From Making Chicken Mash to Cooking for Hundreds Growing up in rural Ireland during the 1920s and 30s my mother's main tasks around the kitchen were making the mash to feed the hens and saving the water potatoes had been boiled in to get the starch for her grandad's collars. Somehow she was never involved in cooking the meals for the family. Straining the fresh milk to make sure there were no hairs in it was as near as she came to human food! When the time came to move out of the family home and earn a living her aunt took her to England to a job as a ward maid in the local hospital in the North East. There she lived in 'digs' and had her meals provided for her. In 1940 she met, fell head over heels in love with, and married my father. Mary Ellen Lynch became Mary Ellen Chicken within a few months of their first meeting. Her new life meant a move away from the place she'd come to know down to Teesside where Dad was working. She often said that she'd never eve...