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Authors: Kate Llewellyn
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understood, especially later during the war, that some people of German background were interned and names were changed and Germany was despised.
When the Second World War came around, I remember my parents being upset because Aunty Ruby said that she thought that we did not have a hope of defeating Germany; the Germans simply worked harder than us and they would beat us in the end. Nothing more was said of this, but Ruby was thought of as a traitor by her sisters. And she was proved wrong. But it was a close thing.
I have the second recipe book my mother made, which is written into a 1968 Wywurry Hatchery Diary. These diaries were sent to customers of the hatchery, but she used hers to hurriedly write out recipes dictated by Doll, Beryl, Gertrude, Win, Edna, Norn (her sister Nora), Mona B, Dot, Ruby or Audrey. Many of these recipes are untitled and they have no method given. Just a hasty list of ingredients.
My mother’s original recipe book is the one I wish that I had because she started it when she was first married and into this she wrote, in a clearer hand than the hurried writing in her second book, the recipes given to her by neighbours and friends. It was a long, thin book and it fell apart when a child brought it back from his mother who had borrowed it, holding it with one hand and letting it hang open. The spine broke and the pages gradually fell out. But even so, I would love to have it. Loose pages and all.
Aunty Ruby lived at Tanunda, surrounded by vineyards in the Barossa Valley, and gave my mother a recipe for pickled onions. It is written in the second recipe book and has no quantities recorded, which I find exhilaratingly liberating.
Peel onions. Wash three times. Soak ten minutes. Wash again thrice and drain. Cover with cold brine made of four ounces of salt to one pint of water. Makesure it is covered. Stand three days. Drain. Wash twice in cold water. Drain and dry. Pack into jars and cover with sweet spiced vinegar. (Seppelt’s.) It can be made by boiling sugar to taste into brown wine vinegar.
Of course, the onions that should be used are small pickling onions, not normal onions. Much was understood and taken for granted in these recipes. Things were not always spelt out.
My mother used cream in the German way, to dress salads and to make gravies, or to simply pour over hot vegetables such as boiled cauliflower. Her lettuce salad was made by finely slicing an iceberg lettuce, placing it in a large cut-glass bowl and pouring over it a mayonnaise made of two hard-boiled eggs mashed with salt and pepper into a cup of cream with a dash of vinegar.
Five or six days a week while the breakfast dishes were being washed by my mother and dried by my father, the Mixmaster would be whirring on the pink Laminex table, whipping up a sponge for morning tea. This cake was filled with homemade apricot jam and whipped cream and taken out to whoever happened to be visiting or working on the farm. My parents sat on boxes under a cedar tree and everyone came and joined in. Sometimes it was just my brothers and them and sometimes there were three or fourothers. The sponge, which was made in two tins, was almost finished by the time the tray was brought back into the kitchen. The rest was used for afternoon tea with biscuits made in long sausage-shaped lines on trays. The mixture for these (which had chicken dripping fat in it in lieu of butter because it was cheaper) was forced through a silver extruder that made a star shape of them. There was a lot of vanilla essence in these elegant, crisp little biscuits and they were kept in a big tin, which was filled every week.
When I think of my father’s heart disease and calculate the cholesterol in just the morning and afternoon teas he ate for many years, it isn’t surprising he died at sixty. But nobody knew anything then about the effects of animal fat or, if they did, it had not reached my mother, who would have done anything at all to save her husband. We lived
When the Second World War came around, I remember my parents being upset because Aunty Ruby said that she thought that we did not have a hope of defeating Germany; the Germans simply worked harder than us and they would beat us in the end. Nothing more was said of this, but Ruby was thought of as a traitor by her sisters. And she was proved wrong. But it was a close thing.
I have the second recipe book my mother made, which is written into a 1968 Wywurry Hatchery Diary. These diaries were sent to customers of the hatchery, but she used hers to hurriedly write out recipes dictated by Doll, Beryl, Gertrude, Win, Edna, Norn (her sister Nora), Mona B, Dot, Ruby or Audrey. Many of these recipes are untitled and they have no method given. Just a hasty list of ingredients.
My mother’s original recipe book is the one I wish that I had because she started it when she was first married and into this she wrote, in a clearer hand than the hurried writing in her second book, the recipes given to her by neighbours and friends. It was a long, thin book and it fell apart when a child brought it back from his mother who had borrowed it, holding it with one hand and letting it hang open. The spine broke and the pages gradually fell out. But even so, I would love to have it. Loose pages and all.
Aunty Ruby lived at Tanunda, surrounded by vineyards in the Barossa Valley, and gave my mother a recipe for pickled onions. It is written in the second recipe book and has no quantities recorded, which I find exhilaratingly liberating.
Peel onions. Wash three times. Soak ten minutes. Wash again thrice and drain. Cover with cold brine made of four ounces of salt to one pint of water. Makesure it is covered. Stand three days. Drain. Wash twice in cold water. Drain and dry. Pack into jars and cover with sweet spiced vinegar. (Seppelt’s.) It can be made by boiling sugar to taste into brown wine vinegar.
Of course, the onions that should be used are small pickling onions, not normal onions. Much was understood and taken for granted in these recipes. Things were not always spelt out.
My mother used cream in the German way, to dress salads and to make gravies, or to simply pour over hot vegetables such as boiled cauliflower. Her lettuce salad was made by finely slicing an iceberg lettuce, placing it in a large cut-glass bowl and pouring over it a mayonnaise made of two hard-boiled eggs mashed with salt and pepper into a cup of cream with a dash of vinegar.
Five or six days a week while the breakfast dishes were being washed by my mother and dried by my father, the Mixmaster would be whirring on the pink Laminex table, whipping up a sponge for morning tea. This cake was filled with homemade apricot jam and whipped cream and taken out to whoever happened to be visiting or working on the farm. My parents sat on boxes under a cedar tree and everyone came and joined in. Sometimes it was just my brothers and them and sometimes there were three or fourothers. The sponge, which was made in two tins, was almost finished by the time the tray was brought back into the kitchen. The rest was used for afternoon tea with biscuits made in long sausage-shaped lines on trays. The mixture for these (which had chicken dripping fat in it in lieu of butter because it was cheaper) was forced through a silver extruder that made a star shape of them. There was a lot of vanilla essence in these elegant, crisp little biscuits and they were kept in a big tin, which was filled every week.
When I think of my father’s heart disease and calculate the cholesterol in just the morning and afternoon teas he ate for many years, it isn’t surprising he died at sixty. But nobody knew anything then about the effects of animal fat or, if they did, it had not reached my mother, who would have done anything at all to save her husband. We lived
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