) but all of my closest school friends and my siblings can attest to such a fact. 

Mum had a system and with seven of us in the family and all with various before and after school commitments it meant that the kitchen fare was designed around a roster akin to an army barrack. 

Now don't get me wrong, I am one of the few people I know that had a hot breakfast every morning of my childhood. Great friends like Janet C and Libby J would ask to be included in the Sunday morning waffles and ice-cream or pancakes that would fill happy tummy's and start the Sabbath off "just right".

Each week night we had the same thing - i.e. Monday for 8 years we had steak and mashed potatoes with peas, Thursday night for 8 years we sat to a plate of steak and mashed potatoes with beans, and Tuesday night we were delighted with steak and chips. Now the blessed night of the week was Wednesday when we would sit down as a family to a hearty lamb roast that was so sweet and juicy plated up with vegetables that had been baked so long in the juices of the pan that they had softened, browned and caramelized into something that "Master Chef" gormonds would have yearned for! All this and the jam tart from the bakery near "Siriannis" served hot with an extra creamy ice-cream that was so frozen that it both melted into the pastry and tangy jam tart yet kept cold enough to send shock-waves through our baby teeth.

Tonight was a night that tugged on my heart strings, and at my deeper Limbic memory system eliciting memories of days of yore. My sister, brother, Mum and Dad along with my eldest son Alex sat around the table discussing the pro's and con's of today, my father stopped and asked if "as parents they had been good enough" "was I there enough for you" he asked. At the age of 86 (pushing 87) I expect he is reflectively regarding his own carbon footprint. The way I see it, as parents greatest our greatest asset is our children, and he was measuring up if we were proud of him.

My Mum was explaining to Alex all the wondrous things that they had done through there younger days, some things that she remembered of us kids at a younger age and recounted these vividly to my 26 year old, and a few horrific memories regarding me personally that she needed to share as a way of her own proud parenting.

It was a night that I don't think that I will forget, I night where we were collectively back in "Eltham" our family home, re-living past achievements and challenges. Flip, Bill and I were all absorbing the night in our own way (as family members' are apt to do), all I know is that when asked by my wonderful father if he was strict enough or not strict enough, I looked into his apprehensive gaze with amazement. He and my mother could not have given me a better childhood; were they strict - bloody oath, were they too lenient - well just enough to let us see that they were human. Would I change them for another set - not on "your Nelly". I love them as they are and would not have changed a minute of my life, this is why I am and who I am today!!!