A retrospective is called for…make yourself a cup of tea and settle in. (My next post will be briefer, you can be sure of that!)
Home for the Holidays
Crostini with revived roasted peppers, Patrice Newell garlic (I included a glorious box of that as part of my garlic-addicted mother’s Christmas present), mint from the garden, capers and Gympie Farm chevre, served on the eve of Christmas Eve. Sound slightly glam? Not a bit.
The routine on arriving at my parents’ place: first, open fridge and despair at multitude of past-its-use-by-date food (an eccentric with obsessive-compulsive-hoarding tendencies is in charge of the kitchen); second, surreptitiously discard the worst of it without being observed; third, deploy remaining ageing food (the shrivelled capsicum/peppers went into the oven, were roasted for an hour or so, then peeled; I was inclined to tie my mother down and make her read Mark Bittman's pantry suggestions).
There’s a part of me that feels embarrassed that I used capsicum that most people would have discarded; that my mother makes a beeline for the display of reduced-to-clear produce items in every supermarket she ever visits. But perhaps it’s time for a rethink. For an ever-increasing number of people in Australia, and elsewhere, frugality, bargain-hunting, or worse, is going to become essential, if it’s not already. My mother’s habits have not changed in my lifetime, through her and my father’s increasing affluence and into a comfortable retirement. No doubt it’s why they have a comfortable retirement. She has been frugal forever. Hours spent in the kitchen turning $1 boxes of damaged fruit into compotes or bargain-basement vegetables into soups or stews using cheap cuts of meat. Always comparing prices in the supermarket, watching for bargains. And not wasting food. Little is thrown away. I’ll take advice now on other frugal ideas…
Cooking Ennui and the Food Show-offs
In this forum, I’m feeling a little uncomfortable admitting yet another travesty but my heart simply hasn’t been in the kitchen — not over the holidays, not now.
The crostini weren’t the only less-than-astonishing creation of the holiday period. Our Christmas meal was a decidedly unglamorous, un-gourmet affair (dare I admit that a pudding that came free with a new appliance and supermarket custard were on the table — my father told me to avert my aghast gaze). There were also the humblest of hamburgers on Boxing Day, a very wonky summer trifle, about which, the less said the better, and a night when Dad cooked supermarket sausages.
But is this all a crime? Should I feel so sheepish about it? Should I feel the need to keep up food appearances no matter what other stresses, pressures and factors there might be? I think not.
Egged on by glossy magazines, lavish cookbooks, television chefs and slick blogs, food snobbery has become endemic and we’ve lost our grip on reality. And Christmas is peak hour for this plague. Among a certain set of the affluenza-stricken in Australia at least, where climate has largely cold-shouldered the generally egalitarian and accessible roast-bird-and-vegetable-plum-pudding tradition of Christmas, food has become an opportunity to show off. Hark, the food magazines and their lobster-lavished spreads, and whole-roasted-stuffed-suckling pigs and stress-inducing, multi-layered dessert extravaganzas and single-origin this, and line-caught or paddock-to-plate that. Of course while in most cultures, a religious festival such as Christmas is an occasion to go nuts, show off a little, get those copecks out from under the mattress, few cultures have embraced such outrageous hedonism and excess and keeping-up-with-the-gourmet-Joneses as Christmassing Westerners.
I’d like to say that I planned our humble Christmas as a rebellion against all the excess but, for one unfortunate reason and another, circumstances dictated it. And you know, it wasn’t too bad.
The Benefits of Being Part of a Family of Hoarders 1
Digging through boxes at the old family home, looking for Auntie Amy’s wedding dress, some wondrous things uncovered (no wedding dress came to light … it’s there somewhere). This dated 14 September, 1972, typed on thin notepaper.
I do wish I could be with you on Monday when you turn six years old. One, two, three, four, five, six years. My! My! That is a lot of years! There are twelve months in each year so that makes it seventytwo months. There are fiftytwo weeks in a year so that makes it three hundred and twelve weeks and if we go to days. Well! Three hundred and sixty-five days in every year with an extra day thrown in now and again for “Leap Year” that makes it that you have ben here with us for about two thousand one hundred and ninety-one days. That’s an awful lot of days for a small lass like you but they have been wonderful days for Mummy and Daddy and all the people who love you so dearly and I hope they have been happy days for you, my darling, and I hope that as the years go by each day that comes will be just wonderfully happy for you. Man, many, many Happy Returns darling Stephanie.
Do you know what happened the day you left us to return home? As you know the schools in Sydney commenced their vacation on Friday, that was the day you left here — Early in the morning I heard a knock on the front door and when I went to the door — who do you think was there? I give you three guesses! It was Ruby and she had come up to ask me if Stephanie could come and play with her. She looked quite sad when I had to tell her that you had just gone home because you had to go back to school on the Monday.
Grandma hasn’t been doing very much since you left because she caught some wog that was going the rounds and was very sorry for herself for some weeks; however, I’m beginning to pick up again. You can tell Mummy I haven’t written because I thought I may pass on the wog to her and that would not be kind. Tell her, when I feel hale and hearty again I will writer her, but you might also mention that a letter from her now and again wouldn’t go amiss.
Have a wonderful birthday and lots of fun. Give David a hug and kiss for me and a thousand kisses for you my darling and the sort of hug you would get from a polar bear — and that would about squash you.
Love, love, love! Grandma
The Benefits of Being Part of a Family of Hoarders 2
My grandmother’s cooking notebook. A tussle ensued when I tried to claim it — Mum won that battle — but I claimed a few others: The Merrie-Christmas Cook Book (love the little rhyme on the dedication page, verse 4 of which goes — “Father’s in the pantry, Sampling Yuletide rum, Full of inner happiness, Can’t you hear him hum?”), and two ‘50s gems, the Joys of Jell-O (Molded Chef’s Salad, Ring-Around-the-Tuna) and How You Can Give Hawaiian Parties (Pineapple-Cottage Cheese Salad Mold and Honolulu Punch, with tips for making a Hawaiian costume, a pineapple pot holder and a paper plate fish).
The Benefits of Being Part of a Family of Hoarders 3
The discovery of what I guess must have been a hat box, which travelled with Auntie Amy on one of her trips home to Australia from San Francisco.
Finding Religion
When you’re hanging around in the emergency room at St Vincent’s hospital, Toowoomba, on New Year’s Eve, waiting to discover why your father has a temperature of 39.9 degrees (it was pneumonia), reading matter is limited. I had no idea there were so many food references in the Bible (I blame my parents for my practically non-existent religious education!). Never imagined I'd be quoting the Bible here, but nor did I imagine I'd spend New Year's Eve in an emergency room...
He can keep his locusts, but the wild honey… mmm… late at night I’ve been finding my way to the pantry with a spoon and raiding the jar of Tasmanian leatherwood honey. I think I’m addicted.
Home Again and a Kayaking Excursion to Remember
Shoulders and back are aching from Saturday’s outing on Cowan Creek, a tidal subcatchment of the Hawkesbury River. From Apple Tree Bay, a leisurely paddle downstream towards Houseboat Bay, then back upstream past the Halvorsen marina. If I were rich, well, I'd buy myself a fine houseboat, and a fine captain and moor it along here somewhere and catch fish, and read books, and daydream, and live happily ever after.
