Our Typical Yet Unique Story

We are a Gujarati family in Yorkshire. Well, some of us are born and bred here in this fabulous county.

Our unique yet in many ways typical story

We are a Gujarati family based in Yorkshire.
In fact, some of us were born and bred in this fabulous county!

My Grandparents came here with a view to live a better standard of life than would be available to them had they remained in India. Learning about the new culture and customs resulted in some very poignant tales, some very funny stories about language barriers and of the “strange” food they ate.

My Granddad came over first, as you do, to set up shop (haha!), you see, back in India he left his wife and his first, unborn, child. That child was my mum.

My gran and my mum followed after a year or so and my uncle and aunt were born here in Yorkshire. I obviously came along a little later as did my two cousins.

So, to skip a few years in our story now, having had mostly good times and a few bad times, a couple of serious illnesses and disabilities amongst family members brings me to circa 2007.

My mum has been a single parent and very poorly all of my life, the simplest of things like doing the washing and cooking were mostly impossible for her while I was in my teens.

For those of you who know us, you will know that I like to eat, especially my mum and Gran’s homemade favourites, mmmmm yummy! So it was especially hard for my mum to not be able to create the daily freshly cooked meals she would have ideally like to do, just as her mother had done for her family.

I’m not too bad a cook myself now, but in comparison to those two – I can’t cook! For all you traditional Gujarati families out there – Gran tried, she tried really hard to teach me but I wasn’t interested. Although, mum made me learn the basics on the grounds of good parenting.

Whilst my mum was at her worst she decided to make things easier for us. This, however, wasn’t easy for her as she was in horrendous amounts of pain. When and if she could move, she would spend it in the kitchen (with my assistance) and mix spices for use later. Then all I needed to do was to follow her simple instructions and create a nice healthy tasty meal.

Looking back this was the origin of the paste that we want to share with you today, my mum started developing back then. When we first started this process, the paste would only last a couple of week’s maximum in the fridge before it went off. This was frustrating for both of us, as it felt like we were throwing away or wasting unused paste. We have always made the best of the time we spend together but it still was a shame to waste the ingredients and time. My mum hates waste when it can be avoided. She continued to do her research into making a longer lasting paste. Being ill she was just too aware of only using fresh healthy naturally occurring ingredients when and where possible.

The product as it is now has been around since the late 90’s by which time my mum had ‘perfected’ her recipe and we have used it ever since.

We use the paste in umpteen different ways as it is so versatile. We will also be sharing these other ideas and recipes with you.