Slow Food - Part 1

We are enjoying slow food.  A couple of weeks ago we bought some peas in a pod, just for the joy of extracting the peas from the pod before cooking them, having to work for our food, so to speak.  I love that the peas are not all the same size, and that they have the stalk part where they attached to the pod.  There was something very satisfying about working for this bowl of vegetables.  It will be even more satisfying next summer when we grow our own.  We cooked them for a couple of minutes in the microwave and then added a dob of butter.  Delicious.

A certain member of our house turned 40 this week (hint - it wasn't me).  Since he doesn't like cake, he requested a vanilla slice for his birthday cake.  The kids and I made it together this afternoon.  We used up almost all our remaining custard powder, so I almost put custard powder on the shopping list but then thought - no - why not make it from scratch next time?  So I consulted the trusty Green and Gold Cookery Book, first compiled in 1923 as a fundraiser for King's College, now Pembroke School.  Sure enough, one can make custard from eggs (which we have in abundance), sugar, milk and cornflour or ground up rice.  Why have I not done this before?  It's no more time consuming than using custard powder with milk, surely?  Convenience is thrust upon us in supermarkets.  Packaged this, packaged that - no wonder our recycling bins are full every fortnight.
Even the packet custard took a full half an hour to thicken up on the stove, as I made 2Litres of it to ensure that the vanilla slice was a thick slice.  It was strangely therapeutic and peaceful, stirring the custard constantly (as instructed on the packet).  I had time to process the events of the day, do some pelvic floor exercises, observe how much grime and dust seems to be stuck to the wall above the stove, wonder how many hours of my Grandparents' days were spent cooking.  A lot of it I suspect.  Along with cleaning and washing clothes, that would have consumed their day easily I think.  Is this why our parents' generation grabbed the convenience food with glee, determined not to be chained to the house as their mothers were?
The Green and Gold was a purchase I made in the year 2000, at BigW for $7.48, according to the sticker on the back of the book.   Flicking through it, I thought how resourceful these women were.  Bread and cakes had no preservatives, so once they were stale, there were plenty of ways to use them up, so they need not go to waste.  Most families had backyard chooks for eggs, and roast chicken once the eggs were no longer forthcoming.  A lot of recipes specify "the weight of 2 eggs in flour, sugar and butter".  I was surprised to find that 2 of our eggs weighed 150g.  No wonder they don't fit in the egg cartons that come from the supermarket.  I perused the recipes, noticing that as long as you had eggs, milk (and therefore cream and butter), flour, and sugar, you could make almost anything sweet by adding seasonal fruit or stewed fruit.  I then set out to look for slices (for my friends The Slice Girls) - but SHOCK HORROR - no heading for slices.  Clearly a deficiency in our Grandparents' cooking repertoire.  Oh wait, there it is, right at the end, under "Confectionery" - toffees, caramels, fudges, even homemade turkish delight and homemade marshmallows.  I propose to work my way through the Green and Gold for the rest of this year, partly as a way to keep in touch with my grandparents generation.