User:Amymaymoo/sandbox

Laura Maynard

Overview
Laura Maynard was born in November 1957 and is the best Mum in the world. She lives in Brighton and enjoys brisk daily walks, people watching, and Infinity Food's homemade pakoras. Among her other favourite things are clever comedy (such as Fascinating Aida), cooking, studying nutrition, reading on a range of topics, looking after people, bread sauce with lots of butter, roast potatoes, and fried cheese sandwiches (with a little mustard) after a glass of wine or three. Her daughter Amy lives close by and they love to chat over cups of Pukka tea and potatoes, as well as by a pottery wheel and while watching old videos of Amy's childhood from their beloved cottage in Claygate.

Love
Unlike most people on planet Earth, Laura Maynard met her unequivocal soul mate at the tender age of thirty, during her divorce from Mr. Silly-Majig-Thingy. John was a quietly confident, very funny, bright, silly, modest yet hard working and universally enthusiastic man who was four years Laura's junior (she initially refused to go on a date with him on this basis). He had many passions, including cooking, gardening and for a short time bonzai trees... but his unequalled passion was her. They enjoyed just three short years together after he moved his things in with her the morning after their first date, which they spent talking all night long. Within this unjustly short time they enjoyed a short eternity of happiness, more than many people experience in a lifetime. Among their favourite pass-times together were walking in the Lake District, spending time creating their home (John famously charted a plant he was growing in their garden, brick by brick), having cook-offs against each other, going out to eat, and drinking while they were at it!

Laura and John conceived a baby girl called Amy late in 1989, and she was born in 1990. She was a very lucky girl to be so wanted, and born to two people who thought the world of each other as well as her.

Chef
Laura Maynard is an incredible self taught chef, a passion which has continued throughout the various stages of her colourful life to present. She first fostered a passion for cooking while living in Spain in her twenties, where she mastered the best Caesar salad which she made huge bowls of, for her friends to come and feast on. Later, she ran a pub with Mr. S-M-J, where she made an inhuman amount of food every day including her smoked fish and mushroom pie with pastry from scratch, which a certain customer travelled insensibly far for once every week. Among her other most notable culinary achievements were her beautiful and delicious cakes, which took various fantastical forms including a shiny green crocodile, a book worm, an intricate make-up bag for one of Amy's birthdays in her early adolescence, a teddy bear's picnic, and a caricature of Nigel asleep on the sofa, paper in hand. Laura's infamous party-food, which featured memorably in Amy's childhood included epic, multi-layered pavlova filled with strawberries and cream, sunken chocolate cloud cakes with hand-whipped cream and bitter chocolate flakes, barbequed halloumi in caper-coriander and chilli oil marinades, huge garlic barbecued prawns, whole salmon stuffed with coconut thai prawns and wrapped in string, black and white bean soup with crispy onion croutons, skate wing with browned caper butter, and ofcourse, the best ever roast potatoes. Among her every-day repertoire included crab and sweetcorn pasties, stir-fries that can wake you up and get you out of bed at night just by their smell, the best mushroom burgers, red dragon pie, hot apple millet with fresh yoghurt for breakfast, and molasses and barley malt flapjacks with orange chocolate.

As a result of her hard work over the years and her current study, Laura's authority on nutrition now greatly influences her cooking and her dishes have relatively recently expanded from delicious to specifically medicinal as well.

Mother
Laura Maynard, despite having become a single Mum in 1991 and against all other odds, was the best Mum ever and still is. When Amy was a baby, she loved and cuddled her without question. She fed her only the best food she knew, looked after her every need, and worried about her all the time. When Amy grew into a spirited little girl, Laura encouraged her and helped her to grow, guiding her into trying all kids of new things, teaching her to cook, letting her make mud pies and play in dirt, playing 'spit the cherry pip' into a bowl in the garden, letting Amy help her grow potatoes (!), and sometimes enduring hours on end of being followed around the house, with Amy repeating every thing she said - which sometimes made her laugh accidentally, inadvertently encouraging Amy all the more. Laura kept a little pig book of all the funny things Amy said, ('Mum, I think that cat wants me to smell it's breath'), which made Amy feel really important. She even once indulged Amy by putting on her green princess dress before going to the pub with friends (she changed quickly after that without Amy knowing). When Amy stayed with her grandparents for a few days to allow Laura to do some much needed work on their home, she spent most of it making Amy a beautiful princess dress by hand, with little pink roses gathering white netting at the waistline. Their little cottage was full of people on a regular basis, when Amy enjoyed her Mum's wonderful food and enjoyed being around and sometimes entertaining her Mum's friends. When Mum and daughter were home together, they ate delicious, made from scratch organic meals together every night, danced around to Bonnie Raitt, Crash Test Dummies and other 80's music, and played all kinds of games, including famously 'the game'.

Now that Amy is twenty four years old, she has many fond memories of her childhood and while she feels she is very grown up, she loves having her Mum round the corner and still climbs onto her sofa to be looked after when she's ill, and rings her up to talk to her whenever she has a problem. It's really good to have her around.