Prologue - May 2017

Prologue - May 2017

It has been a wonderful and nostalgic journey recalling so many treasures from the past as a prologue to this blog - family traditions, favourite shared foods - things that link me to my past, to the warmth and safety of my family. Even if it is not immediately apparent (what do we remember from the past), much of it has involved food when I think back. Mealtimes and the like have always been an intricate part of that past and of family times. Occasions I remember so clearly are Christmases, Sunday afternoon visits to friends and relos with afternoon tea of course (remember the time when we had space for such things?), school holidays at Aunty's (she wasn't a great cook but she tried hard to please us), and so many more wonderful memories. Aren't we luck to have had so much?

Aunty Nell (she raised Mum) with me, baby brother Rob and big sister Ros (L-R)

Some of my earlier memories have improved with age as things often do - making ginger beer at Christmas (or was it just talk of that practice?) I do know that when the bottlo started up a little business at the end of Aunty's street in Caulfield, that's where we got our ginger beer, orange jelly and clotted cream again at Aunty's, the dark cool pantry at Mum's family home (Aunty's!) a place of unforgettable and evocative smells, the annual bottling fest at home with fruit hand-picked at orchards along the way home from summer holidays at Point Lonsdale as well as with tomatoes from Dad's garden, Dad's secret stash of tinned fruit (bought when 'on special' and stored in his huge shed) which mum had to swallow her pride to 'borrow' from - she pretty much adhered to a fresh whole food diet ..... until she needed something in a hurry.
Growing up, we kids ate very little fried food because of Dad's dicky tummy - ulcers. Poor darling. They were the bane of his every waking moment for decades. Mum was also rather a healthy food devotee and we dutifully followed suit - did we have a choice? For instance her soy bean fad in the 50s - hated them then, love them now. She made her own baked beans with soy beans and bought Soy bean bread which we loathed.
But she did a mean a la cart breakfast (for sensitive tummies mine and Dad's) - brain omelettes, meat or vegetable pancakes, scrambled eggs in little curled cups of dry-fried straz or Melba toast cups (we called it fairy bread made from day-old bread pressed in to cup-cake pans and baked in a very slow oven), porridge with brown sugar or honey, plus cream for dad - the oats in those days had to be soaked overnight! Summer brekkies were stewed fruit and milk, egg flip (to get our proteins and vitamins, love that woman!), no boxed cereal for us - except for the occassional wheatbix.
School sandwiches - milo!!! Heaven between bread and butter. I was a bit indulged because I wasn't keen on sangers - can you believe I would eat a quarter sandwich for lunch - oh how things change! apple, sugar and cinnamon, honey, beetroot. I have delicious images of the kitchen on school mornings - butter dish sitting over the kettle to soften the butter for sangers, breadcrusts acting as sponges to soak up the juice of tomato or beetroot so the bread didn't get soggy. What a sweetheart she was!
Picnics were always special. Mum would whip up egg and bacon pies at the last minute or would have made meat pies the night before. Yum! The occasional week night after Dad got home from work, we'd all pile into the car together with the famous 'Blue Picnic Box' (a fruit box painted blue - Mum's favourite colour in the 50-60s) and head for the lake, Lake Wendouree. Mum created yummy masterpieces straight out of that box - Dagwood sandwiches (remember those?) stuffed with cold roast lamb and every salad vegetable we would eat plus onion - a sandwich wasn't complete without a few slivers of onion. And the cake tin or biscuit jar always came along with Amy Johnson cake (named for the famous English aviator), shortbread, sponge, or chocolate cake - lots of goodies which were churned out on Friday bake-up days;  that happened in so many kitchens back then.
Saturday nights were easy nights - we didn't sit at the dining room table but ate something savoury out of ramekins in front of the fire. What a treat and we took turns (sometimes) to select the easy meal to have. My favourite was Chow Mein OMG do you remember those simple days? Such unsophisticated and rather limited palates we Aussie had back in those days.
As I got older, Mum talked about the ingredients for, and the process of making, brawn, but I don't recall her ever making it. But I do remember a jellied mystery concoction that Aunty made (it's on my list of things to attempt). Mum also spoke of the hard times during the war and what they did to make food interesting for example 'mock lobster' - silver beet stalks in a rich white sauce. sounds rather yummy!
Precious times and the memories are so vivid.
Not long ago after Mum died when I was going through some of her things, I found a diary with some jottings in it about her grandfather, Richard Hill. He was a baker and had shops at various times in Port Melbourne and St Kilda (still researching all that history), but a little gem popped out. He made fruit cake for the WWI soldiers and Percy (Mum's father) took it all down to the troop ships at Station Pier (Port Melbourne) on his bike. Not long after that, Percy enlisted! I have one of Richard's bakers recipe books still.
All these precious memories, glimpses into the past, saved recipes from mothers and grandmothers, fathers and grandfathers are an essential part of the precious chain that links us as families to the past, and hopefully the future.  All of us.

 Fun and laughter at the 2016 Family Christmas - just a third of  the family
(I always forget to get whole family shots).
NB: Pavlova with fruit topping, Pan Forte (made by Nath) and the mandatory experiment,
this year Humming Bird cake decorated with sugar bees by granddaughter Rebecca.

My little family is in the process of building new as well as continuing existing traditions. Our family's Christmas dinners always have the mandatory pavlova (my job) and now pan forte - it's a bit of a story but every little thing is important for the very reason that it is important, even if only to one member of the family - we are all building our treasure trove of precious memories. It all counts. And something my Mum always did at Christmas was to make shortbread to give as gifts, circles of pale rich buttery shortbread wrapped in cellophane; I try to follow her example, not necessarily with shortbread, but with something from my Kitchen - pan forte, chutneys, etc

Something for next Christmas? A Maggie recipe made hastily between
returning from our trip to Tassie and leaving for the Top End.
That's the time when quinces are ripe - what do you do but cook them up!

Food - don't you just love it!?