First Friday

It was a partly sunny, almost mild day.  Snow is expected this evening, with a lot of wet snow dumping over the weekend.  Happily, my friend came and extracted me for a late lunch at a new place, which was pretty good.  Homemade ketchup!  I had some cod cakes, which were packed with loads of fish.  Really good, although I managed to eat slightly less than half of an appetizer serving… Don got some fish and chips, and Jerry has been guarding me and sulking about being left at home when I was out.  It was a fairly nice day, until the clouds closed in… incidentally, I have a reminder on my phone to eat every few hours.  We’ll see how that goes!

I had a few moments reading some of my historical recipe books today.  As you know, I have several books like that, and I do enjoy reading them.  Today’s book was “A Century of British Cooking” by Marguerite Patten, who was a very prolific cookbook author and “Domestic Economy” teacher who was very active during WWII in Great Britain.  This book, which I have as an ebook, covers how food has changed since 1900.  I have a few of her other books, published in the 1950s, 60s and 70s, where she covered the introduction of home refrigeration/freezers and a variety of stoves.  This one is carefully structured to touch on what was popular in each decade and how things evolved.  I remain fascinated by her work at the Ministry of Food during the years of rationing.  It’s really eye-opening to me, and more interesting in some ways since the rationing that took place in Canada during WWII was less severe than in the UK, so recipes from that period are markedly different.  It’s also a bit of an object lesson as there are so many supply chain issues (quick question — how many people either knew or cared about a supply chain until recently?) and the effects of extreme weather and other situations in different growing areas around the world.    It’s super easy to whine about how the government is “starving people” but they don’t control the weather, and therefore crop yields.  So if there’s a prolonged drought in California (which supplies much of Canada’s fresh vegetables in winter) and therefore lower harvests, prices will inevitably rise.  The government doesn’t control the weather, despite some conspiracy theories, so that will have a knock on effect.

I learned that “spicy” and “exotic” foods began to make widespread appearances in the 1960s.  Of course, what counts as either of those is not what we consider to be now.  I mean, “exotic” food was fried rice and sweet and sour pork, while pizza and pasta were considered spicy (because of the garlic.)  No wonder there are so many jokes about bland and boring foods!  The 1960s portion of the book provides recipes for spaghetti bolognese and the 1970s introduced curry (now listed as one of England’s favourite dishes)!  Growing up where and how I did, cooking with herbs, spices and hot peppers was the norm.  We’d met a British family who used very few herbs and spices, and would run a mile barefoot over barbed wire rather than try a hot pepper.  We were children, and absolutely stunned at that; their kids thought that my mother was the best cook of macaroni and cheese because she used her usual herb blend!  Their mother was blown away at the number of herbs we used in everyday meals… 

I’ve been teased for admitting that I like several British dishes, as they’re famously bland.  My favourites include things like toad-in-the-hole, bangers and mash, scones, tea cakes (essentially cupcakes) and sticky toffee pudding.  Not an  exhaustive list!  But some of the suggested cocktail recipes are not anything I’d enjoy — mostly the items in aspic and canapés like peanut butter in prunes… I’m going to try planning a few menus that I might perhaps enjoy when I have an appetite.  When I was a child, I’d sometimes go through my aunt’s favourite cookbook and plan all kinds of meals for when I was grown up and hosting dinner parties.  Maybe I should do that?  I might find an appetite.

Right, puppy time.  Fingers crossed that I’m able to eat more and stabilize my weight.  Good night!