As The Workhouse Approaches....How To Do Everything To Avoid It, the Old Style Way

charlies-aunt

Brocolli, Cabbage and Cauliflower stalks are delicious peeled, cut into fingers and scoffed Cooks priviledge!

I strip the cauliflower stalks of the green leaves and cook them alongside the florets or stir fry them - just like cabbage

On the OS theme of 'waste not, want not' - did anyone see the ”If walls could talk” programme on BBC4 last night ? The series has been looking back on the history and evolution of individual rooms in a house and last night’s programme was on kitchens and how they have progressed from the simple three legged pot seated in a central hearth to todays high tech culinary experiences

One section had them emptying out modern kitchen bin and going through the contents and sorting them as a Victorian housewife would have done.

- Bottle and jars were kept for reuse,

- Meat bones, vegetable peelings and fish scraps were kept for stock.

- Any bones coming out of the stockpot would be given to the dogs and anything left after the dogs had finished with it was hoarded for sale to the rag and bone man. The bits of inedible food from the stockpot or the kitchen were added to the "wash bucket" and sold as pig feed (hence the old term ‘hogwash’)

- Tins would have been resold for recycling

- Cinders from the fireplaces were recycled in the kitchen range and coal dust and wood ash was hoarded in the ‘dust-bin’ and sold to the dust-men.

- Newspapers, books, pamphlets etc were neatly torn up and threaded on a string ready for use in the smallest room

It seems that everything was either recycled or was sold on.....very little actual rubbish - seems like our ancestors were much greener than their modern day counterparts.

We have a very black sky overhead but no rain as yet - fingers crossed for plenty of rain this weekend as watering the lottie takes an hour every night with cans and buckets as hosepipes are banned.

Tiring day at work - it must be full moon again this week - lots of demanding and unreasonable callers. :cool:

Mrs_Veg_Plot

I have been using 2ltr pop bottles with the bottom cut off them as cloches for my brassicas. Last night I put a couple of the bottle botoms filled with cheap out of date beer in the border by one of the veg plots. Hey presto a slug pub. It worked. Mardatha would your hens like beer soaked slugs ?

PepPop

charlies-aunt I wish I'd watched that it sounds really interesting. I didn't realise that rag and bone literally meant they took bones... did they mention what for? Love the meaning of hogwash and that the dustbin men took dust. I feel really stupid because I never realised that - although I don't know why I never worked it out by the names

VJsmum

PepPop wrote: »

charlies-aunt I wish I'd watched that it sounds really interesting. I didn't realise that rag and bone literally meant they took bones... did they mention what for? Love the meaning of hogwash and that the dustbin men took dust. I feel really stupid because I never realised that - although I don't know why I never worked it out by the names

Glue? Can't think of anything else.

oldtractor

I've just posted about this programme,and nowadays we PAY through our council tax to have stuff taken away. I've just read on another thread that rags fetch £800 a tonne. maybe instead of giving away old clothes we should colect and sell instead. I wish I could sew,then I could remake things into other things.

mardatha

I know about the rag& bone man, can remember him from the 50s. But what did the Victorians do with coal dust ?

oldtractor

The coal dust was probably the only thing thrown away. it went in the DUSTbin and the DUSTman took it away. I think they used it for road mending.

charlies-aunt

Ground bones were used for making glues and gelatine and for the production of very superior china pottery. Also ground up for bomemeal used as fertiizer as bones were a major source of phosphates and large quantities of bones for crushing were, in fact, imported from Prussia and countries around the Mediterranean for this purpose; even whale bones were brought back to this country for processing. There are even reports which suggest that old battlefields were scoured for this very saleable material! :eek:


Dustmen took away the ash that was left when the coal and wood had been burnt - not the coal dust itself. I can remember my grandmother making coal dust bricks by mixing with the sweepings out of coal dust from out the coal 'ole, clay dug from the garden and a drop of paraffin. Grandmother used to riddle the cinders and ash from the ashpan - big cinders were put back on the fire, fine cinders were kept & used to make garden paths or to grit the flagstone paths in frosty weather - only the ash dust was put in the dustbin.

bertiebots

Thanks charlies aunt! Here is a link for the programme with info on other episodes! I am going to watch

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b010v8dx/If_Walls_Could_Talk_The_History_of_the_Home_The_Kitchen/

grandma247

only got time for a quick look in and will catch up on the rest tomorrow.
Does anyone else find this "overweight is linked to Alzhemiers Disease," a bit suspicious? I am pretty sure that weight is only a tiny part of it, if at all, otherwise all overweight people would become gaga.
I did care work and there were more thin people with it than overweight that I came across anyway.
Maybe it is a secret scare tactic to get people dieting?