The parkin had been in the tin since Sunday evening, and by Wednesday afternoon the whole kitchen smelled of treacle and ginger even with the lid on. That's the rule with parkin in this family: bake it three days early and leave it alone, and it turns from a dry cake into a sticky one. The recipe is Mum's, on a card in her looping handwriting with a ring of tea on the corner. The kids call her Grandma Linda, so it's Grandma Linda's parkin, and I'm only the person with the oven.
Bonfire Night this year was Wednesday 5 November, and we went to the display at Roundhay Park, which meant tea had to be on the table at 5:00 instead of 5:30. Rob skipped five-a-side, with a speech. I'd done the Aldi shop that morning, so the whole thing came out of one trolley and the cupboard.
What went into tea
The menu never changes: a big pan of chilli, baked potatoes with butter and cheese, and a square of parkin each. Here is the till, roughly, with my own prices from the Aldi receipt:
- 500g beef mince: £3.29
- Two tins of chopped tomatoes: £0.84
- A tin of kidney beans and a tin of black beans: £0.94
- Two onions, a red pepper and a carrot: £0.75
- Chilli powder, cumin and smoked paprika from the cupboard: £0.30
- Four baking potatoes: £1.19
- Butter, grated cheese and a pot of soured cream: £1.65
- Parkin (oatmeal, flour, treacle, syrup, butter, sugar, ginger): £2.30
The total was £11.26, and the pan fed the four of us with four portions left over for the freezer under the stairs, so the real cost of the night is less than that.
The chilli, and the problem with bits
Alfie doesn't eat "bits", and a normal chilli is nothing but bits. So I do it the sneaky way. The onions, pepper and carrot go in a blender with the tomatoes until the sauce is a single smooth sludge, and the mince goes in afterwards. It simmered from half past two with the lid half on, and by four o'clock it looked, to Alfie's eye, like Bolognese. Which is the idea.
It worked, more or less. Alfie ate the mince and half a jacket potato with cheese, and fished the black beans out one by one and left them in a tidy line on the edge of the plate, like a very small abacus. Isla ate everything, with soured cream, and asked if she could have the leftover chilli in her lunchbox in a week. I said no, not in a week. Rob had seconds and said it was "better than last year", which is what he says every year.
Out to Roundhay
We left at six and walked in from a mile away, because the nearest roads were full. It was dry for once, cold and clear, about 6 degrees, and Isla and Alfie wore the new coats for their first proper outing. I counted it as the test: Isla's navy one was still warm after an hour of standing in a field, and Alfie's green padded one was, in his words, "like a sleeping bag with arms". He wore the ear defenders he's had since he was three, a pair of hat and gloves, and a face of deep suspicion.
The display lasted about twenty-five minutes. The first big bang made Alfie put both hands on top of the ear defenders and shout, "That's LOUD", and then spend the rest of it standing on Rob's feet with his mouth open. Isla held my hand for the first five minutes and then pretended she hadn't. Somebody near us was eating a hot dog that smelled so good that I regretted the chilli for about nine seconds.
The way home was the usual crowd shuffling back to the cars in the dark, with Alfie being carried and Isla being tired and dignified. We got in at about half past eight. Mabel was on the warm towels on the airer, offended at having been left alone with the smell of cooked mince. Alfie was asleep before the end of the first chapter of the dinosaur book, and he did not wake when I took his hat off, which for him is a record.
The sums: £11.26 for chilli, potatoes and parkin for four, about £2.80 a head, and four portions of chilli in the freezer.
