You may not have helped but notice
that both Jim Norris (‘Someday, Maybe’)
and Andy Brice (‘Moving On’) are men
who are extremely fond of their stomachs.
(Fortunately for them, they are both married to women who see it as
their role to have a meal on the table when their man comes in!) I thought it
be rather fun from time to time to have a look at some of the things that Jim
or Andy might have found waiting on the table.
Today, let’s start with JIM and pick a day from the early
chapters of the book, ‘Someday, Maybe’,
which opens in the 1930s:-
Jim has a market garden, so that,
although money is in very short supply, and the best of the crops have to be
set aside for customers so that the family have to make do with the bruised
fruit and the windfall apples, there are still plenty of fresh vegetables left
over after the boxes are done for the delivery rounds as well as the apples and
a variety of soft fruits in their seasons. There are also the hedgerows with
their prickly swathes of blackberries, and the fields and hills and woods with
their wild herbs and mushrooms and their bilberries.
They occasionally buy meat from
the farm, and there are sometimes fish in the nearby river and rabbits and
pigeons to be found when Jim goes out with his shotgun. They keep quite a few
hens, which they feed by boiling up their scraps with bran, so there are eggs
(though they must sell most) and once in a very long while there is the treat
of a chicken. This is occasionally roasted, but is usually an old boiler; past
her best for laying or as a broody, but she makes a delicious stew.
Nobody is concerned about fats
and carbohydrates, and so they have no worries about eating too much butter, cream
and cheese. Mary has her milk and cream - unpasteurized and very rich - fresh
from the nearby farm and often makes her own butter, using elbow grease to turn
the paddle in the wooden churn and, naturally, adding plenty of salt for
flavour and preservation, before rinsing and patting the rich, creamy butter
into blocks with her pair of wooden paddles. She usually buys cheese from the
shop. Frying and roasting is done with lard and dripping, from the occasional
roasted meat or from some kidneys, if they can get any, and obtained, if
necessary, from the butcher.
The village shop provides most of
the other things that they might need, like flour sugar or rice and a few tins,
but they try to keep their shopping bills as low as possible. Mary saves the
ends of candles and remoulds them and reuses slivers of soap; stored in a jar
in a little water, the liquid feels a little slimy, but it works a treat. borax
and vinegar, baking soda, ammonia and a bar of household soap deal with her
washing and cleaning needs.
So what might Jim actually eat
during one of his days in the 1930s?
For his breakfast:-
Mary is out as usual in the early
morning seeing to the hens, but has managed to brew some tea and to make some
porridge which she has left simmering on the stove. We find Jim helping himself
to the porridge and then cutting and buttering a couple of thick slices of
bread to have with a cup of tea for his breakfast. This doesn’t sound very
exciting, but at this hour he has too many demands on his time to prepare and
eat anything more. He may well grab an apple for his pocket from the storage shed
when he goes out to get the customer’s fruit and vegetable orders onto the trap
ready for the morning round – or even an onion; he is quite partial to a sweet raw
onion around ten o’clock when his stomach usually starts to growl. If Mary has
plenty and is willing, he may manage to take a small wedge of good strong
cheese wrapped up in greaseproof paper to accompany it.
For his dinner:-
Mary prepares the main meal of
the day for half-past twelve. Yesterday
she plucked, gutted and boiled up a couple of pigeons, so today Jim will have one of his favourites
– a pigeon pie with a rich gravy of onions and carrots and gravy under a crispy
golden lid of suet crust pastry. She will serve it with cabbage – sensibly boiled
for a good long time with some soda bicarb in the water to preserve the green
colour – and a pile of potatoes mashed with butter and a good dollop of
cream. To follow, apple dumplings,
apples sliced with sugar and sultanas mixed in, enveloped in individual
blankets of short crust pastry and served with custard. (The full fat, unpasteurised
milk from the farm makes lovely, creamy custard.) Oh, and a cup of tea.
For his tea:-
They only have afternoon tea when
they have a visitor, but Mary will usually bring out a drink for him at
mid-afternoon wherever he is working in the garden – sometimes homemade
lemonade, sometimes tea, sometimes even beer.
When he comes in at 5, there won’t
be a great deal of time because there is still the evening round of deliveries
to be done as well as many other jobs for both of them to get through. Mary
will have made an effort, though, and he can rely on there being a sort of High
Tea, with both something savoury and something sweet on the teatime table.
(Teatime isn’t complete for Jim without a cake or on the table.)
Today, we will give him one of
his favourite savouries - Cheese Dreams. Mary butters bread for sandwiches, filling
these with grated cheese and chutney, then beats an egg with two tablespoonfuls
of milk. She pours this onto a plate and dips each sandwich into it on both
sides, before frying them in butter until they are golden brown and the cheese inside
has melted and is piping hot. There will be some bread and butter and a small
pot of honey or jam in case it’s needed, and maybe a bit of lettuce and a few
tomatoes in the summer, and to follow there is a tasty seed cake, and some
sticky parkin left from the last week’s bake.
Oh, and tea, of course. There is
always tea.
And for his supper?
Often he will pop in to see an
old friend or a faithful customer on his evening round and he may well be
offered something to eat or drink, but there is Meg the horse to see to when
they get home as well as a myriad of smaller tasks and though he may have had
several cups of tea on his travels, he is always thirsty again and a bit hungry
again when he does lock the back door for the night at last. Once Mary has seen
to the hens for the night, tucked her little Patsy safely to sleep in her
little room, made up whatever floral decorations are needed customers for the
next day and finished – or put on hold – all her other tasks – they are both
too weary to do more than sit at the kitchen table over a plate of bread or
crackers and cheese and whatever bits of cake there might still be left. Once
in a while, just for a comforting change, Mary may suggest cocoa or even
Horlicks if they have a jar. Otherwise, it will be a big pot of tea.
That’s lot of tea in a day for
people in a cottage with an outside lav. Good thing they each have a large
china po under their side of the bed.
