Advice to cure ennui

Sometimes you have those days where you just feel cheesed off for no reason at all.  Utterly normal occurrences seem like they are happening expressly to irritate you, perfectly civil requests grate on you and every little task seems a bit too much trouble.

These are the days when you need to dip into The New Illustrated Universal Reference Book for a little snippet of life advice from the chapter A Great Thought Every Day. Little did that (presumably) long gone, un-named compiler of great thoughts imagine that one day, 81 years later, a slightly grumpy middle aged lady would be pleased by their choice of a Chinese proverb for 7th November,

It is easier to know how to do something than to do it.

Never a truer word spoken this side of Beijing.

Equally pleasing, if a little more baffling, is the Russian proverb for the 8th November

It is better to be lame than always seated. 

I'm going to ponder that one as I limp off to do the washing up.

A Diwali card from the album

Mum wasn't much of a traveller but she loved getting postcards from people who were, people like me. She would pin them onto a notice board until it was full then transfer them to albums.  When I brought these albums home with me, took all the postcards out of the album and put them in date order, the (unkept) diary of my 20s was laid out before me. What a gift that was to leave me. My own life archived and passed on.

She was also interested in other cultures and religions and loved being given bits and pieces from my travels, many of which have returned to me now.  For a few years I lived just off Belgrave Road in Leicester - a road lined with Indian restaurants, shops and businesses and famous for its lights at Diwali and Christmas. I got into the habit of sending Mum a card for Diwali.

This is one that I found on her bookshelf, sent for the 2nd November which was the date of Diwali that year, and posted here for Diwali 2014.

Remembering Grandad on his birthday

It was my Grandad's birthday this week. He would have been 94. Although his name was Frank, he was always known as Jim. I have no idea why. No one seems to remember.

On Mum's bookshelf there are many pictures of him, which I will share over the coming months.

For his birthday, I'm going to put up one of my favourite photos of him.

Jim is about 8 years old and sitting in a garden in Ipswich. I don't know who Doug and Denis were - my Grandad was an only child. They have some charming metal toys which they are showing off to the camera. Two of them look like they might be in school uniform. The shadows look long, perhaps they were playing together in the garden after school one day when someone (my great grandad?) took a snap.

When I look at it, I see my own 7 year old boy in that  little boy with the big grin, captured on film in the late 1920s.

A handsome fellow from Norwich

Another delve into the Victorian album from Mum's bookshelf, and this time I wonder who this handsome chap could be.

He was surely a relative of mine since the picture was taken in Norwich but which of the great greats he might be is anyone's guess.

No date and no clue as to the sitter, but it was probably taken around about 1892, or maybe a little earlier as the Norfolk CC website suggests 1888, since the purple stamp on the beautifully presented cabinet photo indicates that the photo was taken in Gavin and Banger's St Giles' Studio (they had three studios in Norwich , according to earlyphotographers.org).

The old White Lion Street can be seen, as my great great might have seen it as he walked around the centre of Norwich, on this picture from the Norfolk CC website

Any further information about sitter or photographer gratefully received.

Breakfast in the 1970s

So far on this blog I've looked at cookbooks from the 1930s that emphasised the value of thrift, seasonal shopping and reducing waste for the 'squeezed middle' between the Wars. However, by the 1970s food had started to look more like the stuff we eat today, albeit a bit more orange in many cases. Moreover, the idea of eating and food as an aspirational activity rather than a re-fuelling exercise seems to have returned in earnest.

This book, published by Hamlyn in 1976 and sponsored by Brooke Bond/Oxo, shows how eating was reflecting a wealthier and more leisured ideal of family life.
 

Gone are the sections on feeding invalids who presumably with the success of the NHS were a rarity in the spare bedroom by 1976, and in come sections on entertaining at home. Dishes and cutlery are from brands, largely associated with 'groovy' new design, and name checked at the beginning of the book so you can replicate the tables you see photographed: Heal's, Habitat, Casa Pupo, Elizabeth David, John Barker, Selfridges, Conran, Josiah Wedgewood and Sons Ltd. Food is photographed as a package along with the accessories, with backdrops that include salmon mousse placed artfully on a jetty at Nauticalia, Shepperton that are meant to suggest aspirational middle-class lifestyles.

It's a far cry from meat paste sandwiches at a drop leaf table in the living room.

Let's start with our weekend 70s breakfast or brunch, which the book explains to an audience almost certainly unfamiliar with such a concept (actually late rising is also probably a fairly alien idea too) as a "combined breakfast and lunch which saves cooking two meals",  in which muesli makes a star appearance as well as the classic kedgeree.

Muesli would have been a hard sell to the men in my family, who in the 1970s still expected cooked breakfasts, and I'm pretty sure that coffee served instead of tea would have raised a few eyebrows.

However, cheap foreign travel and money to spare for the older members of the family meant that even families like mine became aware of the 'continental breakfast' as a roll, some butter and jam and a weak coffee was dubbed.

The blurb that goes with this also reminds us that by now the figure of the  'slimmer' had appeared at the table - a concept hardly necessary in the cash-strapped or rationed years of previous cookbooks in the collection.

I recall the women in my family going through all the faddy diets of the 70s and 80s to little effect (remember the F-Plan - obviously the family joke was what the F stood for). So while "hungry men and children" were still getting bacon and eggs at the breakfast table (in nicer dishes now - I rather like all the crockery in these pictures, I have to say) with fried bread, the ladies of the house were nibbling oats and apples and having tea with lemon.

The recipes for breakfast actually look quite nice despite the shoe-horning of Stork margarine and/or Oxo cubes into many of them - not thankfully the muesli- although kidney omelettes would be an unlikely breakfast find these days.

Time to don the kaftan perhaps and whip up some kipper toasts...

10 Norfolk Superstitions

Although I was born and raised in Ipswich, my maternal grandmother is a Norwich lass who grew up on Long Row, off Angel Road. My mother spent many happy hours in Norwich and her speech was peppered with Norfolk dialect words, despite her strong Suffolk accent. Perhaps that's why she particularly liked an old book that sat on the bookshelf for as long as I can remember - The Land of the Broads by Ernest R Suffling, published in 1892 (based on the date of the Great Eastern Railway timetable at the back of the book).

Ernest, living in West London, but Norfolk born and from the Broads sets out to guide the Victorian traveller around this little known district. Here, he says, you may still hear pure Saxon words - little did I know that when I used a 'dwile' or was called a daft 'mawther ' as a child that I was speaking pure Saxon too. 

Here is Ernest's description of the "natives" (his quote marks), although I have to say that our branch of Norfolk stock are small and dark - we used to joke we were descended from the Iceni- rather than broad shouldered and  "all bone and muscle."

The "natives" are a fine race, usually with the flaxen or tawny beards, fair skin, straight noses and blue eyes characteristic of the Norse or Danish type. They are noted for their hardihood and endurance...

As you'd expect from a race that lives in the wilds where no motorway has ever penetrated, Norfolk people are "exceedingly superstitious" (my mother certainly was), "even in these days of enlightenment:" Ernest continues, "doubtless much of this is due to ignorance, which the Board schools will probably assist in dissipating." 

He then goes on to list 10 splendid Norfolk superstitions

1. If a crow croaks over a house, someone will die there within twelve months.
2. Nobody ever thinks of buying or selling, or commencing any new undertaking on a Friday.
3. When going to market to sell corn or oxen, if you meet a cross-eyed man or woman you had better return, as your dealings will not prosper.
4. Poppies brought into a house cause the occupants headaches and fainting.
5. Primroses carried into a house bear ill luck with them.
6. If a bow of yew be brought into a house at Christmas, one of the inmates will die ere another Noel comes round.
7. If a red bee flies in at the open window, a male visitor will call; if a white one, a lady will call
8. St Mark's night (April 5th) is considered a favourable time for spells to be cast and for sights (uncanny) to be seen. If one has the courage to go alone to the porch of the village church on St Mark's night, he will see pass before him, at midnight, the shadowy forms of those who are to die before next Easter. Some also say, that those in the village who are to have a serious illness during the same period will be seen.
9. If an unmarried girl, or young woman (mawther) goes into the garden at twelve o'clock on St Mark's night and uses the following spell, her future husband will appear with a scythe in his hand. She must sow some hemp-seed and as she sows must keep repeating these lines:- 

Hemp-seed I sow-

Hemp-seed, come grow! 

He that is my true love, 

Come after me and mow

Then the ghostly lover mows - or would do so if he ever appeared.

  10. Here is another charm: The maiden sits before a mirror in her bedroom, in which must only be            one candle shedding a dim light. At twelve o'clock she says:-

Come lover-come lad,

And make my heart glad;

For my husband I'll have you, 

For good or bad.

Then the future spouse looks over the maiden's shoulder into the glass.

Ernest rather ominously warns that "several fatal jokes have been the outcome of these ghostly incantations" but doesn't elaborate further.

So be warned...

Stalin and Mussolini making their mark in 1933 but where's Herr Hitler?

The trouble with history is that you need 20:20 hindsight to spot who the good guys are and who the villains will turn out to be.

Our 1933 internet, The New Illustrated Universal Reference Book, which tackles the enormous task of covering the "main interests of humanity" for the young families of the 1930s, reassures the reader that "History is not longer a dull subject. It has been released from its swaddling bands and become a vigorous youth holding a torch to light the pathway of today and to-morrow." Crumbs.

So how is that vigorous youth's torch illuminating the politics of the early 1930s?

Of course, 1933 is a momentous year for Europe, as a certain Adolf Hitler makes his bid for power and, in January, becomes chancellor of a coalition government, where the Nazis have a third of the seats in the Reichstag. In February, the German Reichstag is destroyed by fire. Although the plot and execution is almost certainly due to the Nazis, they point the finger at the communists and trigger a General Election.  A month later, in March, the Enabling Act is passed and powers of legislation pass to Hitler’s cabinet for four years, making him virtual dictator.  Hitler  proclaims the Nazi Party is the only political party permitted in Germany. All other parties and trade unions are disbanded. Individual German states lose any autonomous powers, while Nazi officials become state governors. In April, the Communist party is banned, followed by Socialists, Trade Unions and strikes in May. Hitler withdraws from the League of Nations in October, and in the following months, he trebles the size of the German Army and ignores the arms restrictions imposed by the Treaty of Versailles.

So, a big year in German politics. Does Herr Hitler get a mention the miniature biographies?  Hill, Hindenburg, Hippocrates and Hogarth but no Hitler...

That other 1930s Euro-dictator of note, Mussolini, gets an entry but he's been around a while by 1933 and already has a name for himself as a "founder of Fascism...and virtually dictator" of Italy. So how does The New Illustrated Universal Reference Book tackle Il Duce - well, he's probably making the trains run on time, despite abolishing freedom of the press, curtailing liberty and the blatant threat to North Africa. 

We shouldn't forget what's happening in Russia and the rise of that other European dictator, Joe Stalin. How does 1933 view him? To be fair, it took the outside world a lot longer to work out just how bad it was going to get under his murderous regime. For 1933, the jury is out on whether Communism will turn out to be a Good Thing and whether Stalin's Five Years' Plan is a blueprint for a new economic future. 

The final line shows that the writers were up to date with events in Russia but, curiously, they turn their eyes away from Germany at the Treaty of Versailles and write nothing about what is happening to the German people, reflecting perhaps the view of many people in 1933.

The owner of this book, my paternal grandmother, saw a father off to the Western Front who returned crippled by gas, and would, a decade later, see her husband join the war in West Africa, leaving her to bring up a toddler and a baby alone in wartime. The optimism of the The New Illustrated Universal Reference Book in 1933 that "It remains for the people to create a new standard of international fellowship and good-will" seems a little sad with the perfect vision of hindsight.

How we ate in the 80s - an idea for luncheon meat

I can't remember if we actually had this particular delight, as suggested by the serving suggestions department of the Co-op, served for our tea but I do recall luncheon meat forming part of our diet in the 70s and early 80s - mainly slapped between two bits of white bread. Luckily, we didn't examine the ingredients too closely.

This recipe is a triumph of hope over experience. I'm not sure Mum ever went to the trouble of making such a tropical delight out of a can of meat.

A Victorian photo album: Who are the musicians in this photo?

As well as books collected from around the family, Mum also loved photos and had shelves full of photo albums. The oldest of the albums is this one full of Victorian cabinet photos.

I have no idea if the people in the pictures are members of my family although many of the pictures were taken in Suffolk studios, where both my paternal and maternal relatives are from. It's an intriguing set of photos.

I wonder, for example, who these people are and why they are clutching mandolins, surrounded by cowbells. There's no clues on the back of the photo, not even in which studio it was taken.
Were they a popular musical group who sold pictures of themselves? A musical off-shoot of my family?

I'd love to know.

Before the Internet, there was the New Illustrated Universal Reference Book...

Before the Internet, there was the New Illustrated Universal Reference Book, a hefty tome that enabled you to check a historical date, look up your ailments, solve your legal problems, plan your garden, fix your radio, find out what was wrong with your pets, settle an argument about the rules of a game, fix a leaky washer, win at pub quizzes, set up a small business and make sure you were spelling things correctly.

Admit it, the contents list for this book pretty much covers most of what we use the Internet for, although good folk seeking enlightenment in 1933 were spared the opinions of the commenting classes on whether Mussolini was really good for the railways or the`merits of a Dandie Dinmont over a Dachshund.

Moreover, before quotes spambots stalked you on Twitter if you were unwise enough to quote a bit of Doctor Seuss, there was the New Illustrated Universal Reference Book's 'A Great Thought for Everyday'. Bishops feature quite heavily and the 10th September is no exception, featuring Archbishop Manning with the cheering thought that,

This life is the childhood of eternity

So, having mused on the metaphysical with Manning (what are the chances of there being a quotebot for a 19th century Catholic cardinal from Totteridge do you think?), I flick open the book - the equivalent of hitting the I feel lucky button in Google - and alight on the page headed Variola,Veins and Veld Sores. V is not a great place to land in a medical dictionary I discover, although it's comforting to note that should you have webbed toes, you need not interfere with them.

I can't help feeling that the New Illustrated Universal Reference Book and I are going to spend some happy hours together. I shall be sure and share the good bits on the modern illustrated universal reference book we call the internet.

Makes it beefy - the royal tonic invented by a German chemist that became a kitchen staple

There are a number of books in Mum's collection that were issued by food companies as part of their marketing. One such is Cooking the Oxo Way, which probably dates from the 1950s, or perhaps a little earlier.

It has recipes for main courses, pies and puddings that are all enhanced by the addition of an Oxo cube. I'm not convinced by the sandwiches section which recommends making Oxo butter - 1oz of butter to 1/2 an Oxo cube - but what do I know? I'm sure it does give 'zest to fillings' and definitely crusts on...who wants a dainty sandwich when you're using Oxo butter?

Part of the pleasure of this little project is following up unfamiliar references, via the power of Google and Wikipedia, and opening up a whole world of new knowledge about the everyday and the commonplace in our lives, which often prove to be far from commonplace in their origins.

The humble Oxo cube has a noble history which begins in Hesse, now Germany, in 1840. Let's start with the advert at the front of the book for the Liebig's Extract of Meat Company, the parent company of Oxo Ltd, which boasts of factories from Montreal to Dar-Es-Salaam.

The 'father of the Oxo cube' and, incidentally Marmite, was the celebrated 19th century German chemist, Justus von Liebig,  a remarkable man born in Hesse whose work transformed scientific education and agriculture as well as inventing a way to give "added strength and savour" to your meat dishes. Liebig lived through the year without a summer of 1816, which hit Hesse very hard and was said to have shaped much of the scientist's work. Amongst his many achievements was the development of a manufacturing process for beef extract and, helped by George Christian Giebert, a young Belgian engineer, the founding of the Liebig Extract of Meat Company, using South American cattle. European cattle had proved to be too expensive and so, until Giebert's suggestion, the extract had been used as a tonic dispensed by the royal pharmacy.

The plant was owned by the Societe de Fray Bentos Giebert & cie which, by 1875, was producing 500 tonnes of extract, as the extract grew in popularity and became a staple of kitchens, soldiers' rations and was even found in the trunks of European adventurers like Livingstone. Fray Bentos began to manufacture frozen, chilled and, of course, corned beef. Our little book has a nod to this in the advert on the back of the booklet for Fray Bentos soups and pastes which "will captivate the palate of all those who appreciate savouriness at its best" (don't you love the advertising language of the past?- which company tries to 'captivate a palate' these days?)

The Oxo cube went into production in 1910 increasing the popularity of the product, as the cubes were cheaper than the liquid. In the 1920s, Oxo became part of the London landscape with the acquisition of premises on the South Bank and the building of the familiar tower. Its architect, Albert Moore, incorporated the design as windows on the tower to get around a ban on skyline advertising. By1924,  the Liebig Co. and its tower was taken over by the Vestey group, who would have owned the company at the time our book was published.

Thus, a little book produced for marketing 50 years ago which sat tucked away on Mum's bookshelf hints at a bigger story of chemistry, commerce, and cattle farms in Uruguay. It begins with a young man experiencing famine in Germany leading to a little red box of beefy cubes in your store cupboard. Times and food fashions may change but we all still have them tucked away somewhere. Does anyone still, as the book recommends on the last page,"slip one or two Oxo cubes in your pocket and be ready to make a beefy drink at any time."?

Read more
Justus Von Liebig on Wikipedia
Oxo (Wikipedia)
Darkness by Lord Byron (about 1816, the year without a summer)
10 things about Marmite

Oxo timeline
Oxo Tower our history
Argentina - the history of Oxo

A book for ordinary middle-class families who cannot afford to despise margarine

One book that seems a little older than the other cookbooks in Mum's collection is the Bestway Cookery Gift Book, first published in 1926, which suggests that it may not have come from my paternal grandmother's house. Mum picked up things like this from lots of places, including older friends of hers. 

The Spectator from 1926 offers a review of this book as a "most excellent receipt book giving exact directions". It is aimed at the "intelligent amateur" and with a nod perhaps to the economic climate of the time,  it will help "ordinary middle-class families who cannot afford to despise margarine or to throw away materials." The "squeezed middle" of the 1920s perhaps?

One such example of  'waste not, want not ' is this recipe for Essex Cakes, which requires the use of the residue from making lard known as 'scraps'. Unlikely that I'll be be trying the original recipe for these cakes, given that I'm unlikely to be able to get lard residue anywhere, but the recipe is quite simple so could work with a vegetable fat.

Making chocolate rock cakes like a 1930s housewife

The simplicity of the recipes in Lydia Chatterton's Modern Cookery (Illustrated) is encouraging me to get my baking trays out and have a go at some of the cake recipes in my grandmother's cookbooks.

Although second hand book websites give the date of this book as anything from 1917 to 1951, my guess is that this is one of a number of cookbooks that my grandmother bought as a housewife in the 1930s. The pictures also suggest that this copy, at least, dates from that period.

I've made rock cakes before but never chocolate ones. I whipped these up in less than 20 minutes including cooking time. The result was a slightly biscuity cake that the kids devoured in seconds.

Next time I cook them though, I'm tempted to take a 21st century liberty with the recipe and add some chocolate bits to the mixture for a little extra taste.

The 1930s Store Cupboard

A housewife from the 1930s is recommended to keep these items in her store cupboard

From the 1936 Cookery Illustrated and Household Management by Elizabeth Craig