veer, on that visit I'd been in England for three weeks and was dying for a burger. Hence, my request. However, we have had decent burgers once or twice there. About the same amount of time that we've had decent fish and chips - esp in chains like TGIF. But in general, when we are in the UK, we stick with pub food. Never been disappointed.

Hee! Kath, Aussie politicians are one-up on their American counterparts in the humour department -- ours are a bunch of saddos who can't tell a joke without it being misinterpreted. I'm sure most of the advert, even with your instruction, went right over my head. And I never had a chance to win the $999 Everdure Barbecue, darn it! (That must be some barbecue!!) I answered four questions correctly, two being lucky guesses. The only ones I actually knew were Captain Cook's ship's name and what QANTAS stands for.

Btw, my shipment of Koala Brand Honey Flake and Sultana Cookies arrived. I have them stashed in a secret place and dole them out sparingly. My family noticed the same thing I did and remarked on it: "Hey, these cookies are sweet and salty!" We've never had anything like them. And now, I'm addicted.

Frieda, the bloke in the ad isn't a politician, but he sure manages to stick it up them with his parody. I haven't done the quiz myself - I'll have to try it.

yoyo, despite its name 'Spotted Dick' used to be (in the days when housewives actually cooked meals) quite a respectable pudding. Flour and suet pastry with added raisons, sultanas etc rolled into a long sausage shape tied into a pudding cloth and boiled in hot water. Served with custard.
A similar old fashioned dish was a Bedfordshire Clanger. The same suet crust but rolled into one end was meat/veg and into the other end, jam; and lucky the person who got the slice in the middle.

Cindy, re microwave cookery. During the mid '70's I took a trip to the historic city of York and landed up in a 'fast food' Italian-run eatery. The only thing historic/memorable was the pudding served with custard. A can of the stuff was put into the microwave to be heated up. We had never seen microwave cookery before and were most impressed by the sparks and flames being given off by the machine.

Bob, glad the Saskatoon fish and chips kept body and soul together. When I lived in Canada many years ago they used to boast that their national dish was meat balls and spaghetti. I wonder if they have moved on since those days?

Kath, your 'politician' reminded me of Sir Les Patterson but sober and minus the blobs of food down his shirt front.
Over here we tend to link lamb with NZ rather than Aus.
I tried several rounds of the quiz, but as most of my answers were guesswork (except for 'lamb-related' questions) I didn't score too highly! Glad I didn't have to admit to being a whinging pom. Friends just returning from Christmas breaks in Aus are still getting over the crowing and humiliation they were made to suffer!
On a plane journey home one girl was surrounded by the Barmy Army . . . totally subdued.
Your boys have really put us to shame. ;-(

Here is a link that might be useful: Some Australian Culture from Sir Les Patterson

Oh dear, Vee, I admire Barry Humphries but Les Patterson is the pits!

As for the Barmy Army, I have nothing but admiration for them. They followed their team and made heaps of noise at each and every match even when things were a bit desperate. Don't know if I'd want to share a plane back to the UK with them though :-))

Veer...Yes, anyone who has spent time at the U of S will smile knowingly at the mention of Gibson's Fish & Chips...it was served in huge baskets lined with yesterdays newspapers. Many a world's problems were solved around those baskets late at night.
Well, we were never much of a "meatballs and spaghetti" fan..it was more like "roast beef and potatoes, with gravy" where I grew up (a German community). We have since found a place near where we winter that serves the best pot roast I have ever eaten, and has NO msg added. Life is good!

Oh yes...the Michener book, Mexico is going very slowly. There is lots of plodding, punctuated by flashes of brillant writing. I am afraid I will have to renew it at te library tomorrow.

Cheers,
Bob

Another Morland dynasty food question-If you go into a pub and order a plate of "faggots", what are you getting?

In the past faggots were served everywhere and I must say I have never heard of them being served as 'pub food' so maybe that is just literary licence. And I expect by now all you totally PC US RP'ers have fainted clean away at the name, but they were a very everyday meal up to 30/40 years ago when nothing was wasted and before everyone forgot how to cook.
Basically they are meatballs prepared from the pigs innards, minced together and wrapped in caul, packed tightly into a baking tin (to keep the shape) and done in the oven for an hour or so. Served with thick gravy and vegetables, especially 'mushy' peas they made a nourishing, cheap meal.

As we are on a food theme, may I ask if there are any RP'ers old enough or maybe brought up in the country (as I was) who can remember their mothers or grandmothers cooking 'traditional' hearty meals? The sort of dinners (as 'lunch' is often called over here) after which, on a winter's day, a man could milk a herd of cows or lay a hedge and 'leave his coat off' . . . as the country saying goes?

The recipe below is a bit fiddly, click on caul for an explanation at the bottom.

Here is a link that might be useful: Faggots

Oh, yes, Vee. I'm a country girl and old enough to remember big mid-day dinners. My paternal grandmother was a wonderful cook who enjoyed the process; my mother, not so much. She taught school, so our big meal was supper at the end of the day.

Grandma sometimes fried chicken for breakfast, and this was on a wood burning cookstove from a freshly killed, home grown chicken. Ah, the good old days pre-electricity or running water. I enjoy eating fresh garden vegetables, but I'm probably the most citified country girl you would ever meet.

Vee, I recall trips from the city to the Georgia and NC countryside, as a girl, stopping in country inns for Sunday lunch. Tables were groaning with platters of fried chicken, several sorts of fresh vegetables, (corn and okra featured heavily), as well as myriad home baked pies, among them Lemon Chess, BlackBottom, and blackberry. Carolyn probably remembers these, too.

Although I grew up in a small town, it was the tradition to drive out every Sunday to visit one or the other set of grandparents who still lived in the country. Both grandmothers were dandy cooks and apparently they were quite competitive about who could lay the groaningest table. And it was not just a contest between them, it seems that this form of madness was inherent in most of the female population of our state. Winter hot-dish socials or summer picnics, funerals (especially funerals), and money-earning pancake breakfasts, spaghetti suppers, chili suppers, box-dinner auctions, bake sales, and cake walks were just a few of the food-centered affairs to which women were expected to contribute.

Iowa was/is known for its corn (maize) and pork and those two products were featured most often. The majority of the population being of German and Scandinavian descent, as the saying goes, every part of the pig but its "oink" was used. Both grandmothers made their own sausages. One grandmother brewed beer and the other made berry wines. Both made their own sauerkraut in washtubs and it was not uncommon to hear the kraut "belching" (except that's not what my Omas called it). They canned so many vegetables and fruits that I often wonder how all those gleaming jars were ever emptied and why botulism wasn't common. Their method of cooking everything "to death" probably helped -- no crisp-tender cooking was allowed unless the product came direct from the garden to the kitchen sink.

Our family's food is very Eastern European, and is known here as Jewish or Yiddish food. Gefilte fish (which my mom still rembers her mom making from scratch. An all day project like Mexican tamales), lox, luxen kugle, blintzes, knishes (potato or meat), chopped liver, bagels of course, corn beef, pastrami....mmm, I'm getting hungry. When I was little my dad had a deli, and every Sunday he'd bring home a bunch of the above for our breakfast. Mmmmmm.

Dinner was usually some meat, some potatoes, some veggies, and bread and more bread. In fact my mom was known to serve bread with pizza. Which my sis and I both blame for our current addiction to bread and our weight problem! Dessert was usually something chocolate, or some sort of strudle or ruglach.

We didn't travel except to Grandma's for Sunday dinner. Her dessert specialty was banana cake. My mother made blackberry cobbler, as well as peach. Her claim to fame was her blackberry jam cake at Christmas.

Did you all have pie suppers? They were held at the school building. The girls took pies (homemade, of course) and stood behind a sheet hung as a curtain with a lamp held behind them to cast a shadow. The boys bid according to their preference--for the girl or the kind of pie he preferred if he could find out. If his friends knew he especially liked a particular girl, they would run up the price on him and laugh like maniacs. Simple fun for simpler times. Bliss and triumph if your pie brought the most money.

Carolyn, pie suppers were still going strong in Iowa as late as 1967 when I was a senior in high school. They and box-dinner auctions were similar. That year I made a chocolate meringue pie for the pie auction and a fried chicken dinner for the other.

We did the sale a bit differently from the sheet-and-lamp method. The pies and boxes were laid out on a table and numbered. Bidders would take a look and see what they wanted. As soon as the top price was determined, the cook was asked to introduce herself and she then cut the pie or unboxed the dinner and shared it with her buyer.

Sometimes there would be wild shouts of glee when the cook turned out to be a popular or very pretty girl or a girl the fellow (the buyers were nearly always guys) was sweet on. I think subterfuge was often involved -- the girls letting the guys know beforehand what they had made. Even when the buyers were disappointed with the identity of the cook there was usually polite applause, but I remember a couple of times when the reactions were downright cruel and no doubt humiliating for the girl cooks. When the baker/cook was another guy, there was a lot of groaning but it was more good-natured or ribald.

Carolyn and Frieda would these have just been country pursuits? I can think of nothing comparable in the UK, especially in my childhood when we were subjected to strict post WWII rationing (it went on 'til the mid 50's).
In recent years the local Methodist church of which the youngest son is a keen member, holds the occasional 'faith supper'. When it was explained what the term meant, that I was expected to produce something to be shared by everyone I decided to make a pot of home-made soup using our home-grown veggies.
When we got the huge soup-pot there and reheated it I was surprised to find it was the only hot dish provided. The other offerings were packets of biscuits/cookies, a few curly sandwiches and even tubes of peppermints. Of course everyone was only too happy to get the soup down them and fill up on sweeties for 'dessert'.
We had noticed this tight a**** attitude when moving to the area and I'm sure it would never happen in rural areas of the US; too much pride at stake.

Vee, as far as I know, pie suppers were country things. Have you seen the movie Oklahoma? In it, one of the girls tied a special ribbon on her basket so her beau would recognize it.

Ours were open to all ages. When my niece was in the first grade (six years old), my sister baked a chocolate meringue pie for her to sell. Unfortunately, she stepped in it when getting out of the car. The little ones' pies were usually bid on by daddy or grandpa.

Vee potlucks in the US are very much like that now, even in country places. I spend a lot of time on the Cooking forum and there have been lots of threads about how "No one cooks anymore" even in small towns.

Several books I've read recently set in the UK have mentioned "beef tea." Is this the British term for what we in the U.S. call "Beef Bouillion", which is basically a soup?

Mary, yes beef tea is/was just beef bones/shin boiled for ages, skimmed and reheated. Often made for invalids.
Rather like the stuff that used to be served mid-morning on the decks of the old Cunard liners . . . shades of the Queen Elizabeth (the first one) when I was a very small child. I am the only RP'er old enough to remember travelling that way?

Vee, I certainly remember when people traveled by ship, but my only ship travel was via Army transport from Honolulu to San Francisco in 1955. I had a two-month-old baby and her dad had no rank, so baby and I were in a cabin with three other young wives. Only officers could have their families in a cabin with them.

The ship had washers but no dryers and it was before good waterproof diapers, so my cabin mates and I waded through clotheslines of drying baby clothes strung across the cabin. The ship personnel did make the formula and delivered it to the cabin.

The best thing about the trip was that the baby was provided a sleeping arrangement of a metal tubular rectangle with drop down canvas sides and a mattress bottom. It swung gently as the ship rocked, and she began to sleep all night without waking on the trip. Her dad suggested we buy a houseboat when we got home.

I would feel really old except that my mother lived from the time of horse and buggy travel to men walking on the moon.

I remember ship travel and did it three times! Firstly, as a single 'ten pound Pom' i.e. a British migrant who paid a mere ten pounds for a trip to Australia, where we had to stay for two years or refund the balance paid by the Australian Government. That was a wonderful experience as I was on a one-class ship so was able to go all over.
Then as a young mother travelling from Sydney to Fremantle with a ten month old child who was teething! I had nappy (diaper) drying problems too, so can sympathise. I changed cabins to get one with a long runway inside so I could string some up out of the way.
Last trip was a cruise to Sweden. I planned to order a specially elaborate shipboard dinner as a birthday treat for my husband and we actually spent the time eating doorstop cheese sandwiches (provided by the crew) in our cabin in a Force Eleven gale.The restaurant had to be closed for safety reasons. Oh, the romance of it all!

Ah, we old-timers who recall travel by sea. Now that was luxury. I was fortunate enough to cross the Atlantic to Le Havre in February, 1961, on the maiden voyage of the S.S. France. We were always sneaking up to first class, and got away with it.You can imagine the fantastic French menus served. After one year abroad, I returned to New York on the old Queen Elizabeth. The food was still excellent, too much of it, but the atmosphere lacked the Gallic je ne sais quoi....

When I am asked "what one thing would you do if you could do anything, no cost or time constraints" (which seems to be a party-piece around here lately..???) my answer is go around the world by luxury liner, with the ability to go ashore wherever I want to for as long as I want to. With a personal maid/secretary to attend to all packing, unpacking, laundry, paperwork, etc.

Wow! I'm in awe of your voyages. In my youth I dreamed of such travel, but that's mainly because I'd never SEEN the ocean, let alone sailed on it. Ferry rides from Norway to Scotland, and from Crete to Athens during storms cured me of that desire. Now a long trip on the Orient Express...

Granjan, I agree with you. All the cruises that I took had bad weather. My bunk broke in the Bay of Biscay and my daughter's cot in the Australian Bight. Neptune has it in for me, I'm convinced! My next trip is by the Prospector train from Perth to the gold mining town of Kalgoorlie,Western Australia, this weekend, a granddaughter is househunting so I'm tagging along!

Crossing the Atlantic in choppy seas of February was no picnic, either, despite the huge stabilizers on the S.S. France. Almost everyone was sea-sick for part of all 5 days!

I forgot to mention-all good weather too. After all, if I can afford ANYTHING I want....

Another one--what is bread sauce?

not what I always imagined it as being:

Here is a link that might be useful: bread sauce description

Hmmm, thin dressing, sort of? I can't really imagine cloves with onion. The menu description listed gravy sauce and bread sauce.

I never had bread sauce until I had it at my MIL's. Now at Christmas I make about 4x what we will actually need because I love it. It is more like a classic bechamel which has been thickened with breadcrumbs instead of flour. It is usually thick enough to hold its shape when spooned. The clove flavour is delicious.

Carolyn, in the UK bread sauce is served with roast chicken or turkey, I've never heard of it with any other dishes. It should be somewhat thicker than a pouring sauce.
The custom of adding cloves to onion is, I think, an ancient one. Onions with cloves used to be boiled in milk and given as a drink to people suffering from colds.
On the 'onion' theme going back a generation or two, my father and his father would often thinly slice a large onion and soak the slices in a mixture of vinegar and brown sugar. They would then add them to a huge cheese sandwich.
Agricultual workers often used to take a raw onion with a hunk of bread and cheese for their lunch when working out in the fields, and eat it just as we would an apple!
I think there is quite a bit of vitamin C in onions (although they workers would neither have known or cared) so it was probably a 'healthy' meal. :-)

Raw onions are indeed very healthy. I'm sure this must all be related to the old Mediterranean custom of eating raw cloves of garlic and also wearing a garlic clove around ones neck to ward off the Devil.... Well, your breath would also keep ordinary mortals far away. However, it is quite high in Vitamin C, which helps prevent colds.

Do you have sweet, mild onions in the UK? Here, they began in Georgia, as Vidalia onions.

Onions and garlic, when used well, are foods of the gods. Also, onion breath would, as you note, create a distance between friends that would inhibit the passing of germs. Although, if everyone is eating them, would you notice your neighbor's breath?

I think what we call 'Spanish' onions are mild. I imagine we have similar varieties as the US with the reds and whites, shallots (very useful for cooking small amounts when you just need flavour) spring onions and various types of garlic . . . which until not so long ago was seen as foreign and deeply distrusted by the average British housewife/cook!
Cece re onion breath I am reminded of the time when I was in the labour ward of our local maternity hospital giving birth to one of the children and being 'helped' by the DH.
As nothing much seemed to be happening he went to the canteen to get something to eat and came back with the last sandwich . . . cheese and onion.
The smell, in that small room, was overpowering and did little to ease either the pain or the feeling of wellbeing that the birth partner is meant to instill.

My mother has long made pickled onions. The raw onions are small (walnut size) and she puts them in jars in a mixture of vinegar and honey and I'm not sure what else. They are really nice - sweet and not too strong.

Veer, the liquid of brown sugar and brown vinegar left after being steeped with the onion was our cough medicine when we were children. I used to pickle onions using a small firm variety we called shallots. Not to be confused with spring onions which are called that in some places! I salted mine for 24 hours, rinsed them thoroughly then put them into a sterilised jar and poured a cooled mixture of watered brown vinegar, a little sugar and spices. Leave for a week at least to soak. The onions should be crisp to the taste.

annpan sounds very much the same way my late Mother pickled her shallots. She used to pack them in 'old-fashioned' brown earthenware jars, to keep the light out and tie several layers of greaseproof paper over the top. They used to be stored for several weeks/months and eaten with cold meats and/or good English cheese . . . something that seems not to be made in the US. Now why is that? You must have plenty of dairy farms.

We do have some dairy farms in the US which produce fine cheese: several in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont (cheddar), and many in Wisconsin, the dairy state. (Indeed an old nickname for Wisconsin folk is "Cheesehead.") In rural Virginia, there are several farms which make delicious goat cheeses; a former classmate runs one of these.

BTW, the bread sauce recipe sounds delicious. Wonder how it would be served with Rock Cornish Game Hen, instead of stuffing?

A piece of good Vermont or New York Cheddar and a crisp MacIntosh apple-yum.

I won't hear any complaints about American cheese! My husband and I still talk of the "Rhyzer Swiss" (can't remember the proper spelling) we used to buy from the Willy St Co-op in Madison, WI, during our stay in 1981. Superb cheese, really sharp, ("crying" as a good Swiss should) but it wasn't popular with other customers who complained about it in the store contact book. We also went to Colby to buy cheese, another good Wisconsin cheese. One thing about the US is that you may find everything there, good food and bad food, the choice is yours.

Well, I apologise for my misguided comments about American cheese. It goes back to the long ago days when I was in the States and several times was offered cheese "You must taste this it is really delicious. It's Kr*ft's latest cheese with strawberry and lime flavour" or whatever it was. Yukkie.
If I were to go into an average supermarket in the US would I be able to buy a 'proper' wedge of cheese . . . or at least one that had once been part of a whole cheese; preferably round with a proper rind on it? I'm willing to accept that it might have been cut up and stuck in a plastic packet, although I would rather it was cut 'fresh'?
Mariannese, does Swiss cheese count as American? Over here we now have much stricter rules about for eg whether Cheddar cheese must come from Cheddar, Stilton from Stilton etc. There are counter claims that Cheddar refers to a way of producing the cheese, not where it comes from. Same goes for champagne. Must it come from that particular region of France or is it the name of the method used to produce it?
It certainly keeps plenty of lawyers employed!

Most American groceries have deli counters with "real cheese". The stuff in slices in plastic is "processed cheese food". I kid you not!

Americans have come a long way in the last few years and it amazes me what you can buy even in "normal" groceries that was unheard of just a few years ago. We owe it all to Julia!

If you are talking about the cheese that is known as "American" then that is a whole different issue-but we can get good cheeses fairly easily. I find a wide variety of unusual cheeses at the warehouse store-(C*stc*) there's a hard greek goat cheese with rosemary in the rind that is a constant at cocktail parties. It's yummy.
At my regular grocery i have an adequate choice from around the world-there is always some presliced in the case for we "hurry-up" Americans, but I usually get them to pull out the whole and slice my order while I stand there-or wedged, depending. And there is always the cheese counter at the weekly farmer's market.

I have found that it has become very much easier to find good cheese in the US, both American and foreign, since my first stay in 1981. My recent visits have been to California and at least in Palo Alto you can find every kind of cheese in the most ordinary grocery, at least wedges wrapped in plastic but with the rind still on.

I don't think European rules about the origin of foodstuffs apply in the US. A recent example is the the Greek fight against the Danish over the name feta cheese. I regret however that European rules are sometimes too strict so that it is now difficult to find a "living" Camembert outside France, one that is made from unpasteurized milk. I have noticed that with Brie it is impossible in Sweden. All are "dead" and do not mature after leaving the dairy.

Marianne in Sweden

I don't know where else to hang this one: what is a "woman's institute meeting"? like the US Junior League? (as seen on another thread here) Was there an example of one in film "Calendar Girls"?

Mary, The Women's Institute was founded during WWI in Canada and is an organisation that supports country women with monthly meetings, talks, outings etc.
Sometimes referred to as 'Jam and Jerusalem' as they used to be known for preserve making and singing Parry's 'Jerusalem' at the start of each meeting.
Their image has become rather faded over the last few years but they still do much good in rural areas.
And yes the film Calendar Girls is based on the true story of a WI in Yorkshire.

Here is a link that might be useful: The Women's Institute

Different from the Junior League in a couple ways. The main purpose of the Junior League is to train women to be effective volunteer leaders. All our projects, fundraisers, etc., are based on the premise of skill development that can be used to improve our community as volunteers; for instance, as members on the boards of non-profit board organizations. In my community, a member of the Junior League is the Executive Director the United Way, another planned and executed the 200th anniversary celebrations of the longest continually operating theater in the nation, and another heads up the Arthritis Foundation. The WI, as I understand it from this side of the pond, also offers training, but in a different way, and with a wider focus. Both organizations, though, seem to be devoted to the development of the potential of women.

We have a similar organisation, the Country Women's Association, which started as a mutual support group for women who often lived fairly isolated existences as they helped their husbands run farms (which tend to be larger and further apart than US and European farms). A typical smaller farm is about 300 acres, where I live they run 2000-3000 acres and up north we're talking square miles. Often the wives only visited town on a weekly, fortnightly or monthly basis, and the CWA provided a place where the women could meet, have a cup of tea and a bite of lunch, and rest in between racketing around the shops (and stay while hubby visited the pub, a men-only preserve then).
The CWA brought out a cookbook full of tried and true recipes and household hints, which they have continues to update and reissue oer the years. I think it would be a rare household in Australia which doesn't have a copy of The CWA Cook Book lurking somewhere!
Now the CWA is in the forefront of organising drought relief, projects to assist babies and children both here and overseas, and heaps of other activities, in addition to the traditional mutual support and teaching activities. There is a documentary on them at the moment being screened on TV, called Not all Tea and Scones, which is quite an appropriate title :-).

-An article in a national magazine about the Junior League was titled "More Than White Gloves and Pearls"-same idea!