MY JOURNEY TO COGNITIVE EATING

What does it mean when one of your parents has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s ???

Well, I had no idea of the journey my mother and I were about to take! My first step was to fly from Australia to Colombia to take charge of my mother and her home.

As time went by I was surprised how lucid she sometimes could be, then denial took over. At times I could not believe this was happening and thought that maybe the doctors were wrong. But Alzheimer’s is a silent enemy that takes the brain slowly and crushes the soul of its sufferers and their families.

Look into the eyes of Alzheimer’s patients and you can see the blank stare that just breaks the heart of the family taking care of them. I found this so heartbreaking that all I could think was that my mother was loosing herself in a world that I could not be part of anymore.

As the days went by my mother’s kitchen somehow became my refuge and cooking together was a way that we connected.

In recent years there has been lots of talks about how food affects our brain. It has been proven that what we eat can affect our memory. So my journey started looking for food and drinks that will influence and manage brain function in the hope that they will stop this sad disease and miraculously save my mother. Needless to say I was not very successful in doing this but the time together was priceless, and her recipes, with a little help from family and friends, became a new adventure in my blog.

I would like to share some of her recipes and somehow honor the memories of her life as a wife, a mother and a cook. As I keep writing my blog I would also like to write a short biography and tell her story. Perhaps it will help me heal and somehow stop mourning the loss of my mother and YES it is a loss, even if she is still here. I am no longer part of her world, Alzheimers took her from me.

Marina’s Apple Cake

Ingredients

• 4 red apples – Pink Lady or Gala apples
• Juice of half lemon
• 2 tablespoons brown sugar
• 120 grams brown sugar
• 2 tablespoons of baking powder
• 1 tablespoon cinammon
• 140 grams of plain flour
• 2 tablespoons raw sugar
• 200ml milk
• 4 eggs
• 40ml of vegetable oil

Method

• Use a 22cm springform pan that has been greased and lined at the base with baking paper.

• Preheat the oven to 180C.
• Slice the apples without peeling them, use a mandolin if you have one.
• Put the apples in a big bowl and sprinkle them with 2 tablespoons of brown sugar and the juice of half lemon. Mix well with your hands.

• In another bowl break the eggs, add the brown sugar and mix the ingredients with a whisk until well combined. Then add the milk and the oil. Whisk again until all the ingredients are well combined.

• In another bowl sift the flour, baking powder and cinnamon. Add this mixture to the wet ingredients until well combined.
• Add the apple slices to the mixture. Use a spatula to combine the apples so they will not break.
• Sprinkle over 2 tablespoons of raw sugar.

Bake the cake for 45 minutes, or until cooked through when tested with a skewer. The skewer should come out with a few moist crumbs on it.

• Serve the cake warm with a spoon of cream or vanilla ice-cream.

Tips

• Make sure that all the ingredients are at room temperature.
• Sprinkle raw sugar over the top. This gives the cake a lovely crunch.