It’s wonderful how smells can transport us to moments from the past. Perhaps it’s the aroma of a particular food that conjures up the memory … though not always. A few months ago I bought a new facial cleanser: it’s a Nivea product which I chose because it looked like it would meet my needs for a modest outlay. When I opened it up and squeezed a little onto my fingers the first night, I was instantly back in my Nanna’s bedroom, standing in front of the dressing-table mirror, smoothing her cool, white Nivea Creme onto my five or six year old skin and relishing a chance to dabble in the grown-up world. The flat, dark blue tin held more than a modicum of excitement along with the thick white crème. Even more exciting was being allowed to peel back the foil cover beneath the lid of a new tin. It seemed to hold the promise of far more than a mere cold cream might warrant (so named for the cooling effect it has on the skin, apparently). Each time I use my current product, I’m amazed that it smells exactly the same as the Nivea Creme my Nanna used, half a century ago. On the back of this memory ride a whole raft of other joyful recollections.

Those happy days with Nanna would often find me draped in her soft and heavy fur coat which lived in the dark, cavernous wardrobe in a corner of her room. I’m not sure if it was real fur but back in the early 1960s it’s quite possible it was. It smelt like it might have been, in its faintly musty, softly luxurious way and it had an air of being slightly forbidden. On my Nanna it kissed her legs just beneath the knee but on me it was full length and left a fur train swishing behind me; the satiny lining was extravagantly smooth and cool on my skin. Oh, the happy hours I spent parading before the mirror in that coat, pretending to be all manner of important and mysterious people! And when I’d had enough of dressing up and moisturising, I loved nothing better than to collapse with a book into the deep, sagging depths of my grandparents’ double bed. The wilting mattress must have been a challenge to them each night as they rolled into an ungracious heap in the middle of the bed but to me it represented all that was safe and soft.

My Grandad was an accomplished green thumb and I spent many happy hours pottering with him in his beloved rose garden, and in the modest greenhouse he built to capture

enough warmth for a full tomato-growing season in the cool, damp climes of northern England. A paraffin heater maintained the temperature so he could plant seeds each year before the frosts outside had passed; this gave him the head start he needed and allowed the delicious red fruits to mature before next year’s cold descended. When I began growing tomatoes as an adult, my Grandad’s words floated back to me across the years, unknowingly and effortlessly absorbed as I shared that long ago gardening time with him. Pinching out the laterals, checking for bugs, carefully tying the plants up to support them … even today it’s as if he’s beside me, guiding me when I tend my own tomatoes. And oh! The smell of those sweet, ripe tomatoes defies description. A basket of rubicund treasure brought from the greenhouse to the kitchen translated into a delicious summer salad for lunch. Even more than the smell of the fruit, the smell of a crushed tomato leaf evokes more memories in a moment than any number of photos can! I wonder if my love of roses is also pinned to those lovely recollections; perhaps it’s the reason I’ve planted roses almost everywhere I’ve lived.

Although I don’t recall that Grandad grew them, I also associate the smell of sliced cucumbers with those summer days of my childhood. Nanna used to slice up some cucumbers and some onions and combine them with a simple mixture of water and vinegar (malt vinegar, I think) to make a type of fresh pickle. Even today as I prepare some of my

own pickles, the smell of cucumbers says “summertime” to me. Sunday lunch at my grandparents’ home was a regular event for Mum, Dad, my two younger brothers and me. It was most often a roast and in summer we would stay on in the endless twilight to eat a “tea” of leftover cold roast meat with salad … and pickled cucumber… and home grown tomatoes. It was a splendid meal for all its simplicity (or is that because of its simplicity?) To finish off, Nanna would open a tin of fruit – pear halves, peach slices or two fruits, usually – and serve them in fancy cut-glass dishes, topped with a swirl of evaporated milk. My Nanna’s little indulgence was to enjoy this sweet treat with a slice of buttered white bread!

 

Speaking of bread, one of my earliest experiences of brown bread was Hovis wholemeal, which my Grandad consumed in generous measure. Coming from a family who had long battled excess weight and coronary problems, Grandad was told by his doctor at one point that he needed to lose weight and eat more fibre. The good doctor suggested he stop eating white bread and instead begin a routine of “two slices of Hovis a day”. Grandad (either deliberately or not) didn’t hear the word “slices” and on arriving home instructed Nanna to get the local shop to reserve two loaves of Hovis a day, which he happily devoured for the rest of his life. He lived to the ripe old age of 80 – not a bad innings for someone born in 1917, with all the limitations and hardships that era brought. I remember the great treat of sharing Hovis bacon sandwiches with him for breakfast, though I’m not sure the doctor intended bacon to be a regular feature of Grandad’s diet! There’s been a bread machine in our house since 1998 (a series of them, that is) and I’ve made almost all our bread since then. South Australian flour mill Laucke make a number of ready-to-bake bread mixes, including a golden wholemeal which reminds me of Hovis – the smell and taste take me back to those contraband breakfasts of my childhood.

I love the power of smells and I’m deeply grateful to my grandparents for giving me so much when I was young. Their home was modest but comfortable, their activities homely but happy; what they gave me was not material goods but unlimited access to their time, attention and love. Just as it should be with grandparents ❤

(Nivea Creme tin from Google images)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

With Valentine’s Day just gone, it seems appropriate that my thoughts turn to the love apple. Pomme d’amour means literally ‘apple of love’ – the French believed the tomato had aphrodisiac powers, hence the name. Aphrodisiac or not, I’m completely in love with solanum lycopersicum 😍 There are a few staples I’d miss desperately in the kitchen but tomatoes, along with garlic and onions, are right up there at the top of the list (olives and their oil, chili and cheese will feature another day …)

The birth of the Allan Street Flower and Veggie Collective is still a recent geological event and our kitchen garden is very much a work in progress. We’re currently using the unassumingly sized plot the previous custodians of the Collective put in place and while this has limited us on both space and soil quality, we’ve managed to cobble together a passable crop of summer vegetables. As you’ll have noticed from my recent posts, there’s barely a day gone by that I haven’t been figuring out what to do with a harvest of tomatoes, zucchinis or cucumbers. That’s not even considering the lettuce, spring onions, radishes, silverbeet and herbs – the slightly more polite summer crops which will wait patiently in the garden for a while and don’t demand to be dealt with as a matter of urgency. Tomatoes, zucchini and cucumbers on the other hand have to be picked when they’re ready, not you, and they don’t respond well to being kept waiting; neglected specimens can go yellow, go hollow, go mouldy or exhibit a variety of other tantrum-like behaviours. We haven’t had true glut levels of these veggies so big-batch bottling wasn’t on the cards, but there’s been enough to require a strong creative streak in dealing with them.

While the tomatoes have kept me on my toes – protecting them from opportunistic blackbirds that hang around the veggie patch, as well as turning them into something useful and delicious in a timely fashion – I’m not complaining. Have I mentioned that I simply LOVE tomatoes? Raw, cooked, dried … in any guise at all. I’ve already shared here the ecstasy of the tastiest semi-dried tomatoes in the world (well, in our part of the world, anyway!) But we’ve also turned out some delicious tomato relish – an old favourite I’ve been making for nearly twenty years and which has been hugely popular when spread under the cheese part of grilled cheese, on toast or muffins. A marvellous zucchini, tomato and eggplant bake with garlic and parmesan, has found its way onto our dinner menu a number of times, and a few tomatoes on the verge of going renegade (aka over-ripe) have been chopped and tossed into stews, casseroles and pasta sauces. A garden fresh tomato soup fittingly graced the lunch table on Valentine’s Day and was a hit. Light and delicate, fragrant like summer itself, it was quickly slurped up with warm slices of freshly baked wholemeal bread, decadently slathered with butter. There’s more in the freezer so we can recall the scent of warmer days when winter wraps its cool grip around us soon.

We’ve revelled in the sensuality of sweet, juicy tomatoes in salads, on sandwiches and savoured whole as snacks; the only way to enjoy bruschetta is when the tomatoes are as succulent as these are.  Quickly sautéed, they brighten up a plateful of bacon and eggs for breakfast. Whether the French were right or not about the aphrodisiac effect, I’ve certainly had a long-standing love affair with this amazing fruit (or vegetable, depending on which theory you subscribe to).

We once lived for two years on the small Pacific island of Pohnpei in the Federated States of Micronesia, and one of the greatest hardships we endured was a paucity of fresh food. Particularly fruit and vegetables. And above all, tomatoes… Virtually every consumable arrived on the island by container ship. The interval between ships was meant to be four or five weeks but there was usually something that stretched this out: whether it was the weather, or delays over unpaid port taxes in places along the way, six or eight weeks regularly passed between the ships sailing in. We still reminisce about the great onion drought, the long potato shortage, the-time-the-milk-dried-up (UHT only, of course, no fresh!) There was great excitement on-island when the vessel was finally spied nestled up against the wharf in the port, and the island grapevine (aka the expat phone lines) sprang to life to pass on the news, “The ship’s in! The ship’s in!”

As the chief gatherer of nuts and berries, I would leap into action and head to the store that carried the best and biggest selection of the “fresh” food; we quickly learned roughly how much time elapsed between first sighting of the ship, and when the produce hit the shelves. And you needed to be there at the shelf-hitting, to ensure an early pick at what was on offer. Ship day entailed substantial time dedicated to the gathering process. A full half day could be spent in buying and bringing home the precious cargo, then preparing it all in ways that would make it last as long as possible between ships. You could tell what stage we were at in the ship schedule by the “salads” being served at the local eating establishments: a recently arrived vessel meant we had lettuce, tomato, cucumber; half way through we were back to cabbage (lasts longer) and cucumber (one of the few veg grown on-island); by the time the next ship was due the salad was macaroni pasta with thousand island dressing!!

On reaching our stores, the produce had already been a long time picked. Usually originating from the US – sometimes Hawaii – it spent a minimum of three or four weeks at sea before we saw it. Much of it was well past its prime when it arrived but that didn’t diminish our lust for it! Every time I handed over seven or eight dollars for three or four watery, tough and tasteless tomatoes, I would head home with high hopes. And every time I tasted one of those poor, sad excuses for a tomato I vowed I wouldn’t waste the money next time. But I always did …

On our one brief trip home during our island time I stopped by the tomatoes in the supermarket and lovingly held one to my nose to enjoy the sweet, fruity aroma. My son Jake was mortified. Looking around us he hissed in a stage whisper, “Mum! What are you doing??!!” I told him I just wanted to smell the tomato. “Are you going to buy it?” he asked. I told him no, as we couldn’t take it back to the island with us anyway. “Then please … put it down,” he begged. To his teenage credit, he stopped short of physically dragging me away from the display…

A few months before we departed Pohnpei for good we were invited to the home of some US friends, to share in our first ever Thanksgiving meal, a pot-luck. It was a gathering of interesting folks from diverse backgrounds. And the really delightful thing about all pot-lucks on the island was that everyone brought along whatever special foods they’d been saving up, to share. So, that Thanksgiving we had amazing Alaskan hot-smoked salmon someone had just brought back with them from a trip to North America. Someone else brought along a decadently oozy full wheel of camembert, and there was a block of pungently mature cheddar cheese. Which the resident dog got to before proceedings really got going; needless to say the dog spent the rest of the day locked away, in disgrace. But the pièce de résistance came in the round, red form of a tomato.

The island’s Chinese embassy was experimenting with a market garden and Konrad, Pohnpei’s agricultural expert and officer-in-charge of quarantine, had been given a single ripe, luscious sample which he brought along to share, in the spirit of the island pot-luck. When he produced this gorgeous apparition and placed it, in all its rosy fecundity, in the centre of the serving table I swear there was an audible gasp from the gathering. In hushed awe every last one of us assembled around the table, as Konrad wielded a super-sharp knife and deftly carved the tomato into wafer thin slivers – one each for the 30 or so thanks-givers, who were by then giving extra thanks. It tasted like pure nectar and the fancier food items lay forgotten as we savoured that tiny slice of heaven. When everyone had slaked their desire there were two slices left over and I couldn’t help but gaze at them and wonder if they were to be wasted for the sake of politeness. The MOTH came over, put a gentle hand under my elbow and began guiding me away. “Step away from the tomato,” was the unspoken message. But I couldn’t just abandon those delectable leftovers and, made bold by long months of real tomato deprivation I went to Konrad and, in the fashion of Oliver Twist, asked for more 🙂

I’m already dreaming up ways we might extend our future tomato growing seasons here at the Collective, and not looking forward to the totally unromantic store bought tomatoes we’ll have to face when the current one ends. I waxed lyrical to the MOTH today, about the old Italian way of eating only what’s in season or what you’ve preserved from the season. We’re still a long way off being able to provide for ourselves year-round but with so many pommes d’amour in my recent diet, I’m totally in love with the idea of it!

My brother (aka Baby Bear, but who prefers “rka Baby Bear” – reluctantly known as) is a great ironer. Is “ironer” a word? Well, it works for me. As one who has suffered a life-long aversion to the task, I admire anyone who not only gets the ironing done but actually enjoys doing it! For one of Baby Bear’s long-standing pet-minding clients, he also does the ironing. Said client has a good giggle when she tells her friends she has to get home because her “ironing man” is delivering.

And as good fortune would have it, I too have my own ironing man 🙂 As we prepared to return to the land of domestic reality last year, the MOTH and I negotiated how we would split the chores without the help of the lovely staff we had for our eight and a half years in Manila. We always intended to be a bit flexible but fundamentally whoever did the cooking, the other would take care of the dishes; I was willing to take on cleaning of the “wet” areas, so bathrooms (and toilets – aaaah), kitchen, laundry and all sweeping and mopping of hard floor surfaces, while the MOTH was in charge of vacuuming carpets and dusting throughout the house. The other main area of demarcation was the handling of laundry – with me being the “washer woman”, while the MOTH ironed. His five-and-a-bit years in the army inducted him into the hall of ironing fame – he is both good at it and happy to do it. Yes, that reads happy to do it. I don’t understand either!

The laundry takes up an hour or so of my day a couple of times a week, perhaps a little more on the days we change the bed linen and towels. The MOTH tends to save up the ironing for a special treat every two or three weeks … so that it lasts for at least a couple of hours when he finally gets around to it. He hauls out all the the equipment (mysterious things like a rather spindly looking contraption he lays the clothes on; a hissing electrical gadget that spits steam and water and takes skin off the fingers of the unwary; a fold-away hanging frame which he rapidly fills with smartly pressed shirts and the like). It’s quite a production. He turns on some classical music, and the air conditioner if the ambient temperature is above 20 degrees Celsius. And then he works his way through the task at a speed that astounds and impresses me … and he smiles while he’s doing it. Which reminds me that in my thirties, my dislike of ironing caused me to say that I hated ironing and I hated babysitting other peoples’ children. But if I was offered a choice, I would take on a basket of crumpled clothes. That was before I knew the delights of grandchildren. Now it’s different ❤

Last time I watched the MOTH embark on the ritual I reflected on ironing memories. One that sprang to mind was the MOTH ironing in various places we’ve holidayed – sometimes on tiny, table top ironing boards (designed for doll clothes surely), occasionally with tiny and not-so-useful irons, often ironing at the last minute as we’re ready to go out somewhere. Which made for some interesting photos, tastefully framed but which aren’t allowed to grace this blog 😉 He’s become an expert on fabric integrity and construction quality of linen and clothing, complaining loudly about the standard of some pillow cases I recently bought.

When we returned home to Australia last year, it was a bit like setting up your first flat when you leave home: we had to buy so many basic items, including a new iron and ironing board. I handed over to the MOTH all responsibility for choosing these items, since he would be using them and I wouldn’t (insert smug smile here). He chose an iron that was appropriately heavy, nicely balanced and with a good steam performance (so I’m told). The board had to be sufficiently adjustable to reach a comfortable height for his 183cm frame. And after a couple of months of using it, I was sent on a mission to find a new, more padded cover for said board, as the original just didn’t measure up to the MOTH’s exacting standards.

Whilst searching for the right cover, I was reminded of the first ironing board I bought, when I was 17 years old and just moving out of home for the first time. I was working for a company specialising in exhaust systems and got a staff discount on a Hills ironing board, which was pretty high-falutin’ for the times (Hills made exhaust systems back then, as well as ironing boards, clothes hoists and swing sets, amongst other things). I think I paid the princely sum of thiry-odd dollars for it, which was a LOT of money back then, but a big discount off the retail price and it really was a Rolls-Royce kind of ironing board. In fact that purchase ultimately lasted me almost forty years, which made it amazing value in the end.

As we packed up the house in Manila last year, I reluctantly decided to part with the board that had been part of my life for so long, and which had followed me on my nomadic wanderings for close to four decades. It was a tough call as it was still quite serviceable. Just that a couple of the rubber stoppers on the feet had long since fallen off and the frame was showing a rust spot or two. In a moment devoid of sentiment, I decided that we would move it on. When I set it aside for disposal our lovely maid Retchel, who had had an almost daily relationship with the ironing board over the eight and a bit years of our time there, asked if she could take it. So although the board and I have now parted company, I’m comforted to know that it’s still providing useful service and probably will for a long time to come. With such a great return on investment, I certainly can’t be accused of being economically frivolous or consumeristic (is that another word I’ve invented today?)

Over the years, that Hills ironing board wore a variety of colourful covers. Beginning with its original 1970s lime-green and bronzey-brown floral, it paraded through checks and spots, paisleys and stripes. In Manila, Carmen the sewing lady came to the house on a regular basis and, given the heavy use the ironing board got, a recurrent task for her every year or so was to make a new cover – our maids ironed tea towels, sheets and all manner of things that wouldn’t even get a whiff of the iron these days!! When we lived on the island of Pohnpei in the Federated States of Micronesia, standard attire for the guys was a pair of jeans or shorts and an “island” shirt – what we would refer to as a Hawaiian shirt, brightly hued and flowered. While we were there, I made dozens of them for the MOTH and for Jake and ended up with lots of usable sized remnants in a riot of blooming colours. These remnants came in handy for all kinds of projects to keep Carmen occupied, including making aprons and shorts for the maids, covers for appliances and covers for the ironing board. The MOTH was completely miffed when he arrived home from work one evening and observed the latest ironing board cover had been made from a remnant of one of his shirts. He complained loudly that it just wasn’t on to expect a bloke to wear a shirt that had a matching ironing board cover and, true to his word he never wore that particular shirt again.

The young girl who bought that ironing board couldn’t possibly have foreseen how long it would be part of her life, nor how far they would travel together. And she would have laughed out loud if you’d told her that in what seems like the blink of an eye, she’d be retired and watching the MOTH carrying out the familiar task while she dreamed of spending time with grandchildren. Grandchildren!! Where does forty years go when you’re busy living life?

 

In the later Manila years, the gloss of ex-pat life dulled a little at times. Ten and a half years is a long time to be away from home – especially when you’re lucky enough to call an incredible country like Australia home. Without question, our overseas adventures afforded us the most marvellous opportunities and I’m not sorry for a moment that we seized the break when it came to us in the mid-2000s. We travelled extensively, we met interesting people – many of whom have become firm friends – we enjoyed ventures that life at home would never have put in our way, including the chance to live inside another culture (two, in fact). It was fantastic … for the most part. But towards the end, a deep and powerful longing for home set in which became more and more difficult to shake. At such times, the MOTH and I would spend long hours musing on “when we go home”. In particular we pictured a place in the country, where we would grow vegetables, raise ducks and chooks, and read books.   This dream sustained us when our home-coming seemed ever distant.

This week, with our first half year at home having flown by already, I’m happy to report that we’ve been hard at work making a reality of the vision that kept us going during those times of acute homesickness. The chooks are still to happen a bit later in the year – and we haven’t had any concrete discussions about ducks at all, as yet – but the reading is coming along nicely and the veggie garden is booming! Fond visions of growing and preserving our own produce are becoming a reality, as we meander through our first season of abundance. The warmer months have been conducive to a successful season in our existing, modestly sized veggie patch. While we have plans for a more expansive kitchen garden, the current set-up has still enabled a rewarding start to our efforts in moving towards some self-sufficiency.

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve revelled in the productivity of the kitchen, turning some of our yields into goodies that will last beyond their natural season. You’ll recall from my earlier ramblings that the birds around here clearly didn’t watch the Sesame Street episode on sharing.  They’ve practically annihilated our already meagre fruit crops this year and didn’t intend leaving any for us! And while we’ve accepted that this year’s orchard yields are yet another moveable feast, I did make one last-ditch effort to save a few dozen apples from the thieves of the sky 🙂  This meant picking under-ripe fruit that wasn’t ideal to eat so I’ve been finding ways of turning it into palatable end products.

Some sugar to sweeten, and a dash of lemon, produces pie-ready fruit for the freezer; apple-scrap vinegar and apple jelly join the strawberry jam, rhubarb chutney, tomato relish, and cucumber relish and pickles for the pantry shelves. A local blueberry farm recently sold its harvest at the farm door so blueberry jam has joined the other jewel-coloured jars; bags of snap-frozen blueberries are nestled in the freezer, along with pots of blueberry compote – fantastic on Greek yoghurt for breakfast! There’s also chopped rhubarb, zucchini slice, and blanched tomatoes waiting to be turned into sugo to use in pasta sauces and on pizzas.

Our new electric dehydrator has been whirring away almost constantly in the laundry and has produced an array of delicious dried goodies, as well as the most incredible aromas when you step in to put on a load of washing. Home-dried raisins have graced a cheese board, dried mango, banana, apple and pear will make scrumptious snacks, cereal toppings and cake ingredients. Veritable seas of parsley, sage, mint and oregano sway in the veggie patch and these have also dried beautifully, creating a collection of jars filled with multi-hued green piquancy that will last long after the frost finishes off their living relatives.

But perhaps my favourite experiment in this preserving paradise has been the dried tomatoes I made last week. In deference to space limitations, we planted only three varieties of tomatoes this year, just a couple of plants of each: Sweet Bite, a beautiful fruit that lives up to its name, sized somewhere between a cherry tomato and a small regular tomato; Italian Heritage, a good looking ribbed tomato with rich flavour but which hasn’t been as productive as the others – in part due to the soil still needing more work; and the old-fashioned favourite Grosse Lisse, which produces large, juicy tomatoes of the kind that were once the only type you could buy in Australian shops.

The Sweet Bite, when sliced in half, semi-dried beautifully in the dehydrator. Since it isn’t totally dried, I’m storing zip lock bagsful in the freezer and jazzing them up just before we want to eat them. Using only instinct as my recipe, I served up a small bowl of these incredibly tasty morsels the other night when friends came to dinner and the verdict was unanimous – simply the BEST semi-dried tomatoes any of us has ever tasted. It’s easy: bring the tomatoes to room temperature in a shallow-ish bowl; pour a little extra virgin olive oil over them – don’t skimp on the quality! You want enough oil to generously coat the tomatoes without them swimming in it. Add a little freshly crushed garlic – not so much that you overpower the sublime flavour of the fruit – along with a little crumbled, dried oregano (from our garden of course but failing that, some chopped fresh oregano or basil would be preferable to the commercially dried stuff, which is too pungent). Season lightly with salt & fresh ground black pepper and gently toss everything together. Let it all macerate for about an hour and …. rapture! I don’t ever want to go back to the bought variety but until we have our much bigger tomato patch next year, eventually we’ll have to buy or do without.

I’d best be off now … black grapes were on special today at the produce market and they’re waiting to be turned into raisins. It’s exhausting, this retirement business. But it tastes so good 🙂