I have shared this before, but I’m using it and similar items about past lives with my family history writing group tomorrow.. from Sue Robb:
Recipes From an Old Farm Kitchen – Sue Robb
Spring time is when stone jars in the kitchen were filled with a mixture of treacle and sulphur, and every morning each member of the family was given a spoonful after breakfast.
And the sensible size of teaspoons in those days was large and brimming, so everyone had a good dose. The young folk were given nettle soup and well chopped young nettles were put in barley broth. This was the way to keep fresh and clean. And if you were peaky, what could be better than a raw egg beaten up with milk to be taken every day?
When money was too scarce for medical advice, country folk put their trust in natural food and home food.
- leek broth for asthma sufferers – 3 lbs lean beef, 5 large leeks, 3 pints of water, boiled until reduced to one pint, skimmed, strained and taken twice
- lemon and honey for good health – zest and juice of 2 lemons, 2 oz butter, ½lb loaf sugar, 1 tsp ground rice, 2 eggs, sugar, lemon and rice added to the lemon juice and stirred until it boils, beaten eggs added and everything stirred until it’s cold, then bottled in a 1lb jar
- egg snow for invalids – 1 egg, 1 tbsp milk, sugar to taste, orange or lemon juice – add sugar, milk, juice to egg yolk and beat well, beat egg white with a knife and stir into the yolk mixture, serve in a tumbler
- onion porridge to cure a cold – 3 large onions, peeled, soaked in water then chopped and 1 apple chopped added to ½ teacup of water, 1 teaspoon honey, 3 cloves, water salt and pepper all simmered together until tender and eaten at supper time
- an old-fashioned remedy for exhaustion – two fresh eggs beaten with a little warm water… apparently “inside 15 minutes the eggs thus taken all turned to nourishment…“
- celery milk for rheumatism – wash, trim and chop sticks of celery into small pieces, simmer in water and milk for an hour, pound then strain through a jelly bag and use as required freshly made
- a good health drink – 2 heaped teaspoons of home produced honey melted in hot water and 1 tsp cider vinegar added, stir and drink when cool… “if taken at least three times a day this drink has been proved as a cure for sore throats and rheumatic twinges. even alcoholics have been said to befit from it as it takes a way the desire for strong drink…“
Good stuff if you have had your taste buds removed!
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Can you really imagine anyone eating it? At least no-one would catch their cold as they wouldn’t venture anywhere near them!!
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It sounds like the bush tucker trial!
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Sue Robb is Irish so it might be a bog-tucker trial!
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I can remember old people, when I was a child, putting a peeled onion in their coat pocket to ‘ward off a cold’.
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Good grief… I knew some Ukrainian friends who would eat bulbs of garlic as we would apples… not sure why… vampires maybe?
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Same as onions and leeks, antiseptic qualities apparently
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I love eating them but thinly sliced when raw and in salads… not keen on raw garlic though, whatever its health-giving properties! Leeks are my fave though!
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Honey has the longest shelf life of any food product, as in thousands of years. Never heard of a sick bee. Ginger I could talk reams about. I put mine together on a cracker with peanut butter.Works for me.
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Oooh ginger…. anything ginger mmmmm!! I must try the ginger/honey/peanut butter combo… when you say cracker do you mean like a cream cracker – a biscuit you’d put cheese on?
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A saltine type cracker but whole wheat.Grated real ginger root and honey.They found honey in the Egyptian tombs that was 5,000 years old but still edible. Honey is good for sores as it is antibacterial.I love the little dance the bees do in the hive that tells the other bees where the pollen is. -40 c here so hope the bees are keeping warm brrrrrrr!
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Gosh -40, brrrr indeed!!! It’s about 4 here. Keep warm!
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Stock up on beer at home for days like this. Like they told me in the Boy Scouts ( be prepared ). What do you get from rubbing noses with loose Eskimo girls?
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Flu?
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Sniffle-is. Hope you got it!
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I had to read it out loud.. and then I got it!
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