Chips& stuff & things.

[joette]

I made chips this week you know potatoes from the garden,peeled them & fried them in a pan with oil.

Well you think I had crossed the desert without a camel or water.
"You really made them & not from the freezer"??

I thought back to Mum's trusty chip pan which was a permanent fixture in the kitchen & chips would be cooked in it at least twice weekly.Oh & fish in batter & my fav fritters.We thought nothing of it it was just part of daily life that you would shop daily for fresh ingredients & use them ASAP.

No fridges just the larder & in Winter the top of the coal bunker!Usually around Christmas & New Year when the larder would be full.

How the seasons would be marked by the changing of food.Monkey nuts & pomegranates it's Halloween &Autumn,Spring by Ayrshires & Summer by salad veg & tomatoes.Winter was the stored veg & jams made from the autumn/summer fruits.
Now if I want I can eat salad & raspberries on Christmas Day if I so wish.

I'm sure that it has contributed to Global warming as we fly in so much of our food stock.

I was also thinking about when Granny used to say it was a great novelty to see a motor car & how every child would come running.We were the same but vice-versa.

I can knit & sew not very well but enough to hem & sew on buttons etc & mend a seam.I could at a push turn a sheet or a collar but then why would I when things are so cheap to replace?
I can darn a hole in a sock -comes in handy for torn knees in school trousers.
Now it's almost impossible to buy wool in the nearest town & I have to buy on-line a lot.Ditto for patterns.

I guess I am feeling old & nostalgic.I know that I could if neccesarry do the wash in the sink & cook on an open fire.I could even make my own soap at a push.Not that I would want to mind you.I am happy to wake up to a nice cosy bedroom & a hot shower.

I just wonder what skills we have today will be looked back at with nostalgia?

"Do you remember when we had to type our homework & we had to cook food?"
Who knows or will a more eco-concious generation have gone back to some of the old ways?

I love to knit & cross-stitch but my family are not dependant on these skills to dress them as they may have been in generations past.I love to grow & pick my own food.I love making jam & chutney but again Tescos et al are just around the corner.
It's official I have turned into my Granny.

[PaulaD]

Oh you've brought back some memories !!

My favourite job as a child was "topping and tailing" the gooseberries and blackcurrants. And shelling peas but eating the small juicy ones before handing them over.

Children today miss out on so many things we enjoyed.

I've turned into my Mother

Paula

[Russell]

I've turned into an old grump

I remember the down side too. Rubbing Cardinal polish onto the front step and wondering if the red stuff would ever come off my fingers.
Thinking similar thoughts after cleaning up the old black grate (my mood echoed the colour of my fingers - and usually my nose, forehead and cheeks too).
Clattering my legs with the enamel bucket when the ashes had to be carried out to the ash-pit on a bitter winters morning.
Scraping the underside of the slab of lard in the chip-pan to clean off the burnt, smelly bits before the next batch of fry-ups.
Crawling under the bed (with the springs digging into my back) to retrieve the wooden mushroom used for darning the socks.
Happy times just the same - or is it selective memory loss.

Russell

[bobbyinmelbourne]

There is no taste on earth better than new potatoes and hopefully it's one that can't be 'manufactured'. 'baby' spuds ain't the same. I've been in Aus. 40 years and still miss 'em.
You know that we are upside down here, but coming up to
christmas- groan-I often see suggested menus with brussel sprouts. Now I have done my bit to promote the veg, my grown up kids love them,grandchildren, no, but Fresh, in winter, not frozen tasteless stuff :evil:
I turned into my mother several years ago, sadly she is long gone, so I can't tell her she was right about wearing vests!
Bobby[/i]

[Bertha]

I threw away my chip pan years ago, ditto the deep fat fryer after
setting my mum's kitchen on fire with the pan and my husband having high cholestrol made us get rid of the other. As a treat though we buy fish & chips from the local shop once a month.
New potatoes especially Ayrshires with loads of butter running over them are a fav of mine but hubby prefers mash/ I refuse to mash new tatties!
However, I started to knit again after 25yrs when my son told me I'm to be a granny!. However the family find it very amusing for some reason. My son said "do babys still wear that stuff, I thought you just went to the shops and bought fleeces and things?"!
My youngest (22) though looks like she may eventually take up the needles, she has been sitting alongside me knitting one row purl one row plain. Patterns I think may be beyond her for a while yet. I on the other hand learned from my mum at the tender age of 6 and could turn out an adult size jumper by the age of 8. We also got knitting & sewing at school, not these days, that's why a lot of skills were lost.
Lately I have taken to making my own apple pies/crumbles/stew/sauce as we have 2 apple trees loaded with apples and my lot refuse to eat them so I still spend a fortune every week on apples for them.
We have a pear tree which has just given us 8 huge pears my sister's comment was "You got that from a tree". I had to laugh, she is nearly 50 and had meant to say "tree in your garden". She thought fruit that size could only come from well tended orchards and you bought them in the supermarket. I much more than she will ever am turning into my mother, who at the age of 75 still bakes and makes jams with the fruit provided from my garden when available.
Well must away and get those apples cooked.
Bertha

[sheilajim]

I have no idea into what I have turned into. My mother could not sew and was not a very good cook. I have no idea whether or not her mother was any good at these tasks. I was surprised to find that one of my GGGrandmothers was a dressmaker.

I have never been to Scotland, but I remember wild strawberries, tasty tomatoes and other fresh veggies and home made ice cream. They were delicious.

Not so great were the old washing machines and hanging the laundry out on the line. Another thing that I don't miss was putting paste wax on the hard wood floors. What a chore that was for my mother. No wonder she didn't like housework.

Regards

[claudette]

Home cooking always tastes best I think - and at least you know what has gone into it with no preservatives etc.

There is also nothing to beat home-grown fruit and veg. We do grow a few things in the garden - home grown potatoes are really good and very easy to grow, though my husband seems unable to produce baby ones. His new potatoes were all the size of baking potatoes! And my mouth is watering when I remember the corn on the cob he grew - it was picked, cooked and eaten within 30 minutes - so delicious

And there's a lot to be said for buying fruit and vegetables in the right season - for example in winter if you buy strawberries flown over from goodness knows where I think they have no taste to them and you pay some exorbitant price as well.

My children learnt to do cross-stitch at school but that was all. However, when I was at primary school, we learnt to sew, embroider, knit and crochet while our teacher read such stories as Dr Doolittle to us - I seem to remember my apron had several small blood stains on it as a result of me giggling too much and pricking my finger! Fortunately the material was red gingham so the blood stains weren't too obvious

Maybe it's to do with age but I sometimes think I have turned into one of those Grumpy Old Women (that programme on BBC2) but I hasten to add my glass is always half full - never half empty!

Best wishes
Claudette

[AndrewP]

My Mum used to make soup almost every weekend and make jam whenever the fruit was in season. My brother and I used to enjoy winding her up with questions like "can't we get real soup out of a tin like other folk get" (or real jam from the shops). She has now retired from making jam, but still makes soup quite often.

All the best,

AndrewP

[fmackay]

Real chips! Can't beat them My mum used to have a very heavy(seemed like it at the time anyway)chip pan which she used to make the chips in -she used lard not oil. As we lived in a small village, nearest chip shop nearly 50 miles away, on a Saturday night she would make these chips in the evening and we would eat them out of brown paper bags. Almost as good as the chippie

You always knew what day it was by what she cooked for our dinner. I too used to wish for a tin of tomato soup sometimes rather than the homemade broth etc which we used to get on a regular basis.

Now when I make a meal from scratch, spag bol in particular, I get the comment that it wasn't as good as the stuff I used to make , ie jar of supermarket best!
You can't win, so now it's back to the jars!

I also learnt to knit, sew etc at school and when my daughter was a baby I knitted a couple of things for her but I think that was the last time I attempted it - any time I got stuck I had to phone my mum and explain to her what I had done to see if she could help me. Quite a sight - hugging the phone, holding the knitting and trying to describe the mess in front of me! I gave up

[claudette]

I regularly make soup in winter - potato and leek and also lentil and bacon are especially popular in this house. My mother also used to make a potato and carrot one which was very good. Depended on what was cheap and in season.

When I was young my mother used to make most of our clothes. She was very good at both knitting and sewing.

I used to make some of my clothes as well - I made my bridesmaid's dress and my going-away outfit when I got married. But my children wouldn't wear home-made clothes when they were young - so I went to the charity shop to buy what I could - and they didn't like that either

Another thing I remember from my childhood was how my mother was a great one for recycling anything - she was obviously way ahead of her time! Though this was more as a result of her family being very hard up when she was young because her father died when she was 7 and then of course with WWII.

I remember when we unwrapped our presents at Christmas and birthdays, we had to be really careful undoing the paper and not tear it - then she would smooth out each piece of paper, fold it up and put it away in the drawer ready to be used again next time

She would also cut up the pictures from Christmas and birthday cards to use for present labels. "Waste not, want not" was her motto.

It was heartbreaking going through her house after she died - and throwing away all the bits of string, brown paper, old envelopes kept for her numerous lists etc etc.

Best wishes
Claudette