John Arnold: Mam bought a deep-freezer..there was only one problem - no-one had measured it
Eating and eating habits are so different nowadays than from when I was young. There were five of us in the family, Mam, Aunty Jo, and Paddy Geary, and sometimes over the years Granny Twomey. Choice never came into the matter.
Mam cooked our meals and ’twasn’t so much ‘ate it or leave it’, or ‘like it or lump it’, or ‘and half the world is hungry’. No, back then family meals were prepared - and Mam was a good cook and Aunty Jo was no slouch either - and you ate what was on the table.
Maybe we were an unusual family in so far as weren’t what you’d call ‘finnicky’ or ‘picky’ eaters. I often heard tell of families with seven, eight, or nine children and they’d later say ’twas a case of first come, first served, or the Lord helps those who help themselves - in other words, he or she who hesitated was lost!
I was looking back there lately on some of the old ‘Statement of Account’ dockets from Woods’ shop in Bartlemy which was our local for decades. Items like bread, tea, sugar, salt, pepper, mustard, jelly, Irel coffee, fags, matches, Dettol, Jeyes Fluid, and Andrews liver salts were on nearly every bill. Occasionally, there might be half a pound of ham or corned beef, tomatoes, oranges, bananas, biscuits, or a sweet cake.
We got the butter from the creamery - Dave Ryan would bring it back with maybe a bag of pig ration, and he bringing home the empty milk churns.
We had our own milk, potatoes, turnips, cabbage, lettuce, onions, beef and lamb, poultry and eggs.
I remember nearly 60 years ago, Duggans Electrical of Millstreet had a kind of ‘roadshow’ in the local hall here in Bartlemy - basically promoting and selling fridges, freezers, cookers, washing machines and the like. Mam bought a massive deep-freezer, and I mean massive.
Our kitchen is small - it was the former dairy in my father’s time where they churned the butter - so before the freezer came we had to build on an extra room onto the house - the Freezer Room.
Luckily, there was one huge window in the Freezer Room - facing out onto the haggard - tis nearly four feet by five feet. That window had just one huge pane of toughened glass in it and we were able to carefully take out the glass. When the Deep Freeze was ensconced in its new home, the glass was put back in its bed of putty.
I’m not sure was there a 10- or a 20-year guarantee on that freezer but it served the family well for nigh on 30 years.
Lads, we were fair meat-eaters! Every year we’d slaughter a beef animal, two pigs and three lambs and all that meat was put in the freezer – not to mention chickens, turkeys, cakes, apple tarts, soups and strawberries from McDonnells Fruit farm near Tallow.
Truly, we had full in plenty, and you know I often heard people say, ‘Yerra, you can’t bate fresh meat, not stuff that’s been frozen, there’s no taste off it’. We never found that.
Mam always believed that if something was top-class going in, ’twould be as good taking it out. Granted, there was an art I’d say in defrosting meat properly and we always kinda slow-cooked on the Rayburn decades before the concept of slow-cooking had been invented!
We often had porridge in the morning before going to school, eaten after gulping down a big tablespoon full of cod liver oil. The combination danced around for a while in my stomach before declaring an intestinal truce!
Truth be known, I was never a great fan of porridge, but just lately have a mind to go back on it - and back on the cod liver oil too for the pains.
Maybe I’m looking back through rose-tinted glasses and maybe time has dimmed my brain, but I can never remember, as a child, being asked, ’Now John, what would you like for you dinner or your supper?’ You ate what you got and if you didn’t you went hungry, and I can’t remember going hungry.
In fairness, I’ve a great appetite and I’ll eat most anything that’s put before me. Of course, there are exceptions to every rule and curries, Chinese food, ‘bloody’ steaks, soft-boiled eggs, pasta, spaghetti, oysters and sushi would cause internal combustion to my 1957 constitution -and that’s only by looking at them, never mind tasting them!
Getting back to my gastronomic habits, well, I must admit that since the cows went last autumn I’ve put on weight. Normally, down the decades, Christmas would see the pounds added, but come the spring work and calving season ’twould melt off again. Not so easy this year, so measures will have to be taken.
I’m not a great maker or keeper of New Year resolutions so I’ll just have to change my eating habits.
I’ve been reading lately that things like almonds and walnuts and other things in the ‘pulse’ family are good for you so I might try and have them for the supper -maybe every first Friday from now on.
In fairness to me, I was going to start on the stricter dietary regime last week, but circumstances sometimes alter intentions. I was in Croke Park for the weekend at the GAA Congress. Though only an ‘observer’ (I couldn’t speak or vote!) I was treated royally. They even created a menu which acknowledged my presence at the annual GAA summit.
The Friday night banquet served Beef Wellington – this was named for Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Welington who bate Napoleon at Waterloo in June, 1815, and as we all know Napoleon had bought his white horse Marengo in Bartlemy a few years before that - how is that for culinary serendipity!
My friend Jarlath Burns knew that I’d appreciate a bit of history as I ate!
On the Saturday morning, I was going to start back on the porridge but I’m not yet officially on the diet so I went for the scrambled eggs and smoked salmon instead.
You see, when it comes to food I can resist most everything except temptation and I ate a feed of chips late on Monday night, in the car, a long way from home.
Then, today, I got an invitation which I couldn’t refuse. Our local hall committee here are trying to raise funds for a major renovation programme. A very laudable project but, ye may well ask, what’s that got to do with sausages, rashers, black and white, puddings, Portobello mushrooms, tomatoes, fried eggs, hash brown, beans, fried onions, and my impending consumption of same?
Well, on Sunday week all these edible delicacies will be on the menu for the Bartlemy Big Breakfast, and sure, I must support this event, mustn’t I? In advance of that March 15 gastronomic celebration, I think I’ll take to the sauna for the next ten days - and have the walnuts for the dinner too!
App?
