Simply Sue: Making Life Easy
Fancy making some bread sauce? Sue Papworth recalls that the first task was to fetch the step ladder from the top landing, carrying it down three flights of stairs.
After the parents retired, they discovered convenience foods.
Pa kept ringing me up, in tones of wonderment. "Did you know," he said, "You can get rice pudding in tins!"
I did know. I'd done the student-bedsit bit and knew
you could get pretty well anything in cans. (The only problem, sometimes
was getting it out of the cans. I was once reduced to opening a tin of peaches
with a trowel - and once, in extremis hurling a tin of Spam at a tree, but
that's another story.)
When he discovered the stock-cube, rather than having to boil a whole
cow for a week, his amazement knew no bounds. But the real revelation was
instant bread sauce.
It certainly beat the last labour-saving method of producing it many years
back. We'd tried it only once. Ma got given an early food processor of amazing cumbersomeness. You screwed all kinds of massive machine-tooled bits onto it to do various tasks.
"Right," said Ma, "we'll make some bread sauce."
And this is how we did it.
First, you had to go up to the top landing and carry down the step-ladders
(three flights of stairs, and down the passage, taking great care not to splinter the top step on the hook in the ceiling at the kitchen end
of the passage for the hanging of hams (currently vacant).
Then you had to winkle them, sideways, into the larder, shin up, shift three
boxes labelled "gas masks" (containing Christmas tree ornaments), a bottle of
Gentian Violet and a gas-mantle off the top shelf, and find the attachment for the grinding of breadcrumbs, which lived in a box labelled "Easter Eggs, 3 Doz".
Shin down, drop gas-mantle, sweep up, wash breadcrumb gizmo, dry same, and discover the little thingy that attaches it to machine is missing.
Turn out entire three drawers of kitchen dresser, hunting thingy. Find
several thingies, which prove to be entirely wrong thingies, most totally unidentifiable. Put them back, just in case.
Identify correct thingy, lug entire machine across kitchen and put on top of fridge by only socket in kitchen, shift toaster over, knock thingy down back of
fridge, shift fridge, retrieve thingy and attach to machine.
Read Machine Instruction Book on Breadcrumbs. Cut crusts off half stale
loaf, cut into even one-inch cubes, drop into attachment, and switch on machine.
Panic. Dive into bottom cupboard of dresser to find bowl to catch crumbs being
hurled out of attachment.
Sweep up fine snowfall of crumbs from floor.
Remove attachment, unscrew thingy and return to drawer saying "must
remember to label this", wash and dry attachment, shin up ladder and return to
box labelled "Easter Eggs, 3Doz", replace boxes labelled "Gas Masks" and bottle of Gentian Violet, gallop back down, lug stepladder down passage past hook and
up three flights of stairs, gallop back down again, shift machine back onto enamel-top table where it usually lives, and forget to plugfridge back in.
Having got the tea-cupful of breadcrumbs, start
making the bread sauce.
