Zurich Legacy Kitchen Cookbook - Book - Page 17
L e g ac y K it c hen
Vicky
Lishman-Peat
I lost my mum, Janine, in 2023, just a few
in a gift shop cookbook. Back home, she
weeks after she was diagnosed with an
adapted it, replacing the animal fat and local
incurable brain tumour. As a family, we were
cane syrup with vegetarian ingredients we
never very openly affectionate – like many
could actually get hold of in the UK.
British families, we knew we loved each
My favourite memory of her making
other, so saw little reason to make a song
it is of Mum and her then three-year-old
and dance about it. Mum showed her love
grandchild standing outside in the garden,
through food instead.
mixing enormous quantities of treacle in
She would make cakes for special
an equally enormous bowl. She later rang
occasions, fill my freezer with home-
me to confess she’d eaten quite a lot of the
cooked meals before maternity leave, and
raw mixture while sitting at traffic lights.
make birthday scones in the shape of your
The image of her spooning cake mix from
name and age, even well into our thirties.
a bowl on the passenger seat still really
Since she’s been gone, I’ve realised just
tickles me.
how much her influence has shaped the
It’s a four-day process and takes a lot
way I cook. She loved food from all over the
of bicep power, so while Mum was alive,
world, but was also completely in tune with
I left it entirely to her. After she died, I used
the seasons. It feels like innate knowledge
her handwritten notes and that vague
to me now that March means nettle soup,
cookbook recipe to piece together the
June means elderflower cordial and August
finished version.
means bramble jelly.
Now, making “Grandma cake” every
This cake came from a holiday Mum
year feels like a way of carrying on what
and I took to Madeira. She tried Bolo de
mattered so much to Mum: sharing food
Mel, loved it, and found a very vague recipe
with the people she loved.
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