Food History

Daylight savings is here and I’m awake at an exceptionally early hour. I lay in bed thinking “What did I forget to do yesterday?� I’d forgotten to blog! I feel like saying, with a dash of coyness “Imagine, Gillian forgetting to blog� because coy has a bit of a 1960s feel but I was so tired last night I forgot a whole bunch of things. If I’m a bit less thoughtful than usual, this odd sleepiness is why. It also explains why – when I finally write it – there is enough for two posts. I’ll post the first part now and the second part tonight. This means you’re guaranteed a post even if I’m still on the wrong side of fatigue.

Being tired explains a whole bunch of things about my life. Cooking Better Electrically is certain-sure to cure them. It has a woman in a blue print frock and a beehive hairdo on the front cover (also a frilly pink apron – why don’t I covet that apron? I surely ought to, especially since it’s perfectly clean and starched and belongs on a TV set). On the back cover, the lady with the beehive is looking up (coyly, of course) from the white bowl she’s sort-of stirring. This time she has a floral pink dress and 2 inch (white) heels. No apron, but the floor has white and black squares and makes me think that cooking is like playing chess.

For some reason the front cover has my bathroom tiles as the kitchen splashback. I wondered where those tiles came from. Should I give them back?

Cooking Better Electrically says (just inside the back cover, right opposite a picture of another woman in a floral dress. No, I take that back – this one has a knitted dress or top and the apron is floral and not quite as severely starched. And she’s on the phone.) it’s “Issued by Electricity Supply Department. State Electricity Commission of Victoria.�

Victoria had only one electricity supplier back then (it may still have). From memory, the major generators were (and probably still are) in the Latrobe Valley. What’s important about them is they were set up by Sir John Monash, a Jewish engineer who Montgomery called the best general on the Western Front. He was entirely ignored in Australia’s Centenary of Federation celebrations as were our two Jewish Governors-General, which is irrelevant but interesting, especially since Monash’s Jewishness was the biggest obstacle to his military career.