Wesley College - nearness breeds closet affection (or was that cupboard love?)
Just when I get back up and running, the server for my blog had issues. It hasn’t been a bad week, but it’s certainly been one of curious niggles. The niggle of my neck (now down to panadol strength relief) can make way for the happiness that is community cookbooks. I have two for you: one for today and one for tomorrow. Then my little pile of birthday presents will have been examined, rejoiced in, and put away.
Today’s cookbook is one that’s dear to my family. I didn’t go to Wesley College, but many of my kin were (and if my language has strange twists today it might be that my brain has strange twists today – I wish it were possible to press a button and switch on normalcy). anyhow, because some of my close family are/were and probably will be Wesley students, my view of this book is quite different to other cookbooks I’ve introduced you too.
The thing is, it’s hard to be even vaguely objective when something is close to home. Writing about the history of next door or round the corner is quite different to writing the history of a time much past or a country much different. The loss of objectivity doesn’t necessarily make worse history, but it certainly makes different history. Our particular knowledge of the place or foodstuffs colours what we write and pushes what we think in particular directions. It’s something all historians tend to be aware of, but it’s particularly important for food history.
How many times have you looked at descriptions of this close past and seen yourself reflected? How many times have you looked at a more exotic past and thought that the people were more exotic?
In this case, the Wesley Cookery Book offers a bridge to a different view of the past for me than for anyone less connected to Wesley and a different history again for my relatives who know every brick of the place and every person mentioned. There are degrees of this differentiation for every cookbook we look at, but for this particular one and me, those degrees are not that high.
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