My Mother in Laws Meatballs

Pyracantha 2012

From a Demonstration at Dedham Hall 2012

Dates have been released for 2013 but only three places are left so please book if you would like a place!

I know the title of this blog post is going to raise a few eyebrows but while I was painting this pyracantha,which initially started as a demonstration at Dedham Hall, a wonderful memory crossed my mind.

I met and married a wonderful man and remember the first  few years  of marriage where we regularly visited my parents in law. My Mother- in -Law was the most amazing cook, from Belgium she introduced me to so many wonderful ways of cooking and gorgeous recipes which inspire my time in the kitchen even now. On one summer visit she had wanted to cook a delicious recipe that involved making  tiny meatballs. As her time was taken up with other parts of the evening meal she  delegated the task of  forming many tiny little meatballs to myself and my brother-in -law, Jean Paul.. We were instructed to take the role very seriously and to make each ball the same size which she had carefully shown us.

At first we were really careful making sure each little meatball met with her satisfaction but soon we became more engrossed in having fun and laughing at our weak attempts. Soon giggles were drifting into the kitcehn. Our meatballs had turned into the size of small beefburgers and when my Mother-in law came out of the house to see what was going on she was none too pleased! No meatballs replicating the neat one she had shown us. We were promptly told off like two naughty school children and the task was taken out of our hands. We continued to giggle like kids and looking back I can now see how annoying that must have been for someone with a full meal to cook. One little task would have helped so much. But we were young and didn't really feel the size was incredibly important!

And so today I looked through my demonstration at Dedham Hall, a week ago and came across this painting of a pyracantha. I had shown an artist how to make a wash and paint the small berries out of it, rather than paint each tiny individual berry one at a time which would have taken ages. But all of a sudden today I noticed my berries were beginning to vary in size. To speed things up I was making some disappear into the foliage and limiting those that would be in full detail. Even then I couldn't help laughing as one gigantic berry overshadowed all the neat little ones around it. At a distance it didn't show or matter but as I am now older and wiser I made a correction to neaten the sizes.Now they all look similar. It wouldn't matter if they were hugely different but how funny a painting should bring back such a great memory!

So I may call this " My Mothers in Laws Meatballs" and continue to raise a few eyebrows, just for fun!

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