In Good Company: Food For Life
...One delicacy considered good for the constitution and which contains few calories has become a popular feature on our bowling night. I can personally vouch for its energy giving qualities. Battling for the league cup is nearly as exciting as fighting for possession of the communal plate of mixed tripe, provided by our club steward...
Enid Blackburn considers food for life.
How did you feel when you struggled to pull back the curtains this morning? Exhausted after the haul from bed to window? Weary from wincing at the same old view, which in my case is either a workman’s quiff peeping from a 6ft gash in the road, or his drill-happy mate struggling to gain control of his teeth and eyeballs as he clings with both hands to the dithering machine.
What we need is a packet of roast peanuts. Grandpa McKenzie, a 95-year-old Canadian eats 1lb of roasted peanuts every night. He never retires before midnight, smokes like a chimney and drinks a bottle of whisky a week. When he retired 30 years ago he became a part-time accountant; in his spare time he fiddles with the local band. Exercise has never been his strong point he admits. Yet he is reported as having twice the energy of youngsters aged sixty.
More good news to come. Chinese take-aways could be helping to avoid the risk of a heart attack. An American doctor discovered this revelation recently.
When studying the blood taken from a man during an experiment, he found it did not clot normally. When questioned it was revealed that he had just feasted on a plate of hot bean-curd, a common ingredient in Chinese cooking.
Intrigued the doctor had the same Chinese chef whip up a similar meal for other students to try – and as he expected their blood was equally slow to clot.
A fiendishly cunning race the Chinese, they have also been eating a fungus called moyee for centuries, fully aware that it not only contributes to longevity but potency too.
Who can blame them? If it’s efficacious I’ll try anything – well almost. I have never yet been able to look an oyster in the eye and swallow it. Even their legendary aphrodisiac properties cannot alter the unattractiveness of them.
Among my collection of ancient cookery books, I have a recipe for stewed oysters that should prove a stimulating starter for any meal. Printed in 1893 it suggests ‘about three score of oysters’ concluding with a cautionary footnote regarding price. ‘Oysters are so very expensive, try those sent to this country from the United States and Canada in tin cans; which contain about 50 oysters and are sold from 6d to 1s per can.’
In the 19th century appetites must have been extraordinary. In the same book is a recipe for pot-au-feu (stew to you and I) which starts of with ‘Take 4lb of beef . . . .’
One delicacy considered good for the constitution and which contains few calories has become a popular feature on our bowling night. I can personally vouch for its energy giving qualities. Battling for the league cup is nearly as exciting as fighting for possession of the communal plate of mixed tripe, provided by our club steward.
Before I was initiated it always reminded me of the crepe soles on shoes. But eating this quivering delicacy at home is not the same as struggling for a vinegary morsel from the communal plate on Thursday nights. It was the same when one of our players turned up with a gruesome looking bag of tricks called black pudding. We all grimaced and shuddered, yet finished up fighting harder for a slice of this than we had during the match! Washed down with half of lager, most commodities taste unbeatably succulent I find.
I consider myself particularly lucky to have all these health-giving foods, peanuts, pork scratchings, tripe, brewer’s yeast, all at my own local bowling club. When I’ve finished who knows, I may just pop along for a blood-flushing parcel from the oriental establishment on the corner. Good health!
