Preparedness for when

GreyQueen

BY the late seventies, at least in my school, we were doing a mixture of baking and savory dishes. I still cannot tolerate cauliflower cheese.:p

But if you look at it from the POV that cooking is a series of manual skills applied to ingredients, usually following printed directions (or until favourites are imprinted in memory) then I'd make the argument that knowing some skills is better than knowing how to design a ready meal wrapper.

Molly41

GreyQueen wrote: »

I stagger to think how these drama kings and queens would cope with the total cessation of the water supply, or power being off for days. They are very vulnerable to upsets because they have always lived in a world of plenty and ease, this is their normal, and anything else is unimaginable.

I grew up in homes without c.h. and bathrooms and that's normal to me, although I prefer not to rough it, I do know how to dig latrines and maintain hygiene without flushing loos. Rather not exercise those skills, but they are there if needed.

Me too and without a working bathroom for two years as my father was into diy but was really busy with his day job as a decorator.

I have to admit that it has left me somewhat phobic to disruptions and I get in a terrible tizz when something breaks or we need to decorate. I am very lucky because my husband is just the best at mending and fixing anything and understands how much it all upsets me. I wonder how much he really has saved us when the SHTF?

As for cooking I have insisted that all four of my kids have taken GCSE food technology. It has definitely helped them with their cooking skills but also two have gone on to food preparation as part-time/ temporary jobs. I loved domestic science at school and it very definitely contributed to my love of baking and cooking in general.

thriftwizard

I wasn't allowed to do Home Ec., art or textiles at school & was made to do Latin & Chemistry etc. instead. To my long-suffering highly-academic mother's total despair, I couldn't wait to teach myself as soon as I got the chance. So when I should have been applying myself to becoming a Whitehall high-flyer, I was sneaking off home early to try out new recipes, make curtains or plant seeds. I did once think about doing the Cordon Bleu & doing director's lunches, but in the end I decided that that wasn't proper cooking!

I have & use a Panny (oooh, nice shiny new word!) but prefer to make bread by hand, and both DDs and one of the DSs can & do make bread too. I'm deeply into low-yeast overnight-rise bread at the moment, with a lovely thick chewy crust. It's just remembering to start it, when you're drop-dead tired & not wanting to get up to a cluttered kitchen...

mardatha

I hate loathe and despise cooking ...but I do wish I had learned the basics. I'm always having to ask people on here how to do this or that. Just the basics, like knowing you have to brown meat first to keep the taste in, how to thicken stock into gravy, stuff like that. I found the wartime cookbooks the best ever for me. I do know how to do cheap filling meals but could do so much better if I knew more.
Am supposed to be concentrating now on solar lighting and battery charging but I'm not getting very far.

sevenup01

I do like to cook but i havnt done the fun stuff - baking from scratch for ages - I have very little work surface and its always cluttered. My home economics lessons were a mix of baking and real cooking. I remember walking home from school carrying a rather warm glass casserole dish full of chicken casserole which we then had for dinner. I was praying that i wouldnt drop it!
I also loved our sewing lessons and wanted to take it up for gcse but the bleeping staff who chose what options would be available for us to choose from decided not to give that option any more. That one decision by them coloured the rest of my academic life. I couldnt even take it up at college as you needed the gcse portfolio to get in to the college course. Now i would still like to take it up at college level but i dont have the time or funds.....yet!

[Deleted User]

Morning all, we have a yellow round object in the sky this morning, anyone have an idea what it is??? I read something in folk mythology that it might be the sun, but surely that's just a fairy tale?

GQ may I borrow the tin hat please? I have had that thought many times over the last few years, agree totally about Food Tech taught in schools these days, it was all about shelf life stability and the label and bar code being correct, zilch about cooking and nutritional values. The end event had better happen while us oldies are still around with the knowledge and skills to teach and pass on or it will be a very stick wicket indeed for mankind.

MAR you keep on asking, we like to help and there will come a day when you think I know how to do this, and that will be very satisfying for you and you'll soon be the one passing on the skills, that's life!!!

Have a good day all, Cheers Lyn xxx.

maryb

Arggh just typed a very long post and lost it by clicking away to check a link. Probably just as well, but anyway, here is the gist of what I was going to say.

Pineapple, you can still get the Bero book and it's also available online. I like their recipes because they are still simple but tasty - a quiche does NOT need half a dozen eggs and a pint of cream.

I don't go back to wartime cookbooks but, despite its reputation as a dire decade, I think the 1970s were pretty good. I still have my Good Housekeeping cookbook and use a lot of the recipes. The Queen of Puddings recipe uses 2 oz sugar in total ie for sweetening the custard base and whipping with the meringue and it's plenty sweet enough.

I would love to see Delia's cookery course from that time brought out on DVD. I saw a couple of Mary Berry's daytime TV appearances on Youtube (when she was talking about general family cooking not just baking) and I was struck by how often she referred to particular cuts of meat being inexpensive. I can't imagine current TV producers bothering about that.

Shirley Goode was also on TV back then and she's still going strong
http://shirleygoode.blogspot.co.uk/. I never saw her at the time but I still use some of her old paperbacks

The_Dragon

Be-Ro cook book

Ordering mine today and I remember making all sorts at my home ec classes as well

Butterfly_Brain

GQ I agree with all you have said and I know that a lot of people will call us paranoid, but I can see a lot of trouble ahead, prices are rising for everything, people are being bullied into slavefare with threats of sanctions, sick and disabled included, wages at the lower end of society suppressed, we have been flooded with cheap immigrant labour so that the big companies can exploit them and the low paid face the likely hood of losing in work benefits when UB comes into force, how are they supposed to live? This country is living under a dictatorship of rich globalists, paranoid or truth?
But I bet the MP's will still award themselves a massive pay rise on top of all their perks such as subsidised bars and restaurants, £300 a day just for turning up a huge salary, cushty pension scheme and £150pw for groceries :mad::mad::mad: And the poor are thrown the scraps in the form of a derisory JSA payment :mad::mad::mad:
I have been adding to my stock at a massive rate and I would advise anyone to do the same and make sure that you know how to live off of the land and can hunt, shoot, prepare your own meat, and be able to cook it. Have a protection plan in place for your home and family as well.
We are indeed living in scary times

mardatha

Right on sister BB! You got the govt to a T pet!