I'll do the cooking but much prefer the eating
I've never written about food here – that's the food I cook and eat, not the food produced by farmers.
That's because I really don't like cooking, even though I like eating.
Of course, I do a lot of cooking, every day, as do most women, and lots of men too, I hasten to add in this gender-equal world of today.
When I go shopping I see people studying the shelves and gathering ingredients with enthusiasm, clearly planning lots of exciting food, whereas I just do the weekly round, collecting the same familiar items to make the same familiar things, and I'm happy to be doing just that.
Years ago we had friends staying on the farm and we were out doing something which my friend thought was not really suitable for me, and she said that if we won the lottery we could have a man to do this and I could do the usual housewifey things without having to be out here all the time.
I think I managed not to say anything inappropriate, and just replied: "No, I'd pay a woman to be inside doing housewifey things so I could be out here enjoying myself with a clear conscience." Which was met with just: "Oh!"
I have cooked for parties and had get-togethers for family and friends. In fact when I was first introduced to my granddaughter's future mother-in-law she said: "Oh, you're the lady who does massive parties."
I couldn't think what she meant and replied: "Do I?" but she was talking about the Scottish holidays we used to have every few years to get us all together with our northern friends.
She had heard about them from her son who'd come to the recent ones. He must have been a bit awestruck with the numbers and how we'd all just got on with catching up, and eating lots, naturally.
I'm not a follower of the cooking programmes on television and feel almost ashamed when friends get excited about them because I don't know what they're talking about.
I'll just go on sticking a lump of meat in the oven on Sundays, steaming lots of vegetables and making some kind of pudding with fruit from the freezer.
And with luck that'll last me several days and I won't have to think about cooking at all then.
Sorted!
Rosemary Allen is a retired livestock farmer living near Ellesmere
