Food History

I’m taking a break from drinking. I promise to get back to it, though, and write more curiously influenced posts.

Today I have two things to talk about: search terms and one of the community cookbooks. They are in no way linked, nor is the fact that I spent this morning looking at stoves.

Normally search terms for this blog aren’t at all interesting. Everyone who comes is practical and sensible and looks for good stuff. This time, when I checked the stats, things were a bit different. That’s why I’m sharing. Everyone else gets strange terms to chuckle over so it’s about time we had some, too.

Right up the top is ‘brad and butter pudding’. I do wonder what Brad tastes like in a pudding, but I don’t want to kill him to find out. A few entries under Brad is ‘pleasure revenge food’ – if it was the same person who used both search terms and you are that person, please own up. There has to be a story in it.

Just for the record, photography was invented in the nineteenth century. This means that the poor soul who looked for ‘medieval beef photos’ was entirely out of luck. I hope that the person who keyed in ‘middle evil times people how to cook food’ had better success, though I can’t promise anything for ‘names of a Jewish butcher.’ I have met a Jewish butcher and I don’t think I called him names at all.

The rest is pretty sane and sensible. I’d really love to know what the person who googled ‘jewish herb garden’ found out. Why should a Jewish herb garden be any different from a non-Jewish one? Colour me mystified.

The next cookbook on my little pile of must-reads is The Tried-and-True Cookbook. It has a lovely blue cover and was put out by the Wesley Deep Creek Uniting Church in order to help primary school children at risk. It comes from the bottom end of mainland Australia rather than the top end, but it’s still about children and their needs.

Melbourne has a Mediterranean climate, and its food has a Mediterranean influence. Instead of tropical flavours, there is minestrone and Chinese barbecue pork, pilaf and lasagna. There is, however, also macadamia chicken, tomato curry and some truly wonderful-looking desserts that could be from anywhere European. In other words, the cookbook doesn’t reflect Melbourne, it reflects the congregation of that particular branch of the Uniting Church.

To celebrate that congregation and its efforts in helping children, how about a recipe? This one calls itself “Impossible Pie” and, despite the name, it looks delightfully simple.

Impossible pie

4 eggs
½ cup butter
½ cup plain flour
2 cups milk
1 cup sugar
1 cup coconut
2 tsp vanilla

Blend all ingredients together and pour into a 25 cm greased pie plate.

Bake at 180 degrees C for about 1 hour or until centre is firm.

I’m going to post about cookbooks tomorrow after all. Tonight I want to put in a plea for more help. Four months ago I had a queue of people who wanted the food testing for the Prohibition Banquet all sorted out so that they could move on to the more joyous task of drinks testing. I still have a core of happy testers (and one new one) but most of the queue seems to have disappeared.

I have thirty-something recipes that need homes and tasting. I would very much like results by the end of May so that the committee can do the tricky job of trying all the drinks in one evening before the evenings get so long and so cold that such a task becomes dangerous. Though an extended cocktail party in mid-winter does have its attractions, and I do have a camera…

Testing these recipes is really a matter of getting the ingredients, mixing them, sipping elegantly and telling me how much you like what you taste and what, exactly, it tastes like. If you say something curious or colourful (or even curiously colourful) I might blog it. If you are three sips in and think of a splendid new science fictional or fantasy name for the drink then I can take that to the committee for consideration. We’re not renaming the food for the occasion, but we are most certainly renaming the drinks.

I’ll blog the final recipes with their new names (and slightly modified ingredients – Australian brands in 2008 and New York brands in 1921 don’t always overlap) after Conflux, which isn’t until October. This is, in other words, your last chance to taste what’s going to happen at the Banquet and at the Speakeasy the night after.

All I need is an email address and the number of recipes you’re willing to try and I’ll email them to you forthwith. In advance, thank you, because I really, really didn’t want to have to make all thirty-nine of those recipes myself.

Several thoughtful people gave me community cookbooks for my birthday. I’m delaying putting them away until I can blog them, because community cookbooks are way more fun when they’re shared. I looked at my little stack today and wondered where to start and how to go about it. The problem is that in some ways local cookbooks are all different and unique. In other ways, they’re a bit the same. It’s the latter that worries me. Normally I classify works by similarities of ideas or concepts or language. If I do that in these instances, what you will get are blog posts of the greatest boredom. It will strip the books of their individuality and quirkiness and render them intellectual sludge. That intellectual sludge might be the underlying material for really interesting academic papers, but I’ve decided against it in this case. Be proud of me.

What I thought I would do is introduce them in pairs. Not matched pairs, either. I’ll take two at random each day for three days and find you something cool in each and every one of them. After all, a lot of love and work goes into each and every community cookbook. Even the ones that use a set format and just modify it a little and then add their own recipes entails a bunch of effort.

I’m afraid my blogposts won’t lead to a sparkling little article on the nature of community cookbooks. It will help you retain your respect for them and understand just how fascinating they are, though, and the lack of sludge should mean that you won’t use my blog last thing at night to help you get a good night’s rest. So, three posts, two books a post, starting tomorrow.

Yesterday was so busy and last night so fatigued that I completely forgot to blog. Sorry about that! I blame first week of term, but the real problem lay with me coming back in the afternoon to teach a new course that evening. Naturally this means that today and tomorrow all I want to do is sleep.

Tomorrow has all kinds of paperwork lying in work, some messages, and a meeting.

I think I might take the easy way out. Today and tomorrow I’m going to give you other people’s recipes. Not Sharyn’s, though I’m certain more of them will come. More for the biscuit and scone collection tomorrow and something else the day after. I’ll decide tomorrow and the day after when they come. Today I want to talk about what I have in store for the blog over the next little while.

I also have five new cookbooks. They were birthday presents from sensible souls. I shall blog about them soon. In fact, I won’t put them away until they’re blogged, so that’s something to look forward to. They’re all community cookbooks of one kind or another, so the recipes will be interesting and the stories behind them good.

Soon we’re going to start testing cocktail recipes for the Prohibition Banquet and the next night’s Speakeasy. I feel as if I should start a chart for my hangovers.

While I was away I scored some cool cooking equipment. Most of it is modern and only of interesting to people who eel like eating at my place. My mother let me have a set of antique scales. They’re not very antique, I don’t think, but beautifully balanced and use pre-decimal weights. Now I have a 1940s scale for my big weigh-ins (for those rare occasions when I make cakes) and this other balance for the smaller things. I’m going to try to take a picture, but if you see the moustache cup at the top of the post you’ll know that I failed. The failure is probably due to a missing cord (things are a bit topsy-turvy at my place when term begins). When the cord appears I’ll try again.

And that’s the sum of my apologies. Historical scone and biscuit recipes tomorrow!

My mind has, all day, been scattered like chaff by the breeze.

Every now and again I get that way, in between-times. This particular between-time is the place between Passover and the start of term (moving from the Jewish calendar to the secular one), between kosher food and my everyday fare, between the continuous food at my mother’s and the more sporadic supply at my own home.

There are some continuities in my life. We talk about the history of food in Melbourne whenever I visit, for instance. This time round I discovered the whereabouts of the cherry farms that supplied the Eastern suburbs, fifty years ago, and the precise variety of prune that my family ate forty years ago.

Some aspects of work are also continuities. You will be pleased to know, for instance, that I am the proud possessor of a costume for the Prohibition Banquet. I bought reproduction fabric and 2 metres of silk and my mother did the rest. She can sew, thank goodness. When I sew life becomes interesting.

I maybe ought to let you know that I bought a bit of extra fabric and I’ll be making them up into picnic squares. There may be some kind of giveaway on the blog later in the year to celebrate the banquet and my guestliness. That giveaway might include picnic squares and folding instructions and recipes. The only thing that might come between you and possessor of hand-hemmed picnic squares of reproduction fabrics is if all my friends get there first. Maybe I should just squirrel two away and promise them here, now. Watch this space. You, too, could be the proud possessor of a square and recipes to go with it. It won’t happen for a few months, though.

Tomorrow I move away from between and into term time. This term I’m not teaching food history. My subject is Medieval Women and women eat food, so food won’t be entirely absent from my teaching. I have no idea how it will affect my blog. I’m in between-time, though, so I really don’t have much idea about anything.

Sharyn’s children are all christened. I couldn’t be there, because seventh day Passover and christenings really don’t match, but my thoughts were with them all.

She says that she has a couple of posts to take us through the missing food elements and then that’s it: we will have a complete documentation of a rural Australian christening with stories. Although I admit, I wasn’t expecting the Mayan aspect of today’s post.

“Perhaps this one should be called ‘Recipes from before a Country Christening,’ because when you have a wedding, 21st, christening etc in rural Australia, you have people coming from all over the place, and you are never catering for just the one meal. We already have friends here, from both interstate and overseas, more family and friends are expected today, although precise numbers are unclear. So, not being one hundred per cent certain of how many I’ll be feeding, I decided late last night, while roasting the chicken for the ‘Chicken, Leek, and Tarragon Pie’, to make pumpkin soup, and get the makings out for a casserole.

It then made sense, while I had the oven on, to prepare the bread cases for the ‘Smoked Salmon Tartlets’, and one of my houseguests decided to pitch in with her own favourite recipe, what she calls her ‘Sinking Mud Muffins’, so we’ll have something to offer with coffee & tea today. And after all, doesn’t everyone make muffins at midnight?

But she couldn’t have chosen a better comfort food for me. Chocolate has been used as important parts of people’s social and religious lives, since the Mayans grew it in Mesoamerica (250-900 AD). Modern studies have proven what is in it that makes us feel so good, and as a child, my best friend’s mother used to make the darkest, moistest, absolute best chocolate cake. She knew I was somewhat partial to it, so weekends when I stayed over there would always be a big slab of frosted chocolate cake to have with our morning tea mugs of Milo.

As a teenager I moved to Wodonga for work, and my friend moved to Benalla. Whenever she came home, even unexpected visits, she’d ring me, and I’d head straight out to see her. It took me half an hour to get out there and I’d walk in the door, just as her Mum would be removing a freshly baked chocolate cake from the oven. “I knew you were coming”, she’d grin, “so I made you a cake.” It’s not really any wonder I named one of my daughters after this woman.

So today, while I raise a glass in honour of the Anzac’s, make ‘Frangelico Truffles’ as gifts for my boys god-parents, eat chocolate muffins, and my house fills with more of the people I love, I’m sharing my recipe for the truffles. To my mind, nothing else could quite say thank you, to those people for making the commitment they have chosen to make to my children, like handmade chocolate.

Frangelico Chocolate Truffles

Ganache
8 oz (230 g) dark sweet chocolate
2/3 c. heavy cream
2 Tablespoons Frangelico.
Dipping
16 oz. (450 g) dark sweet chocolate
1/4 cup vegetable oil

Garnish
2 cups chocolate shavings.

When chocolate and cream ganache have cooled to room temperature, stir in sherry before refrigerating. Roll dipped truffle in chocolate shavings. “

I’ve been eating birthday cakes. Mine. Plural. My mother made me one for the day nine family members got together for a birthday dinner. She made me another one for today, since it’s my actual birthday. The first was a chocolate sponge made with potato flour (since it’s still Passover) and the second was an orange-hazelnut cake.

Friends and relatives have been drifting in and out for the last few days, too.

No, I’m not having a major birthday, although turning a prime number is a rather cool thing. I’m just lucky enough to have a birthday that coincides with an Australian public holiday and (this year, though not most years) Passover.

It’s family time and a long weekend and everyone is slowing down a bit and my parents’ place is good to visit. This means I’m having a gentle but prolonged happytime.

There is food history involved. Of course there is. How could there not be? Not just Sharyn’s lovely posts (more to come, by the way, but tonight is about birthdays), but friends and family remembering fruit past and recipes present. Sometimes they remembered fruit present and recipes past.

Between us we have eaten amazing amounts of food (I shall roll home quite soon, I think, even though home is hundreds of miles from here) and spun so many stories and made so many jokes that I can’t remember the half of them.

Anywhere, that’s where I’ve been. In a smaller world than usual, celebrating Passover and my forty-seventh birthday and remembering the past. Some of the past hasn’t been happy – ANZAC Day is not really a happy history, after all, but it’s all worth remembering.

The best thing about a birthday? The more of them I have the more I have learned and the better I understand the past.

PS I haven’t forgotten presents. In fact, at least one needs blogging, one day soon.

Culcairn is heating up, as you can see from this post. By Saturday, there will be enough food in that town to feed double the usual number. Enjoy Sharyn’s latest post!

“Recipes from a Country Christening

My childhood memories of food at parties may well be different from people the same age in other areas. With the migrant camp at Bonegilla http://www.environment.gov.au/heritage/national/sites/bonegilla.html introducing a wide variety of people to our region, we had an incredible amount of choice.

Pot-luck dinners run by the CWA might have French style ragouts; sweet and sour sausages & rice (the rice was always cold and gluggy); stroganoff; homemade pizzas on scone dough; homemade spring rolls; kransky; tuna mornay; and my favourite, lasagna. Big, solid layers of meat and tomato sauce, nutmeg flavoured cheese sauce and homemade pasta. Sweets could range from platters of fairy bread and honey joys; bread and butter pudding; to fresh apple strudel. I have fond memories of watching the strudel pastry being made.

Making fresh pasta, and tomato sauce, for a lasagna always takes me back to the aromas of my friends mum’s kitchen, when I was a kid. It takes a bit extra time, but the flavor is always well worth the effort.

Home-Made Pasta Dough

INGREDIENTS

400g plain flour (strong/bread flour is best, but you can get passable results with ordinary plain flour)
4 whole eggs, lightly beaten
salt to taste
METHOD

Place flour onto the work surface, and make a well. Add eggs, salt and gradually work into the flour until a soft and pliable dough forms. Knead the dough until smooth and consistent - 5 minutes should do.
Allow dough to rest for an hour, covered in cling wrap, in the refrigerator. Divide dough into 4 balls. Flatten each ball into a disk and pass through the pasta machine on the widest setting, Fold in half lengthways and repeat. Keep rolling twice on each setting until you reach the narrowest setting.
Cut pasta if it gets too long.

* To roll by hand, divide mixture into manageable balls. Roll each portion evenly onto a well-floured board. A marble rolling pin is best for this job.
Dust rolled pasta with extra semolina and allow to rest for 10 minutes before using, or air dry the pasta until required.

Pasta Sauce

INGREDIENTS

10 large tomatoes
1 heaped tablespoon dried basil, or half a bunch of finely chopped fresh basil leaves
1 teaspoon butter
1 onion, finely diced
1 cup stock (chicken or vegetable)
½ cup red wine

METHOD

In a medium sized stockpot (you can use a deep-sided saucepan) melt the butter, and fry onion til soft. Add roughly chopped tomatoes and stir for several minutes. Add stock, basil and wine. Bring to the boil, and stir while tomato flesh breaks down. Season to taste, and simmer for approx half an hour, or until sauce has reduced. For a smooth sauce, blend for a few minutes with a stick blender.”

A few weeks ago I thought I had suddenly aged ten years. Maybe twenty. I kept dreaming of flavours of Passover past. This is one of the reasons I gave you those posts about my notebook (they will return, when I have time to get back to them). “I’m getting old and grouchy,” I told myself. “Even dried fruit was different forty years ago.” Maybe it was time to buy that walking stick I joke about?

A friend and I did a market visit a week ago and I found some dried plums. These prunes reminded me exactly of the dried fruit of my childhood. “How is this possible?” I thought. I memorized their details and brought some for my mother to try. I wanted to see if it was all in my imagination, or if there was something to be learned about local food history.

They were sun-dried, with no chemicals. They were angelinas. Fresh angelinas are a very dark purple and crisp and sweet and have a very slight tartness to them. The dried fruit came from a local Canberra orchard (using the Australian definition of ‘local – anything up to two hours drive away’).

My mother tried them. She didn’t speak for a minute. She, too, had been transported back to Passovers past.

It appeared she, too, had bought from a local orchard (except local to Melbourne, not to Canberra) when I was exceedingly young. There was only a little imported kosher for Passover food back then, and very few food choices at all. Everything was supplemented by dried fruit. Mum and Dad knew someone and they grew angelinas and made the most wonderful dried fruit.

And so we repeat the past without even knowing it. This means I’m still middle-aged and can’t justify that cane yet. I can still feel grouchy if I want, but right now I don’t want.

You see, the prunes were only available for a few weeks a year then, and they are now. They’re round at the tail end of summer and the beginning of autumn. This means that, around Passover every year, this particular dried fruit has been available in south-eastern Australia since the first Angelina plum tree was planted by Europeans.

Suddenly I miss the grandmother I never knew. She died before I was three. This is a result of family gathering together, I guess. I’ll get back to my culinary collection next week. It will be quite different to the bits you’ve seen already. When I left home, you see, I discovered similar traditions to my own in terms of enjoying home cooked food, but with quite, quite different recipes. Next week, I promise. And I have other things in store of the rest of this week, not least more about Sharyn’s country christening.

Instead of giving you something from my grandmother’s notebook, today I’d like to do something a little different. As part of a paper I did last year, I compared the recipes she cooked against the recipes in key nineteenth century British cookbooks. My grandmother’s cuisine lacked Sephardi elements and lacked some of the continental cooking, but otherwise there was a significant amount of overlap. I’ve been wondering, since then, who remembers my grandmother’s dishes (or their own versions thereof).

The whole list is far too long for here, but I thought maybe you might like to see a section of it (the As to Cs). Please tell me if it looks familiar, and if you have any family recipes for any of them and you’re happy to share, then please email or post them in the comments.

Almond biscuits
Almond Icing
Almond Pudding
American Shortcake
Ammonia biscuits
Anchovy Eggs
Angel’s food
Apple cake
Apple crumble
Apple Salad
Apple Snow
Apples in Syrup
Apples on sticks
Apricot Sauce
Asparagus Sauce
Austrian apple pie
Bachelors bullions
Baked Eggs & Tomatoes
Banana & nut Salad
Banana Cheese Toast
Banana Cream Pie
Banana Savoury Rolls
Banana Souffle
Berry Sponge
Biscuits
Biscuits
Black Top Pudding
Boiled fruit cake
Bombay Toast
Brandy Butter
Butter biscuits
Butter scotch
Butterscotch Sauce
Caramel Custard
Carmal Sauce (Ice Cream)
Carrot cheesecakes
Carrot pudding
Carrot Soup
Casserole Rabbit
Celery & Marmite
Champagne biscuits
Cheese Souffle
Cheese Straws
Cheese Toast
Cherry ice cream
Cherry rocks
Chocolate Bake
Chocolate Crackles
Chocolate Eclairs & Cream Buns
Chocolate Icing
Chocolate Sauce (ice Cream)
Chocolate Souffle
Chocolate Walnut Sandwich
Chocolate-Walnut roll
Christmas Pudding
Cinnamon Sultana Sponge
Cocoa-nut biscuits
Cocoanut ice
Coffee Sponge
Condensed milk tart
Cornflour cake
Cream cakes
Cream Tea Cake
Cream-de-Menthe Sauce
Crispy biscuits
Crusted Apples
Crystallised cherries
Cumquat preserve
Curried Lobster
Curried Veal

If you were checking this page at exactly the right second, you would have noticed a timeslip. Saturday’s post appeared three days in advance, and has now gone back to its true home. Sneaky piece of writing.

One of the reasons many people are fond of reconstructions such as the Conflux banquets or those done by those cool people of the Tudor Kitchens project at Hampton Court is because there’s often a feel attached of playing with time.

Instead of stepping into a time machine, we pretend we’re elsewhen. Most of the time it’s not history we’re playing with, but with times that might have been. The history of our perfect dreams. Sometimes those dreams have a certain reality to them and sometimes they’re more like fantasy.

It’s like reading historical fiction and fantasy, except that we walk in the world, nibbling at a meat pie, or snacking on sweets.

For me, this dreaming is something else entirely. Part of me tells stories and part of me analyses them. When I analyse them, it’s to find out about people in the past and to help me to understand people in the present. Understanding is what it’s all about, really. Seeking the patterns of the past and making sense of them for the present. That’s the intellectual side.

Humans, however, are not made of intellect alone. The mouthfeel of a cake that has been five hundred years forgotten – that’s an emotional feel. Harder to analyse, because I’m still developing tools for it. Other people have tools – but I learned the historical styles based on text analysis and sight, not mouthfeel, so I’m working as hard as I can, finding out how I can link my brain with senses of smell and touch and taste.

Human worlds are moderated by our senses. This is why food history is so important. It’s another path to understanding. Added to more traditional approaches to history, it can illuminate and help the heart understand where we come from and maybe, just maybe, where we are going.

I received some new teaching toys in the mail today. There’s a company in England that specialises in making little packs of reproduction ephemera. I bought these packs because they fit what we’re doing on Thursday night, and they arrived just in time. One of the topics for Thursday’s class is food during the Blitz and my students being able to handle reproduction ration books will help bring that aspect of the past to life.

In fact, ephemera is wonderfully evocative. I did a post a while back on a leaflet advertising Dr Morse’s Indian Root Pills, and meant to write more, but life got in the way (as it does). And I’ve given you another variety of ephemera - think of how nostalgic some folks become when they see the favourite wrappers from their childhood.

I can’t introduce you to my wartime ephemera, because I want some surprises for Thursday’s class and how can it be a surprise if you’ve read it on your teacher’s blog two days before? Instead, I’ll talk about the tea leaflet in the Fifties pack, because it takes me back to my childhood. I wasn’t alive in the fifties, of course, but the habit of cutting coupons from tea and carefully saving them for gifts is definitely something I remember from my childhood. I don’t remember us every cashing those coupons in, but we must have. We were forever cutting them out, anyhow.

The facsimile leaflet I have in front of me is for Black and Green’s Golden Tips tea catalogue from 1954-55. It has a few drawings of jewellery on the back flap, but otherwise is just a list (with headings) of what can be got and for how many labels.

Let me give you some food-related examples:

A tee strainer will set you back 14 labels and a bun tin 21. You could exchange 31 for a good quality tea towel and 47 for three dessert spoons of solid nickel. If your life is incomplete without an aluminium porringer (2 pint size, best quality) then you need to drink 63 labels worth of tea, while you could get tannin poisoning if you drink enough (176 labels worth!) for three aluminium saucepans with lids. At the lowest end of the scale is a kitchen swab, which only needs 6 labels. I want the bun tin. Maybe I should get a half a dozen friends a-drinking while I build my time machine.

There’s a blog devoted to ephemera, if your appetite is whetted. It’s called Ephemera and covers a lot of the stuff of daily life that fades from our sight so quickly. Maybe Marty (whose blog it is) has a leaflet with a picture of that desirable bun tin on it?

Many moons ago I wrote a post (which is somewhere in the archives, hiding from me) about the relationship between food and health in the Middle Ages. I love the thought that – if you follow the right principles – a feast won’t make you nearly as sick as when you don’t. Should I admit that I was foolish enough to try both a well structured meal and a poorly constructed one? Probably not a good idea.

Let me instead give you some principles of food and diet from ML Holbrook’s 1888 work. Or should that be a book by one ML Holbrook MD, author of Hygiene of the Brain and How to Strength the Memory? Whenever I see the word ‘Holbrook’ I think of submarines, because for some reason the very inland Australian Holbrook has a stranded submarine. Maybe someone should do a food history reading, sitting on the sub and reading from Eating for Strength, which is the source of the preface below? And isn’t the perfect state of agriculture in the late nineteenth century reassuring to know?

Quite obviously, though, the burning question is whether we should all take the grape cure?

I’m in a sarcastic mood, and the study of diet has changed in 120 years, but there are some fine sentiments in the preface, and it’s worth reading, with or without submarine.

“Preface

In no period of the world’s history has there ever been so deep an interest in the subject of foods as at the present. At no time since Adam and Eve left the Garden of Eden has agriculture and horticulture been so perfect, and the human race supplied with so many choice and nourishing articles of diet. And, also, at no time have so many been engaged in laborious researches on the nature of that which we eat and its relations to health and work. It would almost seem as if the time had nearly arrived when mankind would eat to live would feed themselves so as to nourish their bodies most perfectly and render themselves capable of the most labor, and least liable to disease.

The object of this volume is to present the most recent facts of science in a way to make them valuable for actual use in daily life. There is no doubt but man may double his capacity for work and for enjoyment by improving his dietetic habits. Many have already done this, and multitudes more are only waiting for the knowledge which will help them to do it. A thorough understanding of the different divisions of food and their right relation to the needs of the body is necessary, and this has been fully stated. Several new features have been introduced. To meet the requirements of that constantly increasing class who have more and more desire to draw their nourishment from the vegetable kingdom, carefully prepared and elaborate tables have been arranged showing just how much of each particular food one needs to consume in order to provide the body with the required amount of proteids, carbo-hydrates and fats.

These tables have been especially prepared for this work and are full of interest as well as being of practical value. Another interesting feature of the work relates to the cost of the different articles usually consumed, as for instance the cost of proteids, fats and carbo-hydrates in oatmeal, beef, mutton, corn, eggs, butter, cheese, beer, etc., etc. These tables are so arranged as to show at once which are the most economical articles for the table and which the most expensive, and will be of great value to all who would choose their food wisely, and also for those who desire to reduce the cost of living to a minimum and yet nourish themselves perfectly.

The chapter on the use of the apple as a means of preserving health and the one on the grape cure will, the author believes, meet a need long felt, as will also what has been said concerning the importance of the thorough mastication of our food.

The subject of drinks has also been treated fully, and a very large number of recipes for wholesome ones given. What has been said on this subject cannot fail to prove helpful to those who are in doubt on many points.

The directions for feeding young and delicate children have in practice proved most satisfactory.

The time is near when a knowledge of the principles of diet will be considered as important a part of our education as a knowledge of the multiplication table. That this little work may help to hasten this time is the sincere desire of the author.

M. L. H.”

PS Holbrook not only has a stranded submarine, it has a nice bakery.

I’m becoming a firm believer in everything being linked. That’s the only explanation for a food history excursion including unexpected tips on how to make a shofar. Our hosts today didn’t even know what a shofar was, but Michael knew all about hollowing ram’s horns the easy (though slow) way and gave me a really good explanation why rams’ horns are used more than ewes’. Ewes have a solid portion at the thin end of their horn: they’re harder to hollow out. None of which is relevant to food history unless the breeding of sheep for meat and the breeding of sheep for musical/religious reasons work together, which they might have, somewhere and sometime.

We talked about Aylesbury ducks and their fine history while we were at the farm, but in the end we forgot to see them. We met some young male Belted Galloways, who acted very much like teenage boys. Michael tried and tried to call them, and they kept fairly disdainful gazes upon us, but they saw there was no food in meeting us so they stayed away. The thing is, we will get the ultimate revenge. Young cows should not act intolerably bored – not when they’re in the slaughter paddock. (I felt so mean typing that!)

The sheep were much cooler, and meeting Beyonce the pig is always a delight. She has grown huge and the sheep (Wiltshire, I think) looked tiny and elegant by comparison. They reminded me, in fact, of many of the sheep I had seen in Medieval Book of Hours. So did a roaming whippet.

The hens avoided the peacocks and peahens, and since the peacocks and hens decided to squawk around us enthusiastically we didn’t talk to the hens, just as we didn’t talk to the ducks. I pointed out that I knew how to cook a peacock, which amused my students immeasurably. I left out some key elements when I described the process to them, but it was a genuine error. If they cook according the (very vague) method I described, without the missing steps, they won’t have roast peacock, they’ll have some form of leather.

My enthusiasm for all the plants and Michael’s and Elizabeth’s immense knowledge of what they’re doing often transformed into discussions of how to cook everything from briar rose hips to belladonna’s uses. It was someone else, though, who knew that paddymelon fruit were not edible.

And that was our class excursion. We all bought meat to take home (which resulted in me cooking steak and kidney pie for my dinner), one of my students collected a bunch of feathers to use for calligraphy, and I’m now the proud possessor of a sheep’s skull (alas, merino – I was hoping for one of the heritage types) and a red kangaroo skull. The ‘roo skull is amazingly tiny. They act dangerously clever and sheep act stupid, so maybe the main use of a big brain is to form the base of a dish for the evening meal. And no, I didn’t buy any brains.

Tonight I’m part of the Absolute Writers’ Blogchain again. Last time everyone was talking about pets, as you’ll probably remember. I remember because we all ended up talking about eating strange animals, which was mostly my fault. (I need to put some work in and convince everyone that I’m a gentle and unassuming soul, don’t I? Which reminds me, you might want to take a look at the conflux guest list.)

This time the writer before me was Colby Marshall. I ought to be really grateful, because the newest post on Colby’s blog was about cockroaches and I do not really want to even think about cockroaches served on a plate for culinary delectation. If anyone has eaten a cockroach, I’d be very happy to hear all about it, though. I’m generous that way.

Colby wrote about dance and writing and how even a week without is an eternity. The most I’ve been without food is three days, and the first 36 hours are tough, and then it gets better. This got me to thinking about fasts. Ramadan is a civilised fast (unless it occurs in summer, when the no drinking during daylight hours is worse than the no eating, by a long shot). Judaism has one day fasts.

My favourite fasts though, are Christian Medieval. They’re the sort of fasts that one can get fat on. Fasts not counted by calorie, but by avoidance of certain foods. When I discovered this as an undergraduate and reported enthusiastically to my mother, she worried I was going to convert. Then I told her about the Papal Schism and she felt a bit more reassured. Then I had a Catholic boyfriend and she was de-reassured again. Then I told her that most Christian fasts involved fish and she stopped worrying about me for months. You see, the fast days were the big fish days in the Medieval calendar, and I’m fatally allergic to fish.

Give Fantastical Imagination a day or so, but make sure you visit. Otherwise you may never know where the chain takes allergies, fasts, perplexed parents and the Great Schism. Also, you might want to read the earlier posts, so here’s a list:

Auria Cortes

Polenth’s Quill

Unfocused Me

Spittin’ (out words) Like a Llama

Food History

Fantastical Imagination

Life In Scribbletown

For The First Time

Polyamory From the Inside Out

Livininsanity

Spynotes

A Wayward Journey

Virtual Wordsmith