Cate Devine

I have to admit that when I reported on the launch of VisitScotland's invitation to the Scottish diaspora to submit recipes and food memories for a cookbook, I subconsciously thought it was a great idea but that it was for other people. I didn't stop to think if I had food memories that might be worthy of consideration.

Subsequent to the publication of the story, though, the twitter hashtag #treasuredtastes (the book's subtitle) has been trending; I've been surprised by the number of people who say they have food stories to share. Shirley Spear, chair of the Scottish Food Commission, who is fronting the initiative, has been urging the tweeters to actually submit them to treasuredtastes@visitscotland.com rather than merely reminisce.

The title of the recipe book, You'll Have Had Yer Tea? surprised me. The phrase is infamously attributed to the old days of negative hospitality, when it was virtually impossible to find any hotel, restaurant or cafe in Scotland prepared to serve food outwith fixed hours. Some of you will also know that the phrase is attributed to Edinburgh meanness. In Glasgow, "Would you like your tea?" is the more natural response to unexpected visitors to the home.

So it's a bit of a joke, to highlight how much Scotland's attitude to hospitality has changed. I also suspect it's to emphasise that this new book, to be published later this year, is not about celebrity chefs or fancy restaurants. It's for and about ordinary people, and Scotland's long tradition of home cooking, and the unsung role of women in making the kitchen the heart of the home.

Now that I think of it, I vividly remember my Ayrshire grandmother's baked egg and cheese pudding, which always had a well-browned crunchy top and was utterly delicious. I recall her laden tea table. Suddenly it all comes rushing back: the plain and treacle scones, the pancakes, the jam, the trifle, all homemade for our Sunday visits.

My siblings and I used to survey the table and nip each other in delight. Although not wealthy, hers was a house of plenty - at least on that day. Conversation between the adults around the table would continue long after we'd had our fill and gone off to play. I remember the pipe smoke and the tinkling of teaspoons in teacups; it felt comfortable and safe. Half a century on, I appreciate the effort involved; it seems to me now that such generous purvey was my dear gran's best way of demonstrating her love for us.

Now the mental image of her old gas cooker springs to mind. It was one of those vintage stand-alone numbers in blue-and-white enamel, with little turned feet, and a low-level grill that you lit with a taper, and which would burst into flames like a tidal wave from front to back. As a very young child I'd stand and watch slices of thick white bread slowly darken under this grill, and the smell of gran's toast still lingers.

My maternal grandfather's homemade rosehip syrup is another strong memory. He was blind yet he'd pick the hips from his rambling Paisley garden, boil them in sugar in a big jeely pan, then strain the lot through muslin and into recycled brown glass medicine bottles, to be stored in a dark sideboard cupboard throughout the winter. It would be consumed only sparingly as a tonic or a cough mixture. Nowadays, of course, we'd be dotting it on savoury plates and drizzling it on artisan desserts, and celebrating its gorgeous natural bright pink-orange colour. Made with foraged ingredients, Grampa's rosehip syrup would be the toast of the modern culinary age.

People and places and smells and tastes I've not thought about for years are hoving into my mind's eye - not least my mother's devotion to her new-fangled slow cooker, and the veg prep she had to do after cooking breakfast and before leaving for her full-time job as a teacher. Again, I'm lost in reverie.

Which is all very well, but what is the point of having and sharing such fond forgotten memories? Isn't it all a bit, um, kailyard and backward-looking?

Perhaps. But I'm coming round to the realisation that some people won't be so lucky as to have such long associations with food and family. Maybe - scary thought - mine is the last generation to have them.

Modern women juggling jobs and young children and elderly parents - unwitting victims (sorry, beneficiaries) of the 1975 Equal Opportunities Act - are understandably lured towards ready-made supermarket meals and the microwave; or the local pizza delivery service. There are many reasons for the sad reality that in 2015 there's at least one, perhaps even as many as three, entire generations of Scottish parents who don't know how to source, handle and prepare fresh ingredients and cook from scratch, and don't even want to.

This dislocation from the land, and from the feel, smell and taste of fresh produce, and from the habit of sharing food around a table, is fuelling the crisis of obesity, Type II diabetes and heart disease.

If our food memories and cooking traditions can help restore that connection, then perhaps we have a civic duty to record them. To think that long-departed relatives and friends could yet make a difference to the modern Scottish diet really does take the biscuit.