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.

Exposing ourselves.

The concept of a common experience is self-deluded rubbish.

Kinda like, well, you know, even playing fields, religion and the promotion of dairy as a health alternative.

And I know all this because, once again I spent the day out and about with my boys.

First up, I had to drop in on the quilting lady and organise Clair's sampler quilt to be done for her birthday.

Plus I had to ask her all about the quilting of Dad's yellow circley prick quilt.
Fantastic news there, she can quilt the first verse of Wordsworth's daffodil poem onto it, thus saving me from a thousand expletives and perhaps 4 weeks of grief.
I hate stitcheries, and I don't care who knows it.

I also have the green light to go ahead and make my Aboriginal hexagon quilt as big as I please as it doesn't need to be custom quilted at all and therefore won't cost me $400. Phew.
So, maybe I will go on to make it the shape of Australia after all.
Creative extravagance or lunacy?

And, as my uncle had safely delivered her babies some years ago, and because I was kind enough to drop her daughter's shoes at a friend's place on the way home, she even booked Dad's quilt in before I've actually finished it.
Unheard of.
And she gave me a break on the price too.

So, it seems that I am now officially a member of the quilting community.

Anyway, I was inside with Quilting Lady (and rushing) but also talking sewing and cuddling her cat, and the boys were outside dying from heat exposure, cursing my nimble fingers.

Poor Hell Boy is sick again, which is extremely unusual for him.
The heat did him no good at all.
He looked kinda frayed and wilted when I came out, which I'm sorry for, but I emerged with the weight of the world off my shoulders.

Anyway, common activity, widely varying experience.

Next stop, Rouse Hill shopping centre food hall.

Food halls are pretty close to the way I picture Hell.
Hell would have more Roosters jerseys.
There was only one there today, but it was stinking up the joint anyways.

Seriously, the very sight of those rags makes me start spitting.
Hell Boy's somewhat worse than me, but today I noticed that even calm, loping Yoga Boy was heard to mutter "cunt" or similar, under his breath.
It certainy wasn't "ohm", I'm sure of that.

Has he finally seen the light? Or have we worn him down to a nub and conditioned him like Pavlov's dog?

We split up to select our lunch and when we met back at the table, I had to laugh at the highly illuminating selections we had each made.

Mine was brown bread with avocado, turkey, cranberry, spinach leaves and cucumber. No butter.
And water.
No nonsense, make it snappy.

Hell Boy opted for piping hot Asian prawn soup in a bid to really get his fever happening, and Yoga Boy returned with a Quarter Pounder.
He immediately proceeded to scrape off the pickles and the onions, rather like a flavour-phobic 4 year old, or an average Australian adult. Same diff.

Then he remembered that he doesn't like McDonald's chips, threw them away and purchased another burger, again without asking them to leave out either of the dreaded flavoursome items.

Our final stop was Border's of course.
And coffee.

We each purchased a book, and I believe that the titles could easily be used to sum each of us up successfully.

I'm not shy, I'll go first.

Mine was the very first book I grabbed off the bargain table for $9.95.
A fine display of my inclination (and talent) for making a snap decision and sticking to it.
I like that about me.

Simone's choice = Toilets of the World.
256 pages.

I like it because it has a picture of a female urinal device that allows you to pee standing up like a man.
I would like to pee like a man.
Squatting places you at such a disadvantage.
Besides, it would be handy for road trips and doctor's visits.

Yoga Boy's choice = The Compass of Zen.

Looks sensible, seems to be about spiritual paths, yet promises, "an often hilarious presentation" of Buddhist traditions and teachings.
I confess I've never married Buddhism and hilarity in a sentence before today.
Hmm, I don't think I'll borrow that one.

Hell Boy's choice = The Grizzly Maze.

An in depth account of Timothy Treadwell's fatal obsession with Alaskan bears, and his descent into madness as he lived (and died) with them.

Oh, and Jeff also purchased a copy of Juxtapoz magazine because he liked the picture of the tattooed goat.
Fair enough too.

So, there you have it.
Three closely connected people with similar values, identical voting preferences and exactly the same address, exposing themselves through choices as simple as literature and lunch.

No butter.







PS I think this may be my fourth blog in a row featuring urine.
Go figure.