The things I come home with.

....are many and varied.

And considering that today I left the house with just my leopard skin handbag (well, it was Wendy's leopard skin handbag until last week), I think that the following list is pretty stunning.

OK:

• Woody Guthrie biography - returned from Bonnie
• Toilets of the World picture book - returned from Mark with his fave dunny bookmarked with a gingerbread brochure
  
• Free Aussie calendar from the very nice lady in the tobacconist (hang on a tick and I'll explain). I might pop that in Jeff's Shitmas stocking.
  
• 1 bar of soap with FACE written on one side and ARSE written on the other for Adrian's boss David for their Kris Kringle draw next week (I bought this in the tobacconist)
• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao - book from Bonnie (I love that free A&R bookstore, it's great)
• 1 tin for holding Vietnamese Moon Cakes from Wendy
• 1 sexy pink satin nightie from Wendy
• 1 bottle of Tamburlaine red wine from Nutrition Care
• 1 huge box of chocolates that I'm allergic to from Mediherb/Phyto Medicine
• 1 vanilla lip balm Xmas gift from Bonnie
• 1 match your key chain to your outfit Xmas gift from Bonnie
• 2 gorgeous charms for my Pandora bracelet that I don't actually own yet from Kathryn that I'd left in my pocket from last night
  
• 1 box of 40 rolls of ribbons from Clair that I'd left in the car last night
  

Plus my handbag, a cardigan, my pale green blouse that I had taken off because Sue and I just got a massage on the way home from work.
That sounded bad.
I'm still wearing a black singlet, don't panic.

Sue and I went to the new massage place (it's in the mall, Gretchen) after work together, sorta like a family outing.
I'm pretty sure I looked worse than she did afterward, but they have no mirrors up, so I'm just guessing.
If I had to put money on it though...

Anyway, that's a fairly typical haul.
Obviously I don't receive Xmas gifts every day, but it's not common for me to come home with just the bare essentials.
Sometimes it's food from customers, shoes from Wendy, weird books from Bonnie, out of date stock, road rage megaphones....the sky's the limit.

I'll probably bring that home too one day.

Nutritional Necronomicon

Please Sir, may I have some more?
These are words that never were uttered due to the recipes which follow.

Having slept very poorly Wednesday night for one reason or another, I had to haul arse to work in a somewhat shabby state.
Not since I was in my early twenties have I left the house feeling so rubbish.

So, my plan of attack was to brighten myself and my surroundings up by grabbing my newest book, "Toilets of the World" and taking it in to work with me to show Mark.

Mark genuinely believes that the male staff toilets at Merrylands are third world, and blessed as I am with an innie not an outtie, I must take his word for it.
I thought this book may give some pretty tidy visual comparisons, thus providing me with a ball park to work with.

Perhaps half way through my second coffee, I had to presence of mind to remember the book and due to my rummaging around looking for that, I also managed to put my lunch in the fridge.

One of the few examples of dirty toilets keeping food fresh and disease free that you may ever read about.

As I emerged from the back room, clutching said trophy, Mark himself came scuttling around the corner with his very own trophy, wrapped neatly and deliberately in order to prevent even the smallest amount of damage.

So precious was it that I was able to read through it at lunch, but I was not allowed to take it home.

Those books are my favourites.

It was falling apart, bound simply in tomato red.

Mrs Beeton's Cookery Book.

New and enlarged edition.
350 wood engravings.

OMG Mrs Beeton's!
The retro recipe collector's holy grail.

Published 1896.
Mark had bookmarked the section for dealing with servants for me, which was very kind.
However, my sixth sense for booky nonsense being what it is, I randomly opened it up to page 79.

Hooray for page 79 too.

To my delight, this featured the following recipe.

BOILED TONGUE

Ingredients:

1 tongue

Awesome stuff.
What a no nonsense Victorian matron Mrs Beeton must have been.
I like her.

In choosing a tongue, select one with a smooth skin which denotes it's being young and tender.
If dried and hard, soak for 12 hours.
If fresh from the pickle, soaking for 2-3 hours will suffice.

They pickled tongue?
Imagine peeping into that pantry as a child.
Makes me think of the anatomy museum at Sydney Uni.

Put the tongue into a stewpan with plenty of cold water and a bunch of sweet herbs and gradually bring to the boil, skim and simmer gently until tender.

Peel off the skin and garnish with tufts of cauliflower or Brussel's sprouts.Tufts!

Everybodies favourites!

If serving cold, fasten it down to a piece of board by sticking a fork through to top to keep it straight.

Well clearly it's not just the French who know how to present their food after all.
English cuisine may not be as flashy by comparison, but they do know how to bring sideshow alley to the table.

I believe the right underneath the tongue instructions lurked information on how to make a sauce out of onions and milk to dress boiled tripe.
mmmmmmmmmm

My next discovery came on page 162.
This is a few pages into Cooking for Invalids.

Joy O Joy!

Gruel!

Yes Virginia, gruel does exist.

Gruel

Ingredients: 1 tbl groats, 2 tbl cold water, 1 pint boiling water

Mix groats with cold water, pour over boiling water, stirring, bring to the boil and boil for 10 minutes stirring constantly.

I'm not certain, but I think that's also the way you make wallpaper paste.
It's absolutely falls into a category I like to call bum glue.I wonder why this generation of people were so horribly constipated?
Also in this section are Invalid's Jelly and Egg Wine.
I wonder the first person was to stir beaten egg into hot sherry and feed it to ailing children and geriatrics?
Don't you just love the British sense of humour?

Possibly the same person whose ancestors went on to make things out of crushed Jatz biscuits and white bread in Anglican Nursing Homes all those years later.

Good on them.

Well, that was all I had time for. But I'm sure you'll agree that the rise and rise of fast food is a direct result of this type of approach to cooking.

And so, applying no logic whatsoever, my implacable conclusion is as follows:

Mrs Beeton's Cookery Book -->McDonalds --> modern obesity/diabetes epidemic --> mass invalidism --> Jerry Springer --> the return of Satan

Far be it fom me to play the blame game, but realistically, it's all her fault.
Clearly her aim was to fatten up our babies and return from Hell's kitchen to eat them all with Lucifer himself when the Mayan calendar ends 21/12/2012.

Consequently, I suggest that her cookbook be retitled Nutritional Necronomicon and that her name be changed to Mrs Beast-son.

For what we are about to receive, may be truly evil.

Amen.

Homemaking with Mark!

After supplying my already troubled mind with The Anglican White Bread and Margarine Cookbook a few weeks ago, my friend Mark has once again come to the party with something rather special from his collection.

I can only imagine this guy's collection.
A Pandora's Box of well chosen kitschy nuggets spanning several decades.

Mark, you see, is an artist.
And a very good one.
Able to work in any medium he chooses, including those shitty Go-Lo pencils I bought for him as a joke one birthday.

You see, that impresses me.
It shouldn't, but it does.

Cat person too.

Knowing that I love to incorporate tragic things into my blog, he said to me recently,

"I have something at home that made me think of you."

I responded the only way I know how, and said, "Uh-oh."

"Yes," he tells me, " it's a book of 1950's style housekeeping tips. You'd love this thing, it has beautifully drawn, very graphic diagrams of women's hands up a chicken. I'll bring it."

And bring it he did.

This cherished copy is originally from Auckland Public Library, no less, and is titled, Modern Homes and Homemaking.

Somebody paid 50 cents for it - I hope it was Mark.

The contributors seem to be a veritable army of Margarets and Beryls, the book having been aimed at the good women of England, circa 1958.

The things that Mark wanted to show me were neatly bookmarked for me, as I expected.

His picks were the diagram showing you how to thump your upside down swinging baby, should it be choking.

But more importantly, the Holy Grail itself - a series of diagrams showing you how to ram your heavily manicured hand right up a chicken's arse, plus how to skin a rabbit (booooooooooooo), then neatly remove it's pellet filled bowel, all while wearing high heels and looking sexy in case hubby should come home early from the office.
You can never be too careful.
What would those neighbours think?

Please tell me what the artist was thinking about when he drew that pic on the bottom left of the chicken plucking diagram.
Seriously.

But my favourite parts are some things I think even Mark may have missed.
Firstly, the page where someone has been so pedantic that they neatly corrected the spelling of effect to affect.
I salute that person.
It's almost certainly not Mark - I am all too familiar with his "hand writing."

The second is on the page that instructs us how to do the washing up.

Both the page and the concept itself are amusing enough to be sure, but what caught my eye was the fact that there are a couple of stains on this page, which suggests to me that someone has indeed required and sought guidance with this task from this very book.

How wonderful.

I have also chosen to include a photograph of what they suggest are the most nourishing foods possible.

In that photo, we see:

• a block of Cadbury's Dairy Milk Chocolate
• a big old lump of butter
  
• cheese
• peanuts
  
• eggs
• fish - smoked for extra toxicity
  
• deep fried oily chips
  
• cakes and biscuits
  
• white flour
  
• liver
  
• sugar cubes and lots of them
  
• treacle and golden syrup - both kinds! War is over!
  
• plenty of red meat with extra fat
• are those kidneys?

Up the back somewhere, there are half a dozen mushrooms, something green and some carrots.
But they're probably just intended as a garnish.

I'm not sure what's in that tin.
If you figure it out, don't tell me.

Happy homemaking!

luv sim xo