did you ever kiss a frog?

I don't do Halloween:)

I don't do Halloween.

I know, an old curmudgeon.

Yes I am one, but Halloween!

Really? a new import, demands with menaces.

 

It's not that I dislike everything to do with it; dressing up parties? Most kids enjoy dressing up and the ghosts and witches lend to creativity in the makeup department. It's fun

But encouraging children to walk the streets after dark (and Halloween is no fun in the sunlight) so it's always in the dark, knocking on people's doors, demanding sweets with menaces. I'm sure 99.99 reoccurring, children do not avenge themselves on us if we refuse to add to their rotting teeth, expanding waistlines or feed their -'me me' complex.

Told you I was a curmudgeon!

But to be absolutely honest I did do Halloween three times. And sort of enjoyed it.

A few years back I had just relocated the family to Lincolnshire, had a new abode built for us in a beautiful village, in a cosy cul de sac, of other self builds. Our end of the cul de sac when I moved in consisted of two houses and four bungalows, and many building sites. All of which, bar mine, consisted of young working couples and young children.

 

They played on the unmade road, played in each others building sites of gardens. They were nice kids and every day one or three or even five or six would come a visiting. Fascinated I think by our household of 'old' women. Of the guide dog and exotic looking cats. Of the old lady bedridden and dying, they would ask after our mother every day and hope she was alright that day. We'd stand around chatting, admiring their fancy flashing light trainers and the ribbons on their scooters, trikes and bikes examine their dolls in their prams.

I envy the clothes kids of today have so full of colour and fancies. Everything spring bright.

A couple of the older children borrowed books and my printer to print out colour photos of cars. In the way of children, they chatted innocently about their lives and dropped nuggets of home life into my ears. We all became, if not friends, more like surrogate grand-aunt and grand nephews and nieces.

The first year  there I discovered their plans for Halloween.  The little ones excited at their first one. They were going to come knocking at my door, not just mine, all the cul de sac. I warned the family we ought not turn of the lights and close the curtains this Halloween. I bought the sweets and we waited.

 

 

For the knock on the door.

 

They came with a parent hovering at the gate, far enough away to create 'grown-upness'  and near enough for security. The kids dressed to nines as a vampire, a werewolf and a witch. There were cobwebs and spiders and blood dripping. Wigs and darkness with wicked red purple and brilliant emerald glitter. Make up liberally applied and masks for eyes to glitter behind.

 

Very impressive.

 

I had promised my sister who had never seen Halloween costumes a vocal look at our visitors and as they stood by my door chanting trick or treat and trying out a few soft woos and ugs for a tentative scary effect. I made suitably frightened noises and told my sister in turn what these fearful beasts from hell looked like, which made the beasts giggle until I reached the witch, the smallest, and described how scary and fearful this witch was.

A tiny reassuring voice floated on the air between us

'It's alright Miss Ross don't be scared its me, Claudia. Look' and off came her mask.

As I said they were nice kids, more worried for me being scared than demanding her treat.

 

We kept Halloween at our house until they grew out of it, then the curtains were closed and the lights switched off, the car in the garage and peace reigned again for the curmudgeons at the end of the cul de sac.

 

Because I don't do Halloween:)

 

 

Z is for - desserts I have disliked

 

 

I began this A-Z with the evolution of an appetite and wrote how by being made to try the foods I initially refused I learnt not only to like but to appreciate them. How these dreaded foods of childhood became favourites of adulthood. I finish the challenge with an opposite story.

 

We were never ‘made’ to finish any pudding or dessert which we did not like. These were treats, they were special it was unnecessary for us to finish the plate. We could refuse them with nothing more than a ‘you don’t know what you are missing’ and an alternative piece of fruit or jelly and custard.

 

I still do not like those. I have never learnt to like or appreciate them. It still doesn’t matter. They added nothing to my health and I still ‘don't know what I am missing’ - don't care.

 

What I didn’t like then: desserts with alcohol in them. Desserts such as

 

Trifles. Mum made hers with sweet Sherry. When I grew up I drank Sherry, sweet through to dry and enjoyed the drink - however I do not like Sherry trifle. I began to use Sherry to enrich gravies and sauces in my cooking and the drink added an extra depth which I really enjoyed - but I do not trifle.

 

Rum Baba. Many of our guests remember Mum’s Rum concoctions with pleasure, I hated them. These were proper home made Babas, rich in the alcohol of the navy:) not the rum flavoured stuff of the supermarkets nowadays. It has never been a drink of choice, I favoured Gin in my drinking days.

 

There were strange sounding desserts such as Sabayon and what she called Savarins, this last which appears to be the same as the Rum Baba, except I think she distinguished the difference because the first was Rum and the second a liqueur of some kind - Grand Marnia springs to mind.

 

Christmas cakes I enjoyed as long as Mum did not make them beforehand and add alcohol to the stored cake. I know it helped to keep them moist but it ruined the taste for me. As did the Brandy poured over the Christmas pudding, if it wasn’t lit in time and burned off.

 

When I grew up I could add Tiramisu to this list of disliked desserts.

 

As I said I have nothing against alcohol, I have used it a great deal in my savoury cooking, with meats and fish of all kinds, in the sauces and marinades. In my youth I have consumed a fair amount from glass and bottle! The desserts though - no, no, no.

 

When I began thinking through this challenge I was chatting with friend from forever and we were discussing my mothers culinary skills. Our favourite dishes from our past, produced in Mum’s kitchen, as well as trying to fit food into the more difficult letters of the alphabet.

 

The last letter is always the most difficult - so few words in the English language beginning with Z. However friend from forever conjured up yet another dessert from our past she liked, I didn’t.

 

I don't like Zabaglione either.

 

 

There are hundreds more blogs in this challenge - pop over and see, you may make new friends, discover new interests. 

 

Y is for - to every thing there is a season

 

 

Once when I was a young teenager I went to a restaurant in the West End as part of a birthday treat and had a bowl of strawberries.

 

Strawberries!!

Unheard of in April at that time.

 

I couldn’t resist and as it was my birthday treat I was allowed the extraordinarily expensive fruit. I beamed and smiled and declared them wonderful. I had learnt my lessons well. But I confess I had been strangely let down, underwhelmed at what I had eaten. There is a good reason for not eating strawberries in April they don’t taste as good. They are fruit of sunshine, not necessarily warmth but sunshine.

 

The famous line

 To every thing there is a season,

     ( Ecclesiastes 3 : King James Version)

 rings true throughout life and as this is an A - Z of food I will leave aside the seasons for life and death, sowing and harvesting and concentrate on food.

 

Humans are clever, I have remarked on this before, they are also greedy, lack self control and as each generation grows become more demanding.

 

 

We like strawberries, they tell us of summer and picnics, good life and leisure. They satisfy stomach and mind.

 

They are good for us!

How often can we say that of a treat?

 

Therefore it makes sense to eat them all the year around. Doesn’t it? Growers from across the world can now produce them out of season in greenhouses or in deserts. Transport and storage facilities can whisk them across the miles to arrive fresh as proverbial daisies. It is not just strawberries, friends of mine eat soft fruit all year around, buy mandarins every month. The shops are full of runner beans from Chile, potatoes from Egypt cabbage from . . .

 

The list is endless. The argument being there is never any reason not to have all these goodies which are so healthy.

 

For me - it feels wrong. I would dearly love to eat cherries all year around however, we can grow perfectly good cherries in this country in the summer. I do not want to buy cherries that have been flown half way around the world. I want to wait with anticipation for those few summer weeks when they taste extraordinarily good, when I can pig out with a clear conscience. I want my strawberries at the peak of their taste sensation grown in UK, the same with raspberries The summer for me is a jou=yful celebration of all fruits British. A fest as well as a feast of pure taste delight.

 

Oranges and mandarins taste so much better in the depth of winter, they are only seasonal for me because that is when I had them as a child. They cannot be grown over here. But I still don't want to eat them in the summer.

 

Runner beans grow beautifully here in the summer we are ideally suited to grow them, we have the correct warmth and rainfall,they are a summer treat. We do not use up our underground water supplies in the growing of them. I personally do not want beans out of season and flown thousands of miles.

 

I like anticipation, I like the passing of my life in seasons. I desire hearty stews and minces, roast potatoes and warming soups in the cold, I desire fruits and salads in the heat. I want mince pies at Christmas and hot cross buns at Easter. I loathe seeing Easter eggs for sale in January and mince pies for sale in October. Travelling through the year coming to each season, month or even day of the year can be looked forward too in almost childlike shivery excitement, can become rare treats. To have everything when we want it is not good for us however much it feels that it is.

 

A time and place for all foods.

 

Are they better for you if eaten in the correct season, in the correct climate. There is plenty of argument on both sides of the question, as there is on organic and free range farming. With very little compromise between the opposing sides.

 

To me it feels intrinsically right to follow the seasons in my food as much as possible, I add that last because it would be completely foolish to deprive myself of essential nutrients in the case of a long hard winter. And I am not perfect, nor can I always resist the narrow path of principle.

 

A flawed human, moi:)

 

 

There are hundreds more blogs in this challenge - pop over and see, you may make new friends, discover new interests. 

 

X is for - from rationing to feasting

 

 

Christmas - 'tis a strange event to be writing about at the end of April but that’s the a-z for you. When I first hosted a living history group down here on earth, for the U3A, I set  Xmas for us to write about one month.

 

We were to all intents and purposes the same kind of age - retired! - except of course we were not. Our childhoods ranged from the 30s depression to the early 60s - everyone’s description of their Christmas fare was so different. I talk only of the food today because that is what my a-z is about. But even amongst us 'welcome home darling' babies there was a vast difference. Traditional Christmases for one was a strangeness to another.

 

 

So mine consisted of far too much to eat, but we ate it all. Looking back I am not sure how any of us did. We would regularly sit down 13-15 people over a three day period. My father, working in a bank was given a free turkey each year from one of the clients, that was Christmas Day meat, I wasn’t and still am not keen on Turkey. My treat was on Boxing Day when we had one of our chickens roasted. Not the tasteless meat that passes for chicken these days but a robust tasting older bird who was certainly free range.

 

All the trimmings would include various jellies such as redcurrant or gooseberry (cranberry jelly came later) then there was onion sauce, bread sauce, roast potatoes, boiled potatoes, carrots, Brussels sprouts parsnips and swede. Topped with lovely thick gravy.

 

Followed by Christmas pudding complete with silver threepenny bits inside. There was the choice of sweet white sauce or custard. That was the basic meal.

 

Before the day started, before the guest arrived, us kids had our stockings to unpack, they were actually my father’s socks. The highlight for me was the banana, mandarin and the coin tucked into the toe. Along with chalks, pencils, handkerchiefs and colouring book.

 

We began the serious eating with drinks and nibbles as everyone arrived. These nibbles consisted of mince pies, sausage rolls and small neatly trimmed sandwiches. Afterwards, listening to the Queen's Speech, there were chocolates, sweets, bowls of fruit( oranges, mandarins, grapes, boxes of dates,bananas - Christmas was the time for citrus and oranges and mandarins are still the best eaten at this time of the year)and real nuts with a nut cracker.

 

Afternoon tea, Mum would produce the Christmas cake; rich fruit cake covered in marzipan and royal icing decorated with snowmen, reindeer and Santa clause. The only time we didn’t need to eat bread before the goodies:)

 

Supper would be tinned ham, tongue, tomatoes, cucumber, radishes, lettuce, potato salad, coleslaw, beetroot in vinegar, cheese and biscuits. Left over pudding and sauce, fruit salad, Christmas cake, and a pudding of some kind usually a trifle.

 

IF anyone was peckish between all these foods they were free to pick at the bowls!!!

 

This was a real potlatch occasion. Feasting after the year of rationing. Coupons, tins and boxes of chocolates saved for the day. No wonder part of the tradition was a brisk walk after lunch!

 

For Mum and then us, as my sister and I grew older, it was three days of vegetable preparation, of replenishing the bowls, making more mince pies and sausage rolls.

 

When I was young, it was normally cold at this time of the year and snow wasn’t uncommon. We lived in unheated, uninsulated houses and relied on coal fires for warmth. It is hard to imagine any family being able to consume so much food, at one time after the austerity diet the rest of the year, without being ill. We were never ill, our bodies could burn up food as efficiently as any top notch boiler.

 

As I grew up, this consumption went down each year as many of the company aged, and the kids grew up to be fashionably thin. I wandered away sometimes at this time. Firstly to Zimbabwe, when it was still Rhodesia, I had a job out there for a month, where in temperatures that could never burn excesses up, we sat down to the ‘traditional’ fare. I had two Christmases that year as my family postponed theirs until I returned in the New Year:)

 

I also had to endure, yes endure, two Christmases in Australia for a couple of years as the folk I stayed with had to have Christmas Lunch with in- laws and then came back for a repeat performance at home, at dinner time. I remember standing in a bowl of iced water in a bikini with a fan blowing on me and a wet sarong trying to keep hands cold enough to make the pastry. ‘Tis not easy under a tin roof!

 

Traditional in those temperatures is a craziness beyond belief, two such, suicidal!

 

I think the best Christmas I had away from home was in Bangkok. Stuck there awaiting tickets and running out of money my friend and I treated ourselves to a small cooked chicken, some tomatoes, a mango and a small pineapple all washed down with cold chocolate milk.

 

After Dad died the family decided to switch to goose as our main bird, much more satisfactory, and goose remained on the menu until quite recently when I had to reluctantly cease after my gall bladder was removed. We switched for a few years to venison and ostrich but the last couple of years have settled on roast lamb. The trimmings are almost non existent now. Mince pies and sausage rolls are all that remain. The normal amount of veg and barely a pudding or cake in sight. The fruit is still there grapes, oranges, mandarins. The box of dates and figs have gone , sweets have vanished except for a little chocolate. Whole nuts are no longer kind to our teeth.

 

Where did we pack in all that food?

How did we stay so slim?

 

We still eat too much, too much of the wrong food. Such as mince pies which only appear at Christmas, in our house. We maybe over indulge in chocolate. I eat far too many oranges. There is no endless cooking as there was in the past, I roast the leg on Christmas Eve and then we have it cold with bubble and squeak until it runs out. There are only two of us now so this keeps me from hours in the kitchen for nearly a week - bliss.

 

 

 

 

There are hundreds more blogs in this challenge - pop over and see, you may make new friends, discover new interests. 

 

W is - for me and my big mouth:)

 

 

 

One should always be careful what one claims. Especially when one is young and cutting edge, free from home’s familiar restraints, able to reinvent oneself, desperate to be someone. Open one’s mouth once too often, too wide, make claims that may bring you down.

 

Bad move!

 

My first real trip abroad was a last minute invitation to join a group travelling across Europe to Iran and Turkey. A £50 limit on money which could be taken out of UK meant definitely living as the locals - exciting or what?

 

 

 

I had a moment to decide,

a moment who need a moment?

a dream come true,

six weeks wandering around.

Camping where and when.

 

I gave no thought to the fact I would know only one person in the group. I bade farewell to my holiday job, grabbed my passport and with nary a look backward set off.

 

A glorious six week adventure. I look back with the fondest memories.

 

Food. Well we took tins and tins of spam and corned beef - no wonder I eschew them now:) We weren’t sure, you see, what we could buy but vegetables and fruit we ate in abundance, all day, every day. Fruit we had never heard off, fruit which was expensive back home. It was on that trip that I discovered that capsicums, in all colours, were delicious eaten as one would eat apples. I would buy them by the kilo and munch my way through them. Delicious.

 

Another new fruit for me was the water melon. The UK had been introduced to melon a few years back. I liked it okay, served in slices and daringly sprinkled with ground ginger - oh it all seems such a long time ago:)

 

Watermelon though - probably didn't travel as well. Watermelon really needs to be eaten under the sun, walking over dusty paths with the chatter of exotic language in the background. One could buy thick slices from any of a hundred wayside stalls.

 

Eat.

Spit out the seed.

Moi?

 

Never in my life had I spat anything. It wasn’t done. It wasn’t nice. But freed from middle class rules, under the sun, surrounded by everyone else spitting out the seed I spat. Guilty pleasure. Walk along eating - unheard off - not done( well sweets and fish and chips was okay:) again I wasn't at home and I ate as I scuffed along in my flip flops. Watermelon is exceeding good accompanied by unsweetened dry biscuits - don't ask me why?

 

I got quite a reputation for the amount of water melon I was happy to consume and that was my downfall.

 

Istanbul - camped right on the edge of the sea. Starlight and free wine from the local restaurant,a foolhardy tipsy swim in the Bosporus at night. Awaking in the dawn with a leg which had been stung by jelly fish!! I could not walk as the sting had temporarily paralysed my leg, from hip to knee.I couldn't feel my leg. It would pass the locals assured me - so there I was stuck in the camp. My fellow travellers said they would fetch me some provisions to while away the day.

 

A watermelon? I asked. The largest they could find, please.

 

I wouldn't be able to eat a whole one, they warned me. I had though seen the size of them in the markets, do-able I thought and hey I had the whole day.

 

I can eat any size, I boasted - bets were laid and of they went to find the largest watermelon in Istanbul.

 

Foolish, foolish moi.

 

What kind of soil did they grow the fruit on in those parts? When travelling companions eventually turned up it wasn't a watermelon they had found, it was some mutant fruit, no melon could grow that large surely!

 

It had taken them two hours of searching but with delight they produced the mammoth of all melons. It was difficult to carry, its girth was so wide. The weight was staggering. They had been followed home by a curious gaggle of small children who had somehow grasped that this was to be eaten by one person. They squatted at a discreet distance chatting quietly but excitedly to each other.

 

It was the entertainment of the day - nay probably of the week, month. Oh dear, me and my big mouth.

 

I ate slowly. Pace yourself I told myself, often.

The fruit never seemed to diminish however much I ate.

 

I ate

I ate and

I ate.

 

Everyone around me settled into easy relaxation as they chatted, offered encouragement and the betting changed many times.

 

I am also known for my pig headed stubbornness. And come what may I was going to eat that melon.

 

They watched like hawks, in case I tried to tip the juice away. For to be sure the juice was filling me up quicker than the flesh. It was a beautiful juicy fruit no doubt.

 

I grew to dislike the redness the flesh, the blackness of the seeds and as for the green of the rind. Not a shades I had ever been fond of, come to think of it red and black were never colours I sought out, and green had been the colour of school uniform:(

 

When would the eating finish.

Hours.

I ate for hours

I finished the melon.

I ate nothing else all day except that confounded watermelon.

 

I felt sicker than I had ever done for a long while.

I wasn’t deemed as having won unless I could keep it all down.

 

I am not good at being sick. I will lie in agony for hours rather than bring anything back up. As my leg recovered and my stomach took its place in my experience of self pity, I lay in the fading sunlight and then through that next night.

 

I could walk the next day. Well stagger anyway to the back of our transport where I lay prone and wished the day over and done with while my companions laughed,talked and toured the sights.

 

Guess what? I am not so keen on watermelons anymore:)

 

 

 

There are hundreds more blogs in this challenge - pop over and see, you may make new friends, discover new interests. 

 

V is for - how much three tons weigh?

 

 

Drinks figured fairly high on my travels. Drinks like nectar and some . . .

 

          Not!

 

Wine has top place I guess, as soon as I left these shores in the 60s wine was featured. In Greece we tried treading them, not the most pleasant experience and only put on for the tourists - we hoped anyway. 'Tis a squishy squashy sensation under the toes.

 

I came to know vineyards well on my travels, being invited to view them in Yugoslavia. Working on them in Australia, going on tours. Grapes are not just for pressing they are for drinking but first they must be picked and brewed. I have done my share of grape picking as well, in Australia, where for two summers I picked as a second job after working night shifts in the local fruit canning factory. I would be picked up at silly o’clock in the morning by a Greek and driven to the fields where we picked in the increasing heat until mid-day when we would be deposited back in time for a clean up, quick lunch, and back in the factory by 3.00pm. As that shift finished at two in the morning and a shower was essential before bed, it meant short nights and extremely long days.

 

I discovered then that a large tin mug full of wine drank - not sipped - before bed would send me to sleep immediately, but much more to the point, wake me up with a bursting bladder a few hours later in time for the grapes. I had palled up with a French lady and we picked together. One morning the other grape pickers never turned up and so we were left to pick alone. He had obviously tried to find help but it was harvest time and had came up with nothing.

 

Usually the pickers would put the grapes on a tarpaulin on the ground and a tractor would come round, and the tarpaulins picked up and the contents hurled into the back of the trailer. This was the problem that day. No tractor driver, three tons of grapes on tarpaulins.

 

Could one of us drive the drive the tractor?

While the other helped him load the grapes.

 

My friend only had one lung so it was decided she would drive;I would flex my young unused muscles and load.

 

I wasn’t sure it was do-able but we did it.

My shoulder muscles were like concrete the next day.

I hadn’t realised fully just how much three tons weighed!!

 

Then there was that time in Gorome, Turkey, when another party I was travelling with decided to camp in the caves. We settled down for a sing song and a couple of bottles of wine. Three local youths wandered up with some wine and asked if they could join us. They sang wonderful, soulful Turkish songs and joined in our renderings. Then when we bade them goodnight they tuned nasty and said as they had brought wine and song it was selfish not to share the women.

 

Share the women?

Us?

We had not realised (this is back in the 70s remember) the fierce restriction of women in these countries. We had covered up when visiting holy places, worn long skirts and scarves. Unmarried women traveling with non family members were obviously prostitutes and the young men with us (barely more than boys I may add we were all young) were our pimps. Nasty situation. Our guests produced knives.

 

Wine = women, it was simple for them.

 

Our men stood guard all night as the disgruntled visitors roamed around outside the cave entrance. We were dead impressed with our travelling companions, it must have been very scary indeed to be faced with knives when unarmed oneself.

 

Another alcoholic encounter on my travels had a better ending. The first trip I made to Iran we were on the road to some obscure village, we hoped to get to the village in time to buy food supplies for supper. The road followed a nice straight line - across the map - but in reality it tapered away in the middle of the desert. Leaving us stranded at night in the middle of velvet blackness and desert.

 

One night with food is no bother, but we knew how far back the last village had been. We were in for a day at least before we ate again.

 

Early in the morning we were woken by a horn and a friendly laughing Iranian. Head of the road build crew. Our lights had been reported to him and he was on his white charger - actually a flash white Cadillac type car, how it could be driven across the desert we didn’t know. He was all smiles, apologies for the unfinished road and offering his escort to the next village and next road. No trouble, really no trouble. Then on hearing we had no breakfast opened the boot and out of a fridge offered us all, ice cold beer. The strangest breakfast I had had up until then. I am not a beer drinker but that can was nectar.

 

While in Iran we had another encounter with drink, this time with fizzy soft drinks. We had stocked up for a two day desert crossing with an assortment of these bottled drinks. The crates were stacked inside the Land Rover and we set of into the shimmering heat. We knew we couldn’t keep them cold for long what we hadn’t considered was how awful they would taste hot. The temperature grew increasingly unpleasant, way above anything we had ever experienced. We drank the drinks hot because it was liquid and we needed that more than anything.

Then of course there was the road. I call it a road - it was on the map as an unmade road, so we were not fooled this time, however it was a shaky bumpy ride. The inevitable happened fizzy drinks when shaken. . .!!

So they had to go in the back to avoid injury from the explosions, we made it to our destination having just enough drink left after the explosions, to drink. Took me a long time before I could look fizzy drink in the eye again.

 

One last memory. Ouzo the drink of the Greeks, stored in a plastic water canteen will leave the flavour of the drink for many a week. Ouzo flavoured water is really rather nice:)

 

 

 

There are hundreds more blogs in this challenge - pop over and see, you may make new friends, discover new interests. 

 

U is for - Turkish Delight

 

 

 

I have blamed my parents for many things over the decades, children often do. Always with tongue in cheek. The main complaint of my adult life has been the ‘good manners’ I had instilled into me. My upbringing has counted against me so often. Don't get me wrong, I don’t wish to have bad manners, never wished I was ill mannered, liar, cheat or unpleasant - well not often:)

 

But. . . But. . . But . . When one looks around and sees the rude, bullish behaviour which appears to produce results, one cannot but wonder a little if it would be so very very bad to emulate.

 

I kid you, I think:)

 

I was given a sound upbringing, by all the norms of the day.

 

Good table manners were essential when I was growing up. All the usual rigmarole - don't talk with mouth full, ask permission before leaving the tale, eat it up without complaint, even if the food is disliked. Yes, well I learnt them all. You could take me out to eat anywhere with no problem.

 

So, many decades ago back in the late 60s when I first ventured beyond these shores I knew how to behave in general. Of course different cultures have different small niceties which one picks up on the way - or not!

 

My first exciting trip abroad was across Europe and into Iran and Turkey. I so enjoyed myself. I enjoyed the whole feel of these places and the friendliness (Iran was one of my top countries for friendliness, how the world changes). Anyway, the time had to arrive when we would be setting off home. We spent a few hours the day of departure in the old town of Istanbul.

 

We were invited into a tea house,dragged in almost with the owners excitement. Tea houses were the best on those travels. Of varying opulence/seediness and varied cleanliness/hygiene, but all so friendly and atmospheric. This one was superb; decorated in richness and local musicians sending those wonderful plaintive tones across the space. The owner swept us in, all eight of us, seating us at a huge round table and after taking our orders for chai and coffee, declared, as we English were his personal friends?!! we must eat his special Turkish delight, handmade in his own kitchens, from his family's secret recipe.

 

How much of that was true who knows, who cares? He declared it was 'on the house' and that was enough for the rest of the party but, my heart sank to my little toes. Every Christmas back home Mum’s special treat had been a box of Turkish Delight, I hadn’t like it at all. Hoping against al l sense that handmade in the kitchens would produce a product of such difference I would laugh with delight.I smiled my thanks, as three cubes were placed before me.

 

It wasn’t the same as back home.

It was worse.

 

While the others scoffed down their treat, I forced each cloying mouthful past my mouth, the taste and texture fighting with each other to produce a gag reflex. He stood and watched us eat with obvious enjoyment, beaming and nodding his head. There was no place to hide a single sickly part of it.

 

I managed, I joined with others to praise his delicacies. So good I murmured as I dabbed the sweetness from my lips, washed down the flavour with my chai. Beaming with pride he snapped out orders to some underling and, before we could say a word in protest, another plateful was laid before each of us. The nicety here was, if you praise a dish you automatically receive more, because you obviously haven’t had enough!

 

We declined a third portion, even the others who had enjoyed it all couldn’t face more.

 

A dreadful end to the stay in Turkey, at least for my assaulted stomach, which grumbled its discomfort for the few hours we had to wait for the boat to take us to Europe. I have mentioned before, I and the sea do not have fond relationships, so I wasn’t particularly looking forward to this crossing, especially full of Turkish Delight.

 

What could be worse!

 

Well of course there is always something worse. When we arrived on deck we were summoned to be gathered and as a beaming replica of the Tea House fellow, the Captain, smiled down at us from the bridge, it was announced that day was his birthday, and as our guests - guests? we paid for the berth! He was sharing this magnificent birthday cake with us all. We were handed a large plateful of cake. I knew with out tasting, it was going to be awful. Apart from the frosting on top, at least a yard thick (I am not a fan of frosting) the honey fairly oozed from every crumb. The Captain watched intently and with obvious pleasure as we dutifully wished him Happy Birthday and ate the cake.

 

I was ill for many hours. Not actually sick, that would have been good - unload the misery, no just pea green ill.How I cursed my upbringing then:(

 

Why oh why couldn’t I have just said no?

Not on your life matey.

Piece of fruit will do just fine, thanks.

 

Because , decades ago, my mother had told me I shouldn’t:)

 

 

 

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T is for - high in the Pyrenees

 

 

When I was growing up through my teenage years my mother tried to persuade me to drink tea instead of milk on social occasions. Or if it was in a pub or restaurant a tomato juice instead of milk. I liked milk. Still do.

 

She failed in both attempts as she did with persuading me to wear makeup. Eventually I did begin. The only way to make it palatable was like her to add sugar! I’m sure milk is healthier.

 

Mum was a tea drinker to her bones. Not excessive but like many in our country it was the cure of all ills, from fatigue to bereavement. Everything could be made good again with a cuppa.

 

 

We had a tea caddy on the wall, on top of which Mum brewed ginger beer. We had various teapots depending on the occasion. We had the matching milk jugs, sugar bowls and because one china set came down from Victorian times we had matching slop bowls. We had tea strainers and a variety of cups and saucer sets. Everyday tea sets, afternoon tea set and of course the impossibly fine, special occasion, tea sets with such twirly delicate handles it was a stress of tremendous proportions for a Dyspraxic child! We had the doilies and matching cake plates, sugar tongs; plain sugar for everyday, cubed sugar for special. We were a British tea drinking family.

 

I shamed them preferring my milk:)

 

However, a tea drinker I became - with all the tea making baggage which still splits this country. How to brew an excellent cup of tea?

 

White or black,

milk or lemon?

Milk in first, milk in last?

Warm pot before boiling water is added.

How many minutes to leave the tea to brew?

What kind of tea leaf to use on what occasion?

 

I can still rise to the argument even after having abandoned most of that early training, especially on the milk before or after debate, as I drink my tea black now. Why do I bother? Because I know as everyone else with childhood brain washing embedded in their Psyche which is the correct way to make a pot of tea.

 

I still make a pot of tea occasionally.

I still buy loose tea occasionally.

Not as often as I wold wish.

 

The first I knew of how tea making was not set in concrete was a school trip I made to France. The convent,I was attending, dipped a cautious toe in the overseas travel idea when I was in the 6th form. They organized a trip to Lourdes via Paris. I was not a Roman Catholic so the pilgrimage aspect was not what appealed, it was Paris and the Pyrenees which led me to sign up.

 

It started badly with a rough channel crossing (sea and moi do not go together like peaches and cream) a long tediously slow train journey to Paris (French railway workers were on a go-slow) and then at the convent where we were to stay two days, I was confronted with a plate of spinach and egg. I loathed and still do spinach in any form.

 

I was well trained I ate it.

I was sick.

It was put down to the travel.

Maybe.

 

 

Onto the Pyrenees and to Lourdes which is a whole different blog I feel. I was fascinated and puzzled by the whole affair. The only food related memory I have of Lourdes itself was the over whelming odour of garlic. Garlic hadn’t really reached our island shores or our cuisine at the time. Maybe just a little might have been forgotten but we were visiting at the same time as 1200 French girl guides. They sat behind us en mass at mass one day and when they opened their mouths to sing, with beautiful clear melodies, we almost passed out in a collective heap.

 

Within a few years garlic had begun to take a hold in Britain.

 

No, the point of this day's blog is still tea. As much a food to us Brits as anything else. Somewhere high in Pyrenees mountains, reached by donkey, we stopped at a tiny cafe of sorts for a rest. We ordered a pot of tea, my friends and I; we were adults surveying the world. The nuns were below in church, we were free even if we still wore school uniform.

 

We discussed softly whether the French knew how to make tea? The consensus was if they liked garlic so much they probably couldn't taste tea so well. Oh how arrogant and stupid are the young.

 

The pot arrived, we decided the cups were more suited to coffee, which to be fair was probably the beverage of choice for most Europeans at the time. The china too thick really to my jaundiced eyes.

 

Truly we had not seen the best? Worst? Inside that pot was a tea bag

 

None of us had ever seen a tea bag. We didn't even know it was called a tea bag. But we pulled the string and out it came. Tea leaves in a muslin bag.

 

Well!!!

 

To say we were flabbergasted was to be rather downbeat. Speechless, shocked, bewildered. What in all that was sure and secure in our worlds was this abomination.

 

It was one of my dining out stories for ages, until the days arrived when Britain too succumbed to the lure of the tea bag.

 

Of course we got over the shock soon enough.

Such handy little things.

So quick. so easy.

So cutting edge:)

 

On future travels the ease with which one could have a quick brew up was a real bonus. As more brands came we learnt to distinguish our preferred bags, learnt how long we liked to leave the bag in water. Some conventions still prevail, there are still arguments over milk first or last, between milk, lemon and/or sugar.

 

Just enough dispute to ensure all is still well in our tea drinking communities. That the past is still with us in the present.

 

I do like a bit of continuity.

 

 

There are hundreds more blogs in this challenge - pop over and see, you may make new friends, discover new interests. 

 

S is for - the delight of a devil

 

 

Ah sugar!:)

 

Refined sugar. The delight of a devil and all his demons.

 

Not many folk actively dislike sweetness. There are degrees of course. But us humans are hard wired for it. In the wild sugar is rare, fruits and honey, some vegetables. Sugar was of course not the devil we know it today. Sugar is energy, fast and instant. Sugar is a substance worth taking, sometimes death defying risks for, taking long journeys for. And because it is so difficult to find in the wild there is no harm to it!

 

It is rare, ‘tis delicious and so it became a trap as sticky as any honeycomb.

 

Humans are so clever, too clever for their own good. Starting with working out how to raid wild bees nests - wild bees do not give up their honey without a desperate and vicious fight. They then worked out how to make fruit sweeter with the aid of this honey and cooking. Then they worked out how to combine it with another rare but vital substance - fat - to make something so delicious it could tempt a devil off a tree.

 

Wild animals do not posses much fat, it was agriculture which produced the fat and the tamed bees for honey, the ovens for the cooking together. We taught ourselves how to refine the stuff. How to easily transport it around the world.  We discovered how useful it was for preserving foods, for making alcohol for. . . well you get the picture. We pour it in bucketfuls into factories specifically designed to offer us sugar, in every increasing refinement and into every conceivable likeness. Adding it to traditional dishes which never in their history has demanded such. We are hooked on the devils sweetness.

 

Its history, since we began to control it, has been a long miserable and sordid tale of greed and riches. Those who took control of sugar had a power which could, and was, misused for centuries. Despite being produced by slaves, think of the low overheads! it was sold at exorbitant prices. Fortunes and stately homes , whole cities and nations built on the back of sugar.

 

Kept under lock and key as was the cocoa and tea which also belonged to the rich and powerful. But sweetness was craved more than tea and cocoa, our bodies know that sugar is an essential source of nourishment (in small doses) our minds never caught up with portion control:) It came down to us masses, we demanded it, our demand grows exponentially. No end in sight for our addiction.

 

One of the great catastrophe of history. How many poor souls have been whipped to the sugar canes, how many still. For slavery is not the dead and buried affair folk would like to think when they eat the chocolate. If the thought even crosses minds where chocolate is concerned. New moral dilemmas arise now, support fair trade sugar and chocolate to encourage the masters of this crop or deny them even that because they still use the unfair trade to produce other bars.

 

Refined sugar today is definitely a non-food.

 

When I was a child, sugar was rationed.

Sweets were rationed.

Sweets were were a treat - worth the waiting for:)

 

When I was very young, I would sometimes creep into the pantry and 'steal' a teaspoonful of the stuff.  I got caught and told off soundly. Because I ‘stole’ or because it was a rare treat?

 

Friends sometimes accuse me of having a sweet tooth. I dispute the allegation. It is based on the fact that I like small dribs throughout the day. A teaspoon here, a teaspoon there. On the occasions I have cut out sugar completely, I find I am busy making carrot or garden pea soup. As you see, a drib throughout the day.

 

What I don’t like is the cloying sweetness of gateaux, the stickiness of puddings. A lot of sweetness makes me feel distinctly ill. I would say others have the sweet tooth, those who never put a teaspoon of sugar in their tea or coffee but will happily guzzle down a treble chocolate desert with chocolate sauce or indulge in a sticky toffee pudding.

 

When I was young and cutting edge travelling the mountains of the Himalayas and the Hindu Kush, camping out without aid of tent, and relying on a sleeping bag for warmth. When I was tired from sleepless nights and rough terrain, of alarms and struggles with language, I rested awhile in Quetta - a former British Hill Station. A place for the Masters to retire too in the heat of the sun on the plains below. We arrived there at the start of winter!

 

It was cold.

We were exhausted.

We were hungry.

 

I found a tin of condensed milk in a dusty store in the town. It was well before 'sell by dates', but even I could see it was a very old tin. I didn’t care I craved something sweet. I had never liked the stuff back home but my mind knew this tin for what it was - instant energy - it was something of a need. It was caramelised within the tin. It was old beyond belief, it was wonderful and I consumed the whole tin. Letting the wonderful taste slide down my throat.

 

I forgot the cold.

Forgot the hunger.

The weariness.

I slept the entire night even on the hard stony ground.

 

Sometimes refined sugar is good:)

 

Giving my pint of blood in Iran, instead of a biscuit and cuppa afterwards we were given small brown sweets made from unrefined sugar - oh so tasty.

In the Hindu Kush we were given lumps of this brown sugar to suck as we drank the chai. Oh so tasty.

I have bought sugar cane by the kilo to chew on as we travelled dusty byways.

 

I like it!

I shouldn’t,

but I do.

 

Nowadays I have a choice between UK sugar made from sugar beets and no slavery and the other stuff, eases a conscious a little.

 

I don’t have sugar in every beverage I drink, and sometimes go weeks without adding it, usually when my diet is full of fruits or sweet vegetables. I do try and keep away from the refined stuff and get my daily fix from the foods which deliver more than sugar in their packet.

 

But I can and do get tempted. It is easier now to resist the refined because this latest taste dysfunction has targeted refined and artificial sugar big time. It began with chocolate tasting nastier and nastier, then it was sweets, then biscuits. I still enjoy a few of my homemade cakes and biscuits. Apple cake stuffed so full of apples it barely needs sugar, fruit cake of course relies on the sweetness of dried fruit and ginger cake it is the spice one is wanting.

 

I fear they too will go eventually.

Then that devil can tempt as much as it likes I will not heed.

 

 

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R is for - eating people is wrong

 

 

 

Roast Dinner

 

 

Sunshine flecking fields.

Fat ewes.

Giggling lambs.

Will you put mint sauce on me?

when I’m dead,

when you roast me.

Demands the child, with expectant smile.

Foolish child,

we will waste you.

Crushed with sorrow, she cries.

                                                                                                       A.Ross.

 

 

 

 

 

That child was me.

 

When I was a child, as I have said, meat was my favourite and of all the meat we ate roast lamb was my favourite. It still is.

 

I was not, I think, a particularly ghoulish child.

I understood about meat, it came from animals.

I understood what humans were, they were animals.

 

My thought about my demise made perfect sense. I didn't however wish to be a stew or be minced nor did I wish to be sausages, although I enjoyed eating all these. No I wished to be the best of the best, a roast. With all the trimmings:)

 

This poem was inspired by one of our rare car trips into the country(petrol was rationed most of my early life). We passed a field full of gambolling lambs. We stopped to lean over a gate and watch them. I always enjoyed watching them. They are such fun, I will stop and watch them even now.

 

When we returned to the car I asked my parents if they would remember to roast me when I died, if I died before them. The whole family laughed and told me people don’t eat people. That eating people was wrong. When someone died they were buried in a coffin, like the relatives I had already watched go into the earth. If they were dead, I reasoned, why not? all they would say was eating people was wrong!

 

I can remember my devastation at not only the laughter but by a sense of injustice. I had requested and been refused for no apparent good reason (I had not considered their reason good enough:).

 

It was like admitting, I thought trees had souls and could talk to us. A thought that should have been left unsaid. I was learning about not being considered a weirdo.

 

What a waste I thought then. What a waste I still think. I know I wont be roasted but I will feed the bacteria and other microscopic life as I have arranged a green burial for myself. It might not be the last word I intended nearly 7 decades ago but it is my last word now.

 

 

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Q is for - diminish and wreck

 

 

This should in fact be the last in this challenge but the letters do not fit. I started with the evolution of my appetite and tastes, this is about how events have conspired to quell and quench that same appetite.

 

When at the beginning I was a picky eater and would not eat many foods, I now find the same is happening. It has been a long process, but having tried to find solutions and answers to the various puzzles this has thrown up I can chart a course through the quenching of my appetite fires.

 

There are many reasons for loss of appetite. Illness scores high. Anorexia (not nervosa) is a symptom of many illnesses. I have been marginally ill most of my life. With a so-so immune system (which I blame on my mother I was the only one of three not breast fed:)I would be constantly away from school with bad tonsils and chests. My common colds were thick, heavy and long lasting often turning into coughs which settled on my lungs. Many a hot poultice was placed on me as a child. I was about five when I had my dose of antibiotics.

 

Despite this I escaped all the childhood diseases except chicken pox. This escape meant that when I went down with glandular fever in my early 20s I was forbidden to work with children for three years, as I was likely to catch every disease going. The year I was off full time employment after this illness was bad because I was stuffed full of antibiotics and pain killers.Soon after that I became allergic first to penicillin and then to sulphur based antibiotics. I also went down with my first major period of depression.

 

I continued going down with tonsillitis (it hadn’t been removed as a child because of the polio scare) and my chest infections were turning into bronchitis on a regular basis.

 

I was still eating well, as I travelled around the world, I had to cope with bronchitis, injury, dog attacks and dysentery. I lost weight because of illness regularly but always bounced back. Yo yo weight is not healthy but I mostly kept slim and active, walking, dancing, then gardening. Active jobs and plenty of energy to spare in the evenings. I was still young and cutting edge. Was invincible:)

 

 

Then I went to university in my 40s and became more desk bound with studies and the four hour drives each day. The exercise tailed off but I still felt fine. An early menopause and a startling change in body shape also.

 

Then I crashed to the ground breaking to much and spent 7 months in plaster, 12 months with a walking stick and altogether five operations! And lived on pain killers. My father died, my mother began a slow decline into PSP and we moved house. I rid myself of plaster and metal pins a month before the move. We had a bungalow built to our specifications, self build is as stressful as moving, just spread over a longer period. Mum was going downhill fast as was my sister’s sight. My sister and I decided to nurse Mum at home when the doctors told us she had a year at best. She outlived that prediction by another four years.

 

I couldn’t afford to be sick!

During this time I had my gall bladder removed.

More depression.

More pills.

Three months after Mum died I was diagnosed with cancer and had the whole female kit and caboodle removed.

 

Now, I knew my stuff.

Calories in, must equal calories out.

Gall bladder out, amount of fat eaten less.

 

Somehow this didn’t work, I cut the calories and the fat and my weight kept ballooning. I needed more exercise but by this time I had bad ankle and knees from the breaks and a fatigue which wouldn’t dissipate. I developed taste dysfunction and cooking became a brave step into the dark each time I performed, everything smelt rotten and tasted about the same, then the headaches began,that felt like a log chopping competition - a tooth root had penetrated my sinus cavity and half my head was infected, another operation and more pills. These operations were coming in at 18 month intervals approximately. Then a year later heart failure and a depression out of control. Weight gain that never stopped.

 

I was now on pills every day. Half of which apparently could affect appetite and taste. By then my calorie count had plummeted because I no longer felt hunger. I have never been able to eat without hunger. After a short break when food began to smell okay again my taste is now vanishing for a second time. After a brief time when, heeding the medical advice, I forced myself back onto more calories I have again lost my appetite. The amount I eat each day depends a great deal on that hunger mechanism which involves not only the digestive system but eyes, nose and mouth. Now I have indigestion as well. I had never had it in my life before a few months ago.

 

What has caused this sorrowful decline, stress, pills, old age (I’m not actually that old:)To many anaesthetics and drugs. I’m not sure a cocktail of them all. I used to joke when I was young and cutting edge that I was ruining my future health. Shouldn’t joke about such things, there is always a bored god on mount Olympus ready to spear one:) Ready to diminish and wreck a complacent one!

 

I do still enjoy many foods, this time around meat and vegetables have kept their taste and everything with any kind of sweetness in it is going, not just chocolate but also some fruits.

 

I shall be reduced to non-food sooner than I would like!!

 

Something amongst my life has led to the crash in my digestive system. It has taken me by surprise. I never expected it to be so. But then, when do we ever expect these demises.

 

There are hundreds more blogs in this challenge - pop over and see, you may make new friends, discover new interests. 

 

P is for - non-foods

 

 

I am not a fan of highly processed food, non-food as I describe it. We had very little of it when a child, jam, sugar, gravy browning, coffee, mustn’t forget ice cream:) We would eat some tinned food such as ham and tropical fruit, on the whole I was brought up on fresh food. That cannot be the whole reason I reject non-food, everyone else in the family were quite happy to adopt a certain amount of it over the years.

 

I forgave my sister, she went to boarding school very early in life and got her taste buds from mass cooking. My mother was never that bothered about food despite being such a great cook, it was just fuel to her.

 

I will eat mass produced food, with grumbles about after taste. Shopping in a supermarket takes me time, even if I am only purchasing a little. Every word of every pre-packaged item has to be scrutinised. For the ingredient list, the country of origin, before I get to the nutrient information and date.

 

Even with fresh one has to be careful, years ago I bought some strawberries and the punnet, in the fridge, got lost for some reason and not eaten. I pulled it out eventually and was about about to chuck it, after all it had been over a month since they had come home with me and were surely mouldy by then.

 

Not a bit of it. No mould anywhere!

I took them back and complained.

The young lad I spoke to didn’t understand my point

Nor the young manager called over to help.

 

Their argument being it was a bonus surely that they had not gone mouldy?

Mine, that strawberries are supposed to go mouldy so what had been done to them to stop this very natural ageing of the fruit.

 

We agreed to differ - when I suggested these fruit had been irradiated they looked so blank I gave up. They offered me some more strawberries I refused - why would I want more unnatural fruit? I took the refund and bought my fruit elsewhere.

 

Convenience foods, I see the point if one is rushed and harassed, I have tried the odd one every so often to see if they improved over time - on the whole they haven’t! I can rustle up a meal from scratch in the time it takes to use a ready meal if I need to.

 

I worry there are folk out there who do not realize how much they are being short changed. How a Bakewell tart with no almonds on the ingredient list is not actually a Bakewell tart.  It is an over sweet something, filled with cheap shoddy, with no resemblance to the delight the original should be.

 

How  the low % of a meat in a meat pie produces something which is not a meat pie, it is but a shadow of one, a meat flavoured pastry.

 

My main objection though is the after taste which always seems to be there at the end. Not that pleasurable after taste of a good meal, more a chemical sensation.

 

When I was studying Food Science at University I was constantly amazed at the tricks of the trade. Understanding what they are about does not mean I have to approve or enjoy them:)

 

Some of our food producers are beginning to improve, not from any conscious but from media a attention, rules from reluctant politicians and consumer pressure. I hear them on the Radio in the morning justifying their antics. I smile a trifle sourly.

 

I do eat processed food, with full knowledge of what they are. Baked beans, tinned tomatoes, coffee, custard powder,jam, marmalade, bought biscuits / cakes. The last come into the house because of visitors. My mother in her time enjoyed nearly all the processed food on offer and my sister has a a great fondness for may of them! I don’t understand it at all!

 

Since various illnesses, I find I am reduced to considering searching for some to help me. I have found a packet rice which contains rice and 2 flavours, rosemary and lemon, the others in the range I have rejected because the ‘boiled’ rice is awash with a list of substances as long as my hand. The same with other handy quick fixes.I know how they should be prepared and cooked but when I read the packets and tins there is nothing I can recognize.

 

I have the same problems with ‘canteen’ food - I actually mean overcooked meals, cooked before time and kept warm too long. There is an inherent nastiness in the taste, a lack of natural flavour. Away from home I relinquish, to a certain extent, my control and rights to decent food but I also pick my eating places carefully. They improve as the population become more discerning.

 

I am, I think, an embarrassing eating companion as I tend to grill the waiters or waitresses closely as to where or what the meats on the menu comer from, are cooked and is the chef any good!! pull them up if they advertise seasonal vegetables and then bring something which has never been grown in our climate in that particular season. I tell them off, politely, if their description of a dish is wrong - I may still enjoy the dish, but the description is wrong:) how will they know if they are not told?:)

 

I’m not so much of a pendent as I sound, well I don't think so. My friends may disagree:)

 

 

There are hundreds more blogs in this challenge - pop over and see, you may make new friends, discover new interests. 

 

O is for - big bird to small rat

 

I was puzzled a few years ago when a friend of mine was horrified I ate venison, how could I eat a Bambi she complained, shocked at the thought and clearly upset. As she had just a few moments before been telling me a wonderful roast lamb dinner she had enjoyed that weekend, I was confused. Did she not like lambs as well, I think they’re lovely but it doesn’t stop me eating them. And I am pretty sure my venison was not a Bambi they do not cull fawns. It wasn’t something worth the argument, I did point out that she had enjoyed the lamb and left it at that.

 

I do not know exactly what I have eaten over the years on my travels. Many times there was enough language in common to enquire and other times I believed it was better not to know.

 

Although I am a meat eater in general, for many years now I have tried to check the origins and living conditions of the meat I eat. I don’t personally have any problems with meat eating but I do hate cruelty and unnecessary suffering. So if people want to eat horse, cat or dog within their cultures as long as they treat them well and appreciate the food, that is there business. If insects and bugs or certain organs are on the menu well, don't tell me and let me experience them.

 

I am almost certain I have eaten horse, it is or was a common enough meat in Europe when I was travelling. Almost certain also that I have eaten dog when travelling through countries that have the animal on their menu. I have know I have eaten kangaroo, crocodile and insects. I’m not too sure about other game animal. Now has rat ever been on my plate? who knows:)Would I have eaten it if I had known, would I have eaten of the others for that matter if I had known.  This is a question unanswerable in hindsight.  I knew when I set off to roam I would be confronted with the unknown as far as what was on my plate.

 

I didn’t taste ostrich, as far as I know, until I returned home to the UK and now having discovered an  ostrich farm near by it is on my menu quite frequently along with venison. I have had goat often on my travels and still buy it now I am back home. With the wide range of cultural differences in the UK most of these meats are now readily available.

 

Once when I was convalescing at a friends station in Australia her mother would dish me up sheep's brains on toast for my breakfast every day and, after an initial hesitation, I found them delicious, as I did with the barbecued lambs tails dished up by the stock men while we out dealing with the sheep. I wasn’t keen on the bugs I ate but they didn’t actually repel me.

 

 

In those dirty unhygienic kitchens I mentioned in K I didn't enquire as to what I was eating, choosing basically on how well cooked they appeared to be! So I suspect animals we would consider pets and also those we wold consider vermin. After all if one thinks about it, other cultures think our love of pork and shell fish gross and unclean.

 

We all have our ways:)

 

What else? who knows I have travelled in many countries who do not necessarily keep farmyard animals as we do. Who have learnt over the centuries that food is food and why be picky about it. None of it made me ill.

 

Apart from the meat of unknown origin, their were eggs that had never seen a chicken and vegetables never grown in our garden back home.  Unknown and not easily forgotten fruits which made me doubt my sanity at times:) some were delicious, some were interesting and some downright terrible but they served as an essential part of the travel experience.

 

The dysentery I went down with was caused, almost certainly, by the plates and glasses our food and drink was served on being washed in the lake water, a lake which had dead and decaying animals in it and into which every loo on every houseboat on the lake was flushed. Even my stiff upper lipped British digestion couldn’t withstand the onslaught of evil germs.

 

There maybe many other animals I have eaten in my life, I will never know. I do know that compared to some other cultures we have concentrated our dietary habits on a very slender choice of foodstuffs. That nay prove to be okay in the future but I rather think those nations who can eat a wider range of food will do better if our chips fall down - just saying:)

 

 

 

There are hundreds more blogs in this challenge - pop over and see, you may make new friends, discover new interests. 

 

N is for - no food, no money

 

 

There have been many time on my travels when I have run low on funds and have had to tighten my belt in consequence. Never to the extent of starving - no - but trying to cover nutritional needs for the smallest amount of money spent as possible.

 

This a-z is about my personal adventures with food. however I cannot forget or fail to mention that on my travels I met and viewed thousands    of  men, women or children to whom food and eating was not an adventure to regale friends with back in the safety of home; people whose life depended on finding enough to eat each and every single day, who died of malnutrition or watched their children do so .

 

People whose daily nightmare was finding enough food to buy food or who watched the skies anxiously for the rain to grow the food to feed their families.  There is I have read enough food produced in the world for this never to happen. 

 

But it does.

Whoever controls money controls food distribution.

So this letter N must be read with that knowledge behind it.

I have had a very lucky life.

 

 

  My first great adventure! was when I embarked on a trip to Orkney and Shetland with far too little money for the time I was going to be away. I had not realised either that food, back in the late 60s, was not so easy to get hold of on small islands in the seas. So breakfast at the B&B and a sandwich for the rest of the day. Maybe a treat of fish and chips.

 

Back then nothing was open on Sundays so the first Sunday it was only breakfast!

 

In Nepal, in the early 70s, I would go through my case of clothes and sell a couple of items to secure enough for cheap meals for the day. It worked and I had the advantage of less luggage to lug around:)

 

No food until I had money!

 

In Bangkok I existed on a tin of sardines, Chinese leaf, a roll, small pineapple and bottle of milk, for days as I awaited tickets to fly out of the country. It was the time of the oil crisis when airports around the world were closing down from lack of fuel. I needed those tickets to get out of the country before my money ran out. There was money waiting for me in Darwin I had enough to pay the cheap hotel I was holed up in for about ten days, so money was very scarce. As it turned out I had to fly to New south Wales as Darwin had been devastated by a natural disaster. It took weeks to get my money back down across the country. Fortunately I had a friend in Sydney to stay with - lucky because I arrived in Sydney with $15 to my name.

 

Not enough money.

 

On these last two occasions I was still recovering from a dose of dysentery so in fact wasn’t eating very much anyway.

 

Travelling to Darwin for work a year or two later then finding there was no work forthcoming,I phoned my friend in Sydney to send my tax rebate to me. She trotted to the bank to arrange it. I have great friends, however cannot say I like banks much. I went every day to collect it, every day they said ‘not here’. I was in a motel and counting my money again, thought I would have enough for four or more days, enough to buy a bus ticket for the two day journey down the length of the country. Plus a few tins of sardines, again, and some milk.

 

I threw a tantrum in the bank in the end and threatened a sit in. If the money was in the system why did they have to wait until it arrived before I could have it, I demanded, didn't they they trust their colleagues in Sydney?

 

In the end they gave it to me even though it hadn’t arrived, and they really should not have against Banking rules at the time.(There wasn’t Internet banking back then:) I caught that bus with little time to spare, bills all paid, and two roll up ciggies in my bag.

 

No food.

No money.

 

 

An elderly lady gave me an orange on the second day having noticed I had no food with me. She had nothing else to offer, they offered to buy me a meal at one of the stops but I said I was fine, I could manage. Should have taken them up on the offer. But hey two days and nights isn’t long a time. I knew my friend had left money for a taxi at the bus station and a t-bone steak in her freezer for my return. Of course when I got back I had gone past hungry and fell asleep. The steak was good for breakfast.

 

Travelling around New Zealand I again ran short on funds and lived on cold meat sandwiches and fruit for days on end. Treating myself to some chips way down south to keep the cold away.

 

Not enough money

 

This were not the meagre rations of the above. Just the cheapest food I could find. I stopped in Dunedin to visit a friend and filled up there.

 

I had read many years previously that many survivors of starvation cannot eat the food that they existed on, after life returns to normal. Quite bizarre I thought, however, I found that sardines was off the menu for ten years. I knew I liked them but even after opening the tin I just couldn't bring myself to eat them and they weren’t even starvation rations.

 

My mind was convinced that if I ate sardines it proved yet again I had

 

No money and No food.

 

 

See yesterday’s post for mind over matter. The brain is a strange creature which controls us more than we know.

 

 

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M is for - eat to survive - or not

 

 

Why would any animal deliberately turn themselves away from food and attempt to starve themselves. I have never heard of a healthy creature do this, except of course mankind. The instinct to eat is hardwired into our DNA, an instinct which inhabits our primitive brain and guides our internal workings. So unless one is ill it takes an incredibly strong will to refuse food completely.

 

There are many people who fearing they have eaten too well or unwisely regularly try ‘reducing diets’ instead of actually stopping eating too well or unwisely! All it will do of course, if carried out too often, is teach our minds we live in an area prone to famine:) But for many who do not fall off this diet regime their feeling for body and health is strong enough to over ride, or distort the cues to eat.

 

Then there are the dedicated ones who use starvation to make a point. Their love of a cause is strong enough to overcome that instinct. Hunger strikes which can and do lead to death are, if one thinks of it, amazing acts.

As is the act of a mother who will give food she needs to her children, Love is a powerful force indeed.

 

Then there is starvation itself. Famine which leads to mass death. We hear of those who eat anything to stay alive, rats, leather, corpses and even turning to cannibalism. Overcoming cultural norms to do so. But the power of culture can have a devastating opposite effect, whole societies will choose to die rather than break taboos.So how do some choose to die rather than live, lie alongside food and choose not to eat? How do they overcome the survival instinct?

 

The power of the mind has fascinated humans for centuries.We grow closer to understanding many facets of that unprepossessing organ every year, we understand the chemistry better, the effects of hormones on every part of the body, we have worked out much of what was hard wired into us for survival back when we were barely human. The more primitive parts of our mind evolved to keep us alive. The modern part forgets this sometimes at its peril.

 

 

 

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L is for -I like a good chew

 

I like a good chew me:) meat, crusty bread, al dente pasta and vegetables. Nuts and firm fruit. But, more than that I like food. I get hungry, I want feeding. Up until a decade ago even being ill would not stop my perfectly behaved digestion, from nose to bowel, from being efficient and ever welcoming to food. I was never fat, nor lacking in energy.

 

When one’s body lets one down it comes as a shock. Years ago back in the 60s I developed Glandular Fever badly. I was sent home from work in a taxi and lingered in my bedsit for a few days wondering what was wrong with me.I decided it was tonsillitis ( I was prone to the complaint) as my throat was so terrible I had trouble swallowing. A friend dropped by each evening on the way home form work and delivered mandarins and grapes, filled my tea maker with water and I existed on these until she came again. The axe in my head settled in so comfortably I couldn’t stand and had to crawl to the bathroom.

 

It is lonely being sick by oneself in a basement, I gave in and phoned home. Mum came, not on a white charger just in the car, swept me up, took me to doctor who diagnosed glandular fever and ordered me to bed for 6 weeks ( they did things like that back then!)

 

I was starving hungry, but couldn’t eat. Mum liquidised all my meals. From English breakfast to roast dinners it all came to me via a mug. For four weeks I lived on liquids. I wasn’t hungry but oh how I longed for something to chew:(

 

As you can guess I am not so keen on liquids only.

 

Recently I had problems with my gall bladder and again found eating a problem, I could eat but everything I ate made me ill. 16 hours of agony, yet it was never clear which food was upsetting me so much. The weight dropped dramatically as I struggled to eat more than a couple hundred calories a day. I turned in desperation for some kind of nutrient to a liquid diet plan, a non food in my opinion but it contained vitamisn and minerals and was easy to get down, which bumped me up to 7-800 calories a day. It didn't upset my digestion at all - said it was a non-food!:)

 

I came off the diet drinks immediately that confounded little organ came out!

 

Although a liquidised meal, of real food, sounds grim it is remarkable in the burst of intense flavour which comes through. Not the individual delights of the food separated but it is satisfying for all that.

 

At the end of her life my mother was confined to bed with PSP, unable to chew or swallow properly. I knew she was hungry so out came the mixer, in went the food.  I returned the favour. Meals were liquidised, anything from quiche to liver and bacon. It kept her enjoying tastes until a couple of months at the end when she had to go on fortified drinks. I am sure Mum craved something to chew as much as I did. However, at least she had the meals she liked.

 

Recently I have been struggling with a fast vanishing appetite. Blaming it on either a dysfunctional taste sense or one of the many pills I have to take. My calorie count dropped again, no pain just I find it difficult to eat if I am not hungry. Told  by the medical services I had to eat more, maybe, they suggested, my weight would drop also if I increased my calorie intake.

 

It all seemed a contradiction but I thought I would try.

 

A shake seemed the way to go. I worked out a tasty breakfast in a glass combining oats, dried fruit, nuts, fresh soft fruit, bananas, water and yogurt . Delicious, easy to swallow, having been through the blender easy to digest. After a few months of this I began to wake up with an appetite again, more energy. I ate more. I can’t say the weight has come off  but, it is no longer increasing. Now I can manage three meals a day, not large ones to be sure and sometimes I dip too low but only the odd blip now and then.

 

A liquidiser, some fluid and imagination and food can become a possibility again.

K is for - frozen metal will strip away one's skin

 

 

 

Kitchens today gleam with happy pride and show off all their bling with satisfaction. They are wonderful places for a foodie such as I. Although I do not, in fact, own one of the winners, but compared to the kitchens here just after the second world war mine isn’t so bad.

 

Mum produced her fantastic meals on the most basic of ovens, the Christmas Turkey- which never fitted in - was cooked all night first one half of it and then turned around the second half - one part always sticking out of the door. Thinking about it we all should have gone down with food poisoning or something we never did.

If one looks at the graphs of the incidents of food poisoning one finds my childhood was a relatively safe place considering the lack of refrigeration and the reliance of the meat safe. The increase becomes rapidly higher as the decades pass until it is at it’s terrible high. As we grew cleaner, more concerned with germs, became the victims of health and safety rules, ignored good husbandry in return for a profit, the chances of suffering from food poisoning increases. There is whole new blog in that thought:)

 

A large square table stood in for kitchen tops, food was prepared on it, yeast left to rise on it and, with the aid of a cloth, clothes were ironed on it. In between while us children built dens and secret caves under it and sat or jumped off it. One sink, one draining board and a manual washing machine complete with mangle, that was it. A large floor to ceiling cupboard for other provisions. Nothing matched, there was no all over theme.

 

Outside there was a meat safe.

 

The kitchen served it’s purpose and Mum was pleased with it. Modern by those days standards. As the bling came along Mum collected it. Automatic washing machine, fridge, freezer and microwave it took years but she kept up. The second kitchen I was aware of was the school kitchens, I only viewed them through the hatch as I collected the mass produced, kept warm far too long, food. Years later I was to work on the other side of the hatch, peeling hundreds of potatoes, opening catering size tomatoes, scrubbing tables and washing up in one sinkful of hot water ugh!

 

Another time I had a part time evening job for a few weeks as a washer upper in a very dubious kitchen in London - I wouldn’t have dared to eat there. The floor was so greasy extreme care was needed in moving around especially carrying heavy piles of china. The filthy language and sexist comments an eye opener but I have always been good at switching off and diving into my imagination. The washing up was back breaking although this time I was allowed two or Another three sink fulls of hot water. The extra money was useful but I didn’t pine too much when my few weeks was up.

 

When I began my travels I never realised there could be worse kitchens in the world.

 

In many countries back in the 70s, especially when travelling away from large towns or cities,, one was eating at wayside cafe type eating places. There would be a problem with language in interpreting what was on offer that night. With smiles of welcome we would be invited and ushered into the kitchen to inspect each dish and choose.

 

Um, yes, well!

 

First rule we learnt was smile.

Do not look at the floor and never let eye alight on preparation surfaces.

Concentrate on the bubbling, boiling pans.

Smile.

It was useless trying to find out what meat was being cooked.

Take your chance on the seasoning.

Smile.

Choose and beat hasty retreat.

 

99.9999% of the time the food was delicious and we suffered no harm. We had bad cafes and restaurants back home I would remind myself, this was after all before Health and Safety had it’s iron hold on our lives.

 

I have had many trips on fishing boats up and down various coasts, where all meals for crew and up to twenty guests was prepared, cooked and plated p from the tiniest of kitchens, small galleys. So small, the cook is standing outside, dancing with flames and pans, as he expertly grilled fish or cubes of goat/mutton.

 

Many of my travels involved long periods of camping where we spent a lot of time in local market places buying fruit and veg and then opening tins of luncheon meat or corned beef - neither of the last two particularly appealed to me. Cooking on bottled gas primus stoves.

 

 

Three incidents remain in my mind with our kitchens of primus stoves.

 

1) The best fish and chips I have ever tasted was produced (for eight) on a two ring stove, in the velvet darkness of a desert night in Turkey. We had searched the markets for potatoes and fish we could recognise. We managed with a lot of laughter and help from the intrigued market stall holder. Even to the extent they cooked samples for us. Cooked on the stove by the son of a prize winning fish and chip shop owner from Blackheath. Consumed with the foreign night time sounds of the countryside.

 

This dish was followed up a few hours later as we slumbered in out tents by the rude and noisy interruption of armed soldiers rounding us up and herding us somewhere else because we had elected to camp in bandit country.

 

2)Stumbling from my sleeping bag in the darkness of early morning, in the Iranian desert, and forgetting to don my gloves so losing a piece of skin from my hand as I touched the frozen metal of that stove. ’Tis freezing in the desert!

 

3) Also in Turkey a few hundred miles further south we perched on a cliff top with beautiful views of the ocean. There was a slight breeze the day I was due to prepare the lunch so I bent over to light the gas . Unknown to us we had a leak and the air around was filled with gas which went up in a sheet of flame at my face.

 

A) I had a good covering of sun oil on my face

B) my reactions were fast

C) being outside it wasn't a lethal build up of gas

 

All these factors meant all the damage done was the loss of fringe,eyebrows and eyelashes. Scorched hands (thrown up to save my face - that didn’t work did it?) which needed bandaging for a week or so. The flame had instantly burnt the oil off but, apart from leaving me looking like I had been in the sun too long, had not burnt my face.

 

I was lucky.

 

It took a while for lashes to grow back and I discovered the use of them, they had kept dust out of my eyes. I lived in sunglasses 24/7 for weeks. I had to have help washing as my hands were bandaged but all in all

 

I was lucky.

 

With all the suspect kitchens I had eaten in the most damage was done with our own little camping kitchens:)

 

 

 

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J is for - not giving up any time soon

 

 

Apart from Mum showing me by example how to cook I have been officially taught at various times. When I left school and before I went to college she bought me a six week course at Corden Bleu School of Cookery in Central London. I arrived with mixed feelings, excited at learning more, scared stiff because I still hadn’t got the hang of people yet. The class appeared to be full of young debutantes - I was well out of my comfort zone. I barely understood their cut glass accents,their slang or their collective experiences of country homes, boarding schools and balls, as far removed from my life as could be.

 

Of course, over six weeks we melded together and I had the advantage of knowing more basic cooking than anyone else. Which earned me some kudos.

 

It was mainly French cooking we were being taught and although it wasn't my favourite cuisine, too much reliance on sauces for my liking, I throughly enjoyed my weeks there, learnt a lot and was even able to show Mum a few new tips. I think if she hadn’t been so shy or had more confidence in her talents, it was a course she would have enjoyed joining herself. In the same way as she encouraged me to cook she encouraged me to travel. I learnt how to manage among other skills, Game of all kinds (I often ate it when I nannied in the homes of those who hunted for a meal, but I never had to cook it until later in life, how to plan elaborate dinner parties (as if I was ever go to throw one of those!)

 

Unfortunately I had to miss the last three days of the course, as I was due at college. If I had stayed I would have mastered the skills for jam making:( As Mum had never made jam at home I had been looking forward to mastering the skill. I wasn’t to master the skill until I was in my late 40s, and then I taught myself.

 

Ah well!

 

But master it I did producing jars of it for many a year, from fruit grown outside in the garden.  One of my smaller ambitions ticked off the list:)

 

As soon as I entered nanny college. It was back to cooking lessons, this time not the French cuisine of upper class living but nursery food. This was better fun than I expected, we learn basic nutrient information, created healthy but fun menus.

 

I was a good cook by this time but I went totally haywire at college making mistake after mistake, cracking under the army type discipline and arid conditions of the place. I burnt, dropped, spilt and generally disgraced all my mothers training! I remember a small steamed pudding I made which was so solid it bounced when I dropped it. I did pass the exams,just. But after I had left the hated college I was well away, cooking in small kitchens for children was the easiest.

 

I picked up tips and methods as I travelled and every new home I worked in I discovered new family recipes. Learnt how to use new foodstuffs.

 

Then after I returned home, years later I decided it would be useful to go on a vegetarian cookery course.

 

Yup.

Moi, who loves her meat so much!

 

I had eaten many vegetarian dishes by then, on my travels through lands where meat isn't the be all and end all of cuisine. It was a week’s course packed full of new information for my greedy brain to absorb. My default is still meat based meals but I think it is probably a 50/50 split these days

 

I taught myself chutney making in my 50s. Now stepping into my 7th decade I am learning a whole new way of cooking. One which accommodate wrists that don’t work as they should, a back which sags from exhaustion and a heart which doesn't like standing or reaching. With taste dysfunctions and decreasing appetite.

 

But. But. But.

 

There are new flavours, new dishes to be discovered and this old lady is not giving up learning how to cook any time soon.

I is for - was, is and always will be a treat

 

Ice cream now.

 

This was a treat when we were young, with no freezers and no fridge until I was seven, one didn't buy ice cream to eat later on. It would be bought and eaten immediately or pretty well immediately. Us kids were sent across the road to the off licence of the nearby pub to pick up a newspaper wrapped block from their small freezer. It was a quick dash home for the ice cream to be divided into our bowls and demolished before it all melted away. Flavours, vanilla and sometimes Neapolitan (pink, green and white) but I preferred the vanilla.

 

We bought them in little tubs at the cinema, where strawberry and chocolate was also on the menu, choc-ices (chocolate wrapped vanilla bars. Out and about little blocks between wafers or in a cone.

 

We heard rumours that ice cream was even better overseas, I was suspicious of the claim how could anything be better!

 

I had to wait to find out, the French ice cream tasted the same.

Wait until you taste Italian I was told.

I eventually  tasted it but although different and nice it wasn’t to my mind different enough to push my British ice cream off top spot.

 

Funnily enough the first ice cream away from home which made an impression on me was tasted in Moscow in the Soviet Union, as it was back then. Sold from metal utilitarian vans on the roadside served with incomprehensible language it was delicious.

 

Italian 2 - Russian 5 and for a while it tied with my childhood ice cream.

 

We were limited as to flavours when I left for my travels and this is where other countries were more adventurous. By the time I had reached Australia I had tasted some amazing flavoured ice cream. Made with their native fruits there was a freshness to the tastes , we couldn't achieve back home.

 

Wonderful:)

 

When I returned home, after a few years, our diversity of flavours in the UK had improved but there was a feeling of frustration at the limitation of the British palate here.

 

I bought a small ice cream maker and made my own, trying to add more of our fruits and nuts, it worked well and then after a few years the machine made its home with some young friends of mine to feed their appetite for the stuff.

 

My friend from forever/editor and I travelled to the USA one year and discovering the array of flavours  on offer decided to see if we could eat a different flavour every day - it turned out some days we had two. We easily did, with some to spare. It was in New England when I first ate pink peppermint ice cream - it is always green here. The colour was pretty and the taste even better.

 

We had to visit Ben and Jerry didn't we? It wasn’t on our planned route but it was a must.

 

We do have more interesting ice creams now, especially in the restaurants.

 

I have never really taken to frozen yogurt even though I like regular yogurt very much, I didn’t take to baked Alaska either - cake with ice cream is so wrong on many levels for me, as to deep-fry  ice cream - no, no, no:) I prefer my ice cream as ice cream, although I can enjoy it on something hot, such as fruit pie, if there is no milk or custard around. A dish of assorted flavours is my favourite.

 

 

I have never outgrown my liking for this dish, in almost any form and at any time. It was, is and always will be a treat above many others.

 

 

 

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H is for good food, large fires and comfort

 

 My mother a frustrated traveller, turned her energies to home-making. She was a splendid cook and appeared to outsiders to enjoy the cooking and eating of her meals .

 

She didn’t.

She wasn’t that bothered about food.

Nor was she keen on cooking.

 

Despite this, she is remembered fondly for her cooking, special dishes talked about still. She taught me how to love food and everything to be done with it.

 

Her mantra for providing a splendid hearth and home was good food, large fires, comfort and pleasant company. Dad provided the last, Mum being rather shy. But it was Mum who ran the home. She not only cooked, she decorated, painting and wallpapering even the stairwells, chose the colour schemes. She gardened and mixed cement for paths. On the food front she grew the fruit and vegetables we ate and early on kept the chickens that gave eggs for breakfast and baking as well as a treat of roast at the end of their lives.

 

As did my friends I learnt a great deal of my cooking skills just by watching, allowed to help, however badly.

 

Friends would come and stay for a few days and often ended up living at our home for longer than they expected. It was a place to go for a disinterested kind of care which soothed.

 

The food was a great part of it. And her willingness to experiment and try all the new dishes which flooded in to the UK after rationing was lifted. Snack suppers or dinner/lunch parties, nothing was beyond her.

 

Nothing fazed her. One Sunday when some of Dad’s business colleagues were due, the electricity failed before the meal was finished. A general power failure, no other means of cooking except… except, my friend also there that weekend had two small camping primus stoves in the boot of her car. Mum in her perfect hair and long skirt crouching over these primus on the kitchen floor, finishing her triumph of a meal for eight and bringing it to plated perfection is a sight which lingers, with a smile, in the memory banks.

 

Cooking was a casual affair, she never fussed or panicked as far as I remember. Food was food, a meal was a meal. As long as the attitude was good even cheese on toast was a feast. It was no wonder that I became a foodie, a foodie who preferred fresh cooked food. Her experimentation led me to glory in the cuisines I came across on my travels.

 

The bad was nearly always interesting, the good often unbelievably good.

 

 

 

 

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