Almost the whole of the UK has had varying amounts of snow, some areas worse than others. It meant shops were getting empty due to both panic-buying and stock deliveries not getting through. In our modern times, we have freezers, long-life cartons as well as the canned and dried products, yet we see frenzied shopping for bread which doesn’t really contain the nutrients needed for survival.
On the home side, my grandmother’s era not only churned their own butter, but without a fridge, it was kept in a bowl of water to keep it fresher longer.
Milk still had cream on top so that could be used for making butter, cheese or adding to desserts. Milk could be pasturised at home just by heating it to simmering point and letting it cool for a longer lasting milk. Bread was often made by local home bakers and had flavour which is missing from the mass-produced cotton wool bread.
We used to save all our sour milk to go in the scones (soda farls) but with the current pasturised and homogenised milk, all the live bacteria gets killed off and that’s what’s needed, so the best alternative is live yoghurt for a light, fluffy result.
I have a tendency of buying organically when possible and it’s the same with flour, I will buy it straight from the mill if I can. Not so long ago I saw large cartons of organic double cream reduced due to it being near the sell-by date. I bought some, made butter with it and when I made some oven scones, I could sit back and enjoy the home-made scones, home churned butter and home-made jam. Butter is easy to make, I put cream into a Kenwood mixer until it separates. Even the remaining whey can be used in baking but the butter needs to be washed, it’s the whey remaining in it which turns butter rancid. It probably was all done just as quickly as it would have taken to go to the supermarket to buy manufactured products but I had a smug contentment knowing what was in everything as well as every morsel being a tasty bite.
I do take shortcuts, I have made bread the way it should be made but I found it laborious and time-consuming so I succumbed to getting a bread maker. It’s not in use often but with the simple ingredients of flour, yeast, water, dried milk and oil, it’s easy to quickly add the ingredients to let the machine do all the work. So not only do I have an easy way of making bread, having a supply of dried milk is handy if the fresh milk runs out. Of course Irish soda bread is even easier, it doesn’t even need yeast and is absolutely delicious.
There are essentials we do need shops and supermarkets for but I won’t be queuing for bread or milk.
ou live but in the West of Scotland, that’s what we know it as. It’s made normally from beef and although it’s often referred to as square sausage, it’s perhaps more like trapezium sausage. It’s made in a long block, generally the bottom is wider than the top. Sliced and fried and perfect to fit between two slices of bread.
e, however I was there to see it come out of the oven. It looked good but when she cut into it, it was too light in colour. The recipe she used was by a well-known English baker and sad to say, although very nice, it was not what our mums and grannies made. Our eager baker wants a report back and although she did follow a recipe, it neither looked nor tasted like the traditional moist, dark cakes we had been used to.
1/2 lb flour, pinch salt
hich are nothing like the elegant teatimes of the past. Cakes and other dainties are served but there’s no crisp cotton tablecloth on the table, no dainty china cups and no real tea, only teabags. There does seem to be a difference on how you feel, depending on the type of afternoon tea you are attending. Add all the frills and fancies, linen serviettes instead of paper, patterned china instead of the standard hotel earthenware cups. Scones served with curls of butter and jam in proper jam dishes instead of prepacked portions. All that transports you to a genteel era, housemaids with black dresses and white aprons and caps serving dainty sandwiches and cakes on a tray. Also tea served from a teapot, kept warm under a tea cosy. Though a dedicated coffee drinker, I have a selection of proper leaf teas for the guest to chose from and not a teabag in sight.
‘s baking though. Granny’s scones were second to none and none of the ingredients were weighed. Handful, pinch and spoonful were the measurements instead of pounds and ounces. When the milk was sold in glass bottles and cream would still rise to the surface, the short life without the fridge didn’t mean sour milk was wasted, we kept it all for granny to use in her scones. No science degree to tell you sour milk makes the scones light, I use active yogurt instead to replace the ‘live’ bacteria milk processing takes away.
a wooden stick, a bit like the handle of a wooden spoon, and there was a luggie of cream to serve with it. Of course being Scottish, it was quite 
common for me to have porridge, I could have it any time not just for breakfast and granny used to put sugar on it so I thought that’s how it should be eaten. Coming home from school in the cold, bitter days, I came in to a bowl of steaming hot porridge. I found out later that it was said that a true Scot ate his porridge with salt, I couldn’t imagine it but when I tasted it, I thought it was much better so I’ve never had sugar on it since.
such as flapjacks, oat biscuits, and in desserts. One of our favourites is Cranochan, so easy to make. Since we grow the best raspberries in the world, it’s a perfect complement. Like everything else, everyone has their favourite recipes. It should be made with oatmeal which has been soaked overnight in whisky but it can be made without it.
wrapped. They’re supposed to be unsafe and a child could choke – not our children, they were well aware that there was money in it and nothing would have got past them.
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