Bits from Books

( 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!

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

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!

An Old-Fashioned Breakfast

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!

Below Stairs

There's a great David Lean/Noel Coward film called This Happy Breed. It chronicles the lives of an average lower-middle class family between the two wars. The family live in a suburban semi, Celia Jonston plays the mother and she drops her "hs", John Mills is the boy next door and gets a bit "gor blimey guv'nor" every now and then. However, the film is a realistic protrayal of life for the middling family between 1918 and 1939 and for much of that time the family have a servant.

In most of my pre-war homemaking books it is assumed that the reader will have at least one servant, otherwise she would be reading books which specifically cater for the wives of working men, penny cookery books and so on. The wives of clerks, butchers, craftsmen and skilled labourers etc., would have had a girl to help them in their homes unless hard times forced them to economise.

It seems however, by 1910 things were beginning to change. In How to Keep House, by C S Peel, the writer laments that

The young working girl of today prefers to become a Board School mistress, a post-office clerk, a typewriter, a shop girl, or a worker in a factory - anything rather than domestic service; not because the work is lighter or the pay better, but because in these professions she has the full use of her hours of liberty, and, more important reason than all, she enjoys a higher social position: she is in point of fact a "young lady."

Many other books of the period are slightly panicky in tone when discussing servants and the servant crisis, and magazines from the 1920s/30s, such as Good Housekeeping are full of suggestions on how to manage with limited help: how to use new time saving equipment, such as vacuum cleaners, washing machines and gas stoves and fires. Victorian attitudes to social class were crumbling fast and by the end of the second world war it is assumed, by the writers of most post-war books I own, that their readers will be managing their homes without help.

I hope to be posting a few post-war examples of "the daily round" over the next few days, but first I thought I would post an example of the duties of the average Victorian maid. I think it makes an interesting comparison between what my modern day routine is (see this post) and what the 1950s housewife's routine was and what was expected of the 1860s maid of all work. Just to give a little social background, a maid of all work would have been the only live-in servant in the household, and she would probably work in the home of a single woman or a lower-middle class family. She may have been very young, between the ages of 11 and 13 when starting work, and was perhaps a daughter of farm labourers. In the book, from which I've taken the following extract, Warne's Model Cookery and Housekeeping Book, her list of duties lasts for three, closely printed pages. I'll just give you the gist of it.

The general servant must be an early riser.

Her first duty, of course, is to open the shutter, and in summer the windows of all the lower parts of the house.

Then she must clean the kitchen range and hearth, sifting the cinders, clearing away the ashes, and polishing with a leather the bright parts of the stove, or range.

She must light the fire, fill the kettle, and as soon as the fire burns, set it on to boil.

She must then clean the room in which the family breakfast. She must roll up the rug, spread out a coarse piece of canvas before the fireplace, an (if it is winter) she must remove the fender, clean the grate, and light the fire. The she must lightly rub over the fire-irons with a leather, replace them, and the fender, and sweep the room over, first pinning the curtains up out of the dust.

She should then let the dust settle for a few minutes, turning meantime into the kitchen to get the breakfast things ready to bring in. In five minutes or so she must return, and thoroughly dust all the furniture, the ledges about the room, the mantelpiece, and all ornaments. Not a speck of dust shall be left on any object in the room. Then she lays the breakfast cloth ready for breakfast, and shuts the dining-room, or breakfast-room door.

Her next duty is to sweep the hall, or passage, shake the doormats, clean the door step, and polish the brass knocker, if there is one. Then she cleans the boots, washes her hands and face, puts on a clean apron, and prepares the toast, eggs, bacon, kidneys, or whatever is required for breakfast.

Previously, however, she will carry the urn that her mistress may make the tea.

She then has her own breakfast, goes up tot he bedrooms, opens the windows, strips the bedclothes off, and leaves the mattresses or beds open.

By this time probably the bell will ring for her to clear away the breakfast things. She should do this quickly and carefully; bring a dustpan, and sweep up the crumbs, put back the chairs, make up the fire, and sweep up the hearth.

I am half way down the first page of this list of duties, but they end on the third page with the writer addressing the maid of all work directly.

Find time for your own work of an evening, and take care to leave no holes in your stockings or rents unmended. "A stitch in time saves nine;" and if every Saturday night you men all your fractures, both in clothes that return and those that are going into the wash, you will keep your needlework nicely under.

Be personally clean. It is the great charm of ladies; and a good wash all over every night before going to bed will refresh you, make you healthy, prettier, and more cheerful that if you fell asleep still dirty from your daily toil.

Be active, cheerful, good-tempered and obliging, and you will find work easy and employers kind.

Do your daily duties with all you might, remembering Whose eye is always on you; and believe that the Great King who gives us our daily work to do, will not leave unmarked the efforts of even a little maid of all work.

Well, I think there's much to mull over, here. I'd love to hear your thoughts on it all.

The Daily Round (For the Modern Girl)

In many of my vintage household manuals a definite series of daily tasks is prescribed for the housewife to complete, this they call the daily round. For those not in the know, the daily round is a cross between a daily light cleaning and a general tidy up. In the books I own, dating from the 1860s to the mid 1950s, the tasks listed offer us an insight into the lives of the women of the time and also a glimpse of their social attitudes. By examining what what expected of them, in terms of daily cleanliness, we can see how those women viewed their homes, their families and their lives. Over the next week or so I'm going to do a few posts on how our forefathers(mothers!) cleaned their homes, or more importantly how they aspired to clean their homes, and also talk a little about the roles of servants during the latter part of the nineteenth and the early part of the twentieth century.

However, before I post on our domestic past, I thought I'd post on the domestic present and talk a little about my daily routine. Blimey, I hope this is of interest to you!

I see my daily round as a way of getting the house to the required level of comfort needed to sustain peaceable and healthful living. And, put in those terms it seems that the daily round is an important part of my day. However, the daily round does not involve big jobs; floor cleaning, ironing, changing bed linen, shopping or running errands; but a series of small tasks which you can generally whizz through. I have a family of four messy people, and include myself amongst the messies, but my daily round takes me no longer than 45 minutes to complete, and often as little as half an hour as the week goes on. Here's a truncated version of what I do.

Upstairs

Make beds, draw curtains, pick up stray clothes and stray toys, throw laundry down the stairs, straighten wet towels to dry, throw dirty towels down stairs, wipe over bathroom sink and counter, clean loo, open bedroom windows.

Downstairs

Wash breakfast dishes, wipe over kitchen counter and hob, straighten kitchen table of all comics, toys and books, recycle and put out rubbish, fluff up living room cushions and throws, wipe crumbs off coffee table, water plants, put laundry in wash, clean downstairs loo and look over towel and basin.

I like to get his stuff done before 10:30 am, so I can get other cleaning jobs done, prep a meal, bake, craft, blog (!) or even go out into town or see a friend. And, although the list seems pretty long reading, in practical terms it takes no time at all because I always do it in the spirit of my house-cleaning motto:

"do you want it done, or do you want it perfect?"

That is to say, my home cannot be perfectly clean unless I become a bit neurotic, and being neurotic is neither peaceful nor healthful so I always aim for "just good enough". I suppose I should now define what "just good enough is." I think the best way to do that is to imagine a friend has popped around unexpectedly. First, she needs to visit the loo. She doesn't want to eat her breakfast off your bathroom floor but she does want to pee in comfort and confidence! So, you need to provide her with a clean loo, clean basin, soap, a towel and loo paper. Now she asks for a coffee and keeps you company in the kitchen. She doesn't expect highly polished stainless steel or perfectly ordered cupboards, but hygienic work surfaces and clean cups to drink from, she doesn't expect your fridge to smell or her feet to stick to your kitchen floor. This friend, is now becoming a bit of a pain in the neck and promptly faints. You say she can lie down on your bed, she shouldn't expect lit candles and lavender striped linen sheets, but a made bed, clothes in the wardrobe and a dust free dressing table. Well, you get the picture, you can imagine yourself making the place comfortable for a friend, when really you're making your home comfortable for your family to live in.

I have a few hints for establishing a daily round, which I hope you'll find interesting, if in fact helpful. Here come the bullet points!

• Just do it. Don't look at the mess just pick it up. I'm one of life's philosophers, in fact I do spend inordinate amount of time in deep, Pooh Bear-style thought. If you are like me and stand in the bathroom for twenty minutes contemplating what people's toilet habits say about their personalities, PULL YOURSELF TOGETHER and spend five minutes cleaning up.
• Set your oven timer. Think about how many minutes you can bear cleaning, then minus that time by five minutes. Are you left with only five minutes on that oven timer? Well that's just fine, you'll be amazed at what you can accomplish if you don't do it perfectly and don't stop to navel-gaze. You may even want to set the timer for another five minutes.
• Give yourself a little reward. A nice cup of tea and an hours blogging is always a good incentive for yours truly.
• Abandon lists. Lists are great for big, must do jobs, like pay gas bill and pick up prescriptions. But it is not wise to list all the piddly jobs you do in a day, it's nice when all the tasks get ticked off and completed, but a slap in the chops when you've not accomplished hardly any, for whatever reason.
• Establish the round as a routine. A routine of piddly jobs to get over and done with as soon as possible. The routine is good for you and good for your kids. They'll know that they can paint, go to the park, have a bit of mummy-kid time as soon as the round is done, as soon as the oven timer goes beep.
• Little ones can come with you. Get them to wash a door. Put a towel that needs laundering under the door and give the little one a clean cloth and some bubbly water. Your door will not be clean, and your floor may be a bit wet, but your kids will be happy and entertained whilst you go like a whirlwind. Praise all door cleaning activity fulsomely.
• Get stuff into perspective. Having grey grouting is not a stain on your character, just a stain on your grouting. Do what you can and when you can, simply to make your home more ordered, happy and hospitable.

Well, I started this post by saying that how own ancestors viewed their daily rounds said a lot about their social attitudes and how they viewed their home-lives. I wonder what my thoughts on my own particular round say about me? Answers on a post-card, please...no, on second thoughts it's best to live in ignorance!

Anon, fellow huswives and happy homemaking!

Jobs for February, Both Seasonal and Vintage

Well, in my copy of The Happy Home, A Universal Guide to Household Management, published by The Good Housekeeping Institute sometime in the early 1950s, jobs to do in January are given thus.

January

Check annual accounts and draw up budget. Extra entertaining. Marmalade making. Turn out linen cupboard, and make a list of necessary replacements; buy these if possible at White Sales.

You'll be glad to know that on the 31st January (last minute Domum strikes again!) I submitted my self-assessment tax return to the Inland Revenue (this, in my view, substitutes "check annual accounts" on the Good Housekeeping list) and made marmalade. My linen cupboard is sadly non-existent so I pickled some beetroot instead.

Now, if you fancy having a go at marmalade making, I urge you to try whilst the Seville oranges are still in the shops. It's not nearly so much of a faff as you'd think and the results are delicious. You need roughly two pounds of oranges and six pounds of sugar to make ten large jars, so it works out as an exercise in frugality, but only if you and yours like the stuff! Here's the 1950s recipe I used, again from Good Housekeeping's The Happy Home.

Seville Orange Marmalade

2 lb bitter oranges

1 lemon

6 pints water

6 lb sugar.

Wipe the fruit, cut in half, and remove the pips, tying them in a muslin bag. Slice the fruit and put it together with the water and bag of pips into a preserving pan or large saucepan. Boil until the rind is tender and the contents of the pan reduced by about one-half (1- 1/2 hours). Remove the bag of pips. Add the sugar, stir until dissolved and boil briskly until the marmalade jells when tested on a cold saucer. Pot and cover immediately.

Now, for marmalade novices, remember to slice your fruit as thinly as you can without going mental through boredom. Also, de-pith your lemon and put this pith in the muslin bag with your orange pips, oh and talking of muslin bags, a clean, child's sock will do for this venture if muslin eludes you. When your rind is tender, wait for the mixture to cool a little because it is best to squeeze out all the pectin gathered from the pips in your muslin bag/sock (a joyously messy business). Make sure you dissolve all the sugar over a low heat before you even begin to think about boiling the marmalade. Email me if you need any further help.

You will be glad to know that in February I shall be turning over a new leaf and do any seasonal household jobs throughout the month rather than in my usual last minute rush. I have perused my vintage household management books, in order to find said seasonal inspiration, and here's what I've found.

From The Happy Home.

February

Prepare for spring-cleaning by turning out cupboards, drawers, shelves, book-cases etc. Make plans for any interior decorations. Arrange for chimney sweep.

Hmm, not too sure if I approve of this "turning out" business. I like my cupboards crammed full of useful and important junk. Let's have a look at what Aunt Kate's The Housewife's Calender, from 1930s, has in store for this month. Oh, there's such a lot of reading to do! Aunt Kate is so verbose (now there's the pot calling the kettle black) I shall paraphrase.

February

Buy a melon, tackle your cupboards (oh no, not you too Aunt Kate), brush up on your pancake recipes, sow hardy annuals, make new kitchen curtains (okay then), have a leap year party and invite single people (what larks!).

Aunt Kate is always such a joy. I feel I can fulfill my housewifely duty by buying a melon and having a jolly good knees up (is it a leap year btw?). I am formally ignoring all advice vis a vis cupboards, just so you know. Now let us examine my much beloved A Calender of Country Receipts, by the blessed and much under-appreciated Nell Heaton, again I shall paraphrase, but if you want a recipe mentioned in the list, please email me.

February

Make beetroot wine, orange curd, lemon wine, honey beer, chilli and onion sauce and remember to waterproof your garden boots.

With your larder stocked with such goodies you could have a mighty fine February knees up. Oh, I think I shall be making the Chilli and Onion Sauce (in fact a chutney) over the next month or so, I'll let you know how it works out.

So to leave you, I give you the view from my front door this morning. Warwickshire schools are still open, and such news my children took as a cruel blow. Anon goode huswives, anon!

It's an Institute You Can't Disparage

This post contatains some sensitive material, if your little ones are reading over your shoulder, you may want to move on and read this later!

Now, I did say to my friend Jenny that I would post on "the daily round" today and how it has changed throughout the decades, but I've (ahem) changed my mind. I've finally booked up the courage to post on something I've been itching to do for ages. You see ladies, amongst my collection of old cookbooks and homemaking books, I have some "top shelf material". That is to say, I have one or two vintage tomes that specifically (and explicitly) tutor on the subject of marriage and motherhood. The books are often simply titled "The Marriage Book" or "Marriage and Motherhood", and date mostly from the 1920s to the 1950s, a time when s*xual activity was not seen as taboo, but was kept within the confines of the marriage bed (largely). However, it would be a mistake to think that the books are simply manuals on how to conduct the intimate relationships, they go further than that, and because of this they offer a more comprehensive insight into the way every-day people led their lives than many of my household guides and recipe books.

In The Marriage Book, which carries the rather wonderful sub-heading of "for husbands and wives and all who love children", young men are encouraged not to consummate their marriage on the wedding night, and indeed this is advice which is often repeated in many of the vintage books I have on marriage.

There are times when, owing to nervous fatigue of the wedding and travel attending the honeymoon, the young woman is too tired to respond to any long caressing...he will find generally with the coming of morning that the expression of affection against which she would have reacted unfavourably the night before is now thoroughly welcome and met with responses.

The attitude of the writers suggests that although many women enjoyed "kisses and caresses" during the engagement period, they would be v*rg*ns on their wedding night and would need careful and gentle treatment before the consummating act.

Little by little this love play should be carried to greater intimacy, care being taken not to make the woman feel she is being hurried or pushed into more intimacy than she desires.

However, the woman was in no way tutored "to lie back and think of England".

She, on her part, if she has an honest desire to achieve normal, wholesome s*x relationship, will put on no false modesty, nor will fail to show her husband that she is enjoying what he gives her. After half an hour or an hour of loving, the woman is usually as eager for intercourse as any man...

As a modern reader I find it interesting that these books explode the myths surrounding s*xual activity pre the s*xual revolution of the 1960s. The Marriage Book shows us that women were expected to find enjoyment in the marriage bed, that men were expected to provide "half an hour or an hour of loving" before the act, and the men are told that at times a woman will "pass through several noticeable o******s before her passion comes to an end." So, Philip Larkin was wrong, "s*xual intercourse" did not "begin in 1963", it was there all along, but confined to a very private sphere, and placed firmly within the context of marriage. As an aside, we are told that even a married woman should "never be pushed into more intimacy than she desires"...how many of our young girls today can say they never feel harried or pushed into more intimacy than they desire?

Now, these books tend to focus on these intimate relationships in their initial chapters, but aim at being comprehensive guides. So we often find alarming juxtapositions of topic within the contents pages. Here are a few chapter headings, as an illustration.

S*x in Modern Life

Common Mistakes

Motives for Birth Control

Choosing a House

The Wife's Creed

Food for the Average Family

Don't for Mothers

Christmas Dinner Menus for Six Persons

Simple Patterns for Children's Wear

These books aim for all-round happiness in family life, and see each aspect of marriage as interconnected, they simply offer more personal advice on the general homemaking manuals of the period. I think we modern types see our lives are more compartmentalised: we don't necessarily see how our intimate lives are related to what we cook, how we manage finances, how we rear our children: but these 1930s manuals did, and I tend to agree, simply because our health and happiness does tend to rest on how we conduct our home-lives, and what constitutes a home-life is myriad.

Before I go, let me leave you with a rallying cry, from Marriage and Motherhood, a call to all patriotic British women which firmly places the book's context in the immediate post-war period. It is interesting to see how the "ideal" has changed over the past fifty years, and indeed how the "ideal" of womanhood is often changed to suit the economic and social climate of the period.

To make a success of marriage and motherhood is the ambition of every true woman, and in doing so she in not only realising personal happiness, but performing the greatest service to her country that is in her power. Happy homes are the bulwarks of a nation, for they provide the only environment in which really satisfactory citizens can be reared, and there was never a time when they were more needed.

Well, I hope you have enjoyed my trawl through the more unusual examples of my book collection. What are your immediate reactions to the advice given?

Victorian Farm

A little while ago I posted on how much I loved the series Tales from the Green Valley, where a group of archaeologists and historians spent a year replicating a whole farming calender as it would have been in the 1600s. It was just wonderful stuff, engaging, interesting and intelligent popular history. Here's the introduction to the series.




Now, a few of the same group have come together again to replicate the farming year as it would have been in the 1880s. I watched the first episode last night and I was in telly heaven. In it, domestic historian, Ruth Goodman, was preserving the fruits and berries she'd foraged for in the Shropshire countryside, using her restored cast iron range and an Eliza Acton recipe. She also gave a scary talk on bed bugs and boiled an enormous pice of mutton. Anybody interested in domestic history should watch, and perhaps visit her site...I think she's my new hero!

Here's the link to BBC Iplayer so you can watch over the net. Enjoy!