Quite recently, I have had some health concerns which have led me down
many an unkenned highway. For once it was not, the extravagances of my teenage
years, or the ungodly state of my soul. My tormentor appeared as ravaged red
eyes, a swollen blotchy face, and gosh! did it itch! On seeking medical help
I ended up with a diagnosis of Salicylates Intolerance.
Er! What? Indeed it’s hard enough to say let alone know what it
means. Briefly say Goodbye to the diet of the twenty-first century. Or the
twentieth come to that!
Formerly a healthy diet consisted of tomatoes, eggplant, capsicums,
grainy things, lots of seeds and nuts. There were delicious curries and meals
with herbs and spices, and with multi-grain bread. Pizzas, with mushrooms (no)
tomatoes (no) onions (no) and pepperoni (no). No more berries, dried fruit or
olives, no fruit juice, not even a grape, crushed or otherwise - all forbidden.
Overnight I was pitched into a food world more akin to that of our
Colonial ancestors. In fact, growing up in post-war British household, with
all its aching austerities, (to which I fear we may all have to get
reacquainted, in an Abbott led world) the food was plain beyond belief.
So what has all that got to do with Folk you might ask?
The songs of those periods detail the diet in various ways.
The obvious
one for Australians is the ‘Old Bark Hut’, listing
'10 lbs of flour,
10lbs of beef, some sugar and some tea.
That’s all they give a hungry
man, until the seventh day.’
A kilo is close to 2 lbs which puts a modern handle on it. Curiously,
no mention of fat, which would provide energy, flavour and the ability to turn
all that flour into baked goods. (My mother used to render down, or melt, lumps
of beef fat and drain it into a pot, kept by the stove. Beef fat was dripping,
pork fat was lard, and no oil in sight, unless it was on the end of a cotton
bud for cleaning out ears)
A lovely Scottish song, ‘McGinty’s Meal and Ale’ has
a pig, obviously tempted by all the cooking smells prior to a party, breaking
into a pantry where he;
‘opened, shived the pantry door, and cam upon the Toddy, (a
whisky drink)
And he took kindly tae the stuff, like any human body.’
The now sozzled swine crashed into the larder shelves, upsetting the
dripping pan. To add to this slithery mess, comes the soft soap, pease meal,
cornflour and, finally, treacle.
A humble sort of fare is proffered as part of a wedding proposal in
another Scottish song, ‘At the Kirk at Birnie Bouzle’ and yet it
is very diverse, and probably illegal.
‘I’ll hunt the otter and the brock (badger)
The hart, the hare and heathercock.
I’ll pu’ ye limpets frae the rock,
Tae mak’ ye dishes dainty.’
Rabbits are thought of as food for the poor, on both sides of the
world. Curiously they did not do so well in Scotland. They are not waterproof
like Hares, and living in that cold wet climate, they did not do so well.
Australians may have cursed their import many times, but the meat and fur are
fully useable, and rabbit cooked in beer is superb. I still remember Len Neary
singing ‘The Rabbiter’.
Other humble meats, offal particularly, went into many dishes, proving
you ‘could eat everything but the squeak’. The art of meat
puddings goes from Haggis in Scotland,
to Haslet, sausages of all kinds, black puddings, brawn and dozens of
variations. As well as oatmeal, there would be onions, herbs and sometimes
dried fruit. The song ‘Stanley Market’ from County Durham
goes;
‘There’s black puddings, nearly white,
They’re made to suit yer appetite,
One’ll serve from six to eight,
Up at Stanley
Market.’
Sometimes these mixes went into pastry instead, and a whole raft of
pies, pasties and sausage rolls evolved. Cyril Tawney wrote ‘The Oggie
Man’ An oggie was a sort of pasty. The Oggie man sold his wares by the
Dockyard gates, as hungry workers and sailors left for home. The supermarkets
try to carry on the traditions of the old pork butchers, but inevitably the
flavours are supermarket-bland. I still smile when I see a Harry’s Café
de Wheels’ knowing the great traditions behind them.
Colonial diets were greatly improved after the invention of Canning in
1845 by Louis Appert, a French Chemist. He was apparently responding to the
need Napoleon found, trying to get foods to his troops over long supply lines.
The early adoption of Canneries led to milk, meat, fish, jam and treacle
widening food choice.
‘Sal…….down to a dish of Hash did stoop,
She’d got a smack in the eye with a doughboy,
Put her sitting in a bucket of soup.’
Then come encounters with damper, leg of mutton, and Irish Stew. More
interestingly is the seizing of a roly-poly as a weapon. That is an actual
dish with a recipe, unlike soups and stews which use whatever comes to hand. A
roly-poly, either the jam or the savoury mince version, is boiled in a pudding
cloth, probably made with suet pastry. It is very filling and probably made an
excellent shillelagh.
In all of the above you will notice there is not a vegetable in sight.
I suppose Barcoo Rot, or scurvy, was fairly widespread. We know that
vegetables were grown quite widely. Windsor in
NSW, was called after its namesake in Britain, because the water in the
river stopped being salty becoming clear enough for agriculture. Potatoes have
lots of vitamin C directly under the skin. This was the major source for the
Brits during World War 2, and, together with cabbage, kept the country
healthy. Still they seem to remain a low status food, so no odes to a cabbage
leaf.
Perhaps I will finish with a song with vegetables in it, though not one
I would enjoy singing. From ‘Depression Down Under’ by Len Fox.
‘I went out to fight for my country,
I went out to fight and to die,
I went out to fight for my country.
And this was my Country’s reply.
Sou-oup, sou-oup,
They gave me a big bowl of sou-ou-oup,
Sou-oup, sou-oup.
They gave me a big bowl of soup.
http://folkonovo.blogspot.com.au/
please do not reprint without permission. Carole
As a footnote; This curious condition of salicylates intolerance is
greatly undiagnosed, but is a lot more common in ‘Allergy’
families. .It comes and goes, bringing asthma, urticaria, and can involve the
gastro-intestinal tract. Talk it over with your Doctor if you suspect you too
may have the condition.
Carole Garland.
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