Life-changing innovations

This week's Book of the Week on BBC Radio 4 is the delightful and funny Dear Mr Bigelow by Frances Woodsford. The book is the collected letters that Frances wrote from England to the father of her American friend between 1949 and 1961. (If any of my family members happen to see this, the book is top of my birthday wishlist!)

This morning, there was an extract from the letter of 7 November 1959. Frances writes of a television programme she has just seen in which first American and then English housewives are were asked, "What do you think is the innovation which has made the greatest difference to your standard of living in the last ten years?"

She is astonished by the responses from the US:

1. Barbecue cooking
2. Polythene hairspray (perhaps I didn't hear that right!)
3. Power brakes

But she is almost overcome when she hears the English responses:

1. Artificial flowers with electric lights inside
2. Tinned cat food
3. Composition soles for shoes
4. Childbirth - today it is quite painless
5. Plastic mirrors for budgerigars 

I wonder what answers we would hear if that poll were to be taken today?

Frances Woodsford is now 95 years old but she is as witty and articulate as she was when she wrote the letters. You can listen to an interview with her here.

The tale of the pricey ricer

This is the sad story of my potato ricer.

It all began on 6 October, a day like any other until I checked my bank statement. There I discovered two small withdrawals that were not mine. My bank acted swiftly to block further activity on my debit card, refunded my account and sent me a new card, which duly arrived on 8 October.

In the meantime, on 7 October, I had a hospital appointment in Exeter (approx 130 mile round trip). It was raining so heavily that I abandoned my car and, not having a canoe, took the train. After three hours in the hospital and a wet walk back to the railway station, there was nothing for it but a little retail therapy. Book shops were out of the question in my dripping rainwear but just around the corner from the station is that emporium of kitchenalia, Lakeland.

What could they have that I had not already purchased from them via mail order or online? Listen closely and you might hear my family say "Nothing!"  There, however, just inside the door, I spotted the Oxo Good Grips Potato Ricer. Just the thing for making the nursery style meals I now have to produce for my aged mother-in-law. And yes, I did find a few more items that I don't really need but retail therapy has to be applied liberally to be effective.

Many shops now will not accept cheques, so I no longer carry a cheque book; my new bank card had not arrived and so I used that old-fashioned stuff: cash. And that proved to be the next stage in my sorry tale: out of practice in using this commodity, I failed to keep the till receipt!

I made some very fluffy mashed potatoes with the ricer yesterday. I put the ricer in the washing up bowl and I took out not one piece but three!

A frantic scrabble through bags, pockets and piles of paper failed to produce the receipt but I rang Lakeland's customer service and explained. The pleasant voice at the other end checked my account details and must have seen my long record of loyal consumerism. (My kids call my kitchen Lakeland.) But no - no receipt, no refund. I could take the broken ricer back to the store and get a replacement. Mmm, 130 miles, £30 in fuel? Perhaps not.

The morals of the tale:

1. Never do cash transactions.
2. Never buy Oxo products.
3. Never depend on goodwill from Lakeland.
4. Mash potatoes like you've always done.

GMT blues

British Summer Time ended last night, we turned the clocks back an hour and this evening feels very wintry with the lights on at 5pm. We have had some blustery weather for a few days and the last of the apples came down along with the leaves from the trees and the Virginia creeper. I was beginning to feel gloomy but a passage from Carel Kapek's The Gardener's Year came to mind:

Bare trees are not such a forlorn sight; they look a bit like brooms or besoms and a bit like scaffolding ready for building. But if there is a last leaf on one of these bare trees, quivering in the wind, it is like the last flag flying on a battlefield, like a standard which a dead man's hand is clutching on the field of the slain. We fell, but we did not surrender; our colours are still flying.

So, having put the last of those apples to stew gently on the stove, I went out again to look at the bare trees and found that there were, indeed, a few leaves fluttering nobly in the wind. Heartened, I came back inside and read Ecclesiastes - a very good book to help one put things into perspective! And then I listened to Eva Cassidy singing Who knows where the time goes?

Time to shake off the end of summer melancholy and think of the positive aspects of long evenings by the fire: the knitting and sewing needles have already made a start on the mound of projects I have to get through in the next few weeks. Did you see the snug neck warmer over on Rattling On a few weeks ago? Here is my version, knitted in Sirdar Click Chunky yarn, with a large wooden button to finish it off.

Thanks, RO, it really was quick and easy and will make a lovely present for someone if I can bear to part with it!

I've also made Christmas stockings for my two granddaughters:

and here is my work in progress:

Gloomy moods don't last long around here. A few hours of sunshine would help to dispel this one, especially as it is the half-term holiday and there are lots of visitors in the area, hoping to spend a few days on the beaches before winter arrives. If the weather forecast is accurate, they'll have to settle for brollies and boots instead of buckets and spades, but the rock pools can be just as exciting as building sandcastles.

Reading

Reading is the theme of the pictures that Margaretha is exploring on It's always teatime. We can be sure that she will find many treasures to share with us but I am fairly certain that she will not be familiar with the picture I have on my wall, by local artist Walter Elliott:

I had admired the painting for several years but it was not for sale and the artist did not plan to have prints made. Then, as my 50th birthday approached, my husband managed to persuade him to make an exception and my copy of the picture of the young deaf girl learning to read and speak has pride of place in my living room. The sentence she is studying is "many achieve worldly honours, but the greatest achievements are usually unrecognised."  Few people understand the enormous concentration and effort that deaf children have to put into learning basic language skills but I think Walter Elliott depicts is very well here.

Beside the seaside

We had some really good weather while baby Charlotte was visiting, so we introduced her to the seaside.

Day 1. Basic vocabulary

 sand

  puddles

 surf

"And that," said Mummy and Daddy, "is the sea."

Charlotte made such good progress in her lesson at Croyde Bay that next day we ventured a little further:

Day 2. Advanced concepts

great tourist attraction

 great seaside tradition

great seaside nuisance

On her next visit, Charlotte will learn about boats and angling and later on we'll tackle farming and wildlife in the region.

(Charlotte's photos appear on her own blog. My son is happy to send invitations to any of my online friends to view them - just send me an email address to monix123@gmail.com)

Gone fishing

That isn't really true but it sounds a bit more acceptable than busy drooling! Mr and Mrs Brit and Baby Charlotte Emily are coming to stay for a few days. I have finished the baking and prepared as many meals as I can so that I will have lots of time to spend admiring the baby. I like being a grandma!

C is for cooking

I realised there was a theme developing in the kitchen on Saturday when I had combined chicken, corn and carrots to make a delicious soup from Jodi's recipe:

and went on to make coffee cake and chocolate chip cookies.

Coincidence?

Book draw winner

It seemed appropriate to put the names of all those who entered the book draw in my rain hat. It is in constant use at present.

I called on my husband to pull a name out of the hat and .....

Congratulations to D. I'll be in touch about getting the book to you; a personal delivery might be called for during the latest postal strike!

Knitted shoes

The mystery picture on the previous post was quickly identified by Rattling On as shoes.

I used a Debbie Bliss pattern but wasn't able to get hold of the correct yarn and the shoes will probably fit Millie next year! However, not to be defeated, I started again with  smaller size needles (pins) and Millie will be getting a parcel from grandma with two pairs of garter stitch shoes, plus the sweater and scarf.

REMINDER
I will be making the draw for A Scrapbook of Christmas Firsts tomorrow. If you would like to enter then leave a comment (enter me, please, will do) on this post or on the original. Good luck.

Cracking the crochet code

You may remember my first attempt at crochet, when I made a little coat for baby Charlotte. I couldn't quite make sense of the instructions but my fudged effort looked acceptable, if not quite right.

My next project was to be a sweater and scarf for Millie, decorated with crocheted flowers. I worked out how to make the flower centres but then I came up against: work 1dc, 1htr, 1tr, 3dtr, 1tr, 1htr and 1dc into each chain space. I  settled on a corsage, like the one I had made for Charlotte, instead.

It isn't really in my nature to accept defeat, so I spent hours trying to follow the crochet pattern for the flowers.  I had been trying to learn from an American on-line instruction video until I discovered that English crochet terminology is different. So I went back to my muddle-along method and produced these:

I am sure that my htr and dtr stitches leave much to be desired but Millie won't mind. (If anyone can recommend an English instruction video or manual, I would like to try to do things properly.)

Now for my next project. Here is stage 1:

and this is stage 2:

Watch this space for stage 3.

Corn cakes

We are getting lots of luscious cobs of sweetcorn in the veg boxes at present, so I have been searching out new recipes to use them. I found this in my Two Fat Ladies cookery book and cooked some for Saturday lunch:



Corn Griddle Cakes

Ingredients

8oz (225g) plain flour

1½ tsp baking powder

>¼ tsp paprika

>½ tsp salt

6oz (175g) fresh sweetcorn kernels

1 egg, beaten

4fl oz (125ml) milk

2 tbsp melted butter

Sift the dry ingredients into a bowl. Combine the sweetcorn, egg and milk, add to flour mixture and mix well. Then add the melted butter. Spoon onto a hot griddle, using 2 or 3 tbsp of mixture for each cake. Cook until bubbles show on the surface, then turn cakes over and cook until golden brown.

They were delicious and I will be adding them to my quick and easy standby meals.

Today, I made Nigel Slater's Smoked haddock chowder with leeks and sweetcorn, but I used smoked cod. What next? There are more corn cobs in the latest veg box so recipe suggestions gratefully accepted.

Boasting

A friend just came by with a little gift to help me to show off my granddaughters properly.

I'm going to be busy for the next few days, cutting pictures down to size. Then I will always be prepared for boasting!

End of a childhood nightmare

A few weeks ago, Rattling On wrote a very tempting post about Boots Original Beauty Formula Products. (If, like me, you have a love of social history and all things nostalgic, you will find lots to interest you over there - click on Nostalgia in her sidebar and enjoy!) Well, I decided that I could resist temptation no longer and headed into our nearest town to see what Boots had to offer.

Isn't the packaging gorgeous? I did, however, have another reason for buying the pot of Vanishing Day Cream. It wasn't that I wanted the day to vanish but to solve a mystery from my childhood. My mother always had two little white glass pots of cream on her dressing table, one of cold cream and the other was called vanishing cream. I used to hide the latter because I was terrified that she would use it and disappear. It became the subject of nightmares in which my mother and the Cheshire Cat would be sitting in a tree and gradually fade from view.

Looking back, I wonder why I didn't simply ask her why she had this dangerous substance on her dressing table but if children behaved sensibly there wouldn't be any terrifying fairy stories, would there? At least I can put the terrors to rest now. I haven't quite plucked up the courage to open the pot and it will probably be a long time before I dare to apply the cream but I now understand its name: Our Original Beauty Formula Vanishing Day Cream is a classic formula, which literally vanishes into skin.

Mystery solved, nightmares banished.  Or was there something different about Pond's Vanishing Cream.......