Bread and Roses

A Response to Previous Comments

2011-04-24T09:47:00.000-07:00

Hi to all who commented on my last post. Thank you for your insight. I've been trying to respond via the comments section on the blog for a while, but Blogger is playing up and eating everything I type. I thought it sensible, therefore, to respond via a post.

First, Lucy said that she felt that in the future only the very wealthy and the underclass will be SAH parents. I think she has a valid point. It is ironic, however, that the "squeezed middle" have always been at home mums, whereas the wealthy have always had paid childcare and the very poor have had to work outside the home.

Sue mentioned that she has posted about how fulfilled she feels as a housewife. I think that housewifery is a very fulfilling role for a creative person. I was NEVER bored when I was a housewife – sometimes a little lonely, but never bored. I also think that SAH parenting has a valuable social role. The older I get, the more I realize that the home really is the cornerstone of a civil society.

Monix has outlined how her experience of being a SAHM in the 1970s differs to the experience of her daughter. I think I read (in The Selfish Capitalist) that real wages have decreased substantially since the 1970s. Basically, we’re getting a lot less bang for our buck. We bought our first house fourteen years ago for £35,000. It is now on the market for £175,000. How can a young couple, with massive student debt, afford to live on one income - or indeed two part-time incomes – if the average cost of a small semi is so astronomical?

Debbi mentioned that she feels that many women work outside the home to afford luxury goods. I think she has a valid point, one or two women I know, whose husbands are on three times the salary of my husband, feel they cannot afford to give up work. However, I think it may be financially easier for those in the USA to be SAHM. I live in what many Americans would consider to be a very small home, however, it would cost £280,000 if you wanted to buy it. Is that about $450,000? Also, and this is a terrible admission for a dedicated SAHM, but even if my DH were to get a job with a similar salary to the one he was on before his redundancy, I’m not sure I would give up my job. I would be scared that he would lose it again – job insecurity abounds for everybody. I’m a coward.

Laura says that her family’s decision for her to stay at home parent has come at something of a cost. Her husband works long hours. She feels that many of her contemporaries are in this situation. I think that this is an important point. Very few SAHM have husbands who work a steady nine-to-five job. For many couples it is the husband’s over-time which allows the wife to stay at home with the children. However, as over-time dwindles so does the option to SAH, and women no longer feel the social pressure to stay at home they did – in fact the social pressure it the exact opposite. Here's an article about British student debt.

A Blog About Home

2011-04-18T08:51:00.000-07:00

I have just spent a happy hour reading through my old blog posts. I'm so glad I did it. My blog read like the diary of a young mother who was very contented in her role, and I was. I think, when I'm dead and gone, my kids and grand kids would be happy to read it and get a glimpse of the old days - the days when some women stayed at home to look after their babies. As, to be honest with you, I think we may be the last generation of women for whom stay at home mothering was something of an option. For despite the apparent resurgence of middle class career women giving up careers in banking and law for the delights of chickens and Boden dresses (so flattering), the future does not look at all rosy for the kind of woman who would rather suck out her own eye jelly than put her six month old child into nursery. And, although I don't want to make sweeping statements about womankind, I think that most mothers would prefer their children to have at-home care until they reach at least primary school age. My instinct is that my daughters may be too crippled by university debt, unable to find affordable housing and be haunted by the kind of job insecurity our economy seems to demand, to even think about "committing career suicide" for as long as I did.

Now I know that these thoughts make me sound that I'm a bit low, nostalgic for my old life, but I'm not. I'm quite happy, really. I enjoy my job, but it's not my life: my life happens at home. If you have a good home life you can pretty much withstand anything, as I so often see in m y work. A good home life is a real blessing and I'm glad the DH and I put down those foundations for our children and ourselves. Where am I going with these thoughts? No-where in particular, perhaps the few readers I have left may care to contribute? What do you truly think about the change in women's roles over the past fifty years? Are you as passionate about home-life as I am? Would the men in your life be happy as a sole wage earner? If you're a man, how do you feel about the issues I've raised in the (crappy) post, or on my blog as a whole?

Well, I'm off now to make some curtains. Yes, the domestic arts still flourish chez Domum (if only in the holidays)! If you're out there and have an opinion, please comment.

A Mulitcultural, Inner City, View of the Snow

2010-12-04T02:03:00.001-08:00

Pupil One: Year 10 student, an escapee from some terrible African dictatorship (fluent in many languages).

Pupil: Oh God! Look at it!
Me: Look at what?
Pupil: The snow. The bloody snow, miss.
Me: I like it. I like proper seasons.
Pupil: I hate it. I hate being cold. I really wish they actually had deported us now!

Pupil Two: Year 10 student, originally from Poland (just in the country, speaks broken English).

Me: Ooh, look at the snow. I hope I can get home okay.
Pupil Two: I don't know what you making fuss about. In Poland I'd be wearing shorts.

An Update and Some Thanks

2010-11-12T09:14:00.000-08:00

Just to let you all know that my youngest did have a mild case of pneumonia. However, all is well now. The doctor told us today that her infection is completely cleared. She's eating well, hardly coughing and taken to watching Barbie films on Youtube. I've been at work since Tuesday and my mum has been taking care of her. I work with very lovely and sympathetic people but it is why it's tough being a working mum at the moment. Thank you all for your prayers and kind thoughts and words - the youngest is now a different child, you wouldn't have thought that she was so poorly last week.

Prayers Please

2010-11-04T09:41:00.000-07:00

If you could find the time to keep my youngest in your prayers I would be very grateful. The doctor says she has borderline pneumonia, if she doesn't improve within the next 24 hours she will need to be hospitalised.

Warm Food for Cold Nights

2010-10-28T03:50:00.001-07:00

In these more sophisticated days girls and boys find no use for such superstitious practices; Hallowe'en, where it is still observed, is just another opportunity of harmless merrymaking for the children.

Because the days are short and dismal, the Children's Party fits well into November's sequence...

From Children's Games Throughout the Year (1949) by Leslie Daiken

It is interesting that amidst the solemnity of early November's Days of Remembrance (All Saints' Day, All Souls' Day or the Commemoration of the Faithful Departed, and Remembrance Sunday) we have two major and ancient festivals which are mainly celebrated by children. The origins of the two festivals - Hallowe'en and Guy Fawkes' Night - are a bit of a heady mix, particularly for observant Christians: pagan origins or religious and civil unrest which fractured Britain?...take your pick! However, what I think is most interesting about this time of year it that we both commemorate our dead and give parties for our young, for who else is Hallowe'en and Guy Fawkes' Night for except children. There is death and sadness, but there is also life and vibrancy and hope in our young. There is something truly wonderful about getting all wrapped up and going outside on a cold, winter's night with the rest of your family and community and watching the bonfire. Also, like all good festivals there is ritual in the celebration: bonfires, fireworks, dressing up, party games: these things haven't changed appreciably for generations. Celebrations keep the year glued together, without them there is nothing but the drudgery of modern life, just tea in front of the telly, school and work.

The foods that were eaten at Bonfire Night/Hallowe'en/Guy Fawkes' Night are a constant. They are the punctuation marks of the festival: fireworks then jacket potatoes, the bonfire and then ginger cake, apple bobbing and then sausages. It seems worng not to indulge in them at this time of year, somehow. Particularly, as they are the kind of seasonal and warming foods which are so very appropriate to our climate as it changes from autumn to winter.

I think what is important, with any kind of celebration, is that we keep the good of others, our children and our community in mind. A celebration should be peaceful and positive and not about the excesses of the modern age. (Here endeth the lesson).

So, however you choose to party in the coming few days, here are a few good, tried and tested , recipes which go with the season.

Jean Toynbee's Ginger Cake - a Two Fat Ladies Recipe. The best I've ever had, they suggest serving it with stem ginger and clotted cream - and why not?

Shropshire Soul Cakes - please email me for the excellent Mary Norwak recipe or go here. You can go here to read more about the origins of this lovely bread.

You may want to try this easy Ginger Shortbread.

Here's one my gran used to do for us, and a recipe I found in an old WWII cookbook. Use and apple corer to hollow out a large, scrubbed, potato. Fill the hollow with a longish chipolata sausage. Pop in the oven for a few hours, serve with butter and chutney when done.

The Blessed Delia of the Mispronunciation's Root Vegetable Soup. Truly very nice and warms the hands after a cold night around the bonfire.

Here's a Casa Domum tradition. Nigella Lawson's Rocky Roads. She doesn't muck about with broken biscuits or bits of dried fruit in her original recipe. Just nuts, marshmallows and chocolate and for this we salute her. My eldest girl added a broken up bar of unmelted white chocolate to a recent batch of this delicious treat and a very fine addition it was. Email me for the recipe if you don't already have it.

Well, enjoy goode huswives and until anon!

Back in the City

2010-10-19T01:28:00.000-07:00

I'm so very sorry for not blogging for so long. If there are any goode huswives out there who still drop into chez Domum on a regular basis you deserve a bit of an update. Look out! Here come the inevitable bullet points!

To those of you who had a good pray regarding my DH's employment situation, I would like to say thank you very much. He has a job working at a local Cathedral. It is far more interesting than his previous job, but more stressful and comes with a considerably poorer salary. However, the people he works with are really lovely and, as a born organiser, he seems to be doing very well.
I too have a permanent job - yes, back in big city! Quelle domage! It's far less stressful than my last job, I love working with "challenging" kids, I prefer working out of catchment and I really like my department. For ages, on this blog, I ranted about childhood well-being and now I'm in the thick of it, putting my money where my mouth is, as it were.(Check out those metaphors). My own children are not noticing my working mother status, as yet, as I'm home by 4:00, but my house looks like a crack den.
In the second week of this new job I was Ofsteded again. They are stalking me.
I am managing to bake with the kids, read (on the train) and do a spot of knitting. I don't do these things as often as I used to, I don't have time to blog about doing these things.
I simply cannot get used to the six o'clock alarm bell. It's killing me. I need a teas-maid/made (noun or verb? answers on a postcard...also, there's the problem of the apostrophe, if it's a verb it'll need a contraction...).
I'm off work today because my back went at 6:30 this morning. From 6:30 until 8:30 I spent my time on all fours on the kitchen floor: my husband had to put my mug of tea on the floor and I sucked it up through a straw. I'm still in bit of pain but my back has eased now - hurrah for Paracetamol and Neurofen! However, I'm still walking like Neanderthal woman, strangely bent over, hands dangling, listlessly, by my knees. I shall be back at work tomorrow because I am scared David Cameron will drag me out of my shirker's bed and put me in the stocks so that the villagers may pelt me with out-of-date Co-Op lasagnes.

Now that you've read that nonsense you deserve a reward. Enjoy the Youtubery, gentle reader, and until half-term, Anon!

Cornwall is Another Country - They Do Things Differently There

2010-08-09T07:57:00.000-07:00

On my holidays I met a lady who runs a tea shop. This is of course nothing unusual, when you visit Cornwall you eat pasties, go to the beach and drink plenty of tea. However, this lady is from the village where my sister lives. Her children were born in the same hospital as my children, she says she misses the blue cheese salad dressing they do at the pub at the end of my street. To many women this lady is living the dream: she chucked in life in the midlands and opened up a teashop in Cornwall: so I asked her how things had changed for her. She told me that Cornwall felt like another country. I've been thinking about this and I can see what she means. Cornwall does feel like a different country, with different landscapes, a different culture, different foods - but for me, so does the North East. When I first went to Sunderland and Newcastle it felt different, there was a distinct Geordie culture, even the North Yorkshire coast feels "elsewhere" to me. I don't know whether it's these far out of the way coastal places have retained their traditional regional cultures more than Warwickshire or Leicestershire or that, as a midlander, the culture of the sea-faring counties is far removed from my own traditions and landscapes. Either way, it is remarkable that in an age where nearly every town has Next and a Costa that this small island of our has managed to retain as much tradition and difference as we have.
Above is a picture of Looe Bridge. Looe is quite a bustling little seaside town, and rather old-fashioned and not a bit chi-chi (unlike Falmouth and perhaps St Ives). My children loved Looe, but on the whole, I think I preferred Polperro - the village 3 or 4 miles down the coast. It was very beautiful and individual and less packed full of sun-scorched holiday makers.

Up until the early twentieth century, when the coastal Cornish economy was dependent on fish rather than tourism, the village women used to supplement their income by hand-knitting Guernseys (or what they called knit-frocks). Whilst I was in Looe I picked up a lovely little book on the history of Cornish knitting, Cornish Guernseys and Knit-frocks, by Mary Wright. In it she writes:
In Looe, knitters regularly organised collections of guernseys from their group, packing about eight or ten each upon their backs. They walked over the cliffs to Plymouth - "about twelve miles, if you know the short cuts" - to deliver them to "W. Johns and Co., General Drapers of Old Town Street", and other agents. They walked in their "pattins", a sort of wooden clog with an iron rim at the bottom which raised their feet an inch or an inch and a half off the ground, to protect them from the wet. They knitted all the way, often pinning and extra skein of yarn to their skirts, "so they would never run out". On their return journey, they brought fresh supplies of yarn.
I'm a keen knitter and a keen walker, but I cannot imagine doing a twelve mile cliff top walk, in clogs, whilst knitting. Did I mention that these guernseys were always knitted in the round? If you're a knitter, or interested in social history, do try to get hold of Mary Wright's wonderful little book, which includes many traditional Cornish guernsey patterns.

Above is a short film on the beauty of Polperro. However, if you look at the photos of the steep cliff paths you may get a sense of the lives of those Cornish knitters.

And finally, here's a short film of the opening of the Polperro festival...a treat for all you folkies!

Anon, goode huswives, anon!

This is a Public Service Announcement

2010-08-05T06:41:00.000-07:00

Yes, like Bob Marley, we're jamming. And I also want to jam it with you... but perhaps not in the sense that Mr Marley meant. Nothing gives the housewife a sense of business-like, no nonsense competency than being able to make her own jam. Men are amazed, small children are in awe, other women wonder at her culinary skill and bravery (boiling sugar is so very hot!). Making jam is like the homemaking equivalent of having A' level Maths...it's a special and unusual accomplishment you can casually mention during dinner parties...it's also a very good way of preserving fruit.

So if you, like me, regularly go a bit mental at the local pick-your-own farm and end up with seven pounds of raspberries (or whatever) slowly festering on your kitchen counter then jam them, gentle reader, jam them. For the past few years I have been using my copy of the The Practical Home Handywoman to help me jam my fruit, and I have found their table for jam making absolutely indispensable. If you're into old household management books you could easily find a copy of the book on Abe or eBay, but if you're just interested in jamming - and how could you not be having read my inspirational sermon on the subject - then here is the Home Handywoman's table reproduced by yours truly.

Apple and blackberry
4 lb berries 2 lb apples peeled and cored - 1 pint water - 5 lb sugar
Apricot
4 lb fruit juice of 1 lemon - 3/4 pint water - 4 lb sugar
Blackberry
4 lb fruit - 4 lb sugar
Blackcurrant
4 lb fruit - 3 pints water - 5 lb sugar
Cherry
4 lb fruit - 1 pint red currant juice - 3 1/2 lb sugar
Damson
3 lb fruit - 1/2 pint water - 2 1/2 lb sugar
Elderberry
3 lb fruit (or 3 pints juice), juice of 3 lemons - 3 lb sugar
Gooseberry
3 lb fruit - 1 pint water - 3 lb sugar
Gooseberry & redcurrant
3 lb berries 1 lb currants - 1/2 pint water - 4 lb sugar
Greengage
3 lb fruit - 1/2 pint water - 3 lb sugar
Loganberry
3 lb berries - 3 lb sugar
Plum
3 lb fruit - 1/2 pint water - 3 lb sugar
Quince
2 lb fruit - 2 pints water - 2 lb sugar
Quince and apple
1 lb quince 1 lb apple - 1 1/2 pints water - 2 lb sugar
Raspberry
3 lb raspberry - 3 lb sugar
Redcurrant
3 lb fruit (or 3 pints juice) - 3 lb sugar
Redcurrant & raspberry
1 lb raspberries 1 lb currants - 2 lb sugar
Strawberry
4 lb strawberries juice of 4 lemons - 3 1/2 lb sugar
Strawberry & gooseberry
2 lb strawberries 2 lb gooseberries - 1/2 pint water - 4 lb sugar
Strawberry & redcurrant
2 lb strawberries 1 1/2 lb currants - 3 lb sugar

This is the table from the book with only the vegetable marrow jams removed. If you want a recipe for marrow jam, do email and I'll find one forthwith. For more jam information and tips please go here.

Oh and a little bird tells me that American women can their jam. Is this true? American jammers please put me out of my misery.

Well, that's enough for today, even I can have enough of jam! Anon, good huswives, anon!

Ruthless Inroads on the Butter

2010-07-23T07:14:00.001-07:00

One of my favourite books of all time is A Calender of Country Receipts, by Nell Heaton. It was first published in May of 1950 and is full of a post-war optimism and love of simple delights. Heaton takes the idea of a woman working in her "still room" and modernises the gardener and preserver's calender. The book is charming, idiosyncratic and useful. Here's an extract from the foreword.

As the modern housewife spends her leisure far away from the kitchen, there is no virtue in looking for labour for its own sake; she needs a pleasant, workable, well-fitted kitchen-storeroom, or kitchen with storeroom annexe, as beautifully supplied with chattels as her income will allow, and the ability to combine age-old lore with modern practice and thus to take advantage of every season's plenty. Needless to say, such accomplishments as these are an enrichment to herself and all her family.

The book takes you through the gardener's month - what to plant and when to plant it - and then the cook's calender. Each week of the year is prefaced with an appropriate poem and illustration. Her writing style and choice of poetry is charming and idiosyncratic: I can imagine the Provincial Lady or Miss Buncle using, laughing at, and loving this book. I have always been charmed by her instructions for the housewife in in the first week of July. Here they are.

We have mentioned "classic" jams and perhaps, with lemon meringue pie, this may be termed a "classic" sweet:
STRAWBERRY SHORTCAKE
Make a good shortcake with ruthless inroads on the butter. Take fresh ripe strawberries and mash in a bowl with castor sugar. Fill the shortcake with a good thick layer, place a similar shortcake on top, and cover with cream, the best you can get. Use next day, as strawberry juice must seep into the shortcake.

The book presupposes that one knows automatically how to make a shortcake, and Heaton assumes that a post-war housewife would stinge on the butter, she is right to instruct "ruthless inroads", I made a strawberry shortcake the other day and it was absolutely, wonderfully buttery and good. However, because dear old Nell's receipts are rather scanty on the the old weights and measures front I resorted to the internet and found this lovely recipe.

Other recipes for July include Agrimony Wine, Stoned Cherry Cheese, and Lemon Fig Jam. In the third week of July she quotes this poem:

The lark's long rapture and the yellowing corn,
The household fires and make that circles free
Around the tree-tops; cities, human stress -
The dear familiar thins of earthliness."
ARTHUR L. SALMON

...and then suggests that the reader make Cherry Brandy. I've done this and it was very, very nice and knocked the socks off my sloe gin. I shall make some more when I come back from Cornwall. Here's the recipe if you want to give it a go. I shall quote Nell verbatim so you get the full force of her personality.

The majority of recipes prescribe Morello cherries, but any not-over-sweet ones will serve. Wipe and de-stalk them except for the last 1/2 inch of stalk. Weigh them, then put into wide-necked bottles. Do not cram them in, you'll need room for the brandy. Prick each cherry and drop castor sugar evenly in the jars (3 oz to 1 lb of cherries). Fill up with good brandy, cork tightly, seal with wax. Keep for 2 to 3 months.

There's a sense of joyous gratitude of home and hearth which the book exudes, and I suppose this comes from the fact that the war was over and those husbands, fathers, brothers and sons who have come back fit and well, deserve happy homes and a better future. And, importantly, if you have been through the mill and had tough times it's the simple pleasures of good food and lavender scented sheets which make life sweet and pleasurable.

Well, I must be off and pack for my holidays. I shall see you next week, until then, Anon!

PS. Lest you think me a culinary genious I should admit that the photo of the strawberry shortcake above is not mine own. The Domum shortcake was far more messy!

Ooh, Matron!

2010-07-12T09:39:00.001-07:00

It's been very hot in the UK these past few weeks: so hot I've taken to wearing summer dresses. Yes, summer dresses. Not jeans, skirts, cut offs or leggings, but proper, bonefide, summer dresses. The DH thinks I look cool in them, and my youngest thinks I look nice, so I've stuck with it. This is my summer look. I call it the "Summer Dress Look." Gok Wan, I ain't.

I was wearing one of the aforementioned summer dresses the other day when I took the youngest to her friend's birthday party: to the Tamworth Snow Dome, to sledge, in July. Now, I'd wrapped the youngest up as for winter, complete with hat, scarf and gloves, but like an idiot I was dressed for a July heatwave. I should know better, all of my books say that a true lady dresses appropriately for any occasion, and the inappropriateness of my attire began to be screamingly obvious when we got to the sledging area and all of the other mums pulled out fleeces and woollie hats. I was left freezing in my summer dress.

A school-gate friend of mine sidled up to me and asked, "aren't you freezing in that dress?"

"Yes," I replied, "I'm a complete idiot for wearing it."

"I'm very worried about that magnificent cleavage of yours. What will happen if your bosom get frostbite?" Asked the friend, in a playful, and somewhat impertinent manner.

"I don't know, but perhaps the illegal immigrants I'm hiding in there will move out."

"I know! " she exclaimed, " when you can get out of here you can rub them up and down on the DH - that'll defrost 'em!" She snuck off, leaving me to think of a witty retort. Which I did, several hours later.

You see my bosom is laughing stock. A great, big, magnificent, laughing stock. Friends, colleagues, family (my dad says that I can't take up golf because of my "nellies"), men who drive white vans. I'm a walking MacGill saucy post card. In the old days a woman got to a certain age and her bosom was allowed to go all matronly with dignity and poise - can you imagine a white van man asking the good lady in the photo* above if he could "towel her down" on a rainy day? No! He would have let her be and given her the respect befitting her maturity and enormous bosom.

You see, in my mind's eye the Domum Two aren't really that big. Big yes, but not thaaat biiig. Also, in my mind's eye I'm not that fat. Fat yes, but not thaaat faaat. I have a positive self image. On good days, wearing my summer dress, I think I look like a chubby Catherine Zeta Jones. My positive self image can be positively self delusional on good days. However, in reality I look like Pam Ferris as Ma Larkin. Actually, I look like Pam Ferris as Ma Larkin on good days. On bad days I look like my old music teacher. I know I look like Ma Larkin because my youngest child has told me so - and six year old children never lie about appearance, they lack the ability to sugar coat encroaching matronliness. The question is do I diet (oh, please God, not that!), should I wear a minimizer bra ("oh, please God not that!" shouts the DH) or should I just go with the flow and embrace the matron that is Dulce Domum? And, seeing as going with the flow is an essential part of my nature I've decided to embrace the matron, she's coming towards me now, bosoms decorously covered by a flowery apron, she's bearing a platter full of scones - lovely jubbly, as the DH doesn't say.

* I took this picture from Yesterknit s, a wonderful site for lovers of vintage knitwear!

Something Incredibly Beautiful

2010-06-18T08:26:00.001-07:00

Wow!

A Young Girl Knitting

2010-06-17T04:50:00.000-07:00

We've been doing a bit of redecorating and sorting out over the last few months. As I type the DH is painting the kitchen and then he'll put up a few (by few, I mean lots) shelves for my collection of vintage cookery books. We've also been trawling through the local junk shops and antiques centres looking for bargains to put on our dresser. I've found some lovely Victorian champagne glasses for £3 each and a nice Victorian circular, glass, butter dish, again for £3. I'm hoping that our Christmas table will look really pretty this year and I'm becoming slightly obsessed with looking for quality vintage bargains to keep on the dresser for "best".

Amongst the china and silver plate in a dusty, stuffed, wonderful, little shop in Market Bosworth I found this amateur watercolour of a young girl knitting. It's beautifully done, but despite the near perfect folds of the dress and position of the hands, the feet are a little clunky and the face is pretty, but not as delicate as the rest of the drawing. It's dated 1934 and signed P. M. Wray. It would be lovely to find out who P.M. Wray was, it's nice to think it was a local person, perhaps a woman, sketching her children and friends as they went about their business. It's an insight into the past and a thing of beauty and I feel very happy that I own it. Oh, and the antiques chappy didn't even know that he had it, and gave it to me for free when I bought the champagne glasses. This is why I love second hand shopping sprees. Lovely things and nice people.

The Compartmentaliser Vs the Juggler and Other Sundry Matters

2010-06-05T07:09:00.001-07:00

The Compartmentaliser Vs the Juggler

Regular readers will know that my mother thinks the DH is a spy. Mum came to this bizarre conclusion about my husband's profession because: a. her rich imagination errs on the dramatic and b. my husband never talked about his work. I know, of course, that my husband is not, and never was, a spy, but simply a man who can compartmentalise to breath taking effect. For the DH there is a work life and there is a home life and the twain will never meet. This skill is something he is trying to teach yours truly right now. He is of the opinion that I will go completely bonkers if I don't compartmentalise - or in other words, keep school at school and home at home. I think he is right but compartmentalising does not come naturally to me, I don't have one of those brains. I deal with and process bits of information en masse, as it were, reacting and thinking, brain constantly planning ahead. I can teach Shakespeare whilst thinking about my children's teeth and if the lasagne will have defrosted before tea. I can mark Year 9 books whilst helping with phonics homework and giving instructions on the proper care of the rabbits. I'm not a genius, of course, just a woman. Not a compartmentaliser, but a juggler. I can juggle many varied and differing balls, keeping them in the air with either a masterful sense of grace or a barely competent, higgledy-piggledy, hotch-potch of a show. The DH can only manage two balls at a time: the ones God gave him: but oh boy, he is the stone-cold-solid-king of compartmentalising. Which begs the question: is juggling really a female trait and is compartmentalising a masculine trait? Answers on a postcard, if you please, gentle reader.

In Which She Discusses Sundry Matters Using the Time Honoured Bullet Point as a Presentational Device: A device Which Brings Pleasure to the Scan Reader and Speed of Execution to the Lazy Writer

I have been weighed, measured and found GOOD, by the much feared Ofsted inspector. I am fit to teach, goode huswives.
I would like to draw my reader's attention to the new BBC television show When Romeo Met Juliet - featuring (ahem) a certain big city school.
Although I'm doing a lot of moaning at the moment I can see that my foray into the world of work is doing me some good. I know what it's like to be the breadwinner - I take my hat off to all of those who have been doing it for years. I always thought my old fella was an all round good egg, but now I think he's a bit of a bloody hero - it's a weight to carry and it needs broad shoulders...mine are a bit feeble and slopey and long for part time work!
The DH has an interview on Thursday to work in a local cathedral. If you are the praying type, I'd appreciate a few flung our way.
Bakers may enjoy this rhubarb and cinnamon cake (delicious) and this coffee and ginger cake (Dan Lepard is a baking genius).
And finally, for a bit of fun, I draw your attention to The Chap Manifesto.

Anon, new friends and old, and have a good weekend!

The Days of Wine and Ice Cream

2010-05-21T11:45:00.000-07:00

So I took a job half way through the year teaching English. Long term supply. (I'll repeat that for emphasis). Long term supply. I took the job knowing full well that the profession, to which I reluctantly belong, is the most stressful in the UK. And, I said to myself, "don't worry Dulce Domum, at least you won't have to go through an Ofsted." Oh, what a fool I was! Our department was told earlier this week that we are to go through a departmental Ofsted. On the last week of a seven week term. On the week Year 11 take their first English Literature GCSE exam (they're not on study leave - I am to teach them straight after they come out of an exam).

Nobody should worry about it too much. The department is strong, very strong. The nicest I've ever worked with. However, it has thrown us into an uncontrollable tail-spin of stress (and there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth). Colleagues come up to us and commiserate: they hug us and look sorry (but perhaps a little relieved it's not them). We have received flowers and cards. It is as though we have been bereaved...denial, anger, bargaining (but I'm just a supply!), depression and acceptance...and wine and ice cream. I am particularly jittery, I've been out of the job for six year and have been in my new school for five weeks. I also suffer from extreme exam jitters.

Well, never mind. What doesn't kill me can only make me stronger. And, Nietzsche knew what he was talking about...didn't he?

Ye Gads! I'm a Teacher!

2010-05-07T11:36:00.000-07:00

I'm a proper teacher. I don't just faff about doing a bit of nice one-to-one. I manage class after class and mark books and mock exams and plan and differentiate and write reports. I take the register. Grrr! And, I'm managing. Just. And, I'm managing because, on the whole, kids are fun.

I have some funny stories from the classroom, for your delectation. First, from a year 8 Frankenstein essay.

"You can tell Frankenstein has really let himself go because when Clerval comes round for a glass of wine they have to share a glass and Frankenstein wipes it clean for him on a rag. If Frankenstein hadn't chosen to be such an outcast he would have had normal things in his house like kitchen roll and a tea towel."

When discussing the election with year 9.

"Shouldn't that be a hanged parliament, Miss?"

And here's one from the TES.

I was marking my year sevens' exercise books, they had all written a short account of the life of Geoffrey Chaucer.

One girl in the class, who is the meekest, sweetest, 'do you mind if I use gel pen to underline, please, Miss?' bespectacled, brace-wearing child, had written the following, towards the end of her homework: "In 1400, Geoffrey Chaucer died of a massive brain tumor. The tumor was so big it would be equivalent to.. (at this point I turned the page)... ...Shaquille O'Neill's left testicle."

Quelle Joi!

Anon, gentle reader! Anon!

Sedgemoor Easter Cakes and Many Good Books

2010-04-07T05:07:00.001-07:00

Mary Norwak's Farmhouse Kitchen, which is becoming a book I turn to again and again, has a whole chapter on what she calls Festival Food. The recipes in the chapter include Pately Fritters, eaten in Yorkshire on Ash Wednesday, Creed Wheat and Frumenty, eaten in Wiltshire on Mothering Sunday or in Lincolnshire to celebrate sheep clipping, to Bedfordshire Wigs, traditionally eaten on St Katherine's Day. Today the children and I made Sedgemoor Easter Cakes, using a recipe I adapted from Mary Norwak combined with a HFW recipe first published in the Guardian.

Here's Norwak's recipe, with my adaptions in brackets.
8 oz plain flour (I committed a baking sin and used SR)
4 oz butter
4 oz caster sugar (another baking sin committed, I used granulated)
4 oz currants (yes, I used sulatanas!)
1/2 tsp mixed spice (didn't have any in the cupboard)
1/2 tsp of cinnamon (used 1/4 instead)
1 egg
2 tablespoons of brandy (I used rum!)

Rub the butter into the flour and stir in the sugar, currants, spice and cinnamon. Beat the egg with the brandy and mix with the dry ingredients. Roll out half-an-inch thick, cut into rounds and bake at 305F, 180C, gas mark 4 for twenty minutes.

We cut our biscuits into egg-shaped rounds, just as a bit of Easter fun! Also, we did as HFW advised and glazed them whilst still warm, which makes them quite sweet, but nice looking. It seems to me that traditional regional cookery differs by simple ingredients - the difference between Parkin and Yorkshire Parkin being extra oatmeal here, less ginger there. I suppose the ingredients were what came to hand and many folks improvised, just like I have today. Perhaps I should re-name the cakes Warwickshire Easter Cakes. Anyway, they are very, very moreish and taste like a rich, flat scone or an extra light shortbread, but in a boozy, spicey way. It says on the Guardian site that traditionally they were given away in threes, to symbolise the Trinity, which is a jolly nice baking tradition we seem to have in many parts of Britain.

So onto books. I've read some great books just recently that I really want to recommend before I go back to the world of paid employment. First, Marjory Sharp's The Nutmeg Tree. I bought this book because of fits cover: a lovely piece of 1930s design, not deco, but gloriously womanly and frivolous. And it turns out that you can judge a book by its cover. If you were a fan of Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, then you'll love this book - it's both light-hearted and warm-hearted. Marjory Sharp is perhaps more famous for her Rescuers children's books and Cluny Brown, and she deserves to be republished...I should write to Persephone Books, they'd love her.

I've also been reading Georgette Heyer, both the mysteries and the romances. I'm not quite sure what to make of her. The mysteries always rollick along quite nicely until the abrupt and disappointing endings and although the romances are superbly detailed, they are a little over-written and irritatingly snobbish. I am a real fan of 1930s literature and am well aware of how the working classes and "foreign types" were portrayed in many of these books, but Heyer's outright antipathy to the "lower orders" is at best irksome and at worst repulsive. She is very much of her time: her Georgian heroines are flappers and her rakish fops are Bright Young Things: and this is what fascinates me so.

I have returned, yet again, to Elizabeth Taylor. I think she may be the most underrated British novelist of the twentieth century. I've just finished reading A Game of Hide and Seek, it is finely nuanced and she shows remarkable clarity in her characterisation and a generous empathy for the people she creates. A wonderful, sad book about love and highly recommended.

Next up, Barbara Pym's first novel Crampton Hodnett. I like curates, Lions Tea Rooms and Fuller's walnut cakes in my novels. I also like spinsters, romantically thwarted dons and High Church snobbery. I shan't give away anything of the plot of Crampton Hodnett, but suffice to say it is typical early Pym and an absolute joy. Here's an extract.

"Hullo, Mr Latimer, going to take evensong?"
The bright, almost chirpy, tones startled him, and Mr Latimer turned round to see Mrs Wardell standing by the vicarage gate, with a trowel in one hand and a young plant in the other.
"Yes, I am," he said shortly. It was surely obvious that he was going to take evensong. Where else could he be going, with a cassock slung over his arm and a face as long as a fiddle...

When he got to the church he found the usual weekday congregation there. Miss Doggett and Miss Morrow, old Lady Halkin, the Misses Grote, Mrs Allonby, Miss Nollard and Miss Foxe, Mrs Jason-Lomax and Jim Storry, a feeble-minded youth who did odd jobs in the church such as fetching vases and putting up wire frames for the ladies when they did the flowers.

Yes, this was the Church of England, his flock, thought Mr Latimer, a collection of old women, widows and spinsters, and one young man not quite right in the head. These were the people among whom he was destined to spend his life. He hunched his shoulders in his surplice and shivered.

I am hoping there are a fair amount of walnut cakes, curates and spinsters in Mrs Tim of the Regiment. I haven't started it yet, but it looks very good. It's one of those Bloomsbury re-issues, and amongst The Brontes Go to Woolworth's as a bit of a bloggers' favourite. I shall post on it when I next get the time.

Well, you've probably realised that I am now fully rested and well fed and well read and am extremely unlikely to go embarrassing myself in front of Ed Balls (who was that masked woman...?) I hope you all have had a happy and peaceful Easter. Until Anon!

PS. For a Simnel Cake recipe go here and here.
For Hot Cross Buns go here.

Goodbye Big City - Hello Market Town!

2010-03-31T11:16:00.000-07:00

Well, I've finally finished my term at Big City School. You know, it went okay. My students remained universally charming (and often a complete - if unknowing - hoot), my colleagues ranged from supportive to lovely and the work was rewarding and not too stressful. However, I won't miss Big City: I won't miss the commute; the rudeness of the bus drivers/taxi drivers; the particular area of the school I worked in; the aggression of the community I served. I now have a new job covering the maternity leave of an old colleague, it's in a faith school in my home town and I will be working part-time until after Christmas. I feel quite content to do long term supply jobs until the DH is on his feet, although if he does decide to retrain I will have to get a permanent teaching job.

I'm absolutely shattered. And, I kind of feel like the life I've been leading over the last few months hasn't quite been my own, as if I've been jumping through a rabbit hole every morning at 6:30 and ending up in Big City - a strange, disordered, nether-world full of damaged and tyrannical people who keep telling me to F-off!. What I'm feeling is a culture shock, of course. I've been living on Planet Dulce Domum for years and have found it a very pleasant place to be. I obviously need to get back there for a week or so. Therefore, I'm going to settle down with a few good books, my Cary Grant box set, my girls and a nice cup of tea and I don't intend to set foot out of the house. This is a decision I have just made. I will not be cajoled by other well-meaning folk to go and do stuff, I will not do any church work (I may not even go to church!), I will not be persuaded to go on long car journeys with a bored DH (he can go on his own) and we will frequent the chippy and the Chinese takeaway more often than is seemly. We have visitors over the Easter period, and a friend's wedding to go to, however I will not run around like a loony trying to please. I will be perfectly nice, but perfectly lazy because being perfectly perfect will drive anyone into the loony bin!

Ah, I'm so glad I've got that off my chest. It's very nice to have a plan, even if your plan is simply to do bugger all.

If, towards the end of the holiday, I blog again it will be because I have rested and read and played with my kids and got my skirtings clean and then, gentle reader, you'll know that all is well. However, if, towards the end of the holiday, you turn on the TV and see an overweight woman moon Ed Balls (yes, y'all in the USA, our Minister for Education is called Mr Balls), then you know that I have not rested and read and played with my kids and got my skirtings clean but quite the opposite and have gone completely mad - mad, I tells ya!

I shall leave you with this bit of YouTubery, for your delectation!

In In Which She Accidentally Seduces a Train Conductor

2010-01-23T01:27:00.000-08:00

So I'm on the train going from Big City to Market Town and I have my nose in a Rosamunde Pilcher and I'm (ahem) chillin' after a hard day at the chalkface. But then, gentle reader, I smell something funny. Now, smelling something funny is not an unusual occurrence on the 3:50 from Big City to Market Town, but this smell was the distinct, and perhaps now slightly unusual, smell of cigarette smoke in a confined space. I look around the half empty carriage and see a group of boys in hoods puffing away quite happily, and might I say quite illegally, at the old coffin nails. The thing is, I don't tell teenage boys to stop smoking unless it is between the hours of 8:30 and 3:10, after those hours it is an other's responsibility. So I search around for the train conductor and I catch his eye.

I don't say a thing to him, surely he can smell the smoke? I indicate with my eyes that the boys on the other end of the train are smoking. He smiles. I smile (grimace) back and indicate, again with my peepers, that the boys at the far end of the carriage are puffing away like chimneys. He smiles a wide, not so charming, grin. I give up. He obviously wants an easy life and doesn't want to confront the hoodies. Who knows, in this day and age they may pull out a "piece" and "ice" him. Or they may call him a rude name. Either way, it is obvious that the conductor is not going to cause a fuss when we only have five minutes of the journey left before they train "terminates". I agree with him, I just want to read my book.

However, when we all "alight" and the hoodies exit the train, the conductor takes me to one side and says, "it's been nice having you on board today love, enjoy the rest of your journey!" I think I've pulled.

Snow Day

2010-01-13T02:39:00.000-08:00

I know I said I'd be back during the mid-term break to regale you with tales of daring-do in "the big city school", but after two days of full-time work I've got a snow day! You're probably quite pleased to know that so far I've been using this time off effectively: planning for future lessons; updating my teaching skills; going on the Teachit website and so on... Oh heck, like George Washington, I cannot tell a lie! I've actually been looking at old pictures of Warwickshire in the snow on the Windows on Warwickshire website and eating peanut butter out of the jar with my finger. Simple pleasures for a simple person.

You know, I don't want to say it too loudly, but I've been very much enjoying my job so far. The kids I teach are genuinely charming: they actually thank me after the lesson for teaching them; they say I have nice hair! My colleagues seem friendly and I've made a chums with the maths teacher who has a room near me, we share flasks of coffee during breaktimes and talk about Pashley bicycles. I do, however, have a permanent headache. I haven't been able to shift it since I started work, it's all of the thinking I'm doing. There's a lot of thinking in teaching, not just about your subject, but about how to handle the various personalities and learning styles of the kids you're responsible for, also I'm having to think about home organisation much more. I know I won't shift my bad head until I'm used to my routine.
My only grumble is that I do not like the city I work in. It is not the city's fault. It got hammered by the Luftwaffe during the war and never recovered, the horrible 1950s town planning and bloody awful corresponding architecture just made the city centre grim: grey and grim, particularly in the slush. I don't like walking through the various underpasses and overpasses in the dim morning light, you get quite a vulnerable feeling. It's one of those cities where idealistic architects built living spaces according to academic and experimental principles, but never thought to ask the bombed out citizens how they would want to live.

My own children seem to be quite happy(ish) with our new family arrangements. For my eldest girl, very little has changed. She was always home around 4:00 and now lets herself in and watches "Come Dine with Me" in peace and quiet until I'm home with her little sister at 4:15. My youngest really enjoys her after-school club, and complains that I pick her up too early "I was in the middle of building a Lego tower with..." However, this morning when I was gettting her ready for school (which has been her dad's job since I started work) she complained that she wants me to work at her school. "You're a teacher, you can work at my school, not the school for big kids!" She has also said that she misses me walking her to school, her routine has been disrupted and she's feeling it. Not too much, she's quite tough, but enough for us both to feel a bit sorry and sad. I hope that when her new routine is established she enjoys her dad taking her to school, I know that he's enjoying more practical involvement with the girls and is making a real effort to keep them happy and buoyant and not missing mummy in the mornings too much.

Well, I suppose I really should adieu. I'm going to mop floors and prepare a proper roast dinner whilst I've got the opportunity...oh, and eat a little more peanut butter form the jar. Anon, goode huswives, anon!

Bits from Books

2010-01-05T01:58:00.001-08:00

( A photograph of my home town centre, taken in the 1950s when my copy of Newnes Household Management was first published)

So I'm sitting here waiting for the snow to come. We've not had the bad weather here in the middle Midlands, but we're due it today and my girls are expecting their schools to close at lunch-time so they can come home and make a snowman on the green. What can I say? They're an optimistic pair. I've been watching the chaos the bad weather has been causing in other parts of the UK with interest. Apparently, there's a poor woman in Scotland who left her home on 23rd December to buy a turkey for Christmas and is still stuck in town, unable to get back to her cottage, her husband and their six dogs. And the bad weather brings me, in a very roundabout way, on to some bits from books; bits from books I had for Christmas, in fact.

I remember one time, just after one Christmas in the late 1980s we has such bad snow that our water pipes froze and we had long power cuts. Roads were pretty impassible for a few days, but we had a house full of Christmas left-overs and we melted snow on the gas hob for water...believe it or not, we had a lot of fun! I completely forgot about this until my sister gave me Jocasta Innes Country Kitchen as a Christmas present this year, and my mum said "can you remember making the syllabub from that book when we had all that snow?" It all came flooding back, I was about fifteen or so and the syllabub is one of the first recipes I followed from a book. I've never looked back. Here's the recipe.

Good cows they were and never ailed, and plenty of everything there was in that house, good milk and cheese and buckets and buckets of skim for the pigs.
Precious Bane, Mary Webb.

Syllabub
1 lemon
1 small glass (4 fl oz approx) Marsala, Madeira or sweet sherry
2 tablespoons castor sugar
1/2 pint double cream
pinch of ground nutmeg
Grate the lemon rind, squeeze the juice and combine both with the sherry and the sugar. Leave to stand for a few hours, or overnight. Strain (to remove the rind) and add to the cream. Then whisk till thick, fluffy but not too stiff. Spoon into little glasses and serve cold with biscuits.

*******

Well, the snow is falling now. And I quite fancy some rich, snowy-white syllabub to fortify me against the vagaries of the weather. Actually, I can't help but think that syllabub would make a great rich topping for a trifle. I am incorrigible.

Next up, we have two volumes of Alison Barnes' Newnes Household Management from the 1950s. These were a present from the DH and I love them. They offer a complete and comprehensive journey into the 1950s housekeeping ideal, and have a lovely idealistic and business-like tone. Volume one alone includes advice on: pressure cooking; tea party food; getting your figure back to normal after having a baby; how to lay out a herbaceous border and the ABC of dressmaking. But first, I offer you an extract from the foreword.

Home is the most important place in the world. It may be a bachelor bed-sitting room, a rather poky little flat, a part of someone else's house, an inconvenient cottage or a rambling barn of a place. Whatever it is, making it into a home brings its own unique brand of personal satisfaction.

A good home is a well-organised one and produces happy, well-balanced, tolerant human beings, able to give and take. It is in the badly managed homes that you find constant quarrelling, strain, distrust, emotional tension and spoilt, undisciplined children destined, if their parents only realised it, for untold unhappiness when they get out into the world and can no longer have their own way. For a child's earliest experience of adapting itself to others - and so into the pattern of a civilised community - begins in the home. Without the right home atmosphere, no child can ever really learn the true art of living.

Personal happiness and national welfare therefore depend very largely upon sound home management, which is the joint responsibility of all who live in the home.

Here let me add a word of warning: the house that runs as smoothly as well-oiled machinery (and just as soullessly) must never be confused with a real home that has a warm, friendly atmosphere because it is built on a sure foundation of affection and understanding.

Has never a truer word been written, gentle reader?

But now onto volume two, which offers the homemaker instructions on: etiquette; how to make a Christmas centre piece; traditional Jewish food and how to deal with dry rot. However, I shall leave you with their chapter on Elizabethan recipes. There was quite a fad for the Virgin Queen in the 1950s, they were, after all, the new Elizabethans! Here's what Alison Barnes has to say on the matter.

Authentic traditional fare from the days of Good Queen Bess, as served in the Elizabethan Room at the Gore Hotel, London.
Syllabub
Take a pint of canary or white wine, a pint of raspberry juice, a sprig of rosemary, a nutmeg quartered, the juice of a lemon, and some peel with sugar, put these together in a pot all night and cover them. In the morning take a pint and a half of cream, and a pint and a half of new milk. Then take out the lemon peel, rosemary and nutmeg, and squirt your milk and cream into the pot. With a wooden cow, fold at the corners. (The nearest modern equivalent of a wooden cow is a grooved wooden butter par, but this part of the recipe can be omitted without damage to the resulting dish.)

Never mind finding a wooden cow, how in the heck do I squirt the milk and cream? The mind boggles. I imagine Jocasta Innes reading this recipe sometime in 1955 and thirty years later finally coming up with a workable syllabub and punching the air in satisfation. On that note I must anon goode huswives! I shall see you in the mid-term break!

Move Over Miss Read - Or, Dulce Domum Goes to School

2010-01-04T03:53:00.000-08:00

I want to thank you all for all of the kind thoughts and prayers you've been sending out to me over the ether. We had a very good Christmas, full of fun and togetherness and busy-ness, and we had some really kind comments from family who stayed with us over the period. The DH is back at work today ( but for how long I don't know, there have been no further developments leaving dates and so forth), the girls will be back at school tomorrow and I start work next Monday. It seems that the New Year is upon us with a vengeance!

I have a full-time job, but for one term only, at a school in a local city. The school is in a very deprived borough but is good and creative and serves its catchment well. I will be doing some special needs work which is what I wanted, so I can honestly say that God has been very good to us. I hope to keep you posted on how things are going.

Although I am very much at peace with the kind of work I'll be doing, it's work I'm comfortable with, I do feel a little worried about how I'll manage my home-life whilst holding down a full-time job. The DH will be taking the children to school from now on, and my youngest will have to go to an after school club for half an hour. And, although I know that many mothers who work full-time would be more than grateful for my working hours, my youngest feels nervous about the changes and I feel concerned about her nerves. Predictability and consistency are so important in little lives. I hope to lessen the impact of my working by not letting my job creep into my home, by being as much as myself as possible, by home being the same as it ever was. I think this will take an iron clad will, a certain amount of self-discipline so far as organisation is concerned ( not just for me, but for the DH...the question is, will I become a nag?) and a good deal of patience and sensitivity. We will see how it goes.

Anyway, I repeat my thanks for your kind words and prayers and I wish you all a Happy New Year.

Where the Heck is Dulce Domum?

2009-11-30T02:14:00.000-08:00

Oh, gentle reader I am a bad, bad, blogger. But if you're still out there do forgive my recent disappearance from the blogosphere, and I will explain myself later, but first you must let me get Advent out of my system. I do love a bit of Advent and beautiful period of waiting and reflection before Christ arrives. I also like all of the planning and preparation we make during the season, and I like the connectedness I feel to other people throughout the world who plan and prepare at this time, and all those people in the past for whom Advent was a special time before the feast of Christmas.

Gosh, I could go on, but I just don't have the time. However, here are a few good Advent links for those of us who wish to differentiate between the commercial "run up to Christmas" and the spiritual "Advent" (arrival) of Jesus Christ.

The C of E's Advent page
The Arch Bishop of Canterbury's Advent Reflections
St Nicholas - the Advent Saint

And, for the practical amongst us.
Mincemeat, cake and Christmas pudding recipes - all by the most beloved and sainted Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall.
How to make an Advent wreath - I've found that it is much easier, and you get better results, if you use florist's oasis, rather that a wreath ring. Also, this year I couldn't find the purple and pink candles, so I opted for the non-denom red and whites. Heck, what can I say? I'm both catholic and reformed!
How to make those nifty parcel bows out of old magazines! Oh, this is how I'd ideally like to spend my Advent - praying, reflecting, and making parcel bows. However, I must...

...go out to work to earn a crust. Yes, the world of paid work beckons with its twisted calloused fingers. The DH has been made redundant (a horrible phrase which places the responsibility of job loss on the victim rather than the irresponsible and greed-ridden economic system we've been subjected to over the past thirty years). And, of course, the West Midlands has been hit harder than any other area of the UK by the recession, simply because most of our employment was in both manufacturing and IT. So the amount of forty-something project managers out of work in my area is massive. The DH will have to retrain and meanwhile I will have to hold the fort. I am holding the fort thusly:

by doing supply work - not teaching but secondary SEN TA supply. So far in mainstream, but I hope to get some special school experience soon. Note to non-teacher readers. I am a Secondary English teacher by profession, and doing Secondary supply is for tough nuts only - I am not a tough nut and have therefore opted for TA work.
Applying for more permanent teaching jobs. One in a local school (Ofsted "outstanding") , but it's where my eldest goes to school and I am deeply unsure about the dynamics of me being chronically over-worked (and I will be, it's the nature of teaching a core subject) in the school she rather loves. I'm worried that it will sully her feelings about her school-life. The second job is in an inner city school, with challenging students, but it's part-time one-to-one tuition and may be a bit less like jumping in at the deep end...it's good money too. But we'll see, and I'll try to keep you posted.

Am I happy about my new-found change in status? To be honest with you, I have very mixed feelings. I rather like the TA work, being supply I can pick and choose and TA stuff is always quite fun and I love special needs work. Also, I'm out of school in time to pick up my kids. It's working really well, because the DH is still working...but when he finishes work I will be the main breadwinner and will have to go back to full-time teaching. It's this thought gives me the heebie-jeebies. The thought of having a proper, bonefide career, rather than a nice little part-time job, makes me feel a bit queasy, I'm not an ambitious person and I'm not a good juggler. Tough times are ahead, and I'll need all the strength I can get, so any prayers you can throw my way will be very much appreciated.

So this is my news. I hope to continue blogging on matters domestic, because despite all of all the changes going on right now, I'm still Dulce Domum.

National Poetry Day

2009-10-08T01:29:00.000-07:00

Hurrah for National Poetry Day! I hope you enjoyed the clip of Maggie Smith and Kenneth Williams reading Betjeman's Death in Leamington...Betjeman, Williams and Smith all together on Parky, now that's what I call good telly. You know, I'm the kind of mother who sends the kids to school with a poem in their bag even if their teachers have not specifically asked that the class do so. Their teachers must love me.

Well, anyway, I was gobsmacked to learn that T. S. Eliot was voted Britain's favourite poet this year. He's hardly accessible is he? My hunch is that a lot of people saw that excellent poetry series on BBC4 and half fell in love with Robert Webb and his exploration of Eliot's Prufrock...Let us go then you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky Like a patient etherised upon a table;" ...he wasn't half good at first lines "April is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire"...good stuff!

Well for your delectation here are the final lines of Choruses from the Rock (X). Enjoy!

In our rhythm of earthly life we tire of light. We are glad

when the day ends, when the play ends: and ecstasy

is too much pain.

We are children quickly tired: children who are up in the

night and fall asleep as the rocket is fired; and the day

is long for work or play.

We tire of distraction or concentration, we sleep and are

glad to sleep,

Controlled by the rhythm of blood and the day and the

night and the seasons.

And we must extinguish the candle, put out the light and relight it;

Forever must quench, forever relight the flame.

Therefore we thank Thee for our little light, that is

dappled with shadow.

We thank Thee who hast moved us to building, to finding,

to forming at the ends of our fingers and beams

of our eyes.

And when we have built an altar to the Invisible Light, we

may set thereon the little lights for which our

bodily vision is made.

And we that Thee that darkness reminds us of light.

O Light Invisible, we give Thee thanks for Thy great

glory!

Home Tracts, Home Facts

2009-10-06T01:13:00.000-07:00

Well, eons ago I promised to do a few proper book reviews and I find myself with a spare hour (before my mum comes around for a cuppa) so I thought I'd introduce you to the wonderful world of "home tracts". Now, if you've been reading this blog for a while and fancy starting a little collection of antique and vintage homemaking books, start with home tracts. First, because they're much, much, cheaper than cookbooks and housekeeping manuals, in fact I've never paid for than £3 for a tract. Secondly, many of the tracts are written with the working classes in mind, and unfortunately you get very little insight into the lives of working men and women from 19th century cookbooks, even Soyer's Shilling Cookery, which was intended as a manual for the working classes, contained recipes far out of their price range. Thirdly, they are often narrative based, modern day parables of thrift, cleanliness and prudence and the efficacy of white wash and home-grown parsley, and as such are very entertaining. However, I should warn you that this post is not merely a book review, but gets a little impassioned an political towards the end.

Many tracts were either given away or sold cheaply by non-conformist chapels and are very much a product of the Evangelical Revival. What we must remember about this time in Britain's religious history is that the non-conformists were responsible for the vast majority of 19th century social reform, they simply took the Christian notion of equality and brotherhood of man with much more seriousness than the established church, and the established political parties, and therefore were quite a radical bunch of old dears. Indeed, Roy Hattersley says that the fundamental norms and values of the Labour movement were built firmly on Methodist ideals and not socialist ideals, and I tend to agree with Roy, as he's a nice chap and a good social historian. So when we read these home tracts we see the writer giving a dignity and a sense of pride and equality to the working poor in the narrative. We also get the idea of former sins forgiven, a new life encouraged, ways of self improvement suggested: reading them is a little like reading simplified snippets of a Mrs Gaskell novel, therefore.

But before I rattle on any further, here's a snippet from the first story in Home Happiness, which I imagine was first published in the mid-19th century and is an absolute smasher of a tract. In it a good working man's housewife teaches her slatternly neighbour how to run a house.

Above everything, pray don't have a mess when Eben comes home. It's shameful how some women drive their husbands to the public house, as one may say, by having the place all dirt and litter and confusion, when a man comes home tired, of an evening, wanting a little comfort. Such women have a small right to complain of drunken husbands, seems to me.

Well, you could deconstruct this bit until the cows come home, couldn't you? I detect a waft of the temperance movement, which is as it should be. I'm reminded of the bit in George Eliot's Amos Barton where she describes the miners of North Warwickshire as being better paid than the poor curate but spending their money almost entirely on drink. Indeed, one or two Methodist factory and mine owners in my town formed social clubs, libraries and so on for their workers specifying sobriety as a form of membership to such clubs. What interests me most is that on both sides of my family my great-grandfathers were miners, and indeed alcoholics, and my maternal grandmother, and paternal grandfather told stories of real hardship, poverty and deprivation. However, the question we have to ask ourselves is this. Is it an act of empowerment to say to the woman that she could keep her husband away from the beer simply by keeping a tidy home? Or, is the tract blaming the slatternly wife for driving her husband towards the drink? I'd love to hear your thoughts on the matter, deconstruct away, gentle reader!

Now, most of the stories in the book have an urban setting. (Is it me or have the urban poor in this country been seen as "problem " for nearly 200 years now? If so it's about time we got sorted out.) However, there is one tale in the book which has a country setting, and as such is a good read for any fan of Larkrise to Candleford, as it acts as a mirror to the scenes of country poverty and resilience in Flora Thompson's great book. In it we again read a story of a rather exemplary country couple and their imprudent and weak-willed neighbours.

"I've a good deal of binding that must be done this week, Lucy; can't you do some?" asked James, one morning a short time after they were married. "not to-day; 'tis Hilton Fair, you know, and Jane Richards and I are going. You'll come too won't you?" "I can't spare the time - I'm all behind now; we were out so much last week - I think, Lucy, you might as well stay home. Ain't you going to make bread? We've had none but baker's loaves ever since we married, and I don't like that at all." "Nonsense, you are always bothering about the bread. Besides, if we go to the fair, we shan't want any bread in the house," said Lucy, laughing; "so, come along; the shoes will keep to tomorrow." Poor James stood shilly-shally. He knew he ought to stay at home. and do the work her had promised to finish; but Lucy pulled him by his curly hair, and told him that he looked so handsome that she should be quite proud of going to Hilton Fair with him; and just then Jane Richards, with her smart beau came up; and he was afraid of being laughed at, and being called a grubbing cobbler (his wife called hime so once, when he hestitated about going to a tea party at a public house); so he put away his tools, and dressed himself in his Sunday clothes, to go to the fair.

Oh dear, poor imprudent James talked into downing tools by his pleasure-seeking wife. Well, you'll not be surprised to know that no good comes from going to Hilton Fair. Jane Richards gets drunk and finds herself pregnant by her smart beau (a soldier who hot-foots it away once he's done the dirty deed) , James loses business, after getting a reputation for idleness, the family falls into poverty and "after six years, no-one could have believed that the squalid, ragged-looking Mrs Elliot, with her four dirty little children, was the smart pretty Lucy who boasted of her many sweethearts." The sensible, frugal couple meanwhile had "children who regularly attended Sunday-school. The eldest son and daughter had become teachers...The girls had all been taught useful sewing; and could cut out a shirt, or even a pair of trowsers..." and all the children were taught that "honest working people, with the fear of God in their eyes, are often better off than some of those above them in the world."

Of course, fifty years later Maud Pember Reeves would debate the fact that all the working poor needed to improve their lot was an ability to keep house and keep sober. In Round About a Pound a Week (not a religious tract, but a Fabian society report), she details that despite frugality, cleanliness and sobriety the labouring London poor (the lower working classes) were still unable to afford to buy very little but bread and jam to eat, and the health of their children showed the lack of meat, dairy and vegetables in their diets. Her work, and the fact that the majority of drafted soldiers in the first world war were under-height) forced the government of the 1920s into giving schoolchildren free milk. What interests me, of course, is how far Pember Reeves ideal of "the state as co-parent" has morphed into the state as rich uncle. Labour's attempts at curing social deprivation and child poverty have been solely monetary based, we throw money at the urban poor, but we forget that the deprivation they face is cultural and curing that cultural deprivation is going to cost more money than giving out benefits. The state wanders into our lives and hopes we're not naughty with the money, and hopes we don't become too bothersome, and doesn't tell us how to use it, because we're all individuals and the state doesn't want to impose moral values on its nieces and nephews.

But it's no surprise to me that Labour has forgotten its roots, it's rather afraid of the people of whom it was formed to serve, it cannot converse with them without moralising to them, and Labour doesn't want to moralise because y'know that's not what liberals do, good liberals just throw money at any given situation and don't ask questions, of either bankers or part-time drug dealers on sink estates. So it simply doesn't moralise at all, it prefers its (politically safe) giddy rich uncle status. However, we must see a clear vision from our government on what a good life, a good community is and should be. The post-war Labour government managed this, it wasn't afraid to talk about equality, morality and community and it put it's money where its mouth was, it had a clear vision of post-war Britian and it acted on that vision. The early social reformers, Evangelical tract writers and trade unionists had a clear vision of the capabilities and needs of the people they served, they moralised a-plenty and knew what a good life was and offered a firm choice to their intended membership/readership. This is what we so desperately need now, a clear, from the ground-up, vision of British community life, and how the individual is responsible for their part in forming a civil society. And to do this we have to learn from our social history, learn from the likes of the tract writers and Pember Reeves. We need to empower our populace through moral education. We need a moral New Deal because without it those last vestiges of British community life we love and value will begin to crumble.

Gentle reader forgive me, but this is my post has been my online response to the Fiona Pilkington case. Barwell is on my doorstep and I know it quite well and I can tell you it's not that rough. It's just a bit rough and quite ordinary. It's not a Leicester sink estate, let alone a London sink estate, yet a group of local youth in Barwell bullied a mother and her learning disabled daughter so viciously that the mother set fire to herself and her child in a local lay-by. Asbos and handouts did not help Ms Pilkington and they did not help the children who caused her death, but instruction on how we are meant to behave as individuals, family members, and community members would have. By all means give benefits to those in real and desperate need, but please shirk no longer on expressing moral ideals. We need our bread, but we need our roses too.

Nice Things in the Post

2009-09-21T05:54:00.000-07:00

Well, I was absolutely thrilled to win Angela's rather generous giveaway and even more thrilled to receive the bits in the post on Friday morning! The bunting is going to come in very useful for birthday season, which for us is also the Christmas period. It will be nice to have birthday bunting up as well as Christmas decorations. I also like the Celtic labels, which I may use to label the chutney and jam I'll give away for presents this year, very posh. But mostly I loved the buttons and lace, rooting through the bag reminded me of my childhood days playing in my Gran's button box. Many thanks Angela.

Dorset Apple Cake and Sloe Gin

2009-09-15T03:38:00.000-07:00

Is it me or has it been a really good year for apples? We seem to have tons in our garden, as does my father-in-law, in fact I have so many apples I think I may officially have a glut. I suppose the beauty of apples is that if they are stored properly they will keep for a long time, but if you're like me, and a bit short of suitable storage space (full shed and no garage) it is probably best to think of dealing with them in the kitchen. So soon I will be jelly-ing and chutney-ing and plain old pulping until I have used every morsel of apple-y loveliness.

But before I go full throttle into preserving mania I thought I'd have a go at baking a Dorset Apple Cake. Now, I searched through all of my vintage and regional cookbooks looking for a good apple cake recipes and quite frankly it did my head in. Some recipes used the rubbing in method, some used the creaming method, some were resoundingly anti-spice, and others were very pro-spice. Some added raisins, some added cider, but all of them stated that you should use Bramley apples, which was a complete pain in the rear because my apples are eaters and not cookers. It seems to me that despite the Bramley proviso the Dorset Apple Cake, like most country food, is a movable feast, changing in ingredients and dependent on what a particular housewife had in her pantry from one September to the next. Therefore, gentle reader, I did the sensible and frugal thing and found a recipe which conformed to the contents of my baking cupboard.

The result was the above symphony in brown. I am obviously having a bit of a 1970s kick. Brown plate, brown cake, brown table runner, but you get the idea. You can find the recipe I used here. Yes, I rejected the old (books) in favour of the new (Internet) and I think the result was pretty good. Oh, and you're meant to serve it with clotted cream, which is always my favourite serving suggestion. Also, I did not buy Bramleys but stuck with my windfall eaters and the cake was still moist even though the apples retained their shape. For another good windfall apple recipe please visit Monix.

What could be more wholesome and innocent than a home grown apple? I don't know the answer to that one but I do know that it ain't sloe gin. Sloe gin is wicked, wicked stuff...but I like it. It's a little early to go picking sloes, but I think it may be a good idea to post a recipe now so that anyone who fancies a bit of foraging can get their eye in now a scope out a good bush or two.

Sloes are the fruit of the Blackthorn and are small purple fruits that look like tiny damsons. They're too bitter to eat but are great in cordials, jams and, more traditionally, in gin. The Blackthorn is a thorny old brute and it seems to me that the sloes like to nestle right amongst its inner branches so that foraging for them is always a bit of a painful affair, all in all you need to be dedicated to do it. There are all sorts of bits of advice out there on the best time to pick sloes and how to make the gin, in fact there's forum dedicated to sloe gin! Some say that you must pick them after the first frost, some say that November is the best month, some say October, some say you can pick them slightly unripe in late September and put them in the freezer for 24 hours to mimic a November frost: controversy reigns when it comes to the humble and prickly sloe. I prefer to find a bush and every now and then from late September onwards just have a quick feel of the sloes if they give a little then they're ready. Yes, I'm a secret sloe fondler.

Once you're home you can settle down at the kitchen table, pop the radio on, break out the gin and make the liqueur. Here's how.

If you're lucky enough to find two pounds of sloes, wash and then prick the fruit with a cocktail stick. Pop them in a large glass container - a couple of big kilner jars would do it - and sweeten them with a pound of sugar. Top up the kilner jars with 1 1/2 - 2 bottles of cheap gin. Decant after six months into bottles (I use old pasata jars, but you can get posh gin bottles from Lakeland) and drink. It's nicer the older it gets, but if you make it in October and want a little bit the following Christmas-time then have a fore-taste, it just won't be quite at it's optimum until the following Christmas.

Tips and Alternatives

I buy Oliver Cromwell gin from Aldi for my sloe gin. It's cheap and cheerful and I like its ironic name. Don't buy good stuff as it makes little difference to the overall taste.
That being said, some people buy cheap Vodka rather than gin as it tastes of little and doesn't interfere with the overall taste of the liqueur. I can see the sense in this, but I'm just too much of a traditionalist to try it.
If you can't bear foraging for sloes then try damson gin. You could make it now very cheaply and it tastes incredibly good.
My friend Zillah makes Bramble Vodka - just crush brambles and add them to a jar with some sugar and top up with vodka. Sounds yummy!
Finally, proceed with caution! Sloe gin is pokey old stuff!

Something Vaguely Weird Has Happened

2009-09-14T03:02:00.000-07:00

Yes, goode huswives, I have been voted number 293 out of the top 300 political blogs in the UK. I am so flabbergasted by this, that my political bits and bobs have registered with my readers, that I'm having to have a nice sit down and a cup of tea (just like Tony Benn I drink a lot of tea). When I've fully recovered from this shock, and only then, will I tackle the ironing. After I've done the ironing I'll write a manifesto for my proposed matriarchal dictatorship. Who said a housewife's life wasn't full of thrills and spills?

To be perfectly frank with you, I never thought I had enough readers to ever register for such a thing. So if you did vote for me, I want to thank you very much as I'm quite chuffed.

Time of Plenty

2009-09-09T02:18:00.001-07:00

Then came the autumne all in yellow clad,

As though he joyed in him plenteous store,

Laden with fruits that made him laugh, full glad

That he had banisht hunger, which to-fore

Had by the belly oft him pinched sore:

Upon his head a wreath, that was enrold

With ears of corne of every sort, he bore;

And in his hand a sickle he did holde,

To reape the ripened fruits the which the earth had yold.

SPENSER

I do love this time of year. I like the sunshine of the days and the crisp chill of the mornings and I like that all the fruits of the hedgerow (bar the sloes) are ready for the picking. This year has been so good for fruit. My strawberries did very well and one or two plants are still fruiting, my apple tree was so well laden that a small branch broke under the weight of the fruit before they were fully ripe, I'll have to jelly them. But my first love has always been the wild fruits of our countryside: the elderberries, now just going over; the blackberries, to be picked before Michaelmas (lest the devil gets in 'em!); crab apples on the canalside* near where we live; and damsons and bullaces, old fashioned fruit so good for jamming and preserving.

Of course you can make a good gin with damsons**, just as you can with sloes. I've done it and the taste is just a tad fruitier that that of sloe gin. You can also make a great, easy setting, jam*** which is my personal favourite as it's nice and sharp and really good on generously buttered toast, preferably eaten whilst watching Sherlock Holmes on the telly on a rainy Saturday tea-time. However, this year we made chutney from our damsons. It was a bit of a family affair, the girls helped by squidging the damsons to remove the stones and stirring the chutney whilst it was simmering and I hope they'll remember that they made it when we sit down to cold cuts and chutney this Boxing Day. You'll find the recipe I used here, it's Delia Smith recipe so you just can't go wrong.

I'll be doing a lot more preserving this month, as a friend of ours from church always gives away free marrows from his allotment, so I'll make this chutney too, also I'll have to jelly my poor, fallen apples, perhaps with the last of the elderberries, and I may even go blackberry picking this weekend with the girls, if we get enough of them I'll jam them and if not I'll just stew them and make a pie on Michaelmas.

Now, I've been doing a lot of knitting over the summer and I think the knitting phase will continue throughout the autumn. I'm just finishing off my final bolero, just like the one above, but in petrol blue, and with a picot edging rather than a cable edge. These boleros have been fun to knit, particularly for my little one as they take on two and a bit balls of Wendy Mode Aran, which is cheap as chips in the shops at the moment and a good yarn for knitting kid's clothes (NOT HAND WASH! Hurrah!). However, the bolero fad has faded and my eldest has requested that I knit her some new gloves, I'm sorely tempted to use a vintage 1950s pattern I have for some fairisle ones, but I think she wants the gloves before summer starts so I may find a less ambitious pattern! I will post on them if they turn out to be exciting.

Well, I must be off now as I have to tidy up Dulcie's room. It's a pig sty (or, as my youngest says, a pig sigh - know this, gentle reader, the state of the room would indeed make a pig sigh) and I'm letting her off tidying it up because it is her first week of secondary school and she's feeling a bit overwhelmed. Oh, but before I go, did you know that the brilliant Tales from the Green Valley is being repeated on BBC4 on Tuesday evenings, 7:30? Well, you do now! Anon goode huswives, anon!

*You find crab apples on the canalside becasue the bargees would throw their apple cores onto the grass verges by the canal.

**If you want to know more about making sloe or damson gin I could post about it in October, but just let me know if it interests you.

***This is a great jam to make for the beginner. If you want the recipe email me.

Thank You Monix!

2009-09-08T05:14:00.000-07:00

So I'm back from Spain, the lovely parentals, and 101 degree heat to autumn in England, life as usual (which I like) and a blog award from the delightful Monix. To be honest with you I'm a complete chicken about accepting blog awards simply because I don't like to go about nominating people and leaving others out, however with this one I'm just going to get over myself and do the award properly.

First, I have to list seven things about myself, which you in turn, gentle reader, may find amusing. Here goes.

1. I'm a horribly boring muso. In fact I'm such a horribly boring muso I could be a bloke. A single bloke in a pub trying to make conversation. I'm that boring about music. There are few genres of music that I haven't been "into", I've gone through jazz phases, classical (particularly the English pastoral and choral music) phases, I know more show tunes than Weyland Smithers, I'm into folk, selective country, classic pop and indie. Please don't get me talking about music, I'm so boring I could make your eyes bleed.

2. That being said, I can recite the lyrics to (rap, if you will) Bring tha Noise by seminal rap combo Public Enemy. Base. How low can you go? Death row, what a brother know. Once again back is the incredible, rhyme animal...I like to do it in a cheery, English schoolgirl manner, because the original is rather cross. When I rap my husband wets his knickers.

3. I adore poetry but can only remember one poem verbatim. It's This Be the Verse by Phillip Larkin. It's not a very pleasant poem but I did it for A' Level and taught it for A' Level and it stuck. My professional opinion of Larkin is that he's a right miserable old bugger.

4. I come from a long line of ne'er do wells. My grandfather (who was actually very nice) was shot during the war when he was on leave - up to no good, bad lad.

6. I don't use public libraries. I always forget to hand in my books on time and run up massive fines. The DH used to go into town on a Saturday morning to sort it out for me, which was both a brave and loving gesture, as he used to call the fines lady he dealt with "Conan the Librarian", she was a bit of a dragon.

7. All of a sudden I'm a respectable member of the community. I'm a mother of two, a dutiful wife, a school governor, a regular communicant (delightfully Anglican phrase, methinks), a junior church teacher, a Christening/Baptism prep lady, a jam maker, a soon to be member of the MU. Being a respectable member of the community unnerves me slightly, I'm waiting for the day when somebody takes me to one side and say: "Dulce Domum, we made a terrible mistake. We've just found out that when you were ten you stole a chocolate eclair from the Woolworth's pic'n'mix."

Oh, I feel like I've unburdened myself. You won't tell anybody about the pic'n'mix incident will you?

Here are my nominees for the award. All great bloggers who are well worth a read. Oh, and I won't be offended if you don't want to accept the award.

1. Frances at Left-Handed Housewife cracks me (considerably) up. She's so funny and she can write, which is as it should be as she's a professional children's writer. She's actually JK Rowling, but don't tell anyone.

2. Angela from Tracing Rainbows is also a respectable member of the community, she's even more respectable than me because she's a pastor's wife. I'm also pretty sure that she doesn't have a shameful chocolate eclair episode in her history either. She's funny, likes old hymns and knows her way around a pudding.

3. Jodi from Gumbo Lily is great. A hardy farmer's wife who knows her stuff, great recipes, good gardening, oodles of common sense and lovely photos of the landscape of her farm; a vast American landscape so different from what I'm used to.

4. Nan, from Letters from a Hill Farm, lives on the other side of America to Jodi, and she's well worth a read. She's bookish and likes her film and music, she's gentle and could probably win a gold medal in an international tray bake competition.

5. Nikki, from Rural Writings, is another gentle soul. She's a Canadian blogger, a farmer's wife, a mother and a grandma. She's full of practical advice, information and enthusiasm for her way of life.

6. I don't know Kindnessgirl. She's a new blogger to me, but I like her optimistic ethos and her commitment to goodness and practical love. It's a blog which is well worth a read.

7. Last, but not least, is Jenny from Little Jenny Wren. Jenny is my oldest blog pal. When I started my first blog (about simple living - I live simply in the suburbs, like Jenny) Jenny was one of my first commenters. I love her blog, I love her dolls and think she's jolly nice too.

Oh, honourable mention goes to my friend Sarah whose blog is not online at the moment, but if she ever starts up again I'll let you know as she's funny, ever-so-slightly cat obsessed, and a true thinking Christian.

Blimey, well if those nominated want to join in, here are the rules!

1.Thank the person who nominated you.
2.Copy the logo to your blog (or at least into the acceptance post...).
3.Link to the person who nominated you.
4.List 7 thing about yourself people may find interesting.
5.Make your own 7 Nominations.
6.Post links to those 7.
7.Leave them all a comment to let them know you nominated them.

The Long and Rambling Post - Warning This Post May Fill You with a Strange Sense of Ennui

2009-08-24T01:47:00.000-07:00

It has just occurred to me that I have not posted for a very long time. Well, what constitutes a very long time in the world of blog anyway. I am assuming that most of you are explaining away my absence by imagining that I finally cracked and garroted the DH with a guy rope is some fit of camping related mania and have been justly sent down for a twenty year stretch. This is not the case. I've just been a bit busy, which is a poor excuse for not blogging, but it's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.

The DH has had a lot of time off, which was great, and we've been all over the place, visiting friends and having fun. We've been to the Cotswolds, Stonehenge, Salisbury, Warwick, Worcester, Peterborough (very underrated Cathedral) and been on various second-hand book buying sprees and teas out and yes, even picnics. Now, I do have a few pictures of all of this gallivanting, but I haven't quite got around to attaching the camera cable and software to my new (second hand) PC so I can't post them. Yes, I'm finally blogging on a proper PC and not that bizarre laptop which had half of the keys missing. It's a smashing PC, actually, really fast, it was the DH's old work PC, given to him when his workplace was refurbished. Blimey, I'm rambling. Badly.

It's also been a bit full on with the girls. They've had a lot of friends around to play, and the eldest has had a sleepover. Freya has been Miss Maker all holiday, which is lovely, but those activities need plenty of supervision and we've all got into this rather cosy routine of morning busy-ness, but afternoon slob out movie watching, and this has been great. Favourite movie so far. Hmm, the kids will say Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, I will say A Night to Remember (not the orignial Titanic movie - but a bit of 1940s screwball fluff, excellent). Also, Freya has had a course of speech and language therapy over the past week, and this has meant thatI've had to walk her to the clinic every day and wait whilst she sorts out the difference between saying "k" and "t". The good news is that her therapist thinks she's responded so well to treatment that if the work is consolidated she probably won't need any more formal work. I think Freya and her speech problem may deserve a post on all its own. Not that I think many people would be interested in it, but that if our experience helps another worried family out there, then it's worth talking about.

Oh, what else have I been up to? Hmm, I've been knitting like a crazy women (I've gone shrug/bolero crazy and the girls have a shrug for every summer dress they own, but the joys of the "shrug", again, may deserve a post all of its own), I've read many good books (I really, really will do a few book reviews soon), and I've been baking just a little. Here are two good recipes. The first is for Marmalade Cake, as mentioned in the previous post, the second is for Ginger Shortbread - a superb vintage shortbread, a doddle to make and horribly, horribly moreish.

Marmalade Cake

6oz butter, 6oz caster sugar, 3 eggs, 10 oz self-raising flour, 3 level tablespoons of chunky marmalade, 2 oz mixed peel (chopped), grated rind of one orange, 5 tablespoons of water.

Line and grease a seven inch round cake tin. Beat butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Beat in egg yolks one at a time., the one tablespoon of flour. Stir in marmalade, peel, orange rind and water. Fold in the remaining flour. Whisk egg whites until just stiff and fold into the cake mixture. Turn into a prepared tin and bake at 350 F, gas mark 4 for one and a quarter hours until risen and firm to the touch. Icing (if wanted): Blend 4 oz of icing sugar with sufficient orange juice to give a stiff consistency. Pour over cake and allow to trickle down sides. Leave to set. Cut slices of crystallised orange in half and use it to decorate the top.

This recipe was taken from The Farmhouse Kitchen by Mary Norwak. A 1970s book which can still be bought for pennies in second hand bookshops and on Abe Books. It's highly recommended and contains many authentic regional country dishes. Here's an extract from the introduction to the book

Whether the windows of her kitchen overlook a green, growing field in Yorkshire of the tall golden wheat of Kansas, the country woman has a bond with her counterparts all over the world. She knows the bounty of the land, but also the fickleness of the weather and its effect on crops and income...The country woman is perhaps the most creative of all good cooks. She works from a pantry supplied by nature as well as the supermarket...

Now for Ginger Shortbread, a recipe taken from Farmhouse Fare, a fantastic little book from 1947, highly recommended to anyone self-sufficient-ish, or green living or simple living.

2 breakfastcupfuls of flour, 1 breakfastcupful of moist brown sugar, 1/2 lb butter, 2 teaspoonfuls of ground ginger, 1 scant teaspoonful of bicarb, pinch of salt.

Mix all the dry ingredients together, work in the butter until it becomes crumbly. Spread into and well-greased dripping-tin and bake in a moderate oven of 3/4 hour. Cut into finger whilst still warm and lift gently from tin with knife blade. This is an economical shortbread which is quickly made, and is a good stand-by as it keeps well in tins.

Now, I used American cup measures rather than breakfast cups, I baked it in a 20cm brownie tin, and I set the oven to about 150c, I also baked it for about 50 minutes. I didn't cut the fingers until the shortbread was nearly cool, and it cut well. It tasted lovely, like a cross between a ginger nut and left over crumble topping. Don't worry about the fact that you don't bind the shortbread, just press it gently into your tin, the moist brown sugar does the binding in the oven, just like it would a flapjack - for this reason you must not use white sugar.

At this point I'm going to award you a medal for getting this far in my post and not snoozing off. But you'll be glad to know that this disorganised ramble is about to finish as I must iron and pack for a trip to Spain! Yes, we're off to Spain for ten days to see my parents. Quelle joi! But before I go I want to tell you, gentle reader, that you're my little coo chi face, my oochi, coo chi face...no better still I'll let Gert Frobe and Anna Quale tell you for me. Enjoy this extreme piece of silliness, my friends and, until anon!

In Which She Has Strong Ideas on What Constitutes a Good Picnic

2009-08-03T07:51:00.000-07:00

Another golden rule is: don't lose your cool. Yogi Bear

A picnic is the Englishman's grand gesture, his final defiance flung in the face of fate. No climate in the world is less propitious to picnics that the climate of England, yet with a recklessness which is almost sublime the English rush out of doors to eat a meal on every possible and impossible occasion...Nowhere does the national passion for picnicking show itself more clearly that in our choice of occasions for high days and holidays. No other nation has so many out-of-doors celebrations...All classes and ranks share in this taste; bank holidays see Hampstead Heat turned into one vast picnic ground, and on Derby Day Epsom Downs are so closely packed with people that thew hole population of London seems to have gone a-picnicking. Taken from English Picnics by Georgina Battis-Coombe

Nothing says culinary disaster more than the average English picnic. Yet we're a hardy race venturing forth into the countryside, proclaiming that he weather will turn eventually, putting up with things and NOT COMPLAINING about the limp ham sandwich, warm pop and slightly crushed packet of cheese and onion we're presented when we need to find a little nourishment. This state of affairs, gentle reader, is not for me, when I picnic I like to have a proper feed, something nice to eat which restores my aching mind and body. This is because when I picnic it is always after I've erected an eight man tent. Let me expand on that. When I picnic it is always after I've erected an eight man ten WITH THE DH. Ah, the DH, the sweariest man in the West Midlands (and that, gentle reader, is saying something). Don't get me wrong, he doesn't swear that much at home, he saves his swears for special occasions: assembling flat pack furniture and putting up the tent: but when it does come out it pours forth in a torrent of foul, if creative, Anglo-Saxon, it's like an x-rated Norse saga of a swear, he can swear in blank verse, it doesn't stop, there are rhyming couplets and sub-plots, characterisation and surreal montage. Basically, the man can really, really, swear. So whilst standing in the middle of 20kg of canvas with my arms holding not-so-lightweight-pole-A aloft for what seems like an eternity I am simultaneously following the DH's foul instruction, attempting to make sure the kids don't listen to DH's foul instruction, and smiling apologies to the couple in the deck chairs reading The Daily Mail who are most disturbed by the DH's misuse of our ancient and venerable language.

After this I need to soothe his savage brow, after this I need to soothe my savage brow (it's either I eat, I do something unnatural to him with a tent peg), after this I need to give a peace offering to tently-neighbours, after this I have to physically remove my kids from the adventure playground I've sent them to in order to avoid their dad's linguistic pyrotechnics and to do all of this I need to be prepared. This is what I don't do.

I never make sandwiches. They go limp and unless they are made with lovely homemade bread they go soggy. Unfortunately, you need to dislocate you jaw like a python to eat a sandwich made with my homemade bread. Doorstops! Did someone say doorstops?
Sponge cakes and cakes with nice icing on are a bad idea. They get bashed about, the icing melts away or goes a bit off, they're a pig to cut unless you have a good knife and plate. Avoid Victoria sponges, carrot cakes and so on if you are to have a successful picnic.
Keep it simple. If you are the chief cook and bottle washer, you don't want to stress out preparing and packing a picnic. Don't bite off more than you can chew, as it were. Have three good dishes and some fruit, as a maximum.

This is what I do.

Pop an espresso machine on the campstove and have it fill with bloody good coffee whilst you dish out:

Tabbouleh*, French bread, hard boiled eggs, apricot muffins, oranges and lemon squash

Devilled chicken, potato salad, marmalade cake, apples, and ginger beer

Cornish pasties, homemade chutney, apples, lemon cake and squash.

You know, after this repast the DH transforms back into Husband and Father of the Year and flies kites/goes rockpooling/paddling/sandcastle making and I have another cup of coffee and break out the Persephone book I've been saving for my holidays, and all is well, gentle reader, all is well.

Now, if you want any recipes featured on the picnic menus, speak up and I will email you. But do it quick as I'm off to sunny/torrential** Devon in a bit!

Oh, but before you go. Here's how 1940s Americans liked to picnic. A formal, dignified, affair, I imagine, without the not-so-quet hum of dirty words reverberating in the background...

Almost everybody likes a picnic - except mother. But a picnic can be such a pleasant event for the young and old alike that mother should be able to work out a type of picnic which will permit her to enjoy the novelty in the open air as much as everyone.

Prepared Picnic No.2

Fried chicken

Cold Fried Corn

Sliced Tomatoes Cloe slaw

Buttered Bread or Rolls

Apple Pie Cheese

Milk Tea Coffee

Taken from Meta Given's Modern Encyclopedia of Cooking

*I make a big tabbouleh with chickpeas in it and lot of coriander and mint, not so much parsley

**Who can predict the future? Do I really want to know what's ahead? It's best not to mess with the kind of false prophesy they laughingly call weatherforecasting.

Tamiflu A-Go-Go and On Yer Bike!

2009-07-31T00:34:00.000-07:00

Poor old Dulcie (my eldest girl). She was a real sore throat-y, vomit-y, ear infection-y, conjunctivitis-y mess. Freya (the little one) was just fine, slightly snotty, slightly off her food, but otherwise bouncing off the walls and demanding a kitchen table full of paper, glue, feathers, beads and paint to keep her occupied, whist Dulcie lingered in her room, waiting for me to bring warm drinks and an hours reading (The Lady Grace Mysteries, very good for those who are 11-13 ish). Darn that swine flu, darn it to heck! (This is how I imagine good, Christian, women who post their thoughts on the internet swear. In real life I'm a little less Ned Flanders).

They're better now though (thank God), and Dulcie and the DH are off to the frozen North this weekend to sing a a rather beautiful priory. The little one and I are not going, simply because as soon as we get back we're off to Devon for our annual camping holiday and I just couldn't imagine having the time to pack for a choir trip and packing for a camping trip in just a few days, the logistics of the thing just twisted my melon, man. Poor Freya hasn't quite cottoned on that we're not going this year, I'm being too much of a coward to tell her the bad news because last year she loved it, it was all fairground rides and paddling and fish and chips and hardly ever sleeping. And of course, if you're four, the heady delights of Bridlington are a glamorous zenith.

I shall attempt to make her weekend as fun as possible. After we've aired the tent and packed the rucksacks and shopped for a picnic I'm going to take her to the Coventry Transport Museum. I know, you may think that such a trip is hardly comparable to an old fashioned seaside adventure, but to Freya the Coventry Transport Museum is heaven. When she first started school she did a project on the history of transport and they made a big deal about bicycles. What she doesn't know about Penny Farthings you could write on a postage stamp, but what she really likes, what she really, really, likes are the Safety Bicycles - because, as she says, ladies could ride them and not get their skirts caught in the wheels! For some reason, she finds the idea of ladies in long skirts riding bikes wonderful. So this spot of Youtubery is for her.

A while ago I watched a social history programme which featured many of the bikes in the museum and Paul Atterbury said that the wide use of bicycles at the turn of the last century has been credited with expanding the gene pool! This is a nice thought, bicycles truly are a very convivial technology!

Anyway, my youngest is not the only one who is a little bike crazy ce moment. I do not drive. To get about I either walk, use the bus or wait for the DH to come home so he may chauffeur me about like I'm Lady Muck. However, I used to ride a bike. A man's mountain bike. A man's mountain bike which I can't get on unless I contort myself into impossible positions raising my rear end and lifting my leg in a highly inappropriate way. When I used to ride it to and from work I wouldn't get on it on school premises just in case any of my pupils saw me. Freya would tell me that I need an old-fashioned lady's Safety Bicycle, so that I may ride it in a skirt, indeed so that I may ride it without having to visit the chiropractor. So right now I am hankering after a Pashley Princess.

Freya is, of course, quite right. I hanker after this bike. I hanker after it just like 19 year-old boys called Liam hanker after Subaru Imprezzas with alloy wheels. This bike is handmade in Stratford-Upon-Avon, so it's a local product (and therefore morally good), this bike is the Rolls Royce of the Safety Cycle. I shan't bore you with its particulars, you already know that it's expensive and I can't afford it. But a girl can dream. A girl can visit the Coventry Transport Museum and dream.

Take That, You Swine! Red Tories, Tales from a Victorian Problem Page and a Jolly Good Prayer

2009-07-14T04:51:00.000-07:00

So we have a case of suspected swine flu. Not a big deal so far, but I'm keeping an eye on the little one, making sure her temperature doesn't rise and she's nice and comfy. Poor little mite, she's missing all of the fun of the last week of term, but isolate her we must, as per the NHS regulations. Of course, I'm seeking revenge on the swine flu virus by making my favourite belly pork recipe. The DH once told me that here in the West Midlands pork is not a meal, but a way of life. He's right. Every little independent cafe in town, every butchers and a few fast food trailers all sell the beloved pork and stuffing batches/bap/cobs, and long may the pork products reign, that's what this goode huswyfe declares. Anyway, here's the recipe, which is more of a suggestion, really.

Slow Roasted Belly Pork with Garlic and Oregano

Ask your butcher to score the skin of your belly pork (buy it in one piece and not those piddly slices, you'll not regret it). Get your joint home and chop a goodly amount of garlic together with some fresh oregano (thyme or rosemary will do), mix the herbs and garlic with olive oil. Now, massage this embrocation into the belly pork, remembering to rub it into all of its crevices and in between the scoring of the skin. Season all over, thoroughly. Cover it and leave for at least an hour to marinade, and up to 24 hours in the fridge. Roast the belly pork for 30 minutes per pound in a slowish oven (125/150). When it's time is up turn the heat up to full blast and crackle that prok skin for ten minutes or so (keep checking and don't leave the kitchen). Yummy. Serve with garlic and chilli greens and mashed/crushed spuds.

Now, it will come as no surprise to regular readers that my political inclinations embrace neither laissez-faire morality nor laissez-faire economics, so I've been very interested in reading some of the articles by Phillip Blond, which have been fluttering around the press over recent months. And today I read a good blog post by Gerry Hassan arguing that Progressive Toryism/Red Toryism can't work because:

"It is obvious from this that Red Toryism is incompatible with the main body of thinking in contemporary Conservatism. This points to the Cameron Conservatives portraying themselves as radical, while staying close to the Thatcher/Blair consensus which has brought the country to the brink of ruin. This means that ‘blue Toryism' will prevail in debates within the party and once the Conservatives are in office."

It was an interesting blog post, but not entirely successful in refuting Blond's main ideas, which are really worth a read (no matter the colour of your politics or the country in which you live). However, what struck me was how perceptive and encouraging were Hassan's final thoughts:

"Intellectually, this signals the shape of the future faultlines of British politics. These are less defined by left versus right and more by authoritarianism versus radical decentralisers. The events of the last week have just defined the character of each side a little more clearly. On the authoritarian side stand Blair, Brown and Cameron, and most of their parties. On the other, decentralist side, can be found Red Toryism, John Cruddas and Labour reformers in Compass, and the Lib Dems.

The new establishment which has arisen in the last thirty years is fixated on a narrow and very hollow idea of ‘freedom' which is centred on our power to consume, shop, spend money and see ourselves as atomised, individualised ‘selves'. It still has control of the two main parties, most of the media and corporate opinion, while the radicals who see the sorry state this has led the UK to, have much less power, access and status, but a coherent case and a growing body of opinion prepared to listen to them."

Too true, Gerry. This voter is listening, and learning.

Now, onto wackier things. No, nothing can be wackier than British politics, so I shall re-phrase that last bit. Now, let us relax and indulge ourselves in a bit of vintage nonsense.

Ahh, the Victorians, so pathological in observing the social niceties were they that they could not bring themselves to publish the actual problems on the Problem Page, leaving the reader to guess at what was bothering Hopeless, from Stafford, from the delicate responses of the Agony Aunt. In this case, the Agony Aunt was Annie S. Swan, who, poor thing, was inundated by the missives of the Victorian lovelorn and desperate. Here are a few of her responses, as published in The Woman at Home magazine, circa 1890.

Certainly, MARGUERITE, absolutely decline all future acquaintance with the man. He is a coward and a poltroon. Cut him dead on the street, and everywhere else you may happen to meet him. I should take no other revenge. It would do you no good to make the matter public, and the probability is he would not care. Men like him are not easily wounded. You can very well leave him to One who has said, "Vengeance is mine."

I have not much patience with CONDOR BIKE. In the first place, she has no business to be secretly engaged to anybody, and if secretly, why? No.1 is sure to mind if his sweetheart accepts a bicycle from another man, even if he has not paid her any particular kind of attention. I should advise "Condor Bike" to lay the case before her own father and mother.

ORCHID. - It is a pleasure to answer such a tidy, concise, and practical letter; you give us no trouble at all. For your questions. 1. Soap frequently causes pimples, especially the cheap, much advertised kinds; Clever's are good, so is Dr Mackenzie's arsencial soap.

I hope you enjoyed those as much as I did! I've learnt such a lot from Mrs Swan: avoidance of poltroons at all costs; never accept a bike from a gent; and arsenic reduces pimples. I may post a few more, if they prove popular, so speak up gentle reader!

But before I go, here's an ancient Gaelic prayer that I hope you'll enjoy.

As the hand is made for holding and the eye for seeing, thou hast fashioned me for joy. Share with me the vision that shall find it everywhere: in the wild violet's beauty; in the lark's melody; in the face of a steadfast man; in a child's smile; in a mother's love; i n the purity of Jesus. Amen.

Homemaking - Saying Something Which Often Remains Unsaid

2009-07-09T02:46:00.000-07:00

A little while ago I said that I would post a series of cock-eyed philosophies on homemaking. However, life got it the way (as it so often does) and I was unable to post anything but unrelated bits and bobs until now. Now, I have the time to write, and hopefully discuss with others, a series on the general theory of homemaking.

First, I wanted to talk about "what remains unsaid" about homemaking, perhaps the more politically controversial aspects of the vocation. I warn you, this is a long read!

I think it's fairly obvious to say that having a home is a basic human right. In fact, we in the west see homelessness and dispossession as a terrible social ill. To be homeless is to be without hope. But we need to really define what a home is, because I do think that all of us feel that a home should be much more than a dwelling place, that there are intangible emotions and feelings we often associate with a true home, that home is still an ideal. What I have learnt, from collecting my vintage and antique homemaking books, is that many women throughout the centuries have been attempting to make those intangible emotions we relate with the word home, become more tangible, that we have been attempting to define "home" in a less clinical and more meaningful way, a way which is not simply associated with bricks and mortar but health and comfort.

It is fair to say that the Victorians were the most successful in defining home in more meaningful terms. For them, home was a sanctuary, a place of peace, a place of order and beauty and importantly a place distinctly different from the the workplace. Victorian Britain was a tough place to live and work, the industrial revolution and the concurring social and cultural revolutions meant that the populations had to be increasingly adaptive and creative. The pastoral way of life which the vast majority British people lived before the agricultural and industrial revolutions was in the process of vast and irrevocable change: people flocked to towns and cities, places like Birmingham were just villages in the early 18th century; men and women were beginning to no longer make products themselves to be sold by themselves at market, that is to say the role of the artisan was dwindling; and finally the workplace and the dwelling place became separated. It is no wonder that the cultural ideal as the home as a haven became prominent in the Victorian era, they needed this ideal of an unchanging place of peace in a world of change and turmoil.

However, what the Victorians left us with was the notion of "the separate spheres". When the workplace and the dwelling pace became separate, for example weavers left their small looms in their small cottage to work in huge mills in the industrial north and midlands, the workplace (at least for the middle classes) became a place for men, and home became a place for women. Men felt they were protecting their women from the moral and commercial uncertainties of the Victorian workplace, and the woman, as home-maker was a necessary part of the commercial machinery - how else were the workforce to be properly nourished and rested, if not for the woman at home?

Of course, this is not how my Victorian ancestors lived. My female relatives made underwear in one of the local factories, all of this whilst working alongside their older daughters and keeping house for the miner husbands. But, you can't dispute the fact that the home as haven and the separate spheres were a reality for the middle classes and the cultural ideal for the lesser orders. And, here lies the rub. By the end of the century many middle class women were anxious and desperate for more autonomy. The cultural ideal of the home being exclusively a woman's sphere had intensified to such an extent that women were prohibited from taking part in a cultural life which wasn't related to home and home-life, and many women, although not all, began to fight for access to the universities, professions and political life. Pity the poor Victorian spinster, intellectually capable of having a professional life but absolutely reliant on male relatives for her financial support, Victorian society was heavily skewed against the intellectual, middle class woman's needs, just as it disregarded the terrible hardships of work and home and family the working class woman had to endure.

Well, you know what happens next. First, women being accepted to the red-brick universities, then women being given degrees at Oxford and Cambridge (Dorothy L Sayers being one of the first) and then older women got the franchise and finally the franchise became on a par with men. Yet, amidst these new freedoms people did not loose a sense of the home as a haven, and home as a woman's place. Indeed, the idea that working class women should give up work upon marriage became increasingly popular, and it was not until the second wave of feminism came along in the early 1950s onwards that "home" became the monkey on women's backs it is today.

It is probably only fair that I should explain what I mean by that. The second wavers fought for parity on all fields with men, and for the early radicals the biggest stumbling block to economic, intellectual and sexual parity was the notion of home. Traditionally we have had a sense that a home and family are the foundations of a civil society, but building a home and raising a family takes work and sacrifice, and for the early radical feminists the sacrifice was entirely the woman's, and not just the woman as an individual (whom De Beauvoir concedes probably enjoyed her role as wife, mother and homemaker) but women as a whole, en masse, as it were. That is to say, the early theorists believed that for women to achieve true social parity the notion of the woman as homemaker needed to be attacked. The theory was that if women were to uniformly give up work upon marriage then the professional work of all women will bee seen as being lesser to men, that if the home was given such prominence in women's lives then their intellectual and professional capabilities were always going to be seen as "not their real job/position/place." The only solution to this would be for all women to work, for men to share household tasks equally with women, for childcare to be outsourced and the fabricated and idealised Victorian notion of the home haven to disappear into the history books.

I'll take a break from the extremely potted social history now, and I also want to apologise for condensing and the theoretical beginnings of an entire political movement into two paragraphs.

So where are we today? And, importantly why did I title this post "Something Which Often Remains Unsaid". Well, although some of the early aims of the feminist movement have not been achieved, I would say that the sisterhood has been largely successful. I did not have to fight for my place at university, and my vote (thank you Mrs. Pankhurst, thank you Mrs Henry Fawcett) and my husband sees me as his intellectual equal (thank you Ms De Beauvoir), neither does he see it as my place to clean the toilet - even though it is my job! (thank you Ms Friedan), but conversely I was never informed that being a homemaker was a suitable job for a woman. I was never told that the home and family were indeed the building block of a civil society. I was never told that leaving my children in the care of a paid professional would be so bloody heartbreaking. I was never told the sense of satisfaction and peace I would get through making a home for my husband and children. I was simply told that I was a child of reasonable intellectual capability and that I should go to university and upon leaving enter a profession. What we have to acknowledge is that in its formation feminist theory was based on getting women out of the home, whether they wanted it or not, and for a time the notion of a traditional home became taboo, derided, discounted and then, as the rhetoric mellowed, it became something that was just there for people to go back to after a day's work. Whilst our fore mothers strove to make home a tangible ideal, for us home is something either mythologically intangible or something to be bought and sold as a whole life-style package (as the property boom and bust has shown us). However, what our society shows us time and time again is that a good home is necessary for all our well-being, particularly the well being of our children.

Now, despite my love of vintage I do not see any particular period in history to be better than the one we live in now. I think there's a passage in Ecclesiastes which says we shouldn't yearn for the past. The past had it's own social ills, often far worse than our own. Say what you like about the 1960s radicals but they were primarily responsible for ridding our society of formal racism and other social inequalities, and for that I thank them. But unfortunately our post 1960s liberal society has thrown the baby out with the bathwater. By downplaying the role of home and home life in society we have increasingly commericalised our lives. That is to say, by promoting work life to the extent that it must be put above all other human considerations, we have little idea what to do with our free time other than spend the money which we have earned. We are increasingly unlikely to spend our time on family projects and community projects and we see ourselves as increasingly individual rather than part of something larger. We have become defined by what we do for a living, what we spend our money on and what we do as individuals. We no longer gain social status from being a good wife, husband, mother, father, daughter, son and neighbour - we are no longer relational. When we downgraded the role of home in society we downgraded the role of relationships, because what homemaking is, what it really, really, is, is the formation of strong, peaceful and loving relationships between a group of people who see a particular dwelling as a place of comfort.

I want to leave ideas upon how we go forward, how we can promote good and rewarding home lives, which benefit individuals, families and society in general, without treading on people's individual freedoms, to you, gentle reader. Then once the discussion has come to an end in the comments section I'll collate the ideas in a formal post. However, before I leave I would like to say thank you for getting through this mammoth ramble of mine.

The Raggle Taggle Gypsy and the Hearty Goodwyfe - Or, Does Genetic Inheritance Form Physical Capability?

2009-07-02T01:31:00.000-07:00

When we were first married the DH and I took a trip to Sorrento on the Amalfi coast. Whenever we went to a restaurant or shop the waiter or shop assistant would rattle onto the DH in Italian, simply because DH is so short, dark and curly-haired that they thought he was a native of Naples (they do the same in Spain), he looks as though he hails from the Med and not Northampton.

When you look at me you can tell that I'm English, and if not English then perhaps from Germany, or the Netherlands, or Denmark. I'm tallish (5'7"), heavy-ish, fair-skinned, blue eyed, stout of limb and hardy of body. There is no aristocratic frailty about me, I look like I could plough a field, and I probably could. Apart from yesterday, I don't think I could have ploughed a field yesterday, for yesterday I experienced heat exhaustion.

Now, we're having a heatwave in the UK, temperatures have hit the mid/high thirties and we're not used to it. I am not, and have never been "good" with heat, even as a child, even though I enjoyed the sunshine, I found real heat quite difficult to take and would often burn and throw up on our annual jaunt to Majorca. Yesterday, I did - as I normally do - a 3 mile school run (walking), went grocery shopping, dropped off some books and jam to a friend (walking) cooked tea, washed floors, folded laundry, vacuumed and the tutored in the evening. Towards the end of the day I began to feel distinctly ill; headachy, nauseous, fingers and ankles slightly swollen; it was so bad I could not eat my chicken salad, and that, gentle reader, proves without a shadow of a doubt, that I wasn't quite right. I was much better after I'd had a cold shower, a cool drink and had elevated my feet for an hour, but even so, the heat had affected me for the worse.

The DH loves this weather. He's like a lizard and thrives and basks in it. He comes home from work unusually chipper and suggests long, country walks. Indeed, when we visit my parents in Spain, whilst I sit quietly in the shade, he climbs mountains. The heat energises him, recharges his batteries, and brightens his personality. In short, the way the heat affects him is absolutely opposite to the way it affects me.

Here's the thing. The DH's maternal grandfather was proper Romany Gypsy, with a caravan and everything. This is why the DH is so dark, his genetic predisposition to dark skin and brown curls is because of the gypsy in him. Is there something about his genetic make-up that "remembers" an Egyptian past, that is to say, even though the DH's ancestors came to England hundreds of years ago, is there something about his genetic type which makes him not only resilient to heat, but to thrive in it?

Conversely, my maiden name is very English, it's an Old English word, and is also the name of a village not 15 miles from where I live. Is it possible that my ancestors, being quite the opposite to gypsies, have been Midlanders since the Anglo-Saxon times, staying put in cold, drizzly England for years and years? Is this why I find heat in England to be an abhorrence?

Now, these are just the musings of a heat addled brain, but I'm interested to see your experience of the heat. Are you dark and bask in it, like my DH? Or, are you fair and hate it, like me? Or, and I suppose this is more probable, you can simply take it or leave it?

Oh, and by the way, despite the DH's being a raggle taggle gypsy, he has never offered to read my palm, cook me a hedgehog, sell me some pegs or tarmac the drive (more's the pity). He does, however, do a mean David Essex impression. Enjoy the youtubery, goode huswives!

More Wise Words on Family Life

2009-06-26T08:31:00.000-07:00

Our children are given to us for a time to cherish, to protect, to nurture, and then to salute as they go their separate ways. They too have the light of God within, and a family should be a learning community in which children not only learn skills and values from parents, but in which adults learn new ways of experiencing things and seeing things through young eyes. From their birth on, let us cultivate the habit of dialogue and receptive listening. We should respect their right to grow into their own wholeness, not just the wholeness we may wish for them. If we lead fulfilling lives ourselves, we can avoid overprotecting them or trying to live through them... The family is a place to practise being 'valiant for the truth'. We can live lives of integrity, letting both 'yes' and 'no' come out of the depth of truth within us, careful of the truth in all our dealings, so that our words and our lives speak the same message. We cannot expect our children to be honest with us or anyone else if they hear us stretching the truth for convenience or personal gain. They are quick to catch such discrepancies. Moreover, we should trust them enough to be honest with them about family problems - disasters, serious illness, impending death. It is far harder on children not to know what is wrong.
Elizabeth Watson, 1980 - Taken from Quaker Faith and Practice.

So You Feel Like Doing a Spot of Spatchcocking, Do You?

2009-06-26T02:37:00.000-07:00

The response I had in the last post regarding the arcane and mysterious art of spatchcocking was tremendous, so I thought I should post the recipe so you could all try a spot of spatchcocking this weekend...I do hope the weather is with you, as it is always best to spatchcock whilst the sun shines.

Anyway, no picture I'm afraid, we sucked the flesh of the poor animal's bones way before I even thought of getting the camera out, and the only pictures I could find of spatchcocked bird on the internet belonged to other bloggers, and I draw the line at passing off someones elses spatchcocking as my own. That, gentle reader, just wouldn't be cricket.

So, a spatchcocked bird is a flattened whole bird. Flattening a whole bird is a good idea for the following reasons.

It takes a marinade incredibly well, an unflattened bird does not.
It is more economical to spatchcock and marinade than buy various chicken pieces and marinade.
You can cook a whole chicken in half the time if it is flattened.
You generally grill a spatchcocked bird. This means the skin is crisp and barbecued, the flesh is beautifully moist and you can really taste the marinade ingredients.
Keeping chicken on the bone, always makes it more moist and tasty.

So here's how you flatten a bird.

Turn your chicken breast side down. With a stout pair of poultry/kitchen scissors cut along the middle of the chicken, pretty much alongside the bird's spinal column. It is best to start at the side of the parson's nose.

Now, cut along the other side of the parson's nose so you have removed the entire backbone of the bird.

Turn the bird breast side up. With both your hand press down hard on the mid section of the chicken to break its breastbone. I find this easy as I put my, not inconsiderable, weight behind the activity. But featherweights may need to give it some welly, or just give up as it will be fine either way.

Next snip off the wing tips as they burn easily.

Now, make small slits in the skin of the chicken breast and slip the bottom the chicken legs into these skin pockets. This is to make the chicken flat for cooking, but means you don't have to faff around with bamboo skewers.

*********************************************

Congratulations, you have just done extreme violence to a chicken, therefore, my friend, you have spatchcocked. Now, you must bathe the bird in all the herbs and spices of Arabia. Or, pop it in a casserole with some lemon juice, garlic (crushed but still with skin), rosemary (or oregano, thyme, whatever) and a goodly glug of olive oil. Marinade for as long as you can, overnight if possible.

A spatchcocked bird is best cooked on a barbecue. Make sure your coals are just right and cook for roughly twenty minutes each side. Check in its fleshy crevices to make sure the juices run clear before you gobble it up. It's best to let it rest for ten minutes or so before you do eat it. You can grill (broil USA?) the bird, I've done this, but blimey, make sure your extractor fan is up high and all of the windows are open, as, as the song goes, smoke gets in your eyes! I have not roasted a spatchcock, but I hear tell it takes next to no time, compared with an unflattened bird.

So with that I'll say, happy spatchcocking, goode huswives and anon!

I Really Must Spatchcock a Chicken

2009-06-25T04:32:00.000-07:00

Last night I made wild foodie promises to the DH (and foodie kiddies) about making marinated spatchcock chicken for dinner, accompanied by a Greek salad and new potatoes. Yes, the sun is shining in England, and I'm all of a Mediterranean vibe. However, I've been faffing around in the garden all morning, pulling weeds in a lackadaisical fashion and drinking coffee with real purpose and dedication. Frankly, I'm not in the mood for spatchcocking...I've told the DH time and time again, that I must be in the right frame of mind for such things (phnar, phnar). However, I've got to get on with it as I'm off to a yoga class soon. I haven't been to a yoga class in years, but I made the mistake at mentioning to a few friends a the school gates that I might attend a class and it all snowballed, so that my "might" became a definite social event. I'm sure I'll enjoy it when I get there, it's just the last time I went, back when I was a teen, the class was full of militant hippies who'd just eaten piles of mung bean stew. When they all bent down to do the "Salute to the Sun" ...well, the answer my friend was blowing in the wind, and it was enough to make my eyes water.

You know, I didn't come online to make fart jokes, honestly I didn't. It's just that I read something really great last night and I'd like to share it with you.

...that everyday, ordinary life lived faithfully is where the glory of God is best reflected - in our homes, communities, jobs, our art, charitable enterprises, and so on. Of course, the truth is told and believed first (truth has content), but after that comes the actual living, being and doing.

Ordinary home life matters for everyone. How we arrange children's lives matters terribly. Starve them physically, emotionally, or mentally; cheat or abuse them in their formative days, and we will throw away their opportunity to develop properly. We can and will destroy lives. And this is a most terrible thing. Not only will their personal lives be damaged, but if that damage involves enough young human beings, the culture will become distorted.

Most of us feel we live in distorted communities. Many people are already so scarred that they can no longer enjoy the simple things in life - such as nature, good conversation with friends with laughter punctuating thought-provoking discussion, a meal enjoyed in leisure, the company of a child, the peace and quiet of gazing at an afternoon sky as one rests after work, lingering over a cup of tea.

Taken from For the Family's Sake, by Susan Schaeffer Macauley

Wasn't that good stuff! Now, I really must spatchcock that chicken. Anon, fellow huswives!

Symphony of Sorrowful Songs, Blaming, Miss Read, Advice

2009-06-23T02:52:00.000-07:00

I hope you enjoyed this beautiful piece of music by Gorecki. Sometimes it's good to feel the strong emotions music and art promote, perhaps because we can feel a oneness with our fellow man when emotion is shared in such a way, perhaps great artists have the knack for expressing what we cannot?

I just thought that I would give you an update on my father in law. He is doing a little better, his pain comes and goes, but it is manageable. I want to thank you all for your kind prayers and thoughts, I truly believe they have helped us, and my father in law, get through some difficult times.

For all of you bookish types out there, I thought I'd share some recommendations. First, Blaming by Elizabeth Taylor (no, not that one!). A strange, clever novel, whose main character is so intensely human the reader's sympathy with her shifts on a constant basis. I think Taylor understands that people's inner narrative is often not as generous as their outward actions, I know this is true of me, therefore I found the book to be rather real, and often quite touching. Oh, and here is a link to a Guardian article about her work and a recent biography.

Secondly, I've been eating up the Miss Read Fairacre novels. The literary equivalent of gobbling buttered toast simply to comfort oneself. Considering my proclivities towards country living, happy childhoods and well stocked pantries I've come rather late to Miss Read, however what a joy it's been to read them!

Now, here's a poem for all you Pooh Bears to philosophise over.

Advice

When you are faced with two alternatives

Choose both. And should they put you to the test,

Tick every box. Nothing is ever single.

A seed's a tree's a ship's a constellation.

Nail your true colours to this branching mast.

Robert Crawford

Well, anon gentle reader, I hope to see you soon!

On a Slight Hiatus

2009-06-11T03:35:00.001-07:00

I just thought I would let regular readers know that I shan't be posting for a little while. We've just learnt that my father-in-law is very poorly and things are a bit up in the air, so I don't know what I'll be doing and where I'll be doing it for the next few days. I should be back online very soon. In the meantime, if you could keep us in your prayers I would be very grateful.

The Everyday Philosophies of an English Housewife

2009-06-09T02:29:00.000-07:00

For the past three days I've been stuck, numb-bummed, on the sofa watching Cbeebies with a poorly five year old. Wrapped in blankets, snuggling up, commenting on Mr Maker and Big Cook, Little Cook. I've enjoyed myself, not just because now she's growing up my baby rarely wants to snuggle with mummy and watch the telly, but because it has given me a bit of an excuse to de-busy and catch up with some reading. My husband laughs at my proclivity towards popular philosophy, asking if I've got the Beano stuffed between the pages of Consolations of Philosophy or (his personal favourite) "won't that hurt your brain, Pooh Bear?" However, I'm of a philosophical nature, which doesn't make me one of the world's great thinkers, but does mean I am inclined to be interested in the human condition, and indeed does mean that I'm inclined to stare into space deep in thought over the minutiae of every day life. Needless to say, my mother calls me "dolly daydream."

For years now I've been trying to get to grips with a personal philosophy of the home: the home's function, both on an individual level, a familial level and a societal level: and it seems to me that a philosophy of the home would be a many stranded affair, encompassing ideas on psychology, child psychology, sociology, politics, practicality and faith. And, for me, this philosophy would be a matter of deep, personal conviction. It also seems to me to be a large, long-term task, one in which I must live and learn. I feel very unsure about making sweeping, public proclamations about what constitutes a good home, as one thing I do know is that home is as finely nuanced and individual as the people who contribute to it, but I do think I have some reasonably well-formed ideas, and I'd like to share them with you, as I hope a discussion with my readers will help me clarify my thoughts and could help any younger people out in the ether who need to get to grips with the intricacies of the occupation which will take up most of their time: homemaking.

I feel slightly like George Eliot's Edward Casaubon when I talk like this, the poor man from Middlemarch whose life's work, A Key to all Mythologies, was an impossible attempt at Christian syncretism, a failed epic and a disappointment. However, my task is less grandiose and complex, and I hope not to be doing it alone. So over the next few weeks I shall be posting on home philosophies and I do hope that you will join in. Until then, anon, gentle reader!

Happy Birthday Mother-Mine!

2009-06-08T00:56:00.001-07:00

I love you mum, have a great day and....
shine on you crazy diamond!

A Right Funny Nun You Are!

2009-06-04T06:29:00.000-07:00

For your amusement, here's the late, great, Jake Thackray singing Sister Josephine.

Yes, no longer will the cloister toilet set stand upright!

Oh, I'm having a proper Jake-fest today. Here's the very beautiful Hair of the Widow of Bridlington.

By Popular Demand - Turkish Delight!

2009-06-03T02:41:00.000-07:00

This is not one of my pictures, but one from Flickr!

Once there were four children whose names were Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy. This story is about something that happened to them when they were sent away from London during the war because of the air-raids.

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe - C.S. Lewis

For those of you who have never tried the exotic sweetie that got Edmund into such a lot of trouble in Lewis' wonderful book, here's the recipe. We made this during mid term break, because my girls are Narnia nuts, and my eldest loves Turkish Delight. I've taken the recipe verbatim from Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall's Treats from an Edwardian Country House site, and he says that although this is not the way the Turks make their delight, it is an original Edwardian recipe, which for me makes it more evocative. This truly is the kind of sweetie a young "Jack" Lewis would've eaten!

Turkish Delight

2 tablespoons rose-water
25g powdered gelatine
270ml cold water
450g granulated sugar
few drops pink food colouring
25g icing sugar
25g cornflour

Mix 1 tablespoon rose water with 3 tablespoons cold water. Sprinkle the gelatine evenly over the liquid, but don't stir. Leave for about 5 minutes so the gelatine absorbs the liquid and swells into a spongy mass.

Gently heat the sugar in 270ml water in a heavy-bottomed pan, stirring gently until the sugar has dissolved.

Add the gelatine to the pan, stirring constantly until it has melted, then bring to the boil. Boil over a low to medium heat for 20 minutes, stirring fairly often, then remove from the heat and add the remaining rose water and the colouring.

Pour the mixture into a wetted 15 x 15cm tin and chill for 24 hours until set.

Sieve the icing sugar and cornflour together and sprinkle evenly over a piece of greaseproof paper. Turn the Turkish delight out onto the powdered paper and cut it into 2.5cm squares with a sharp knife. Toss well in the sugar mixture.

****

When we made this, we found that we needed slightly more icing(confectioner's) sugar than the recipe recommended. It was such a lot of fun to make! Why not have look at the rest of Hugh's Edwardian concoctions, it's such a great site for the adventurous huswife!

Well, anon, gentle reader, until tomorrow!

Whitsun and Pentacost - The White and the Red

2009-05-29T07:56:00.001-07:00

Pentacost, for those not in the know, is this Sunday, and in our church we celebrate by wearing something red for the occasion symbolising, I suppose, the wind and fire that came to the Apostles when they were visited by the Holy Spirit - am I the only one who has a mind's eye picture of a William Blake engraving when they read Acts 2:1-4? Traditionally, in England, Pentacost is referred to as Whitsun, a word derived from the phrase "white Sunday". Pentacost was a time when many were Baptised and Confirmed, a time when many people would wear white - hence white Sunday, Whitsun. Now, just to be confusing, there was a national holiday (Holy Day) on Whitsun Monday for years and years, but in relatively recent times the holiday has been secularised into Spring Bank Holiday, which sometimes falls on the actual Pentacost and sometimes falls a week before or after. However, people still call the Spring Bank Holiday "Whitsun", and get bewildered by what is what. Have I befuddled you? I jolly well hope not!

I do like a nice hot Whitsun weekend. Not just because fiery weather seems appropriate to the coming of the Holy Spirit, but because Whitsun always signifies to me the very start of the summer. We've had a beautiful day today, and we've done a few Pentacost preparations to help us celebrate the festival as a family. First, we've made a starter for a fiery Ginger Beer, somehow appropriate for Pentacost, but not to be imbibed this Sunday but on Midsummer day, when the whole brew will be ready for a picnic (weather permitting). Oh, and Midsummer often falls on the feast of John the Baptist's birthday - what John the Baptist has to do with Ginger Beer I don't know, even I can't stretch the liturgical food link to that extent! Anyway, here's a pretty traditional recipe for Ginger Beer.

In a large jar put:

1 tbs dried yeast

2 cups of water

2 tsp sugar

2 tsp dried ginger

Feed this every day for 7 days with a tsp of ginger and a tsp of sugar. Keep it in the fridge, it's very volatile in hot weather. Don't stir it. After the 7 days are up, strain it through a jelly bag (or somesuch) and add:

the juice of two lemons

2 pints of boiling water

1 lb sugar

Make this mixture up to a gallon with cold water and bottle it (use plastic bottles if you fear explosions) and pop the beer in a cool place for a fortnight. It will be ready to drink by Midsummer if you make it this week.

Oh, you can keep the residue from the jelly bag and use it to start another batch of beer. Just halve the residue and add 2 cups of water, 2 tsp of ginger and 2 of sugar and begin again (just like Finnegan).

You could be understandably mistaken in thinking that the above picture was a steaming bowl of pond weed, but in fact it is the beginnings of Elderflower Champagne, a grandiose name for a very simple country drink. If your elderflowers are out, now is the time to pick them - a nice, dry day.
1/2 - 1 lb of elderflower and their stemmy parts (no leaves)
6 oz sugar
The rind and juice of 1 lemon
1 tsp white wine vinegar
2 1/2 pints of boiling water
Put all ingredients into a large bowl. Steep for two days and two nights. Strain and bottle. My book says to keep "for some years if you wish a still Bordeaux". However, can be drunk young and fizzy on Midsummer along with the Ginger Beer!

Now, if you don't quite feel up to making hedgerow homebrew you can gather those beautiful, abundant white blossoms and still put them to good use. Why not try this Elderflower and Gooseberry Jam I posted about last year? Or, perhaps my beloved Hugh's Elderflower Cordial (if you're a novice freeze, don't bottle, the cordial, just so you don't have to get citric acid from the chemist...the lady from Boots thinks I run a crack den).

How about a bit of Whitsun crafting? We made a mobile of white doves this afternoon, and they dangle gracefully over our kitchen table. You can find the template for the doves on this site, and you can decorate them in any way you wish.

I suppose it would be obvious to decorate them with the Gifts of the Spirit, but eagle eyed readers will spot that we have the Fruits of the Spirit on our doves, simply because I found it easier to explain the "fruits" to my five-year-old. How can you properly define wisdom? What do you say about speaking in tongues!?! Another option would be to put simple prayers on the wings of the doves. Anyway, I'll list the gifts, and then I'll list the fruits, so if you're new to it all you have a bit of a one-stop-shop of Whitsun dove making!
The Gifts of the Spirit are: wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, miracles, prophecy, discerning spirits, divers tongues, interpreting tongues.
The Fruits of the Spirits are: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, self-control.

Now, are you mystified with all of this talk of gifts and fruit and Pentacost and Whitsun? All right then, you're allowed to go and put your feet up and have a nice, chilled glass of Ginger Beer!

Finally, a great medieval poem I like to think of when I see the sap rising and the sun shining!

Cuckoo Song

Summer is y-comen in,

Loude sing cuckoo!

Groweth seed and bloweth meed

And sping'th the woode now-

Sing cuckoo!

Ewe bleateth after lamb,

Low'th after calfe cow;

Bullock starteth, bucke farteth.

Merry sing cuckoo!

Cuckoo, Cuckoo!

Well sing'st thou, cukcoo:

Ne swike thou never now!

Sing cuckoo, now! Sing, cuckoo!

Sing cuckoo! Sing cuckoo, now!

And with that I shall say, anon, gentle reader!

Treats from an Edwardian (and a Victorian, and a Georgian) Country House

2009-05-26T08:45:00.000-07:00

Last night I dreamt of Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. In my dream he came to my home and taught me to crochet a granny square. The resulting throw was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen, with tasteful vegetable died yarn, soft and sumptuous, all homely luxury. When I finally put down the crochet hook, Hugh laid the throw on my bed and I shouted "in your face, Jane Brocket" and Hugh gave me a high five. Then I woke up. What a great dream that was!

I'll leave you to do the Prof. Freud bit, but I shall tell you that the blessed Hugh is once again in my thoughts because Treats from an Edwardian Country House is being repeated on one of those numerous Discovery channels. The eldest girl and I have been loving it. We're going to make Turkish Delight this mid-term break, just like Hugh did. Anyway, what I liked about the series is that the charming Mr Whittingstall has such fun making and doing and eating all in the interest of historical verity. Here's the link to the web-page: great recipes; great household tips; and fun things to do, including a quiz on where you're likely to be on the Edwardian social strata.

So, I thought I'd take a tip from Hugh and trawl through my ancient and venerable cookbooks in search of little luxury. The aim is, to find various recipes for lovely, sumptuous treats, in the style of Fortnum and Masons, but at the fraction of the cost, because being good, prudent huswives, we know that homemade is best for the purse and best for the health.

First up is recipe taken from Mrs Dering's Cookery Book. Mrs Dering was the cook and housekeeper at Baddesley Clinton, during the Georgian period and her personal notebook full of old receipts was found by the National Trust, when they took over the running of the house, and transcribed into a little booklet you can buy for just a few pounds. Why not try some Georgian Raspberry Vinegar, to refresh you during those long, hot summer afternoons?

Fill a jar with ripe raspberries. Then pour on them as much vinegar as the jar will hold. Let it stand ten days. Strain it off and to every pint of juice add 12 oz. of loaf sugar. Boil it as other syrup. One third or fourth part mixed with spring water is a very pleasant cooling cordial.

We move swiftly onto the Victorian period, and who is the epitome of good, Victorian housekeeping? Why, my old favourite Mrs Beeton, of course. Now, although I am well aware that the Victorian era was not renowned for its love of luxury (more it's love of corporal punishment and boiled mutton) I have found a treat which those of us who find ourselves on our feet for most of the day would appreciate.

Feet, Tired,- Dissolve a handful of salt in water as hot as can possibly be endured. Soak the feet for ten minutes, then thoroughly dry. Dust the feet and also inside the stockings with boracic powder 1 part, powdered starch 2 parts, powdered French chalk 1 part, to which is added a few drops of eucalyptus oil.

Hmm, note the use of the words "endured" and "thoroughly." Yes, a very Victorian luxury! But, I do think soaking one's feet after a hard day in the garden, is one of life's greatest pleasures...read a novel and sip raspberry vinegar as well and go the whole shebang!

Now, for the roaring twenties and those new Georgians, in the form of Lady Jekyll's Kitchen Essays, a book which really is all frivolous luxury. Dig this!

Chesnuts Mont Blanc - Italians are fond of sweets, but are unimaginative in their preparation. Here is a delicious one, for which the chestnuts of Vallombrossa yearly patter to the ground in their thousands.

Take of them roasted and peeled, 1 pound and put in a stewpan with vanilla pod, 1/4 pound sugar, a little milk and 1/4 pound best chocolate. Cook slowly until soft. Rub through coarse sieve into a basin-shaped mould and well sprinkled with chocolate. Turn out, and mask to whiteness with thinly whipped sweetened cream. Serve on a silver dish.

And finally, something of a sensible luxury. Why not make some Home-Made Citrus Peel whilst the Spanish oranges and lemons are still cheap and in season? A delicious treat, but a lovely addition to home-made Christmas cake and pudding, as amidst all this indulgence there is always duty, alas.

Home-Made Citrus Peel - Collect 2 or 3 dozen halves of citrus fruits: oranges lemons or fresh grapefruits. 2 good tablespoons of common (not iodized) salt to 1 quart cold water. 4 cups of sugar to 2 cups of water. Sugar for sprinkling.

Strip out sectional pith and put peels into salt solution. Leave for 10 days to 2 weeks. Turn peels every day. Finally, strain and rinse thoroughly. Boil very gently until just soft enough to pierce with a skewer, but don't overcook else peel will fall to piece before finished. Put into a syrup made a s follows. Boil the sugar and water until syrup spins a thread when dropped from tip of a spoon. Syrup must thread. Put peels into syrup and boil for five minutes. Leave in pan until next day. Lift peels out on to plate, boil up syrup, replace peels and boil for three minutes. Do this again next day (three times in all). Then lift peels out while still hot on to a large flat china dish, standing them up to retain a little syrup in each. Syrup can be re-used for another batch. The drying in sometimes slow, but dish should be placed in sunny window when possible, or in a barely warm oven. Drying takes about one week at least and peels should then be sprinkled with sugar and packed in wax paper.

Yes, I know, this is why we buy candied peel! However, as much as a faff as the above looks, what a sense of achievement you'd feel after achieving such a marathon of boiling and sugaring and brining! What a delicious frugal treat to chew on! What sunshiny glories shall be uncovered on Stir-up Sunday when you make that Christmas pud! What luxury!

I leave you to indulge yourselves, fellow huswives. Anon!

Ascension Day

2009-05-21T04:47:00.000-07:00

The Collect
GRANT, we beseech thee, Almighty God, that like as we do believe thy only-begotten Son our Lord Jesus Christ to have ascended into the heavens; so we may also in heart and mind thither ascend, and with him continually dwell, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, one God, world without end. Amen.

The Gospel St. Luke xxiv. 49.
JESUS said, Behold, I send the promise of my Father upon you: but tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be endued with power from on high. And he led them out as far as to Bethany, and he lifted up his hands, and blessed them. And it came to pass, while he blessed them, he was parted from them, and carried up into heaven. And they worshipped him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy: and were continually in the temple, praising and blessing God.

In Which She Talks About Child Well-Being...Again!

2009-05-20T02:22:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, on the BBC breakfast news, there was, what appeared to be, a sweet little news article about a new pre-schoolers' programme on Cbeebies. We like Cbeebies in our house, the programmes tend to be of good quality, there are no advertisements, most of the programmes are age appropriate. This new programme is called Waybuloo, and focuses on teaching children emotional literacy; how to manage their emotions, be a good citizen, learn to share, how to be a good friend. At the end of the segment the reporter turned to an expert in child development and asked her opinion on the programme. The expert's response, I feel, was not what the BBC was hoping for. She stated that there has been a marked rise in the incidence of children with poor mental health, poor self esteem, and poor behavioural skills in the past decade or so, that there was indeed a real and desperate need for us to attempt to improve the emotional intelligence of our nation's children. She said that the best way to teach children emotional literacy was for them to be with their parents going about their day to day business; shopping, visiting friends, going to the park and so on. She said that watching a telly programme was not going to cut it. She said that children should be watching less telly and not more, that telly was counterproductive to the emotional well-being of our children.

This was all she said. However, what struck me about the whole three minute segment was that it should have been a lot longer. We need a real and honest debate the state of our children's well -being, we need to make a discussion of these issues as long running and as all consuming as the MP's allowances scandal, the bailing out the banks scandal and all of the other economic scandals which we've been discussing ad nauseum since the stock market crashed last year.

So, let us deconstruct the three minute article on yesterday's breakfast news.

Point One: our children need educating in emotional literacy.

The idea that the nation's children are somehow in need of help stems from anecdotal evidence supplied by school teachers, health professionals and nursery nurses. The Unicef survey on child well being appears to back up this anecdotal evidence, as does the Children's Society research on child mental health. When it comes to making our children happy and well adjusted we are doing poorly. For some years now, the National Curriculum has tried to address the emotional education of our young people, largely through PSHE (Personal, Social and Health Education), which part of the compulsory education of pupils from the Foundation Stage up until Year 11. Indeed, anecdotal evidence, from Foundation Stage teachers, shows us that their time is increasingly taken up with teaching children the "basics" of good hygiene (including potty training), sitting still, non-violence, using a knife and fork, manners, sharing toys, as well as the weekly PSHE lesson the government has outlined in the curriculum. Basically, many children are starting school poorly socialised. As an ex-teacher, albeit in Keys Stage 3, 4 and 5, I can honestly say that we felt increasingly responsible for the kind of teaching that used to be the province of the family. Not just the obvious sex education, but teaching appropriate expected behaviour, deferred gratification, work ethic, good personal hygiene, respectful language. There were one or tow incidences when parents felt that it was my fault that a child could not behave, not just in school, but also out of school and at home.

Part Two: expert says that the best way to teach emotional literacy is for a child to accompany their parents in their day to day business.

This is an incredibly simple solution to what seems like a very complex problem. Children are to learn emotional skills by looking to the lives of their parents. But what is "day to day business"? Can I suggest a day of shopping, cleaning, playing with friends, visiting parent's friends and family, going to the park and playing with different children, visiting the library, playing with siblings, eating dinner together, helping mum and dad make tea and set the table, watching the TV together. This list all seems very "normal" and "achievable" and I can see a myriad of opportunities in the day I've described to help little ones learn to manage their emotions. From praising their abilities as world's greatest four year-old footballer/painter/dancer/Lego builder/ whatever (self-esteem), to saying they can have sweeties only after they've eaten their tea (deferred gratification), for teaching them that when we visit great aunt Nellie we must be quieter than we would be at our home (behaviour has to be different in certain settings), to helping them eat with cutlery and wipe their own bottoms (good health and self-sufficient hygiene), to giving a cuddle when they're upset ( validating feelings), helping them negotiate with another child who wants to play with their toys (sharing and empathising). I could go on, but I think I've made my point. We can do many things with our children, which cost absolutely nothing, to enable them emotionally.

But if you're canny you'll recognise a huge flaw in my list. I have listed the "day to day" business of the average family twenty or thirty years ago. Many modern families simply do not have the time for the kind of normality I've described. In fact, if there have been marked social changes in human behaviour in the past twenty or thirty years it is these vast differences in the "day to day". Now, more than ever, families are consumed by their paid working week. Fathers, as well as mothers, are working increasingly longer hours and have little time for the domestic banalities which make for emotional teaching opportunities. Few families have time to work and play together and family life is increasingly fragmented, and if not fragmented then segmented, by our choice of media and use of those few, precious leisure hours.

Part Three: children should be watching less telly and not more telly.

I suppose what the expert was trying to say is that TV can cause a sense of ill-being in children as it constantly exposes them to sights and emotions which are far too sophisticated for them to cope with emotionally. The television is a poor teacher, particularly if it is not controlled. Now, when we watch a reasonable amount of TV aimed at pre-schoolers we can see that it is often far too sophisticated for them to cope with: too scary, too emotionally advanced, too adult. I have noticed an increasing tendency for TV aimed at the very young to include narrative based upon emotional peril; characters not owning up about being naughty and letting another character take the blame, characters being accused of stealing, characters loosing someone or something dear to them, characters who feel guilt after breaking a promise. These are common scenarios in what appear to be the basis of what many of us consider to be quality children's programming. However, these cartoons are asking our children to cope with emotions and scenarios far too advanced for them to decipher and make sense of. Whilst many of us are too busy to teach the very basics of emotional literacy, the television is exposing them to the kind of advanced perilous emotions they are simply not ready for. This advanced emotional programming carries on as our children age. Take the average Barbie cartoon, the narrative is appropriate for an eleven year old to handle, and may indeed help them to negotiate problems which appear in their friendship groups, however, it is a six year old girl who watches Barbie...eleven year olds are busy watching Friends or The OC.

In conclusion.

The emotional education of any child is the responsibility of the parents. It is an "in house" job and should not be out-sourced to school teachers, health visitors or even the blessed BBC. These organisations can help, can consolidate emotional learning, but they should not be the main provider. However, funding aimed at improving childhood well-being is consistently given to organisations and not families. For example, childcare funding is dramatically weighted towards nursery care and against at-home care. Statistics show that this has helped the learning ability of children who were terribly at risk due to poor family circumstances, but has the opposite affect on the learning ability of children from the average family. If the normal "day to day" business which the expert in the news article described is the best environment for a child to grow in emotional intelligence then perhaps the government should give equal weighting of funding to parents who choose at-home care for their children, as this "normality" is a fair description of the life of a stay at home parent, or job sharing parents, or parents who are lucky enough to have work which is not all consuning of their precious time. British parents who choose this way of caring for children currently pay 44% more tax than their European counterparts, and the Working Family Tax Credit (the old Married Man's Allowance) is heavily weighted towards those who pay for childcare. Also, and importantly, if our aim is to achieve "normality" in the care of our pre-schoolers then we need practised and targeted policy in the application of funding to help those families who come from a background of cultural poverty, and not just concern ourselves with the plight of the over-worked middle classes. Moreover we need an honest and loving debate on the moral implications of family life in the twenty-first century.

Now, I don't have all the answers. I just have a lot of questions and a real passion for family living, community life and the well-being of my country's next generation. This article was not an attempt to bash working mums, as I soon will join that band of sisters, but an attempt to express the real concerns I have regarding the consistent downplaying of what constitutes good parenting, and effective family life, by the powers that be. I'd love to hear your thoughts on the matter, but I'll leave you with the links to a few organisations which debate these matters in greater detail than I ever could.

Civitas - a think-tank concerned with "civil" living, education, the EU and family life.

Time for Parenting - a group of full-time mothers who lobby for equal funding for at home care.

Oliver James - a child-psychologist whose short articles on parenting have appeared in the Guardian just recently, but is, however, more famous for his books Affluenza and The Selfish Capitalist.

The Children's Society - a charity concerned with the well-being of children in the UK.

Each of these sites have links to others dealing with similar issues.

If Ye Love Me

2009-05-10T07:49:00.000-07:00

Family Night Fun

2009-05-10T06:08:00.001-07:00

I love this picture of this family on a picnic. They all look like someone has just said something really funny, and they've only has a few seconds to compose themselves for the picture. I thought it would be a good picture to illustrate our "Family Night." We started Family Night(which may indeed happen during the day, rather than the evening) as a way of building fun, family traditions into the lives of the children: something they can rely on weekly rather than seasonally; a constant weekly presence, and one which will grow and develop with them as they get older.

Each Saturday evening, or afternoon, family members take it in turns to request a favourite meal and then a game or a movie afterwards. The only rules are that we sit around the table and eat, and we don't watch the telly. So in the summer someone may request a walk and a picnic, like the family in the photo, or in the winter someone may request lasagne and a story. But mostly we go for any food we like and board games or films afterwards. It sounds simple, but it's a lot of fun, and planning it into our week makes something very average seem important and exciting.

I've noticed that we all seem to have our favourite choices, which appear month after month. My youngest always goes for crab with pasta, strawberries and ice cream and a game of Mouse Trap. She wanted this for her family night all throughout the winter and the DH trawled the supermarkets finding the unseasonal ingredients just so her family night would be what she expected. My eldest girl is a true carnivore; steak and chips, lasagne and toad-in-the hole, and always, always Eton Mess to follow. I like tapas-y/mezze-y type feasts, with garlic prawns and bread and chicken livers in sherry, or hummus and roasted peppers and pittas and olives. The DH, like the eldest, is a steak man, or sausages or pork chops, it's a real meat feast for the DH, who has cheese and biscuits to follow as he hasn't much of a sweet tooth. The food tends to be simple-ish and repetitive, but I've noticed that the whole "it's your choice" ethos of family night, excites the children and makes the meal special.

For entertainment we used to play a lot of board games, but we're going through a real movie phase at the moment. Even the youngest has given up her beloved Mouse Trap for movies. Ahh, but not any type of movie, our current "pash" is for black and white films, always comedies and preferably slightly spooky. These are our somewhat obscure choices!

The Ghost Train - Arthur Askey and Richard "stinker" Murdoch are stranded in a Cornish train station during World War II, accompanied by a selection of motley passengers. At midnight they hear the sound of the ghost train and spooky hilarity ensues. This is a Family Night classic, and we all quote it, we all have our favourite lines. Superb and really, really, silly.

What a Carve Up! - Kenneth Connor gets a visit from Donald Pleasance's creepy solicitor one evening, informing him of the death of a rich uncle. He and Sid James hotfoot it to said uncle's Yorkshire mansion and during the night the rest of the family is bumped off in a mysterious fashion. A complete rip off of Bob Hope's The Cat and The Canary, but nonetheless brilliant.

Chumps at Oxford - What can I say? Laurel and Hardy are just so funny. The best line: "What? Remove my britches, in the presence of Meredith!" To be repeated by family members ad nauseum.

Ask a Policeman - Will Hay is a policeman in charge of a small Cornish village with no recorded crime, but this is because he is too lazy and daft to be bothered with reporting it! He's in danger of losing his job, and then discovers a massive smuggling ring, hilarity ensues.

Honourable mention goes to Alistair Sim's The Green Man, Cottage to Let, Green for Danger and St Trinians, and Whiskey Galore and The Thin Man films. We'd like to try a few of the Bob Hope films, like My Favourite Brunette/Blonde, and The Cat and the Canary, but the Amazon reviews say that the film quality is an awful, crackly mess. However, I'm on the lookout for a few Road movies, as I know my kids would love 'em.

So this is our Saturday night tradition. I'd love to hear your simple, family traditions, how they came to be and what you value about them. Well, must dash! Happy Sunday one and all (oh and Happy Mothering Sunday to y'all over the pond)!

Bits from Books

2009-05-05T02:43:00.001-07:00

Generally when I do my "bits from books" posts I concentrate on my homemaking books, but today I thought you might like a change and look at some vintage children's literature. Both the DH, myself and our eldest girl love to collect children's books: the DH likes the Andrew Lang fairy books; our eldest spends her birthday money on first editions Famous Fives and Malory Towers; and, well, the little one just likes to look at the pictures in pretty much any book! Other than the DH's Andrew Lang books (what can I say? he's a man of taste and discernment) we pick up these books for less than a fiver. My eldest has found one or two vintage Blytons for pennies, which is great for her as they often cost her quite a bit when she buys from eBay. Anyway, I digress. Here are just a few choice morsels from the family bookshelf! First up, is Enid Blyton's Book of the Year. It's a War Economy book, and published at a time when children's books were rare and quite expensive. War Economy books often have monochrome covers, black and white illustrations and poor-ish paper quality, but nevertheless they're often really great in content, and like all vintage things offer us a precious insight into a world gone by. The book is a fun mixture of nature notes, plays to perform, short stories, non-fiction and poetry. It's aimed at a readership of 10-12 year olds. Here's an extract.

Three Mottos for the New Year

Choose one of them, print it and colour it.

1. "Many men can do a wise thing; many more can do a cunning thing; but very few can do a generous thing."

(We'll be one of the few then, boys and girls!)

2. "'Tis a lucky day, boy, and we'll do good deeds on it!"

(We'll call every day lucky, shall we!)

3. Do all the good you can,

To all the people you can,

In all the ways you can,

As long as ever you can!

(We shall be kept busy if we choose this motto, shan't we!)

It's easy to dismiss this stuff as prissy moralising, just the kind of thing children are not interested in. However, I believe that children have an immense capacity, and need, to do good and be good. They find the shaping of their character to be an exciting and interesting thing. We let them down by by framing their moral teaching in relativistic terms, something to be discussed and analysed rather than taught, this kind of morality comes for later years. Let's just teach them what is right and what is wrong, and allow them the pleasure of consistency and routine in their complex little lives.

Next up, is Warne's Picture and Reading Book. Those amongst you who are wed to the synthetic phonics way of teaching reading, would get a real kick out of this. The illustrations are wonderful and so "of their time" that it makes you want to long for those between the wars years of ponies, tea parties, berry picking...and rickets! The reading primers, however, are a little disconcerting to this modern mummy: all nonsense words and cvc rhyming. I tried it out with Freya (my youngest) who rather likes Kipper and Biff, but she was bored stupid by this book and wondered why the story didn't go with the pictures. But oh, what pictures!

Here's one for the boys. Oh, what larks you chaps had at school, it makes one rather jealous! Quite frankly this book is so packed full of testosterone that it's actually growing stubble. It's a budget book, so the illustrations are black and white, but the stories are spiffy. Here's an extract from Pulling his Leg! by Capt. F.V. Hughes-Hallett, D.S.O...it seems to me that young boys of the 1920s were obsessed with having adventures in Canada...oh, Canada!

Somehow I think that hook of yours must have got jammed in the bear's jaw! But the was certainly having a rare game with me, and if I had taken much longer to make myself intelligible to you in my frenzy, goodness knows what the end of this here child would have been!

And, finally, let's leave the best until last. The Mystery of Coveside House, is a treasure of a book. Filled with the kind of sun-kissed, athletic girls John Betjeman would've gone nuts over, and steady, brave young men who made the Empire great. In it, Daphne and her friends Anthea, Bob, Mary and Tony investigate aforementioned mysterious happenings with youthful vigour and without any sense of irony! Fabulous. Here are the opening lines.

"Anthea" said Daphne, as they walked home from school together. "If you're not doing anything tonight would you come down and help me with that beastly trig? We'll go for a bathe afterwards," She added as an inducement.

The fact that poor old Daphne has to wrestle with that beastly trig, puts this book firmly in the post-war era, when girls' schooling began to resemble the more universal education of boys; hard maths and games being taught alongside French and dainty sewing. I think we forget too easily the advances we've made in eduction over the past one hundred years in Britain. We should thank our lucky stars for this gift. Really we should.

Well I hoped you enjoyed this peek into the family collection. It was nice to share it all with you.
Anon, bookish huswives, anon!

NB: I have edited this post and corrected my errors. Note to self, must proof read!

Queen o' the May

2009-05-01T02:11:00.000-07:00

You must wake and call me early, call me early, mother dear;

To-morrow ’ill be the happiest time of all the glad New-year;

Of all the glad New-year, mother, the maddest merriest day,

For I’m to be Queen o’ the May, mother,

I’m to be Queen o’ the May

There's many a black, black, eye, none so bright as mine

There's Mary, there's Kate and Caroline;

But none so fair as little Alice in all the land they say,

So I’m to be Queen o’ the May, mother,

I’m to be Queen o’ the May.

I sleep so sound all night, mother, that I shall never wake,

If you do not call me loud when the day begins to break;

But I must gather knots of flowers, and buds and garlands gay,

For I’m to be Queen o’ the May, mother,

I’m to be Queen o’ the May.

As I came up the valley whom think ye should I see

But Robin leaning on the bridge beneath the hazel-tree?

He thought of that sharp look, mother, I gave him yesterday,

But I’m to be Queen o’ the May, mother,

I’m to be Queen o’ the May.

He thought I was a ghost, mother, for I was all in white,

And I ran by him without speaking, like a flash of light.

They call me cruel-hearted, but I care not what they say,

For I’m to be Queen o’ the May, mother,

I’m to be Queen o’ the May.

They say he’s dying all for love, but that can never be;

They say his heart is breaking, mother–what is that to me?

There’s many a bolder lad ’ll woo me any summer day,

And I’m to be Queen o’ the May, mother,

I’m to be Queen o’ the May.

Little Effie shall go with me to-morrow to the green,

And you’ll be there, too, mother, to see me made the Queen;

For the shepherd lads on every side ’ll come from far away,

And I’m to be Queen o’ the May, mother,

I’m to be Queen o’ the May.

.The honeysuckle round the porch has woven its wavy bowers

And by the meadow-trenches blow the faint sweet cuckoo-flowers;

And the wild marsh-marigold shines like fire in swamps and hollows gray,

And I’m to be Queen o’ the May, mother,

I’m to be Queen o’ the May.

The night-winds come and go, mother, upon the meadow-grass,

And the happy stars above them seem to brighten as they pass;

There will not be a drop of rain the whole of the livelong day,

And I’m to be Queen o’ the May, mother,

I’m to be Queen o’ the May.

All the valley, mother, ’ill be fresh and green and still,

And the cowslip and the crowfoot are over all the hill,

And the rivulet in the flowery dale ’ill merrily glance and play,

For I’m to be Queen o’ the May, mother,

I’m to be Queen o’ the May.

So you must wake and call me early, call me early, mother dear'

To-morrow ’ill be the happiest time of all the glad New-year

To-morrow ’ill be of all the year the maddest merriest day,

For I’m to be Queen o’ the May, mother,

I’m to be Queen o’ the May.

Tennyson

Happy May Day to one and all!

(Sorry about the formatting on this post!Grr!)

God's Grandeur

2009-04-30T06:38:00.000-07:00

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil ;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod ?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod ;
And all is seared with trade ; bleared, smeared with toil ;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell : the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent ;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things ;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah ! bright wings.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

I thought of this poem today, and it's such a fine poem I wanted to share it with you. It's a bit busy right now for us all chez domum, but I hope to post properly over the next few days. However, for now, enjoy the poem and have a good weekend.

Oh England, My Lionheart

2009-04-23T08:37:00.001-07:00

Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour: England hath need of thee: she is a fen Of stagnant waters: altar, sword, and pen, Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower, Have forfeited their ancient English dower Of inward happiness. We are selfish men; Oh! raise us up, return to us again; And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power. Thy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart: Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea: Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free, So didst thou travel on life's common way, In cheerful godliness; and yet the heart The lowliest duties on herself did lay. William Wordsworth

The air is soft and delicious. The men are sensible and intelligent. Many of them are learned. They know their classics, and so accurately that I have lost little in not going to Italy. The English girls are divinely pretty and they have one custom which cannot be too much admired. When you go anywhere on a visit, the girls kiss you. They kiss you when you arrive. They kiss you when you go away. They kiss you when you return. Once you have tasted how soft and fragrant those lips are, you could spend your life there. Desiderius Erasmus

Heaven take thy soul, and England keep my bones! William Shakespeare

Happy birthday to Bill the Bard (no not Billy Bragg, Frances) and Happy St George's Day to one and all!

April is in My Mistress' Face

2009-04-22T04:26:00.000-07:00

Enjoy some glorious music, on this glorious April day!

Green as Grass

2009-04-21T05:04:00.000-07:00

Hat tip to our modern huswyfe, Jody, whose GREEN post inspired this minor rant!

At some point in the recent past, the nation's favourite hobby changed from gardening to shopping. Now I could go on, in my own indefatigable way, that this perhaps shows a crisis in British society: that we abandoned the healthful, convivial, creative hobby of gardening for regular consumer blowouts, which leave us feeling anxious, guilty and let down after the few brief moments of pleasure, but I won't. What I will say it that it is no surprise to me that "green" lifestyles (oh, how I hate that word) are being sold to us: that most government initiatives on environmental issues revolve around the third of the three "Rs", I imagine Gordon Brown doesn't approve of reducing what we buy and re-using what we have, for economic reasons; that McDonald's Happy Meal advertisements now look like an episode of River Cottage; that popular newspaper and magazine coverage of green issues is often celebrity led...Gwyneth Paltrow's use of organic cosmetics, Hally Berry has a hybrid car! It's becoming increasingly obvious that the green movement is becoming, for want of a better word, commercialised. It's just another lifestyle to buy into, endorsed by your favourite celebrity, with it's own special labels and brands to identify your allegiance with a certain group.

However, my main concern about the commercialisation of the environmental movement is that it makes green a very exclusive colour; the average person feels that they have to be rather wealthy to be properly green. From organic shampoo, to a raised veg bed made from ethically source withy branches, it's all very nice, but it's all very new Tory. And, we look at the lifestyle programmes, and the Sunday supplements, and we dream, and we think if only, and we conclude that green is as achievable for us as buying the country cottage that goes with the lifestyle. When green is well marketed, green becomes aspirational, and is just another consumer product which becomes fodder for a consumer induced sense of ill-being, just another thing we want but can't afford, let's just settle for a Happy Meal with carrot sticks instead of chips.

It's always been my contention that the most environmentally positive people in the UK right now are pensioners. Look at how responsibly our grandparents live. They can fix things, they don't throw stuff out until it's really broken, they can cook (after a fashion!), they've been wearing the same clothes since Moses was a boy, they prefer ballroom dancing and Saturday morning at the football to a recreational trawl around the mall, they garden, take care of their cars, they save their pennies, it's they who use public transport, many of them are involved in community project work, their friendships and family matter more to them than their possessions. Incidentally, the over 65s are the poorest demographic in the UK. When it comes to carbon footprints having loads of lovely lolly is a detriment, David Cameron's carbon footprint must be massive, despite all of his greenwash, my 86 year old father-in-law is a green angel compared to Gwyneth and Hally.

What we must begin to learn is that when it comes to putting environmental abstraction into domestic practice, it is what we do and not what we buy that counts. Not simply because we mere mortals cannot afford the Sunday supplement lifestyle but, moreover, that green is not a lifestyle. Having a green way of life is easy, it is also a joy, it is not something which you can optionally buy into, but something you simply do on a day to day basis. So, green is not a lifestyle, but it is, or soon will be, life being lived. We have to look at our planet (and look at our purses) and look at our family and look at our neighbours, and say how does what I do impact your well-being? Am I better off line-drying my washing, home baking my bread, walking to school/work, eating locally, feeding the kids proper grub, buying Fair Trade, fixing the car so it runs properly, saving up for good experiences rather than bad shopping sprees, going to glorious Cornwall rather than some dreadful Costa? Being green is being responsible, frugal, self-controlled and respectful. Being green is having fun with what you have with the people you love most. Being green and being wealthy are in no way synonymous. Being green is being old fashioned.

A Big Box of Beauty

2009-04-16T06:43:00.000-07:00

He causeth the grass to grow for the cattle, and herb for the service of man: that he may bring forth food out of the earth; and wine that maketh glad the heart of man, and oil to make his face to shine, and bread which strengtheneth man's heart.

(Psalm 104:14,15)

Here are the contents of my organic box. It all looked so beautiful piled up on my work surface, like an 18th century still life, that I couldn't resist taking one of my very poor photos and showing you all. I'm particularly glad of heart about the first of the English asparagus, which we'll be eating tonight, just with melted butter. What a seasonal treat!

I didn't want this post to be one of my patented, overly verbose, essays, but I did have one or two thoughts that I wanted to share, so here goes!

First, I find it ever-increasingly wonderful that we are given such gifts of beauty to appreciate in our everyday lives. Even the humble cauliflower has a luscious beauty all of its own, it's just that we often don't stop and take a moment to appreciate it, we forget about these natural God-given gifts and lack gratitude, it's a shame really, because these rare moments of true appreciation can become a prayer.

Secondly, and on a more practical level, I've never quite understood why people find purchasing organic boxes so expensive. Granted there's a knack to it, and I think you have to be a pretty proficient and creative cook to incorporate box veg into your daily meals, but expensive they aren't. Here's the list of what I received today, all for £13.75.

Four pints of organic milk

A bundle of asparagus

A Lollo Rosso lettuce

A bunch of organic, FT and shipped not flown, bananas

Several apples

A few pears

A box of mushrooms

A box of tomatoes

A small cucumber

A cauliflower

A head of pak choi

I've compared the cost of this box to supermarket non-organic equivalents and it came to £14.90. However, I suppose it all comes out as expensive if you're throwing half of the veg away at the end of the week, but I have developed a way of minimising waste and getting the most out of your organic box.

First, go for a box which contains fruit as well as veg, especially if you have children. Not only do you tend to get very kid-friendly fruits, such as apples and bananas, but you often get some expensive exotics too, such as mangoes and pineapples; a fine treat and a nice surprise. This eliminates some of the veg waste as bananas and apples keep well and are always eaten as snack in lunch boxes.
The company who provides my box gives away surplus milk to those who buy milk with them on a regular basis. The dairy often has a surplus and they don't want to waste it, so you tend to be quids in.
When your box arrives examine it in terms of what is most perishable. So we're eating the asparagus tonight, because it's best eaten very fresh and we'll also have BLTs to use the lettuce and tomatoes. The pak choi will do for tomorrow as I'm doing salmon with garlic and ginger, and the cauliflower and mushrooms can be eaten as and when. eat the most perishable first then they won't go off.
Do your weekly shop and meal planning the day after the box arrives. That way you can plan the veg into your normal meals without having to re-jig everything.
Get to know your veg box man or lady. Not only are you likely to get freebies (see milk) if you're a friendly and regular customer but also you get to have a personal relationship with a local business person who like food. This is good, we need more of this!

Well, I really must go. The kids are painting in the kitchen and I should supervise! Happy veg eating my friends!

101 Things to do with a Stale Hot Cross Bun

2009-04-15T08:59:00.001-07:00

You must forgive the somewhat grandiose title of this post, gentle reader, as really I am only giving you an idea for one thing to do with stale hot cross buns, but I know that you are all women of considerable ingenuity and imagination so I hope I get some suggestions for the other 100 things you can do with a stale bun after Good Friday!

For my own part I give you Hot Cross Bun Pudding. This is a recipe I've adapted from my Elizabeth Craig Cookery Illustrated, a 1930s tome which can be picked up quite easily for less than a fiver. For those interested in what the average Joe(anne) ate way back when you can't go far wrong than to read this book, and the illustrations feature lovely deco tea trays and table settings, all in all, a jolly nice buy. Anyway, on with the grub. Here's the recipe, and I apologise for my crummy photography.

Hot Cross Bun Pudding

4-6 hot cross buns (stale), quartered and buttered generously

1 pint milk

1/2 pint single cream

grated rind of an orange

2 oz sugar

3 eggs, well beaten

Butter a large casserole or pie dish. Place quartered, butter buns in dish so that they overlap with each other ever so slightly. Sprinkle each layer with a little of the sugar until you use up the 2 oz. Mix the milk with the cream and then add the beaten eggs, and mix well. Pour on top of the buttered, sugared buns and leave for at least 15 minutes until the mixtures has been absorbed. Bake in a low oven (in a bain marie if inclined) until the custard is set, this will take between 40 and 60 minutes. If it looks palid when you take it from the oven, sprinkle a little sugar on the top and put under a hot grill for a few minutes until browned. Serve with clotted cream (I mean it)!

Oh, here are a few Hot Cross Bun facts, with which you may astound your friends and family!

Before the Reformation many baked goods carried the sign of the cross. Hot Cross Buns are the sole culinary survivors of this ancient tradition.
Many country women would bake buns and bread on Good Friday because they believed their baking would contain miraculous powers of healing. They would hang them in the rafters of their kitchens and give to those who were ailing.
In 1987 I won a Hot Cross Bun eating competition, downing 8 in 15 minutes. ( This last one is a fib, but I had you going for a minute)!

Well, if you do use up your stale holy day buns in this way, please let me know if you enjoyed the pudding. Anon, fellow huswives, anon!

Vintage and Seasonal - Heck, Let's Have Dessert!

2009-04-08T03:48:00.001-07:00

One function of desserts is to produce a sense of complete satisfaction at the end of a meal - which is a good enough reason for trying every one of the recipes in this chapter. But you'll probably need no coaxing to do that, for where is the hostess who doesn't love to hear the Oh's and Ah's that are sure to greet a particularly delectable dessert?

The Modern Family Cookbook (Uk 1954, USA 1953) Meta Given

The peculiar looking stuff in the photograph above is the delectable Rhubarb Marlow, the recipe for which I found in my Modern Family Cookbook by Meta Given. Don't be fooled by the list of ingredients, it's quite a sophisticated and light treat and very, very good. And, I ask you this, what could be more 1950s that rhubarb and melted marshmallows, died pink and folded into whipped cream? Here's the recipe. Try it, you'll love it!

Rhubarb Marlow

1 cup sweetened stewed rhubarb

24 marsh,allows

1 cup of whipping cream

Pink coloring if desired

Heat rhubarb, add marshmallows, and stir over a low heat until just melted. Cool. If the mixture is very sweet, add lemon juice to give desired tartness. Chill until thick and syrupy; then whip cream until stiff and fold in rhubarb mixture. Turn into freezing tray of mechanical refrigerator and freeze without stirring. If desired, the whipped cream may be tinted delicately pink before adding the fruit to the mixture. 5 servings.

NB. I think the servings are pretty generous. I also think that it tastes better as a chilled fool that as a frozen dessert, but my kids disagreed. Also,it will taste very sweet as a chilled fool but not so sweet if frozen as for some reason ( which I am unsure). Cheap, easy, fun and seasonal!

Now, I have a real soft spot for my Meta Givens cookbooks. The dark green one on the left of the picture above was the first vintage cookbook I ever bought, at the age of 18 or 19. It propelled me into a world of serious, professional homemaking and I was hooked. It was a 1947 first addition, an American book and American published, so what it was doing in a car boot sale just outside of Birmingham in the early 1990s I don't know! It was volume two of The Modern Encyclopedia of Cooking and full of wonderful recipes, nutritional information, holiday menus and inspirational creeds. However, it was the first volume which contained the baking and every day menus. I bought the first volume two or three years ago now from US eBay, it cost about $30 or so and I love it. Here's one of the creeds.

The Family Hostess' Creed

Happy family relationships are part of my responsibility; therefore -

I will save enough energy to do the job of being a happy and helpful hostess to my family day after day.

My family's satisfaction with my table setting and service is my responsibility; therefore -

I will manage my linens and other equipment, my method of work, and enlist the assistance of my family to the end that the table shall be clean and beautiful and the service easy and dignified.

My family's satisfaction with their food is my responsibility; therefore -

I will manage so that foods shall come to the table in the prime condition developed by previous care in selection, preparation and cooking.

Enjoyment of each other and of their food is an important part of successful family life: therefore -

I shall use intelligence, skill and love in serving food to my family.

Finally, the grey book on the right of the picture is a 1953/4 re-hash of of the Modern Encyclopedia. There are a few new recipes, like the Rhubarb Marlow, and the menus have changed slightly (a little less heavy, simpler breakfasts) but it is essentially the same book, just with much less nutritional and household information. It's in remarkably good condition, so I tend to use it for cooking far more often that my 1940s books. I find the suggested menus very interesting, you can see that the early 1950s was a time when modern conveniences were beginning to be used in the kitchen, but home cooking was seen as the norm. I'll end the post by leaving you with a few 1953 daily, seasonal menus.

April: Friday

Breakfast - sliced bananas on prepared cereal with top milk. Toast with butter, jelly, coffee for adults, cocoa for children.

Luncheon - Green beans au gratin, melba toast, pineapple date salad, tea for adults, milk for children.

Dinner - tomato juice cocktail, braised pork shoulder steak, mashed potatoes, pineapple coleslaw, wholewheat bread and butter, rice pudding, coffee for adults, milk for children.

Well I hope you enjoyed this trawl through one or two of my collection. If you try the Rhubarb Marlow, let me know if you like it too. Anon fellow huswyves!

Medieval Angels, Victorian School Ma'ams and Rabbit Midwifery

2009-04-06T03:41:00.001-07:00

Blimey! What a busy weekend we've had chez Domum! On Saturday we made like Lizzie Bennett and hot-footed it to Derbyshire (the finest of all counties) to visit the National Trust's Museum of Childhood at Sudbury Hall, just outside of Ashbourne. We all had a great time, the museum is a real treat for all of the family and I can highly recommend it. My eldest girl tried to climb into a chimney to sweep it (there was a mock display of the various kids of work children had to do in the 18th and 19th centuries) but she chickened out when she had to turn a corner in the chimney...it must have been pretty hairy up there as my eldest enjoys a spot of abseiling and indoor caving of a weekend!

My youngest was completely enthralled by the mock Victorian classroom, complete with mock Victorian school teacher who taught deportment, cleanliness and curly letters! I am amazed at how well the little one took instruction from such a fearsome woman, but she just adored the whole experience, especially when the teacher told her how well she could sit up straight. The child glowed with pleasure. I wonder if all of that Christian/hippy/attachment parenting she's experienced so far has given her an inner longing for a bit of sergeant major treatment... amateur psychologists, answers on a postcard please. As well as the museum there's a lovely Queen Anne stately home to visit, complete with 1930s kitchen and a long gallery used in the filming of the BBC's production of Pride and Prejudice. Also, on the grounds a rather beautiful church. The DH thinks that the church may have been 17th century too, but as we walked around we saw that dotted amongst the plain dressed stones on the exterior of the church were some earlier elaborate carvings; an imp pulling a face and this beautiful angel, to name but two. The DH says the carvings were probably medieval and belonging to an earlier church building that may have been on the site. I rather liked the angel, she looked so stately and dignified perched so high up in the church fabric: "so this is a how a medieval craftsman imagined angels way back when?" I thought to myself. My thoughts however, got no further than that, as my philosophising is very much of the Pooh Bear variety and I was distracted by thoughts of the tea shop. (Ahh, the blessed NT tea shop, is there no finer institution?)

So on to Sunday. After church the DH spent three hours erecting a rabbit hutch. I had to take the children inside when he was doing it, his swearing was wild. The thing is, when the DH swears, he doesn't just swear, his swearing involves a weird stream of consciousness with meta-narrative, and sometimes characterisation. It's like listening to a live reading of Ulysses. However, we only get the James Joyce treatment when he has to construct anything from a flat pack, this is thankfully quite a rare occurrence. So why were we torturing the DH on a fine Sunday afternoon, an afternoon when sane men are sitting in the garden on a comfy deckchair sipping Sam Smith's? Well, because we wanted to prepare for Mrs Much and Ruby, our lovely lady rabbits!

We went to the rabbit breeders with the intention of buying to baby rabbits ( a buck and a doe) and keep them together so they have a bit of company, it was also my intention to take the to the vets and have them "done" so they didn't breed. Hmm, well the best laid plans of rabbits and men and all that jazz. The breeder showed us all she had and we fell in love with a year old Dutch whom we've called Mrs Much. Mrs Much is sad because she misses her babies, who have all been sold by the breeder, Mrs Much has a touch of rabbit post-natal depression. My heart melted, the eldest girl's heart melted. We bought Mrs Much. Did I mention that Mrs Much is probably preggers and ready to drop a litter in a months time? We also have a big softy called Ruby. Ruby is friends with Mrs Much, Ruby likes a cuddle and thinks she's a Guinea Pig, Ruby is a beautiful lilac colour. We all love Ruby. Did I mention Ruby may indeed be pregnant by a lion haired buck called Aslan? My father has informed me that only a crazy person buys two pregnant rabbits. He's probably right. Our plan is to keep one kitten from each litter and sell the other bunnies. The breeder says we'll have no problem selling them, and she'll even buy the kittens back from us when they appear. And you know, gentle reader, nothing says "Spring-time" like two pregnant rabbits!

Yes, It's Folkie Friday!

2009-04-02T01:06:00.000-07:00

One of my favourite singers is Anne Briggs, she has such a beautiful voice and her work was incredibly influential in the late 1960s. The song she is singing in the clip below, Black Waterside, was used as inspiration for Led Zeppelin's Black Mountainside, and if you listen closely you can really hear the similarities between the two tunes.

Black Waterside is an Irish tune, but I'm a little unsure whether the lyrics are Irish. The words to folk songs would alter, like a game of Chinese whispers, according to the regions of the British Isles, and like many traditional songs, particularly English traditional songs, the song is about sexual transgression and regret. The girl laments the fact that she was foolish to "lie in sport" with her Irish boy, upon nothing but his promise of marriage. The naivety of the young girl really comes though, this is not the song of a mature woman, and her words are not angry, but frustrated and shameful.

There's not a girl in this whole wide world, who's as easily led as I.

Of course the other side of the story, dare I say the more masculine version of of the girl's lament, is the bawdy ballad, the kind that would be sung in pubs and fields amongst men only. There's an interesting story in Classic English Folk Songs, published by the efdss, which tells of one of the old, turn of the century singers, refusal to sing a ballad (I think it was Salisbury Plain) to one of the female song collectors employed by Vaughn Williams. The old chap considered the themes within the song far too inappropriate for a woman, let alone a woman of the gentry, to hear.
Perhaps he simply couldn't bring himself to sing:
"Undress yourself, and come to bed with me." "Oh yes, that I will," then says she, "if you'll keep all those flash girls away."

Now, Salisbury Plain is a ballad in the tradition of Black Waterside, in the sense that the transgressors get their comeuppance, but there are other songs which allow the lovers to get away with their "sport" and they are far more explicit than Salisbury Plain. Understandably, few of these truly bawdy songs remain, as most would be embarrassed to sing them to any song collector and they were songs which would only be popular with a specific sector of the community; men who worked and played away from women and children. One of the most famous of these songs is Bonny Black Hare, here it is played by Fairport Convention. Be warned, it would make a sailor blush!

Now, I've read a feminist analysis of this song which states that it is women positive because the girl in the narrative enjoys the "sport" with the huntsman and feel no regret about her actions. I'm a little unsure about this interpretation, this is a man's song, told from a man's point of view, it's man's fantasy, little is said about the woman at all. What we must understand is that folk songs were a narrative mainstay for a largely pre-literate culture. That's why we find so many different narrative genres within the folk cannon, this is how stories were passed around, and in the case of Bonny Black Hare, this is how dirty stories were passed around.

Well, I hope you enjoyed my little foray into the folk culture of Ye Olde Englande. Next Friday I may take a look at songs about ghosts...or perhaps highwaymen!

Enjoy, goode huswyves!

This is Why You Should Never Make Faces at a Copper

2009-04-01T06:29:00.001-07:00

Why not have a laugh 1914-style and enjoy Daisy Doodad's Dial? It is actually laugh out loud funny, and really wonderful to see the humour of a by-gone age...oh, and it does put pay to the myth that British, turn of the century females were all ever-so proper, never mind what Florence B Jack's The Woman's Book has to say on the subject!

A lady's manners should be perfect on all occasions. Manners cannot be donned and discarded at will... When she entertains, she is apast master in the art of asking the right people to meet each other and of making them all feel at ease in her society.

An Old-Fashioned Breakfast

2009-03-27T07:30:00.001-07:00

English Breakfast: Bacon, Scrambled Egg, Sausages, Beans Etc.

Every morning my husband sits down to a full English breakfast...then he has to go back to bed for an hour or two as there is no way he could actually function after eating so much food in the morning! But seriously, has no other meal been more maligned by our over-worked, over-stressed culture than breakfast? This of course is a real shame as most nutritionists agree that breakfast is indeed the most important meal of the day. Apparently, its importance is increased the younger we are, and this is born out by an experience I had as a young teacher. I was seconded to the special needs department, through my own choice I hasten to add, and was in charge with three pupils who were effectively excluded, but were so close to leaving school were kept on, although not in the formal classroom, until the end of year 11 exams. These boys had a wide range of behavioural difficulties, although none exhibited the real signs of ADHD or Aspergers. Now, over a game of Junior Scrabble I asked my little rabble what they ate for breakfast and the resounding reply was: "a couple of cans of Red Bull from the garage, Miss." On the way to school they would stock up on the worst kind of junk, consume it rapidly at the school gates and come in hopped up on caffeine and e numbers, wreak havoc in the classroom and fail to learn a bloody thing! Ah, those were the days. I was in fact quite fond of my rabble, all of them over 6 foot, all of them children, all of them ill-fed. Now, before this post turns rapidly into one of my wild rambles I shall resume my initial point and move on. The point being: breakfast is important.

It has been proven that the consumption of breakfast has real health-giving results. We are apparently more able to learn, communicate well and concentrate if we have consumed breakfast. Indeed, those who ate old-fashioned (non-instant) porridge for breakfast did better in intelligence tests that those who ate a sugary cereal, and those who ate a sugary cereal did better than those who ate nothing at all. The conclusion being, I suppose, that something is always better than nothing. Eating breakfast is also meant to be good for controlling one's weight, although the claim that eating breakfast boosts your metabolism may be slightly spurious, it's just that breakfast eaters also tend to have a propensity to have other health-giving habits too, like exercising and eating the old fruit and veg. It is interesting to note that only 5% of smokers eat a regular breakfast, make of that, gentle reader, what you will.

Now, most nutritionists agree that the best kind of breakfast would be low in GI. Those naughty sugary-carbs really don't sustain you and may have you running to the nearest chocolate bar at 11 o'clock. But, a breakfast containing protein, veg/fruit and whole grain will keep hunger locked up 'til lunch (perhaps unlike the famous breakfast cereal!). Also, because the energy a low GI breakfast supplies is long term, it enables us to concentrate, the protein satiating us until we've done a proper morning's work.

We used to do a good breakfast in this country. My own grandfather, a professional sportsman in his youth (rugby and boxing) would always sit down to eggs and bacon of a morning, and although working men and women had more substantial breakfasts than their sedentary counterparts, breakfast was rarely avoided. Here's an extract from Mary Norwak's The Farmhouse Kitchen, that really brings home the extent of the breakfast of those who worked a physical job.

Many farmers have two breakfasts because they start work so early in the morning. A modern farmer may only being his day, at first light, with a cup of tea and some toast and cereal, and then eat his full breakfast meal at nin o' clock. But in the past, those who had to start the day's work at some distance from their homes would begin with porridge and then return later to breakfast...Either way, a farm breakfast usually starts with cereal or porridge. After this comes a cooked dish of two or three "fries", such as bacon, eggs, tomatoes, mushroom and fried potatoes; sometimes there may be kidneys, sausages or fish. In warmer weather, cold ham, brawn or boiled bacon is popular. After this comes plenty of new bread, oatcakes or toast, accompanied by honey or home-made marmalade.

I don't know about you but I feel full just reading that. But despite the reliance on fried food, note the use of tomatoes and mushroom and protein and oats and good bread; all health-giving stuff for a person whose job is so physical. However, we still see a similar repast at the other end of the social spectrum, aristocratic country houses serving huge protein-rich breakfasts, particularly during the shooting season. In Good Things in England, Florence White describes such a breakfast, as well as what she calls the "normal workers' breakfast" of bacon, eggs and toast. Interestingly, she also describes a breakfast meant for Britishers in a hot climate, those who lived in India during the period of the Raj.

We have inherited from India the chota-hazri consisting of a large breakfast cup of coffee made with milk and accompanied by two bananas; this is served in our bedrooms at five or six o'clock in the morning before we go for our usual morning ride which is followed by a tub and some luscious mangoes, the proper place for eating which is one's tub!

Whilst it is always nice to peek into the lives of our social betters I am far more interested in Florence White's "normal worker" and what they liked to eat of a morning. And, no book provides greater insight into the eating habits of the "normal" middle class folk of England than Mrs Beetons' Household Management. Now, for those of you not in the know, Sam Beeton sold the rights to the original Household Management not long after poor old Isabella's death, to the then publishing giant Ward Lock. For years afterwards, right up until the 1950s indeed, the book would reappear in a revised version every ten years or so, and was always a popular wedding gift to the aspirational middle-class British newlywed. I have several versions of Beeton (I am poor of purse but rich in books, the two may be connected) but one of my favourites is a 1920s edition. In the back are listed suggested menus for "simple" breakfasts. Please don't think the menus are simply a list of breakfast foods one might eat in the summer, they are meant to be an indication of what to eat in one sitting. Undo your belts.

Summer

Rolled Oats

Baked Eggs

Findon (sic) Haddock

Cold Ham

Stewed Plums

Porridge and Cream (again!)

Rolls, Toast, Bread, Butter, Marmalade

Tea, Coffee, Cold milk

Winter

Cream of Wheat

Scrambled Eggs

Fried Bacon

Brawn

Baked Apples

Scones, Toast, Bread, Butter, Jam.

Tea, Coffee, Hot and Cold Milk.

Seriously though, I think there are many reasons why we as a culture have rejected breakfast. First, for years there has been conflicting advice on what we should eat to maintain good health, and the food which constitutes the traditional protein rich breakfast has come under much scrutiny, particularly the humble and much derided egg. Secondly, for many of us breakfast is the first meal we skip to conserve calories, and it is ironic indeed, that not only are breakfast eaters slimmer than breakfast skippers, but it is the act of skipping breakfast which makes us run to the corn-syrup soaked baked goods in the middle of the morning, just the thing which made us fat in the first place Thirdly, I think we are a time-poor culture. Even I, who work on a very part-time basis from home, find mornings a bit of a rush. It must take iron-clad planning and an even greater iron-will to get the family a decent breakfast and then prepare yourself for work and the kids for school. The middle-class folk of the 1920s who owned my Beeton book when it was brand new would have had a maid; father would've worked closer to the office than his modern counterpart, and perhaps would not have started work until nine o'clock; mother would see the children off to school with confidence that they could cope with the walk on their own and so on and so forth. Finally, I believe that meal-times, lack the formality of the past. In a way I think this is a good thing, I prefer informal pot luck suppers to posh dinner parties, but it was the formality of a sit-down breakfast which probably made it a nice experience, otherwise why do we enjoy breakfast so much when we're on our holidays? In all, I think we can safely say that the rejection of breakfast is a symptom of cultural change.

But if breakfast is so good for us, and in particularly so good for our children, then shouldn't we reclaim it? I don't think we could ever go back to the days of having a Beeton-esque extensive breakfast menu, but I do think it is possible to give the first meal of the day the consideration it deserves. Here are my top tips for a good old-fashioned(ish) breakfast.

Plan it. Plan it like you would any other meal, but don't be ambitious else you'll get fractious. Start with breakfast baby steps.
Get up, get washed, get dressed, get breakfast. I am not a morning person, but I find my day always goes better if I'm dressed before breakfast. I just feel up and at 'em if I've got my clobber on.
Try to eat it at the table. This is a big one for us, as we generally eat breakfast watching breakfast news in a comatose, bleary-eyed fashion. But even a simple breakfast at the table makes the meal seem as important as it is.
Try to include veg and protein. Cereal, milk and a banana is fine. Toast, egg and tomato is better!
Why not try sandwiches and juice. Sandwiches for breakfast are really nice if you toast them.
Soak your porridge over-night, this really cuts down the cooking time.
I've heard tell that some folk set the breakfast table before they go to bed at night. I do not do this but admire those with such inclination!

If you have any thoughts about breakfast, or any ideas on how to make a lightening fast delicious morning meal, please let me know, I'd love to hear your thoughts!

In The Handwork of Their Craft is Their Prayer

2009-03-24T09:12:00.000-07:00

Nicholson Evening At Boothby

We've had good weather in the UK over the past week or so. It's been gardening weather and spring cleaning weather indeed. I passed a happy morning in the garden, not doing anything special, just tidying and pottering and I came inside with a small armful of greenery and forsythia.

I have a table in my living room, a side table which belonged to my great-grandmother, it's the kind of thing you'd find at a car boot sale or a junk shop and pay a fiver for it, but it has a nice colour and shape and I have a lamp, I bought years ago from Habitat, on it and an elaborately carved candlestick I picked up from one of those ethnic/hippy shops you find in posh market towns. I arranged my bits of rosemary and eucalyptus with the sprigs of forsythia and it made me happy to do such simple work. I thanked God for that corner of my living room, the flowers and greenery from the garden, the candlestick and the old table, it looked so pretty even though I'm not such a brilliant florist, and I was suddenly reminded of an Arts and Crafts banner hanging in York Minster. It shows St Hilda and underneath this venerable Northern saint it has the words: "In the Handwork of their Craft is their Prayer."

The gift of creativity is such a fine one, it gives real satisfaction and you don't necessarily have to aim for perfection to enjoy it. In fact, I sometimes think if we do aim for a perfect result the work becomes less satisfying, creativity becomes stultified in Self. That is to say, we become too aware of the faults in the work, to aware of what other may see as a failing in ability, and this awareness curbs the joy we have in the gifts we have been given.

During the middle ages calligraphers would make visual jokes out of their errors, laughing at their mistakes only made their work more beautiful, more human. Their lack of perfection didn't stop their prayer or their handcraft, but only humbled them, in the best possible way.

I shall leave you with what Jospehine Moffett Benton says about perfectionism.

It is in the light touch, in whimsicalities, in a sense of the ridiculous that we best see our littleness, see that we are but a seed that needs to lie dormant in the good, dark earth of God. Recreation provides the change in rhythm that sends us back refreshed to homemaking and service in the community. Those who never unbend and relax, who strain to eagerly fly off into the life of the spirit, miss being rooted and grounded in the love of God. The cross is firmly fixed where we begin to be created anew.

Tardy Awards

2009-03-19T04:26:00.001-07:00

Well, what with bad backs and mystery rashes I've been a little bit late in acknowledging and passing on two awards which have been given to me over the past month. This is rude of me, especially considering how pleased and flattered I am that people would choose to give me such things! First, from the lovely Louise, from Months of Edible Celebrations I got an Inspiration Award. Louise is a fellow book collector, and her blog is choc full of really interesting information and recipes from America's past, and a real insight into what they ate across the pond, in times of yore. Thank you Louise!

Next, Niki from Rural Writings (a really great Canadian blog, full of tips for simple living and great recipes...she's a baker all right!) gave me this Friendship Award. Given to those who

"... are exceedingly charming. These kind bloggers aim to find and be friends. They are not interested in self-aggrandizement. Our hope is that when the ribbons of these prizes are cut, even more friendships are propagated. "

Isn't that jolly nice? I'm umming and arring about passing on these awards properly OR doing my usual and giving the award to those blogs on my side bar. Aah! I think I'll do my usual. I wouldn't come and visit if I didn't think you were all good sorts and inspirational to boot. Enjoy your awards fellow huswiyves!

Oh, but before you go. Here's what I plan to do this afternoon...get the washing on the line and then settle down with my knitting to watch this GREAT movie on TCM. Here's the gorgeous Gene and the lovely Leslie doing their wonderful stuff in American in Paris...yes, they DO deserve such superlatives!

Bits from Books

2009-03-18T03:45:00.000-07:00

Reading Woman, circa 1900

I want to thank you for all of your "get well soons" in the previous post. Thankfully, the mystery rash turned out not to be chicken pox or shingles, but a strange allergic reaction to I know not what. I'm pretty much back to normal now, although still a little tired and swollen (on my extremities!), and I hope to be back in blog action from now on. I've been doing quite a bit of reading over the past week, but feel a little too lazy to write a proper book review (I'm like a hungover university student at the moment) so I thought I'd find you a few choice quotes and give you a little overview of each book I've read (re-read). Enjoy, bookish huswyfes!

Cold Comfort Farm

I'm not a big fan of Thomas Hardy, or DH Lawrence for that matter. All of those rural drama-queens fighting and fornicating get right on my pip. I want to walk right into the novel and boss them all about, teach them a few lessons on counting their blessings and introduce the main protagonists to nice boys and girls who will treat them well and keep the cottage garden neat and tidy. I can't help but think that Stella Gibbons felt the same, and that is why she invented monumental bossy-boots Flora Poste. To cut a long story short, armed only with a delightful and suitable wardrobe and her favourite book, The Higher Common Sense, Flora moves in with her disastrous rural cousins the Starkadders and tidies up their lives. It's a jolly good read, a well achieved satire and often laugh out loud funny. I enjoyed it very much, and you will too if you have a slight bossy streak. Here's an extract.

"By the way, I adore my bedroom, but do you think I could have the curtains washed? I believe they are red; and I should so like to make sure."

Judith sunk into reverie.

"Curtains? she asked, vacantly, lifting her magnificent head. "Child, child, it is many years since such trifles broke across my web of solitude."

On Green Dolphin Street

I'm quite a fan of Sebastian Faulks. He has a knack for writing about love, and how women love, in such a real and sympathetic manner. His prose is absolutely beautiful and he's not a bit tricky or self-satisfied. When I'd finished this novel I wanted to hug him, just for being such a very good writer. I suppose the subject matter of the novel is a little tricky though, particularly if you're a Christian, as it concerns a woman's deep and loyal love for her husband and children and the passionate love she develops for another man. Faulks is neither judgmental about the woman's choices nor does he justify them, but simply describes the woman's relationships with tenderness and honesty. For a long time the affair she embarks on is reminiscent to that in Brief Encounter, however, towards the end of the novel, her relationship with Frank is consummated, and Faulks' prose gets a little, well, saucy. I found it very moving. Here's an extract from the beginning of their romance.

She said, "I want you to know for today, tomorrow, for the rest of your life how much you have meant to me, how much you have touched me with your ..." she smiled, feeling tears pricking at her eyes "...your tour of the city. I want you to remember always what a fine man you are, or so you seem to me. I so much admire your dedication, how much you've done, how hard you've fought for yourself. And your kindness, your manners, your...Well, everything about you. I think you're wonderful. Wonderful."

Frank sat staring at her for a few moments. He looked now exactly as he had on the first night she had met him, after the party, black marks beneath his eyes, his tie half mast, his cropped hair slightly rumpled.

He said, "Have you finished?"

She bit her lip and nodded.

He said, "I'm in love with you too."

The Pace of a Hen

The Pace of a Hen is the best book I've read on Christian homemaking, this is because the writer sees the homemaker's role one of providing stability, support and sound teaching. She uses the shape of the cross to teach women how to lead a truly balanced Christian life and pass this sense of balance onto our husbands and children and the wider community. She believes that a Christian's life should compromise prayer, recreation, work and family and I think this idea of leading a truly harmonious life for Christ is incredibly pertinent in today's world, where the work/life balance is so skewed in favour of work that many of our families become fragmented, dysfunctional and just plain old tired out. There is so much great advice in this book, that I'm a little spoilt for choice in choosing an extract, but here's what Josephine Moffett Benton has to say about creativity.

The results of creativity need not always have visible shape and design. The main field of creativity in our day, Fritz Kunkel once said, should be human relationships. Listening to a neighbour can create friendship; listening to a bird can create worship; listening to God can create a soul.

Our minds need many kinds of exercise, and creativity which uses mind and muscles is a source of balance and a wellspring of joy. A woman who walks in the woods, who makes a lampshade, who bakes a loaf of bread, who refinishes an old chair, has not time for bitterness and depression.

Good Grief!

2009-03-07T03:53:00.000-08:00

Good grief, indeed! I'm poorly, a virus-y thing , oh and a strange rash! Pray God it's not chicken pox!

Enough exclamations marks, I think. Just to let my regular readers know that I won't be around the blogs for a bit, not until I'm feeling a bit better. You all have a nice weekend and I'll "see" you soon.

Mrs Beeton's Beetroot Soup (not) and My Own Beautiful Dust

2009-03-05T03:03:00.000-08:00

This bit's for you, Sarah.

I've been mourning the loss of poor old Doris the Dead Dyson for a good few weeks now. I've missed her lightweight chassis, her lovely long hose, I've missed the way she used to glide around the house, but mostly I've missed the sheer power of her suck. You see, after she went to vacuum cleaner Valhalla (Doris was great, but I'm not sure she was Christian), we economised and bought a terrible, heavy, lumbering beast of a Morphy Richards thing. This vacuum cleaner was such a duffer, I think it has been entirely responsible for my bad back of late. I try to feel sorry for this machine, it's not his fault he's not Doris, but really enough is enough, so I contacted a firm which sold reconditioned Dysons and low and behold, and £30 later, Dino the Dyson arrived on my doorstep. Now, Dino is called Dino because he's such an ancient make of Dyson I'm sure they quarried him out of a rock face in Arizona (or perhaps the Isle of White), he's a dinosaur, a fossil, but he is a Dyson, and just to prove it this is what he sucked up the other day AFTER the Morphy Richards back-breaker had finished doing it's job. Dust, ladies, beautiful dust!

Next up a couple of recipes. First, Nigella Lawson's Potato Bread, a great bread, crisp and chewy, but not too dense and it doesn't taste a bit potato-y. It rises like a dream, so well in fact that when it rises I can imagine it died green and chasing a young Steve McQueen out of the cinema, just like "The Blob". Anyway, if you want this venerable receipt please email me, as it's a bit long to put on the blog.
Now, for Mrs Beeton's Beetroot Soup (not). Now, when it comes to beetroot, my cup runneth over. It's that time of year, isn't it, when we all get a bit sick of root vegetables, especially,if, like me, you grow your own or get an organic box. So I decided to soup the glut. I also hit upon the idea of looking for a beetroot soup recipe in Mrs Beeton (combination of assonance and alliteration in a recipe title appeals to something deep within my soul) however, when I looked, no such recipe could be found: there were recipes for sprout top soups; carrot soups; turnip soups,: cow's cheek soup; and a charmingly named, benevolent soup; but no beetroot soup. So, I made up my own. Here it is, oh, I'll leave quantities up to you, but I've put in brackets what I used, just to guide you.

Mrs Beeton's Beetroot Soup (not)

A quantity of onion (1)

A quantity of leek (1)

A quantity of potato(3)

A quantity of beetroot(5)

Butter, cream, milk and stock.

Peel and chop the veg, sweat for a good while in the butter, as ten minutes of sweating will ensure a good soup. Pour hot stock over veg , just enough to cover. Simmer for 40 minutes or so, or until your beetroot is tender. Thin down with cream and milk and season to taste.

Serve to poorly little girls with a mania for pink.

Enjoy, gentle reader, and anon!