Tuck shop tucker

At boarding school, there was really very little reason to go to the tuck shop.  We used to get sandwiches at break (for my US blogpals – mid-morning recess).  They were always brown bread and usually the freshest of soft fresh.  My favourites were egg.  I still love egg sandwiches.  When I make them, I still grate my eggs they way they were grated for those sandwiches.  Peanut butter or peanut butter and jam (jelly), I could take or leave, and mostly left.  The midday meal was a quick gobble before the final two lessons ahead of the end of the school day just after 2pm.

Clarendon Girls’ High School where I spent five years, and from which I matriculated 40 years ago this year.  I took this photograph ten years ago when I went back for my first school reunion.

Reason besides, I did frequent the tuck shop.  There were certain stand out products that were popular among my peers.  They, and two in particular, became part of my Friday, end-of-the-week ritual.

Pocket money

Each term, our parents put money into our “pockets” which was doled out on request.  These were the days before computers, let alone PCs. Parent communication was either snail mail or a weekly telephone call to or from the ticky box (pay phone).  Back to pocket money – a girl needs cash, right?  The matron had a huge, leather-bound ledger and a cash box.  Each one of us (and there were about 70 of us), had a page on which she kept a running tally of our personal allocation and what we drew.  We had to go to her office, and queue after breakfast to draw money or to get a “sick” note if we needed to “escape” phys ed.  I queued. Frequently.

Tucker

The pupils’ mums ran the tuckshop and the fare, some of which would be frowned upon today, included salad rolls (egg or cheese) on fresh, white hot dog rolls;  vetkoek (deep-fried dough) with curried mince.  And buttery, flaky cheese pies.

The latter two often featured in my Friday ritual necessitated by the ubiquotous fried fish, soggy chips and coleslaw:  after school, I’d head to the tuckshop and order either a cheese pie or a curried vetkoek and a yoghurt.  When I have the opportunity to eat a traditional kerrie vetkoek, those vetkoek remain the standard.

Anyway, not so long ago, there was the inevitable discussion about tuck shop favourites on the “alumni” Facebook page.  I discovered that there is a recipe book from that era which includes a recipe for the curried mince.  The discussion turned to cheese pies and I mentioned that, occasionally, I make them.  There’s no recipe.  They must have been bought in from the local bakery – along with the sausage rolls.

I should not have said anything because, of course, I don’t have a recipe.  Anyhow, I promised that the next time I made them, I’d write down what I do. That meant paying proper attention to weights and measures. And things.

The “girl” who asked for this recipe is in this photograph of the residents of Connaught House, taken in 1976. She and I were in the same dormitory at least once that year, if I remember correctly.  She is at the end, on the right, of the second row from the back.  I am on the grass to the left of the matron’s left knee.

So, Judy, this is for you:  taste memories of forty five years ago.

Old School Clarendon Cheese Pies

The first time I made  these cheese pies was because I had some puff pastry left – from something else I had made.  Until I tasted them, I didn’t think about “our” cheese pies.  One bite and I was transported back to the years between 1976 and 1980, and high school. I admit that I make them with ready-made pastry.  I have made puff pastry:  it’s a mission.  And expensive.  A good quality store-bought pastry is a never-fail, at a far lesser price.  There’s a time when discretion is the better part of valour.  So, this really is a very easy “two ingredient” recipe:

A roll of pastry makes between 4 and 6 pies – depending on how thin one rolls the pastry, how good one is at spacing the rounds and how large you make the pies.  I use a small, plastic side plate as a template (about 16cm) and each pie contains about 100g of grated cheddar.  I seal the edges with milk which I also use to brush the pie and glaze it.  I’m a bit Scottish about using an egg wash: if I’m only making two pies, most of the egg will go to waste.  Bake in a hot oven (210°C) for 15 to 20 minutes until puffed up and golden brown.

Make sure that the pastry is sealed and that no cheese escapes – if you don’t, you’ll have pastry shells.

Pimped cheese pies and canapés

Although there is only one way to eat these cheese pies: hot, out of the oven with an entire bottle lashings of tomato sauce (ketchup), one can shrink and pimp them:

Shrink them for canapés and cut the pastry using an 8 to 10 cm cookie cutter and to pimp the filling, if you use cheddar, mix it with fresh herbs (like oreganum or thyme) and/or thin slices of raw or caremelised onion.  Inspired by a friend in the village and a pastry I ate at her Country Kitchen even before we moved here, occasionally and decadently, I substitute the cheese with a mixture of finely shredded raw spinach, caremelised onion and blue cheese.

If you’d like a printable version of the recipe, you can download it here.  When you do, buy me a ko-fi?

Until next time, be well
Fiona
The Sandbag House
McGregor, South Africa

Photo: Selma

 

Post Script

In yet another aspect of my life, I offer

English writing and online tutoring services

every day conversation and formal presentations
writing – emails and reports, academic and white papers
formal grammar, spelling and punctuation
more information here

And then there’s more:

  • If this post might seem familiar, it’s because I’m doing two things:
    • re-vamping old recipes.  As I do this, I plan to add them in a file format that you can download and print.  If you download recipes, buy me a ko-fi?
    • and “re-capturing” nearly two years’ worth of posts because of this.
  • If you’re interested in a soft entry into the world of crypto currency and monetising WordPress blog, use the fantastic Steempress plugin to post directly to the Hive blockchain.  Click on the image below to sign up
  • I also share the occasional post on Medium.

Leftovers – when they are not: leftover

The notion of leftover food and what happens to it, is a divisive one.  I remember my ex returning from a conference with a story about a fellow delegate just would not eat leftover food.  If there was any food left over, his wife had to throw it away.

I must digress

That entire exchange was more than twenty five years ago (as is the memory), but still raises qestions for me.  Firstly, throwing away good food.  Just does not make sense.  I’ll come back to this.  It’s not just the food issue that stuck with me, it was how the story was told:  it was clear that that husband concerned had issued a decree.  I remember thinking to myself:  this still happens in the late 1990’s?  Clearly, I was naive and protected.  I learned that not only did it still happen, but it still does.  It’s one of the signs of domestic abuse.  In South Africa, as with the rest of the world, gender-based violence is a crisis with a surge of femicides as South Africa has entered stage three of the covid-19 lockdown.

Food waste

While I’m on a bit of a downer, and staying with the lockdown, one of the very worrying consequences of the lockdown in South Africa, is the number of hungry people.  I grew up with the constant admonishment that I had to eat every single morsel of food on my plate.

There are children who have no food.

Then I would be regaled with stories about hungry children in Vietnam and other parts of Africa.  What most people who know me now, will have difficulty believing, is that I was a picky eater with the appetite of a bird (a small one!).  It was not unusual for me to whine, “I’ve had enough…” or “I’m not hungry…”  No-one, least of all my mother ever knew that I would feed my winter soup to the lavender bush that was up the back steps, round the corner and behind the garage.  That’s another story.  More relevant is that if I didn’t eat each morsel on my plate, said plate and food remains were deposited on top of the fridge.  They were my next meal.

Needless to say, two, no, three things happened.  I grew up and as I did, so did my appetite.  I also developed an appreciation for most food and an ability to eat virtually anything that’s put in front of me – even if it’s something I’d prefer not to eat.  The third thing is that I did develop a loathing for leftovers that are just the same meal.  Rinse Reheat and repeat does not work for me.

Not the vogue

I think I might have mentioned that my Dad grew up with an alotment and went on to train as a horticulturist at Kew.

My father – the one under the keg tap – “busy” in Kew Gardens.

Consequently I grew up with vegetable peelings always saved for the compost heep.  That compost fed the growing vegetables and flowers.  Sustainble living was just how things were done.  It didn’t have a lable. Then.

Back to my mother: I think I’ve mentioned that she was one of four sisters with a single mother, and grew up in the Second World War.

Mum at about 12 – circa 1940

(Well, I had, and it’s one of those posts I shall have to “reconstitute“.)  The point is, that every morsel had to stretch and nothing went to waste.

Both The Husband (whose parents were married during that same war) and I grew up with the concept of nose to tail eating and wasting no part of an animal.  The Husband talks about his mother who, as a young mother newly arrived on a smallholding in the then Rhodesia, making soap with pig fat. And curing ham.  Eating offal (which, by the way, includes oxtail), was just part of life.  As were meals with leftover meals.  Some more successful than others.  Stovies was one we both remember. In our house stovies were always made after roast beef and was one of my Dad’s favourite winter suppers.  And, let me add he, himself, made a mean pot of stovies.

Patterns repeat

As much as one thinks one rebels against one’s childhood, and “things our parents did”, it sometimes comes as a bit of a shock to discover that we are repeating the same patterns.  Or not.  Anymore.

It’s taken a while, and I’ve made peace with embraced some of those patterns.  Like the compost heap.  And leftovers.  However, in my defence, I plan my leftovers.  Like I plan the weekly meals.  The “deliberate” leftovers are essential ingredients in another meal.  As is the case with my roast vegetable “frittata”.

A while ago, I shared this photo on Instagram and a friend asked if I’d shared the recipe here. Well, I hadn’t then, and I am, now.

Roast Vegetable Frittata

Essentially, this is a baked omelette.  Roast vegetables is a favourite meal and I when do them, I make a huge quantity.  There is so much one can do with roast vegetables:  stir into pasta or risotto;  as part of a salad and in a frittata.   As I did for that particular evening’s meal.  It’s simple and it’s versatile.  One can make it North African by adding harissa and garnishing it with fresh coriander or take it to the other side of the Mediterranean with pesto and basil.  Or one can give it a Mexican touch with cumin, chilli and cilantro (or coriander and dhanya by other names).  I will even add a bit of spinach as I did the other evening when I paid proper attention to what I was doing – to be able to write up the recipe.

This particular evening, I also had some left over spinach from another meal, and I had also roasted some cauliflower (which I usually keep separate because the flavour tends to “contaminate” everything else).  I elected omit the cauliflower, but incorporate the spinach into this frittata.

This transformation of leftovers consists of a layer of roast vegetables in a greased baking dish, over which one pours beaten egg which is topped with grated cheese before being baked in the oven.  The detailed recipe is here in a printable format).

The roasted cauliflower didn’t go to waste, either, it went into the side salad that accompanied the meal.

A last word

This is the first of a few recipes-by-request which have taken a back seat to my lockdown related rants.  So, keeping a promise, this one is for Janette who also writes about reinvention and sustainable living:  under the milkwood tree in her garden which is on the beautiful Eastern Cape coast of South Africa.  Go and have a read.

Until next time, be well
Fiona
The Sandbag House
McGregor, South Africa

Photo: Selma

 

Post Script

In yet another aspect of my life, I offer

English writing and online tutoring services

every day conversation and formal presentations
writing – emails and reports, academic and white papers
formal grammar, spelling and punctuation
more information here

And then there’s more:

  • If this post might seem familiar, it’s because I’m doing two things:
    • re-vamping old recipes.  As I do this, I plan to add them in a file format that you can download and print.  If you download recipes, buy me a ko-fi?
    • and “re-capturing” nearly two years’ worth of posts because of this.
  • If you’re interested in a soft entry into the world of crypto currency and monetising WordPress blog, use the fantastic Steempress plugin to post directly to the Hive blockchain.  Click on the image below to sign up
  • I also share the occasional post on Medium.

Long, leisurely, Lord’s

We are very lucky to live in a beautiful valley that produces wonderful wine and creates fabulous opportunities for celebrating not just wine, but its talented cellar masters and wine makers.  The Robertson Slow Festival is unique.  It is a genteel, intimate and relaxed festival that spreads itself through the valley.  People come together in a multitude of places, including working cellars – like the one up the road from where we live. 2014-07-19 15.42.26 The Lord’s Cellar is, literally, on the Road to Nowhere.  One must choose to go there –  like one chooses to come to McGregor.  You cannot decide to drop in on your way past.  That’s part of the reason we like McGregor, and Lord’s.  The other reasons are the people – and the wine!  Lord’s wines make any occasion special2014-08-09 16.46.45 Late on Saturday afternoon, we headed up the Road to Nowhere.  The day had started off cool and misty, but had cleared into a beautiful, balmy spring afternoon.  We were greeted, as always, by the ever gracious host, Jacie Oosthuizen.  Lord’s (named for the cricket ground and his passion for the game)  is his brainchild, and is a boutique winery nestled in the mountains and surrounded by fynbos.  Winter is when fynbos is at its most beautiful, so this evening showcased some of the Western Cape’s most beautiful flora. 2014-08-09 17.08.49       It was a slow, relaxed afternoon and evening of friends (new and not-so-new) and families associated with Lord’s, Jacie and his wife, the wine maker, Ilse Schutte, her husband and family who were responsible for the traditional Suid Afrikaanse poitjie kos (South African “little pot” food), home made bread and brownies…   The time flew – wonderful conversation about life and wine, live music provided by our neighbour, Konrad, that had some of us dancing…not quite on the tables, but dancing, nevertheless…2014-08-09 20.58.27

Eating to Live

Friday, 18 July 2014, in McGregor dawned:  a cold, blustery morning.  It was also the first Mandela Day since his death in December 2013;  he would have been 95.  Later that day I was  heading down to our local community service centre (aka the police station) to join a sandwich drive.

This, juxtaposed with my my rant, the previous evening, about dieting fads and food foibles, got me thinking about how privileged I am, to be able not just to have the pleasure of cooking, but of food, in all its glory, when there are people, literally down the road, who do eat to live – when they can.

2014-07-18 13.09.43

 

For the last two years, a young McGregorite has organised this initiative.  This must have taken Mira much more than just the 67 minutes she asked of us to give, to organise.

 

 

18 July 2014 2

So, a bunch of us, of all colours and creeds, from all walks of life, gathered at around 11h00, to make sandwiches.

By about 11h45, this happy band of volunteers had made this huge mound of sandwiches to go with the soup that came from Lord’s Guest Lodge.

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I didn’t just join the sandwich drive, I also joined the convoy to deliver the sandwiches and soup.  First, to the Breede Centre which runs a holiday programme of for local children, then on to the informal settlement and the poorest parts of our village.

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The sandwiches and hot soup, along with the treats made a difference – at least for a short while.

 

For me, there was also a weird moment.  There was a time that it would have been inconceivable that I would set foot in a police station to be part of a community initiative:  the police represented the oppressors and meted out their orders.  These orders were usually punitive and harsh;  they certainly did not include feeding people in informal settlements.

Much remains to be done in our country and village of poor and plenty, but that I, and my fellow sandwich-makers were able to comfortably join this initiative, is a consequence of Nelson Mandela who gave 67 years of selfless service.  Halala, Tata.