P is for porridge

 

Porridge never appears on the breakfast table here at Frugal Follies during the summer.  It is strictly an autumn/winter dish.  In the summer I might have overnight oats but the winter calls for something warm and comforting. 

I think breakfast is probably my favourite meal of the day.  I’ve tried ‘em all.

When I was a little girl breakfast was always bacon and . . .    The “and” could be tomatoes, egg, kidneys, liver, mushrooms, fried bread.  Just one of those, not the “full English” of today’s menus.  We never had porridge as my Father reckoned he’d eaten enough porridge as a child and during the war to last a lifetime. Now I eat bacon only when Jack comes. 

I like a variety of breakfasts.  I may have Greek yoghurt but add blueberries, mango, raspberries.  There’s always a mixed collection of seeds and nuts as well. 

Or I might have avocado toast.  Occasionally marmalade on toast.  Or spinach with scrambled eggs.  Or boiled eggs with asparagus spears to dip in, but only if I’ve found yellow sticker asparagus.  I sometimes have baked beans – no toast, just beans eaten like soup.  There’s even a kipper in the freezer waiting for the right day. 

But porridge is an old faithful.  I like to measure out tomorrow’s porridge after today’s breakfast so the oats can soak in milk or water for a day before cooking.  And I have it topped with the same sort of things which I have on yoghurt in the summer

There is something wonderfully reassuring about a breakfast that has been around for generations and has never once felt the need to reinvent itself.

 

N is for nostalgia

 L P Hartley said “The past is a foreign country” but I can’t agree.  The past is so familiar.  Old friends, old faces, old voices.  There are so many in my memory.  All it takes is a smell, a song, an old photograph or even a phrase not heard since my youth.  

So many things from my youth would be strange to youngsters.  Telephones with curly cables.  Televisions with knobs.  But they are not foreign to me. 

I remember childhood summers that seemed to last forever. By the time September came I was well ready to go back to school.  But during those long weeks there were picnics, bike rides, visits, family gatherings. 

Nostalgia wears rose coloured spectacles or rather she takes the ordinary bits of our past and gives them a gentle golden glow.

I sometimes miss things I didn't even appreciate at the time. Waiting for two ounces of sweets to be weighed out from a big jar.   School milk drunk from a bottle with a straw.  Trotting to the letter box to post mother’s endless letters

But I think nostalgia is less about wanting to go back and more about remembering who we were.  In retirement life is no longer quite so full of rushing from one responsibility to another. There is space to remember.

Sometimes those memories make me smile. Sometimes they make me sad. Sometimes they remind me of people who are no longer here.

And that's all right.  We don't have to push the past away just because we're living in the present.  Maybe we can invite those memories in and share a cuppa with them . 

Then, when the reminiscing is over, we can get back to the present.  Nostalgia is a lovely place to visit.  But I wouldn't want to live there.

L is for larder

 

My Mother’s pantry always looked wonderful at this time of the year.  She was a great jam-and-pickle maker and there would be regimented rows of jars on the pantry shelf.  Raspberries, apples and pears from the garden would have been bottled and each Kilner jar held the promise of a fruit pie or crumble.  She’d have made a start on Christmas preparations so there would be jars of homemade mincemeat.  

I sometimes feel I’d like to be like that but I don’t even have a pantry, never mind rows of Kilner jars making me feel like the cook at Downton Abbey!

What I do have is a freezer and a large cupboard.  I’ve been making gallons of soup as well as portions of stewed fruit to have with my porridge or yoghurt.  And I’m building up my supplies of tins in case we have power cuts and the freezer has to stay very firmly shut.

In retirement I have more time for cooking and my supplies of dried pulses and nuts are much larger – many a squirrel would envy me!

There is something very satisfying about putting food by for winter. It feels wonderfully old-fashioned and sensible.

My “larder” doesn’t have shelves that look beautiful on Instagram.  Rather it reflects my lifestyle choice that if the weather is horrid I do not want to have to go shopping. 

 

H is for harvest

 

When I was a little girl I always went to my grandparents farm for a week in the summer holidays.  I liked it to be at the end of the holidays as at the end of August the barley harvest would start.

This year the barley and most of the wheat in this area was harvested before the end of July.  That was largely because this has been such a hot, dry year (and yields have not been good) but seed producers have bred grains which mature earlier than many older varieties.  Fields around here have not only been harvested: they have been ploughed and harrowed and I think seeds have been sown ready for next year.

But my garden brings its own harvest too.  Two or three times each week I have been cooking tomatoes and making my own puree.  It will be used as the basis for soups and sauces throughout the winter.  My precious butternut squash is still in the garden but soon it will come in.  This year I've grown French beans  and I think I have had a better yield than friends who have grown runner beans.  My leeks are OK but don't look overly wonderful.  Beetroot will soon be brought in and salad leaves have given me poor returns.

I decided against carrots and broad beans this year: carrots because they are so cheap in the shops and broad beans because I hate the black fly.

My freezer is packed to the gunwales: I feel truly blessed.  

F is for Foraging

I hope no-one will say that I am mean but my favourite price for anything is NOTHING!  And one of the best ways of getting something for nothing is to go foraging.  

When I was a child, I loved finding field mushrooms on my grandparents’ farm.  It could be a slightly hazardous occupation as the creepy crawlies could have got there first, but there were always lots left for greedy little girls like me.

Apples grew freely in our garden but blackberries were foraged from hedgerows around the farm.  My favourite fruit pie is still blackberry and apple.  With cream.   There’s an abundance of blackberries in the rough patch of land next to my house and I’ve been having a few.  Apples are very plentiful here and my friends are very happy to let me have some. 

There was a sweet chestnut tree on the farm but hazelnuts had to be foraged.  They were so much more precious than the ones in the shops. 

There’s a good source of sloes in a local churchyard and I  pick them in the years I want to make sloe gin.  It’s a lovely warming drink on a February evening.  I don’t pick anything at the roadside or hedges around fields which have been sprayed as I feel there could be quite a bit of pollution on or in the fruit.

These days foraging is more difficult for me as the trundle truck can’t get me close to worthwhile natural larders but I’m so glad that I did it while I could.

New Year in my childhood

 

When I was a child I loved New Year.  My parents were definitely party animals, and unless they hosted a party on New Year's Eve they invariably went to one.

If they were the hosts I was ushered off to bed before the guests arrived but all the ladies used to come up to visit me.  Some of them kept coming back during the evening with delicious plates of party food.  I was also a keen reader so with ladies making a fuss of me and bringing goodies up to me whilst I read one of my Christmas books, I was one happy bunny.

If they were going out I would be sent to my grandparents for a couple of days.  They lived in a big old-fashioned farmhouse on the Lincolnshire Wolds.  It kept out the worst of the weather but it was damp and had very little in the way of insulation.  It was not unknown for there to be frost on the counterpane and it was rarely known for there not to be thick frost on the windows on those cold January mornings.  But what the house lacked in warmth didn't matter - it is the warmth of my grandmother's heart that I remember most. 

There was a small ritual on New Year's Eve.  My grandfather would give me a shilling and the three of us would go out into the yard and each of us would hide our shillings.  The next morning we would go out and "find" our money - the idea being that if you brought money into the house on New Year's Day money would continue to come into the house throughout the year.  However, I would have watched where grandad hid his shilling and, with grandma egging me on, I would  retrieve it for myself.

My grandparents were both wonderful.

 

Y is for Yule

 

When Yule gets mentioned I can be pretty sure that we are not talking about Christmas 2025!  Yule is a nostalgic word, evoking well-dressed, jolly ladies and gentlemen shown on tins of Quality Street.  It's about an age of innocence when children thought themselves lucky if they got an orange and 6d in their stocking.  

I have a strong suspicion that it's nostalgia for a Christmas that never was.  

When I was a child in the fifties I remember my parents talking about the Christmas of their childhoods, Christmas before the Second World War and during that war.  And the theme was that we, as children, didn't have the pure, authentic Christmas which they had as children and it was far too centered on presents and glitter and excess.  In fact, they were making the same sort of remarks about Christmases past as I hear being said today as we oldies look back to our childhoods.  I'll add to the chorus by saying that the plastic tubs of Quality Street aren't as nice as the tins we used to have. 

In fact, I wonder how long saying, "It's not like the Christmases we had" has been as traditional at Christmas as mince pies!

M is for Memories

 I think memories are one of the most important parts of Christmas!

I have memories of being a little girl and being taken to see Father Christmas and then he came to visit me while I slept.

My nephew in disguise.  He's now 53.

Memories of my teens and twenties with parties.  And Christmas in Nigeria when my Christmas dinner walked into my flat for its last jaunt on its own two feet!

Memories of my nephew having Christmas with us and delighting in his excitement. 

Memories of going home from work in my early working life on Christmas Eve knowing I had a run of two to four days off.  That was brilliant.

Memories of doing six services between lunchtime Christmas Eve and lunchtime Christmas Day and then cooking Christmas lunch for twelve.  Then leaving everyone else to do the washing up while I went for a snooze.  

Memories of board games and other silly games before making sure all eleven of my guests had everything they needed for the night.  And then cooking bacon butties for twelve on Boxing Day.

And now I have quiet Christmases reflecting on previous years and the love I have received from God throughout my life and especially in the last year.  

D is for decorations

 

I rather envy those of you who have decorations which your children made when they were young and which you now show to your grandchildren.  The decorations I put up are largely homemade but by me.  There is such vitality in things made by children.

When I was a little girl we lived in quite a large house with a staircase which turned twice so the Christmas tree stood in the stairwell and even little people could reach through and put decoration on the upper branches.  

First to go on were the fairy lights.  Every summer the lights would lose their plug as it was needed for something else so at Christmas another lightly used electrical appliance would lose its plug.  Even when that went on, the lights never worked first time and Daddy had to check every bulb before the set could be put on the tree.   Inevitably they needed another sort-out once they'd been put in place.  

And then the fairy herself could go on the tree.  As the youngest I was always allowed to do this.  She was an incredibly tatty fairy, probably a pre-war jobby, but for me she was magic.  Then tinsel, saved every year until it was nearly bald.  The baubles in those far off days were always blown glass, so pretty but so fragile.  Finally, lametta and maybe some cotton wool for the gaps.  

The other decorations are not so clear in my memory.  Mummy always fetched in lots of greenery, some of which was sprayed gold or silver.  She had some logs of wood which her brother had drilled to form candle holders and he'd made smaller holes so sprigs of holly could be added and arranged.  

The decorations never went up before the twentieth of the month, except for cards which were pinned to vertical streamers attached to the picture rail around each room.  My parents received a lot of cards and leaving them so late would have made for a long and tedious job.  

Memories of a secure and loving childhood.  

Remember, remember the fifth of November

 When I was a child I loved Bonfire Night!  The elfin satey lot would be appalled but we always had a small box of fireworks at home.   We longed for nightfall and Father’s return from work.  He would have a long and leisurely cup of tea – I think he enjoyed prolonging the agony – and then it was out to the garden for the fun.

First there would be the bonfire to be lit.  It would have been built during the previous few weeks.  I’m sorry to say that I don’t ever remember checking for hedgehogs!  

There was a slug of magic stuff, which looking back I think was probably paraffin, a strategically applied match and whoosh!  We’d stand around for a few minutes watching that and then there would be the first fireworks.  Daddy was the only one allowed anywhere near them but we would have told him the order he was allowed to let them off.  First would be the Roman Candles which my sister and I thought were very dull.  Then Catherine wheels – much more exciting as it wasn’t unknown for them to detach themselves from whatever they had been attached to.  My sister, despite being several years older than me, didn’t like Jumping Jacks or Bangers so she’d retire to a safe distance whilst those were let off.  Then the grand finale was rockets.  Aah, rockets.  Just a few seconds of pure pleasure.  Compared to the wonderful displays of today they were very dull but we thought them wonderful.

After that Daddy would rake around the ashes of the fire and pull out the old cocoa tins which had jacket potatoes in them.  As an adult I realise that they must have been cooked in the house because no way was there time for them to cook in the bonfire but we always said that bonfire night spuds were the best potatoes of the year.  There would be chestnuts and cinder toffee and we would retire to bed tired but happy.

  (This is a rehash of a post from many years ago.  It seemed to fit in with my recent reminiscing.)  

Companions

I'm going out for lunch today.  It's one of several meals out associated with my birthday, which was last week.

Eating out is one of the things which has changed hugely over my lifetime.  My parents used to go out for dinner occasionally.  I was taken to restaurants for lunch, often on Bank Holidays, as an encouragement for good table manners.  Eating out for most people was a very definite treat, if it happened at all.  Indeed one of my friends remembers eating out as an ordeal because everyone was so tense on the rare occasions it happened.

Looking at my diary this month (OK a special month for me) I've been out for coffee and a "schmackerel" three times,  afternoon tea at a tea-room with a couple of cousins, breakfast twice, brunch once and I have two lunches out still to go.  And then there was an afternoon tea to celebrate a 95th birthday, two harvest suppers, and lunch at a cousin's home.

I suspect I eat out more frequently than most people  because I live alone and most of my friends live at least ten miles away, but the proliferation of tea rooms, restaurants and dining areas in pubs suggests I am not alone.  

I love the word "companion" which has at its root the idea of people with whom one eats bread.  Not only do I love the word, I love my companions too.  

Birthdays

Yesterday was my birthday - my seventy fourth, if you want to know.  And it set me thinking about my birthdays sixty to seventy years ago.

These days it often seems as though time flies and a decade passes in the time it took to get through a year all that time ago.  Birthdays were very special events, eagerly anticipated, excitedly prepared for. 

At infants' school there was a birthday cake.  It wasn’t edible, just a round tin covered in a white substance (plaster?) and decorated with candles to be blown out by the birthday boy or girl as the rest of the class sang, “Happy Birthday”. 

I would have a birthday party and special tea to which I could invite six friends.  Mother would buy a packet of six invitations which was a cunning way  of making sure only six friends could be invited.  My parties were usually all girls who would arrive in best party frocks with pretty ribbons in their hair.  She would bake a special cake, not the character cakes of today but a cake decorated with the appropriate number of candles and maybe "hundreds and thousands" or Smarties.

There would also be sandwiches which were cut on the diagonal as a special treat.  I have no idea why diagonally cut sandwiches tasted better but Mother had me convinced that it was so!  Sausage rolls were also mandatory as was either a trifle or jelly and blancmange. 

Then games.  Musical chairs, pass the parcel, blind man’s buff.  When Father came home from work he would come and play with us too.  At the end of the party each child would go home with a single gift, maybe a pencil or a packet of sweets, not the party bags of today.  Oh, and everyone took a slice of cake wrapped in a paper napkin.

And I would go up to bed, probably planning next year’s birthday. 

Playground games

 I think I have just about finished this series of posts about childhood in the 1950's but I can't go without talking about playground games.  They were so important!

The commonest game for girls was skipping, either alone or in a group with two people turning a long rope.  Ropes were most often cut from a washing line which had been repaired just too often.  My Mother favoured plastic covered washing lines which gave a very satisfactory sound when they hit the tarmac of the playground.  There were skipping rhymes too, handed down among generations of girls (boys didn't join in, they just played endless football).  

At certain times of the year "two ball" was the preferred game.  One of my aunts was a keen tennis played and she often gave me old tennis balls.  There were so many ways to play two ball: underarm, overarm, with or without a bounce against a wall, up into the air, alternating different throws.

In the autumn conkers came to the fore and that was popular with both boys and girls.  It could get quite vicious in ways which I suspect wouldn't be allowed these days.  Collecting conkers was a popular pastime in itself.

School dinners

I had a school dinner every day from when I started school until I completed my fifth form at Grammar School.  Throughout primary school the cost was one shilling - five pence in today's money!  The price increased in my secondary school days but I don't think it was ever more than 1/6. 

Most days there was some sort of meat, potatoes, vegetables and gravy followed by a pudding with custard.  That was the basic idea.

Meat could be a meat pie, or braised liver, or stew or sausages or maybe roast meat.  Vegetables would be cabbage, or carrots, or butterbeans, or tinned peas, or swede and carrots.

Puddings were often milk puddings (tapioca, sago, rice) but could also be traditional English puds like Bakewell tart, Manchester tart, or steamed pudding.  We might also have stewed fruit or fruit crumble.  

On Friday fish appeared, fried, baked or poached in milk.  There would be a salad sometime although I have still never worked out why salads included cold baked beans.

Everything was washed down with water.  And everybody had to try everything.

Considering we'd also had milk half way through the morning, I think it could be said that we didn't go hungry!

It would never be allowed today!

 I was looking through some old photographs and I found this one, taken over sixty years ago.  It shows Mother my sister and me, all at Stonehenge.  We'd never be allowed to do this today!

And I thought of so many things which were normal in my childhood which would never be allowed today.

After my first week at school aged four I used to walk there and back alone.  It would never be allowed today.

I never had a special child seat in a car and neither did my parents wear seatbelts.  (There weren't any.) I never wore a safety helmet when riding my bike.  It would never be allowed today.

Bayko

The air in cinemas and theatres was stale with tobacco smoke.  Children were often sent to the shops to buy cigarettes for their parents.  Children had sweet cigarettes.  It would never be allowed today.

We were sent out in the morning during the school holidays and told "Be home by tea time"  It would never be allowed today.  

One of my favourite toys as a child was "Bayko".  See those steel rods sticking up?  It would never be allowed today.

Come to that remember toys, cots, everything else, being painted with lead paint?  It would never be allowed today.

How did we survive?

Sweets

 Still thinking about childhood, I've moved on to sweets.  What child wouldn't?  

We didn't get a lot of sweets but sweet rationing ended in 1953.  It had been lifted in 1949 but had to be imposed again after just four months because demand exceeded supply.

So many goodies from those days are no longer available.   I loved Spangles in all their manifold flavours.  Recently a Blogger (Sue?) mentioned sweet cigarettes. They made us feel very grown up as we pretended to smoke them.  I'm very glad they are no longer sold!  

Cadbury's had a very wide range of chocolate bars.  The ordinary mlk chocolate was available in 1d, 2d, 3d and 6d bars.  There may have been bigger bars but not on the shelves which tempted a primary school aged me.  They also sold 6d bars in a wide range of flavours: I can remember strawberry, orange, and lemon but I think there were far more.  

I remember Milky Way being introduced at 3d, much more affordable than a Mars Bar at 6d.  They were "The sweet you can eat between meals without ruining your appetite".  

Some sweets have been renamed - I think Lion Bars were called Picnic Bars and Snickers were called Marathon.  

Come on, which sweeties can you remember from childhood?

Early childhood

Writing about going shopping with my Mother made me think about my early childhood.  Most children seventy years ago spent their lives at home with mum.  Later on, children would go playgroups and pre school, but not those of us who are now top side of seventy.  I was nearly nine years younger than my only sister so most days it was just mummy and me at home.

Housework was hard work.   We had open fires which created mess.  When I was small we had no fridge so Mother had to go to the butcher's and greengrocer's very frequently.  She sewed or knitted all my clothes (other than the hand-me-downs).  She did quite a lot of gardening and we had a very large garden.  There were few convenience foods and she made both the bread and the jam to go on it.  

After lunch she would settle in her arm chair to do her knitting or mending and I would sit behind her in her chair whilst she knitted.  I loved wearing the ball bands as bracelets.  I wasn't so keen on having my arms pressed into service when she wanted to wind a skein of wool into a ball.

Unusually, we had a TV from before I was born.  There was just one channel which had very limited hours of broadcasting but early each afternoon there was a fifteen minute programme called "Watch with Mother".  We watched "Picture Book" on Mondays, "Andy Pandy" on Tuesdays, "The Flowerpot men on Wednesdays, "Rag, Tag and Bobtail" on Thursdays and "The Woodentops" on Fridays.  "The Woodentops" was my favourite!

The Changing Face of Shopping

 Each Wednesday when I was a little girl, Mother and I would walk around to Mr Todd's shop.  There Mother would shop for such things as flour, butter, tinned goods (not many of those), biscuits and the like.  And we'd go home without anything!  The reason?  Mr Todd would send the delivery boy with all the things Mother had chosen.  

I remembered being totally amazed the first time I went with her to a supermarket and she helped herself to items from the shelves and nobody stopped her!

She also went "into town" several days each week.  She'd go to Marshall's for meat, Fishers for baked goods (not many of those as she baked at home), and Shipley's for the fruit and vegetables not grown at home.  On Tuesdays the fishmonger would call.  

But she had to shop several times a week.  I remember the excitement when I was about six and we got our first fridge.  That was a total transformation as she could shop for several days supplies of perishable goods.  

Once a month Sainsbury delivers my groceries.  In one way it's like Mother used to shop.  She had to go to Todd's but the groceries were delivered.  My groceries are delivered but I don't need to go to a shop.  I need a monthly delivery as I'm a bit slow and I worry about the frozen foods.  I use Lidl on the other weeks. 

But I am making much more effort to support a local butcher and the farm shops.

For the oldies (including me!) (Definitely me!)

Those of us who were kids in the 40's, 50's, 60's, probably shouldn't have survived.

Me - ready for anything!

Our cots were covered with bright coloured lead-based paint, the slats were apparently too far apart, and there were no bumper pads.

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets, and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets. Not to mention the risks we took hitchhiking.

As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags.

We drank water from the garden hose and not from a bottle. Horrors!

We sampled cake batter with raw eggs in it, and survived.

We ate cakes, bread and butter, ice cream, and drank pop with sugar in it, but we were not overweight because we were always outside playing.

We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then rode down the hill, only to find out we had forgotten the brakes. After running into the bushes a few times, we learned to solve the problem.

We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the street lights came on.

No one was able to reach us all day. No mobile phones. Unthinkable!

We did not have Playstations, Nintendo 64, X-Boxes, no video games at all, no 99 TV channels,  personal computers, or Internet chat rooms. We had friends! We went outside and found them.

We played cricket and football and rounders, and sometimes the ball would really hurt.

We fell out of trees, got cut, and broke bones and teeth, and there were no lawsuits from these accidents. They were accidents. No one was to blame but us. Remember accidents?

We had fights and punched each other and got black and blue and learned to get over it.

We made up games with sticks and tennis balls and ate worms, and although we were told it would happen, we did not poke out very many eyes, nor did the worms live inside us forever.

We rode bikes or walked to a friend's home and knocked on the door.

Not everyone was picked for the school football or netball team. Those who weren't had to learn to deal with disappointment.

Some pupils weren't as bright as others but tests were not adjusted for any reason.

Our actions were our own. Consequences were expected.

The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke a law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law. Imagine that!

This generation has produced some of the best risk-takers and problem solvers and inventors, ever. The past 50 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas.

We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned how to deal with it all.

And you're one of them! Congratulations.

(I've had this on my computer for years and have no idea of the source.)

The Cooker

Not Mother's but the same era!

When I was a little girl Mother had a cooker.  A gas cooker.  A pre-war jobby and a bit of a monstrosity by today's standards.  Cleaning just the hob (which had to be totally dismantled for the job) seemed to take forever, as I remember.  

She had a big silver kettle on that cooker so she could make tea as needed.  There was an eye level grill, useful for toast.  But that was it.  Everything was cooked on the cooker.

I have a double oven.  And a hob.  Both easy to clean.  And an electric kettle.  And a toaster, rarely used these days as I rarely eat toast.  But I also have a microwave.  And an air fryer.  There's an Instant Pot too as well as a bread maker and a slow cooker.  

And of course I have a fridge, a freezer, food processor, electric whisk, blitzer.  And a dishwasher.  

How on earth did Mother manage?

(I don't know.  But I do know that she bought me my first dishwasher and my first freezer as she was determined that I wouldn't have to do the same as her!)