Savouring Memories

Six years ago I wrote a post here about my collection of recipes handed down, shared and cooked by my grandparents, parents, friends, relatives  and colleagues - all with their own unique memories. My sister Helen came up with an idea a few years later about writing a book about recipes from the past.  Well it sounded a good idea at the time and my sisters and I got excited at the prospect of possibly publishing a book that could be handed down to future generations, but it didn't happen - life often gets in the way of good ideas and so it was forgotten about, abandoned.

However, it has always been there in the background for me and as a maker of Journals over the years I decided to turn this idea into a Journal for myself not only about the recipes but incorporating  kitchens of the past and the gadgets, utensils and kitchen paraphernalia that housewives have used over the years, me included (I have always been a sucker for new gadgets which often lay at the back of a cupboard for years before they see the light of day again).

So, armed with all my old recipes and cooking ephemera and a huge amount of research I set about making the Journal. The cover was from an old hardback book that I gutted (sorry book lovers but it was found in a charity shop and destined for book heaven anyway). I covered the front and back covers and then joined it together with rings.  I generally make my own signatures and sew them into a cover but for this purpose it was easier using rings as I was, and am still able to add other items as I go along.

I found photos of old cooking utensils and copied lots of my old cookery books and food advertising that go back for 70 plus years, to the time of my grandmothers' kitchens.

I've been busy making tucks and pockets, banners and labels in order to facilitate all my ephemera. 

Inside the actual journal I am adding a further three mini journals/signature that I have made, to cater for the many scraps of paper/recipes that I have collected since I married 48 year ago. This has evoked so many happy memories - like the shoe shop receipt for my daughter's first pair of Clarke's shoes aged 4 year old in 1977 - with a recipe hastily written on the reverse. The shoes by the way cost a mere £4.49!

Then there's memories of the Peanut butter and other cookies and jotted down on an American friend's scribble pad. I only knew her for 18 month before she returned home to the USA and now sadly lost touch.

This has been such an exciting venture for me and evoked so many happy memories. Each scrap of paper/recipe/photo has a story to tell. It certainly kept me busy during the dark dreary winter months and delighted I have something to show for it. I'll be hand-writing and using my old vintage typewriter on occasions for making my Journal entries.

And who remembers the days of Hostess trollies, fondue sets and pressure cookers let alone the electric carving knife, wall can openers, choppers, mandolin slicers  - to name but a few, although I'm sure many of these are still found in households today. And then of course there was the introduction of the deep freezer into our homes in the late 1960s which then was a revolution but one we couldn't be without today!

So, the adventure carries on. This is definitely a work-in-progress and each day I'm finding and adding new ideas all the time. Whilst I can't take credit for Helen's original idea, it certainly gave me food for thought (no pun intended!)

Be back again soon P x

St Valentine - A legend

St Valentine's Day or the Feast of St Valentine is a celebration of one or more early Christian saints named Valentine and observed around the world on February 14. There are several legends of martyrdom around St Valentine, one of which was Saint Valentine of Rome who was imprisoned for performing weddings for soldiers who were forbidden to marry and also for ministering to Christians who were persecuted under the Roman Empire. Legend has it that during his imprisonment he healed the daughter of his jailer, and before his execution he wrote her a letter signed "Your Valentine" as a farewell.

The medieval English poet Geoffrey Chaucer may have invented Valentine's Day. He often took liberties with history, placing his poetic characters into fictitious contexts that he represented as real.  In his work "Parliament of Foules" he links a tradition of courtly love with the celebration of St Valentine's feast day. The poem refers to February 14 as "the day birds (and humans) come together to find a mate".

In Great Britain Valentine's Day celebrations became quite popular around the 17th century. By the middle of the 18th it was common for friends and lovers of all social classes to exchange small tokens of affection or handwritten notes and by 1900 printed cards began to appear.

After 45 years together, John and I still uphold this little romantic tradition.

HAPPY ST VALENTINE'S DAY !

(text based on an article by History.com)

All quiet on the Western Front

Today - on the eleventh day of the eleventh month I want to share a trip we made in September, when we took a long awaited guided coach tour with friends to Northern France and Belgium touring the Battlefields and Cemeteries of The Great War. I can't put into words how humbling this trip was and how much about the history of the war we learnt in just four days.

Our tour started in Flanders around the Belgian city of Ypres, where we visited the preserved trenches at Sanctuary Wood Trench Museum, some of the original WW1 trenches still surviving in Flanders. We saw an amazing collection of relics and photos and  were able to walk through many of the trenches.

We then went to the battlefields around Hill 62, one of the most fought over corners of the Ypres area after which we visited the Tyne Cot Cemetery, the largest British war cemetery in the world with just under 12,000 individual graves and a memorial wall which carries another 33,000 soldiers with no known grave.

I've never seen anything quite like it in all my life - so very humbling

Our day ended in Ypres where we attended the moving Last Post Ceremony at the Menin Gate Memorial.  At 8pm every evening, buglers of the local volunteer fire brigade sound the Last Post. This tradition began in 1928 and, with the exception of the period of the Seond World War when Ypres was occupied, has taken place every night since. The 30,000th occasion for this solemn event takes place on 9th July 2015.

This memorial records another 55,000 soldiers missing in the battles at

Ypres and Passchendaele 

We spent a few hours strolling around the bustling city of Ypres 

and enjoyed dinner at a pavement cafe before returning to our hotel.

The following day we went to The Somme. The Battle of the Somme began on a summer's day in July 1916 and ended in a snowstorm four and a half months later during which time 60,000 soldiers became casualties either dead or wounded. It was and still remains the black day of the British Army.

Other battlefields included Devil's Wood, Peronne, Newfoundland Park, The Lochnagar Crater and our day ended with a visit to the Thiepval Memorial to the Missing  - a massive arched structure with large laurel wreaths carved on top of the pillars. This memorial, designed by Edwin Lutyens is the largest of the Memorials to the Missing, and the last on the Western Front to be unveiled. Over 72,000 names of soldiers missing on the Somme are commemorated here. 

Most of these cemeteries are situated on the actual battlefields themselves. It's so hard to imagine the suffering and courage of those days when looking at the peaceful fields and woods today.

*******

Last weekend on Remembrance Sunday we popped into London to see the Poppies at the Tower of London - another very humbling experience.

"At the going down of the sun, 

and in the morning, 

we will remember them"

Once upon a time.....

....there was an abundance of Conifer trees 50ft high overhanging my (not so deep) garden at the back, giving us no end of grief with their sticky brown and dead needles falling onto my garden, leaving a mess and killing my plants as well as giving me no light in my kitchen which meant having the light on ALL  day. You might remember my post here here last year.

This is what the trees looked like last summer - straining at the leash towards the sun

Well - one day the nice tree surgeons lopped about 15ft off the tops for the lady who owns them. 

You can see (through my French doors) just how much was coming off

and this is them today after we had them 'shaved' on our side. Quite a difference don't you think. We wanted them taken right back but apparently they would have ended up just brown trunks and branches with no greenery so we've got to think seriously about what to do next. Anyway, this is the view from my bedroom window - they're still tall but nowhere as near as tall as they were

Now then - there is a story behind the house you can see here, also from my bedroom window. I haven't seen this view for several years - so you can imagine just how tall those trees were. This is the 16th century Thundersley Manor House.

Courtesy of Thundersley: A pictorial history

The current owner sold off a very large plot of land about 30 years ago and a small development of fifteen houses were built on the land. One of which is mine backing directly onto her side boundary. This old picture was taken around 1920 and if you look to the right you will see an old barn - well that is EXACTLY where my house now stands.

Thundersley Manor, was reputedly used by Henry Vlll as a hunting lodge when he frequently visited Hadleigh Castle a couple of miles away high up on the Benfleet Downs. His second wife Anne Boleyn once lived in the medieval market town of Rochford some ten miles away where her father Sir Thomas Boleyn owned the 16th century Rochford Hall - and it is thought that Anne used to accompany Henry on his visits to the Manor.

Inside the house there is said to be a Priest's hole - a secret chamber built into many Catholic houses of England which were used as hiding places for Catholic priests during the Reformation. This Priest's hole has supposedly an underground passage that leads right up to the top of the hill to our local church. I have been inside the house once and its quite amazing. 

It's quite surreal to think that King Henry Vlll and Anne Boleyn could very well have strolled through the grounds on a sunny afternoon - which 500 years later was to become my own back garden !!

See you soon x

De-cluttering and decisions

What a beautiful day today - cold but sunny here in Essex. Had a completely free day today and managed to get up to all sorts of malarkies - mainly of the de-cluttering kind. Well, I've actually been aiming to throw away, recycle, gift or donate something every day - just a little something, an empty lipstick here or a used notebook there and the feeling I'm getting is remarkable. So today was no different except that I ventured into honing in on some wardrobes, cupboards and drawers - I can't believe just how much I managed to clear out and have two bin liners to go to the charity shop tomorrow.

The kitchen is next - ugh (tomorrow) - especially under the sink. Am I the only person who has just about everything stuffed under the sink? There's only me and him indoors at home now but I astound myself at just how much of a muddle it can get into. The trouble is it's a corner cupboard which has a separate partition for all my cleaning stuff which is fine. But I tend to push stuff into the corner part that I don't use often - however because they never see the light of day then the items concerned NEVER get used. Now,  the question is do I throw them out with the idea that if I haven't used them for x amount of months/years I never will (but might regret it later) - or do I keep them and put them somewhere else? Which would mean of course that they would not fit in the new cupboard and therefore something else would have to take their place under the sink and not get used!  Decisions, decisions. I've decided that it doesn't matter how large or small my cupboard space is - I WILL FILL IT !

So - after exhausting myself with such dilemmas I decided that it was THAT time of day to put the kettle on, so armed with some of the fabulous Christmas pressie books  I received, I put my feet up in front of the fire, poured the tea and indulged in some spontaneous me-time. More decisions - these books were much wanted but as yet I haven't given some of them the benefit of any quality reading time.

In the end I chose the lovely hand-written book by Susan Branch  "A Fine Romance" where she journals her long-awaited trip to England - a fabulous book which I haven't been able to put down and which ticks all the boxes on a chilly afternoon.

Mmmmm - a piece of cake would have gone down well - still there's always tomorrow - after the kitchen cupboards of course !

Bye for now

Tiptree

The weather has been so up and down of late that when last Thursday the sun shone and the sky was blue, Emma and I took ourselves out with Leo in tow to the small town of Tiptree, a half hour's drive away, which gives it name to the products exported around the world, by the famous Wilkin & Sons Ltd, purveyors of jam, marmalade and lemon curd, to name but a few of their wonderful products.

We found the factory on the outskirts of town and entered the grounds of the Visitor Centre through huge black wrought  iron gates which led us to the Tiptree Tea Rooms and Jam Museum next door to the famous factory.

Although the Wilkin family had farmed the Essex lands for centuries it was during the mid Victorian times that they began growing fruit. In 1885 Arthur Wilkin (above with his wife) joined forces with two friends and started the Britannia Fruit Preserving Company. In 1905 the company was renamed Wilkin & Sons due to the fact that there were many companies trading under the name Britannia.


The museum had many artefacts from days gone by and gave the visitor an insight into the history of jam-making. Sorry but some of these photos are a bit blurred as only had my phone with me.

Arthur insisted that the Jams were made with no colour, glucose or preservatives which gave rise to the high quality of jam and preserves produced and enjoyed today.

The family has held a Royal warrant continuously since 1911, first awarded by King George V. HRH The Queen awarded a Royal warrant of appointment in 1954  shortly after her Coronation.  

Afternoon tea was perfect - a pot of Earl Grey, home made scones and of course a choice of preserve. Leo was able to pick himself a huge cupcake and bottle of fizzy drink which helped stave off the boredom that he was now showing signs of!!

The shop was very, very tempting but I managed to avoid most things except this - when in Rome and all that!

Have a great weekend and see you soon

xx