really old style living?

maryb

Mardatha I think they blamed the big Foot and Mouth outbreak on a batch of unsterilised swill so that's why you can't give scraps to pigs anymore.

Re the recipe for burnt soup, it might not be as bad as it sounds. I make a sauce to have with beef which is lovely and it involves cooking the flour with the butter until it is quite dark then adding stock and flavouring with a bit of tomato puree and sherry. The secret is to cook it slowly so it doesn't actually burn if you see what I mean, just gets steadily more golden

SuziQ1962

Burnt Flour Soup

I did a cajun cookery course where we made a three beer roux-basically you cooked the flour in the fat in the time it took you to drink 3 beers slowly,it ended up dark reddish brown and had a fantastic flavour when the stock was added to it,made into a sauce for Prawn etoufe(sp)
Also there is a portuguese soup that is just potatoes and dark green cabbage but with garlic that tastes really good,the cabbage is cut up very finely and potatoes cubed,it is cooked for a long time so everything is really soft.

Red_Doe

Isn`t just the pig pail that`s gone...I have my work premises inspected by a chap from DEFRA twice a year and he told me, upon seeing my hens, that it`s illegal to give hens your own kitchen scraps.
I freely admitted that I won`t stop doing this so how they can police that with everyone keeping hens is beyond me. I know why they made it illegal, but truly, most folks are pretty sensible about what scraps they feed hens (and lots of hens are downright fussy!) so......

ChocClare

Ballymackeonan wrote: »

When I was young, a man came round regularly with a galvanised bin on a trolley for "the refuse" - ptonounced as in "deny" rather than "waste". In his case it was for his pigs, something that can't be done now!

I've been looking through my Edwardian thrifty cookery book with a mixture of horror and envy. Envy in that there are recipes for oysters, halibut, guinea fowl... but horror at some of the other recipes. Can you imagine Burnt Flour Soup - cook flour in margarine until "quite brown" then add water and simmer for an hour, add a little cheese, salt and pepper and serve over toasted stale bread! If that's OS I don't want to go there.... or to potato and cabbage soup (cut into small pieces with a little onion, simmer for 2½ hours and add margarine and seasoning..)

And don't forget, Edwardian margarine (pronounced, of course, with a hard "g" as it should be!) was disgusting stuff, not like it is now. Well, actually, I still think it's disgusting, but I know some people don't mind it, and the Edwardian stuff was definitely worse! I have a Mrs Beeton which I think is probably from the Boer War era and that has great things in it, like Half Pay Pudding, which has lots of stodge but comparatively few bits of dried fruit. Presumably, if Father was not on active service, there wasn't a lot of money coming in!

More poignantly, it has quite a large section on nursing sick children, and what to do if your child has diphtheria, TB, typhoid fever, measles etc. It brings you up quite short to think how awful it must have been to have childhood death as such a distinct possibility (as, of course, it still is in too many places in the world). I was reading an article the other day about how the next generation of "superbugs" may render antibiotics useless, in which case we may well see a return to deaths from the slightest thing becoming common again. I know we're always hearing how we're now living too long and how Alzheimers and other diseases are so common because of our increased longevity, but of course, without antibiotics it is just as likely to be the young who die as the old. Scary stuff. :eek:

mardatha

I have a similar book CC. I think they were far tougher, and far more practical and sensible in those days than we are.
They say we are living longer but I think that will change. Todays generation of old folk grew up in the hungry years and WW2. Our kids are growing up in McDonalds!

maryb

It really isn't that long since it was common to lose a child for what would now be minor. My DH was the fifth born in a family of 7 but the eldest child died at 1 year from a chest infection - no antibiotics before the war. It wasn't anything that could have been prevented - he was well cared for, they weren't poor or living in a damp house and could afford heating, good food and to pay for a doctor's visit. The rest of the family were healthy, it wasn't any sort of epidemic or TB. Just a cold that went to his chest

Ballymackeonan

The only problem with the burnt flour soup was that it was made with water! With a good stock, it would be French Onion for those who don't like onions...

Life was a lot more precarious in the past - penicillin wasn't in widespread use until after WW2, and before that you could be carried off by an infected wound if it turned gangrenous. My grandfather came from a family of 11, of which at least 2 girls died in childhood, and another as a teenager. They weren't badly off, farmers on their own land, but the farmhouse was a traditional Irish cottage, possibly a bit damp and with shared bedrooms. They died of TB (and my grandfather also had it but it wasn't diagnosed for years...)

ceridwen

Its certainly very much in living memory to have lost children in infancy. My father was one of 9 children (but he counts it as 7 - because 2 died when young).

Winged_one

My Dad was the eldest of 7, but the 3rd (a boy) died when he was about 2 and Dad about 5. I only got to hear about him once I was grown up, but he is often remembered at family events etc, including my Grandad's burial last year (about 60 years later) as "having a place ready for Grandad".

When I was working in a hotel a few years back (late 90's), we still had the pigman coming for the foodwaste. They banned it here too with the F&M 10 years ago.

MIL is getting organised for her chickens though, and will be feeding them the scraps. The poor cat and dog will be losing out though, as they currently get any edible scraps.

DH and I enjoyed quite an OS meal last night- tomato sauce made last summer with our own tomatoes, onion, garlic and herbs and frozen, with (shop frozen) peas, fresh HG leeks, some home-dried chilli and a piece of haddock and fistful of prawns, all served with pasta.

I need to empty out a few of my baking goods, as that cupboard is still quite full. But I am planning on taking a "shopping day" and travelling over the border again in maybe 3-4 weeks, and also getting a few more OS essentials (like washing crystals to try, and large bottles of white vinegar - just can't get those here).

Actually, if you use the undistilled malt vinegar, the brown one, instead of fabric softener, does that stain the clothes at all? Or would it be the same as using the white stuff?

I really must get some seeds in pots this weekend too, to get the growing season started. I want to start broad beans, tomatoes, cabbage and cauliflower this weekend in pots, and a few early peas and broad beans direct into the garden.

RAS

Some food waste still goes to pigs; bakery waste (not post consumer) is still allowed. I bought some converted doughnuts at the weekend.

A lot of other waste goes into pet food; cream eggs, trifles, packs of chicken tights that never made it to the shops, meat pies etc. All rendered into cat food!.

With respect to kitchens, you can feed garden waste but not kitchen waste. How anyone knows if the cauli leaves were cut the head before or after it went into the kitchen, I do not know.

People might find Tristam Stuarts book Waste http://www.tristramstuart.co.uk/ and Simon Fairlie's Meat http://www.amazon.co.uk/Meat-benign-extravagance-Simon-Fairlie/dp/1856230554

both of which have a lot to say on this matter.

I do think this is one area were work could be done on making more sensible rules, BUT it is now enshrined in EU regulations whioch makes it harder.