I was flicking through a women’s magazine in my dentist’s waiting room the other day and the editor had asked this question to a group of celebrities and it got me thinking about the things I couldn’t live without.

Unlike most of the celebrities, whose ideas sounded rather outlandish to me (an endless supply of chocolate, very popular with celebrities, made me smile a bit) my needs are somewhat simpler and more realistic, given that desert islands don’t have electricity, let alone broadband internet.

1. My husband, Jack, is my first selection as I’m sure that between the two of us, we’d make the best of the situation. We’ve weathered quite a few storms together over the years and have complementary skills, which means that we’d soon have a hut in which to live plus a huge beacon fire pile to signal for help. Our ability to laugh with each other would also be essential.
2. A box of matches or some other way of creating a fire, which means that we could cook food, keep warm and alert passing ships or aircraft of our situation.
3. A supply of pencils and paper for us to write down our memories of life before arriving on the desert island and to record our daily life while living on the island. I know that our family would treasure such a written legacy. This exercise would also keep us sane as we remembered different aspects of our lives.
4. A sharp knife would have many uses – scaling and gutting fish, opening shellfish found on the rocks, cutting palm leaves to thatch a roof on our shelter to name but a few.
5. Some books to read. I can’t imagine life without reading and would be bereft without at least one book. If limited to just one book between us, which one would we choose? At a guess, I’d say “Pride and Prejudice” by Jane Austen, which seems as fresh today as it did when it was written. The characters still retain their charm, despite many readings, and I love the double wedding at the end!

During the past 6 months I have had several hospital admissions, which made me cast my mind back to hospitals from the past 50 years or so. Healthcare has changed dramatically over my lifetime and these are some of my observations.

Aunt Ruby as a trainee nurse

Hospital food had a dreadful reputation and many patients refused to eat the meals which were overcooked, watery and often congealed on the plate. Today’s patients are given a menu list of selections to suit all tastes and heath requirements and can even order a glass of wine or beer.

Syringes were made of glass, and both the syringe and the needles were cleaned, sharpened and autoclaved for sterility by nurses. Today’s syringes are made of plastic and both the syringe and the needles are made to be used once and then thrown out. There are even special syringes for taking blood that contain a vacuum, which greatly assists in this procedure.

Bedpans were made of stainless steel, flushed after patient use and then placed in a machine which hygienically washed out the pan and steamed it, ready to be placed on the pan rack for the next patient. Today’s bed pans are made of papier mache and are designed for one use before being  thrown out.

Dressing trays were made of stainless steel, draped with sterile cotton drapes and set with steel gallipots, kidney dishes and instruments such as forceps, scalpel handles and scissors. Today’s dressing trays are made of plastic, with paper drapes and plastic instruments and are designed to be used once and then thrown out.

Hospital beds were made out of cast iron, with a back rest which was pulled out and then screwed into place by the nurse. To elevate the head or foot of the bed involved propping the bed legs on a wooden block and the beds were high to prevent backache for the nursing staff. Today’s electronic beds contain 3 segments which can individually move up or down at the press of a button, and lowered to suit each patient’s needs.

Have you ever been in hospital? How old were you and what do you remember about your hospital stay?

Perhaps you were a nurse and have some wonderful stories of your nursing days – I know I have and my family are urging me to write down these stories of a different era in medical care, which they now find difficult to imagine.

When you are writing your stories, don’t forget to add how you received any surgical scars – perhaps you fell out of a tree or maybe you had a sporting injury or war wound? Behind every scar lies a story!

I have shared some of my ‘then and now’ hospital observations with you and I’d love to hear about your hospital experiences.

Last Sunday we invited a group of friends around for lunch and, just for a bit of fun, I decided to have a seventies theme. I knew that all of our guests would have some memories to share about The Age of Aquarius and that we’d all been living in various countries around the world during that decade.

I offered nuts, olives and an old ‘70’s favourite – a grapefruit studded with cubes of cheese, tiny pickled onions and gherkins and slices of cabana, which brought howls of laughter from our friends. Jack poured beer for the men and we ladies sipped either sherry or vermouth and soda as we started exchanging memories of nearly 40 years ago.

Seating everyone around the table, I served halved avocadoes, filled with prawns and homemade seafood sauce. We talked about such meals as fondue parties, serving the traditional roast dinner to the family(including our parents and in-laws) each Sunday, the introduction of such fast food outlets as Hungry Jacks, Colonel Sander’s Fried Chicken and Pizza Hut to Australia.

Ben talked about working on a kibbutz in Israel as I brought the Beef and Guinness pie to the table and Sue remembered serving gratin potatoes as her ‘dinner party’ potato specialty as I cut slices to serve with the pie. Geraldine talked about the various pies she’d eaten around the UK – Beef and Stilton, Star-Gazy Pies in Cornwall, Chicken and leek pie in Wales and Eel pie in London.

I’d really dithered about what to make for dessert – Australia’s perennial favourite Pavlova with strawberries and passionfruit, Crème Caramel, an old fashioned Sherry Trifle? In the end I decided that a light mousse would be ideal and settled for fresh lemon mousse was preferable to the much richer Chocolate version.

Over coffee we discussed music from the 70’s and favourites ranged from Rod Stewart, Elton John, Abba, Kate Bush, John Denver, Billy Joel, Roberta Flack, Aretha Franklin, Blood, Sweat & Tears, Bread and Neil Diamond. Movies such as ‘Midnight Cowboy’, ‘The Sting’,  ‘Love Story’, ‘Cabaret’, ‘Star Wars’, ‘Rocky’ and ‘Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid’, ‘The Godfather’, ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’ and ‘Catch 22’ were amongst our top films from the decade.  The women recalled wearing Laura Ashley frocks, crocheted vests and chucky shoes, while Jack and Ben talked about such fashion horrors as flares, body shirts, floral ties and ‘Che’ moustaches.

Do you remember the 70’s? Were you at Woodstock or perhaps at the Sunshine Pop Festival in Melbourne? How did you wear your hair? I’d love to hear some of your memories about that decade.

‘It’s beginning to look a bit like Christmas

Ev’rywhere you go’

Do you, like I, remember this 1958 hit for Perry Como?

While out shopping the other day for some gifts for overseas family and friends, I was bombarded with the ‘Christmas is coming’ message’ which seems to get more strident every year. Christmas Carols were being piped through each shop, artificial trees and decorations were attractively displayed and the butcher was advising patrons to ‘order your Christmas ham now!’

In my family, we have usually given gifts of home baked cakes, mince pies and Scottish shortbread to friends and neighbours and each October my mind turns to making lists of dried fruits – sultanas, raisins, cherries and apricots and bottles of brandy with which to macerate the fruit until plump, ready to be added to handed down family recipes for Christmas cakes, puddings and our secret recipe fruit for mince pies and truffles.

Since I was a wee child, I have helped firstly Gran, then Mum with the preparation, baking, storing and wrapping of these family favourites from our kitchen. I have taken a special delight in using these traditional recipes for my own family Christmas celebrations and have revived the process with both of my own children when they were younger, especially having a wish with stirring each pudding and the reward of licking each sticky spoon!

What family traditions have you brought into your family?

Do they originate in your cultural background, like my Scottish shortbread? Do you remember the origins of each much loved recipe?

Have you thought of collecting all of the family favourite Christmas recipes and copying them, accompanied with both a photo of the originator and a story about that person, for the members of your family? I’d love to hear about your family recipes.

Here’s my family Melting Moments recipe to help you start your own traditional recipe book.

Annie’s Best Ever Melting Moments

Ingredients:

250 gm butter

½ cup icing sugar (not mixture)

1 cup SR flour

1 cup cornflour

Pinch of salt

Turn oven on to 160degrees C. Line 3 oven slides with baking paper.

Place butter (at room temperature) and icing sugar into bowl of food processor and whiz for a few seconds. Add other ingredients and whiz until mixture forms a ball around the blade. Using a teaspoon, roll small amount of mixture into a ball and place on lined baking tray. When tray is full, pour a little cornflour into a saucer and dip a fork into the cornflour before pressing down on the balls of mixture to flatten slightly.

Bake in oven for approx 15 minutes (don’t let them brown!). Cool on tray for 5 minutes before removing to a cooling rack.

Filling:

1 passionfruit

1 cup (or more) sifted icing sugar

1 tbsp butter

hot water.

Place butter and icing sugar in a small bowl and with a balloon whisk beat until butter disappears into the mixture. Add passionfruit pulp and stir again. If mixture is too stiff & unwieldy, add a tiny amount of hot water.

Spread the icing mixture onto the unmarked side of the biscuit and place another on top, squeezing slightly until icing mixture fills the space between the two biscuits. Leave for about 30 minutes, until icing had set and firmed.

Store in an airtight container.

Tips: can also make the icing either lemon or lime by finely grating the rind of a lemon or lime and adding the juice until the mixture forms. I have also used chocolate, coffee or victoria (using sherry as the liquid) icing, but I prefer the tartness of passionfruit!

Little Miss Ruby and koala

We always had these for afternoon tea when I was a little girl in Brisbane. The passionfruit vine grew over the outside toilet at our Clayfield house, so we had them on everything!

At Christmas time, Gran used to tie a cellophane bundle of Melting Moments, tied to a bottle of beer, as a gift of appreciation for the postman, milk man, green grocer, baker and the garbage collectors.

Why not share your family recipes, Christmas memories with us? I would love to hear from you.

Recently I have been reviewing my life and trying to identify various themes, important events, influential people or mentors and life-defining choices. My family are very keen for me to write about my life and sometimes I’m not sure just how to get started.

I don’t want to bore my future descendents with a history filled with trivial details: I want them to learn from my mistakes and to recognise similar characteristics within themselves.

Several friends suggested I use a Timeline to help me sort my life experiences into manageable portions and I searched for something suitable via the internet. However, I found it simplest to use a notebook and pencil.

This is what I did:

• Starting on the first page of my notebook, I wrote the year that I was born. On the second page, I wrote the year that I was one, and so on throughout the book right up to my current age (I’m as old as my tongue and a little older than my teeth!).
• Every day or two, I’d flip through the notebook and select a couple of years on which to focus my memory. I carried the notebook with me as I focussed my thoughts on 1957, asking myself those who, what, where, why type questions about my life, family and circle of friends during that year. Where were we living? What type of car did we have? Who was my best friend? Once I had the answer to my questions, I quickly wrote down those points on the appropriate page in my notebook.
• When I caught up with family or friends, I’d take out my notebook and ask them questions about some of the blank areas or years. Is 1961 a bit hazy because I went to stay with my grandparents as Mum was in a car accident? Which year did we go to Disneyland for a family holiday?
• Once I felt I had exhausted my memory bank, I tore out all of the pages and placed them chronologically on the dining table. Firstly I went through them looking for milestone events which had occurred and I made a list of those dates and details.
• Continuing, I looked for the mentors in my life, lifetime themes, choices I’d made (both good and bad) and again noted the years and details, which provided me with a) a good idea of where to start writing my life story and b) the areas where I needed to do more background research.

Like many people, I don’t want to start my story, like Dickens did in David Copperfield, “I was born with a caul around my head…..,” however the Timeline has given me several good openings, some sound ideas for different chapters and even a thought or two about how to end my story, given that I live long enough to tell my life story in my own words.

Have you thought of starting a Timeline as a way of sorting through your life time of memories?

How do you identify which incidents you want to write about and those you should omit? Let me know how you tackle this subject as I’m sure many of us just don’t know how to ‘get started.’

Last week Jack and I drove out to the Chittering Valley, where the friendly people at Golden Grove citrus orchards picked 6 kilos of magnificent Seville oranges for us. As we drove home, the car was filled with the glorious scent of fresh citrus and we both inhaled deeply, imagining the marmalade already on our breakfast toast.

Today we cooked the last batch of oranges into marmalade, a process I have observed and in which I have participated all of my life. All of the women in my family have been careful housewives, making jams, jellies, marmalades, pickles, chutneys and relish from whatever excess fruit or vegetables came from the home garden.

It has always given me a great feeling of satisfaction to open my pantry door and offer a friend or visitor a jar or pot of jam or chutney. Somehow food always tastes better when you know that the fruit has been cut and stirred by hand and then bottled with love and a sense of pride in a job well done.

Here is the Seville Marmalade recipe, for you to try on some hot toast, in a bread and butter pudding or smeared over browned lamb shanks before baking for several hours in a low over.

Seville Marmalade (courtesy of David Herbert)

1 kilo (2 lbs) of Seville Oranges                 2 kilos (4 lbs) sugar

juice of 1 large lemon                                  1 tablespoon treacle

Wash oranges & place in large pan with 2 litres water. Bring to the boil & simmer gently for 2 hours (or until peel may be pierced with a fork). Remove from pan, reserving cooking liquid. When cool, quarter each orange & cut each segment into fine shreds, saving the juices and the pips (tie these in a piece of muslin). Place a saucer in the freezer.

Return cooking liquid to the pan, over a medium heat, adding the saved juices, the lemon juice and the muslin bag of pips. Reduce liquid by a third, remove the muslin bag of pips, add the chopped fruit and boil until reduced by a third.

Place clean jars into a medium oven, in a roasting pan. Add the sugar to the fruit, stirring well to dissolve the sugar. Increase the heat & boil rapidly for 20 minutes before starting to test of setting point. To test for setting point, drop a spoonful of marmalade onto the chilled saucer and allow to cool. If the jam forms a skin & wrinkles when pushed with a finger, it has reached setting point. Remove pan from heat when testing. Allow jam to cool slightly, stir in the treacle and pour mixture into the hot, sterilised jars. Seal and store the marmalade.

What is your favourite homemade jam recipe? Do you still use a recipe passed down from Gran?

Please forward your favourite jam or marmalade recipe to me.

This week I have been thinking back on my earlier blogs about love letters (I guess I’m just an old romantic a heart!) because my niece, Taff, asked me whether or not she should be saving her emails? “Of course you should, my dear girl,” was my immediate response and then I set my brain to working out just how to go about this task.

Preserving a digital object is not like preserving a book, photograph or document. You can place a book, say, on a shelf for 50 years and, if kept dry, it will last. The same can’t be said about a digital object, which is why digital objects like emails could be considered more delicate than physical ones.

I think of Emails as being ‘At Risk’ documents, often recording a very personal side of a person’s life history, as they reveal much about human nature, at that tiny instant in time. In today’s hectic lifestyle, they are the major source of communication (especially to Gen Y and X aged folk) and are a direct record of many people’s lives.  I believe that if Taff and her friends don’t start preserving their special emails now, much of their personal history will be lost.

Preserving Emails

Emails should be saved and managed just like any other important digital file. Save them on a hard drive as simple text (some people also store them onto a disk), making sure to capture the header information. Taff also asked her boss about whether the company had a policy about saving work-relate emails.

We spent a little money buying some different coloured, acid free papers, which she used to print off the personal emails, which she now has stored in archival quality document boxes. I guess that she is also a romantic as I noticed that she had tied a different coloured ribbon around the Mylar protective sheets enclosing ‘love-mails’ from different beaus! Maybe I’ll do the same with Jack’s love letters one day……..

Which letters or emails do you want to save? Where do you keep them? Do you have some letters from your parents or grandparents, perhaps from earlier beaus? Do let me know the types of letters you want to preserve!

As a strong letter writer in my younger days, I have accumulated a stash of letters over my lifetime that I just can’t part with! My collection contains letters from family and friends long gone, who have penned chronicles of their day to day lives, special events and people or places they have seen. Some are intimate love letters, some are from sweethearts from the war front, and others tell of surviving the Great Depression…………………

A letter is a precious thing, a first-hand account of another person’s innermost thoughts at a given moment of time; a tangible record of direct, open communication between the writer and the reader.

A letter travels some distance from the author to the recipient, the envelope plastered with stamps, perhaps franked with the names of faraway places. Your letter is able to pass through time zones, across borders, sometimes via air or sea……..travelling from distant places I have only heard about! Words travel well, tucked safely inside their snug envelope, and often the receiver will take a few moments to sit down in a quiet place, perhaps with a cup of tea, before slitting open the envelope to read the precious contents.

Do you have a sense of anticipation when you hold the envelope in your hand – does it contain good, much anticipated news, or maybe bad, or sad, news? Perhaps you sniff the envelope to gain a quick scent of the origin of the writer, or maybe the envelope has a lipstick-stained kiss on it or the initials S.W.A.L.K.

Letter writers carefully select the words used in a handwritten letter as they seem to carry more weight that an impersonal typed letter. Reading words that have been scratched into the page or perhaps blurred when tears made the ink run really has a different kind of emotional impact on the reader. Consider also, the difference between a letter handwritten with violet or sepia ink to one printed via a modern digital printer.

All of my letters were previously gathered together in different sized bundles and tied together with various coloured ribbons, but, once my family realised what a treasure trove I had tucked away in assorted shoe and glove boxes, they insisted that each letter be placed into a Mylar protective sheet and stored in archival boxes as part of our collective family heritage. I am so delighted that they are interested in my earlier days, my travels and friends, and do understand that damp and silverfish could damage them.

I urge you to make a start on sorting through your letters and preserving them as a legacy of family heritage. Let me know about some of YOUR special letters!

I was out at lunch the other day in a friend’s home when most of the table gasped in unison! Bill, an old dear friend, declared that he would give his ‘right arm’ for just one love letter from his recently deceased wife Jessie. He wanted tangible proof of their love!

Although having been school sweethearts, and married for 47 years, he said that Jessie had never written of her love or feelings for him in a letter. Bill told us that such a letter would now be his most treasured possession; now that Jessie was no longer beside him.

This made me think about the kind of loving communication between couples of the Gen X, Y, Z generations – sending text messages in strange symbols, or speedy emails and quick phone calls; none of which you can take out to re-read over and over again.

I wondered whether the gentle art of expressing our most intimate thoughts and feelings by writing them down in a letter to the person we love and cherish is as old fashioned as high-buttoned boots?

How many of us take the time to sit down and write a letter from the depths of our heart to the ones we love – a REAL love letter (the kind that crooners sang about when I was a young thing), on special paper and in our own handwriting?

Here are my ideas for writing your own love letter:

• Practice on a spare sheet of paper first;
• Place a photo of your loved one nearby for inspiration;
• Start slowly by writing down everything you feel in your heart; you can always edit later;
• Write at least three things that you especially love about her/him;
• Always end with your thoughts and hopes for the future;
• Re-write your love letter on special paper (look for acid free to last forever), in your own handwriting, for both first and lasting impact.

You know, love letters are not just for young, courting couples. They are a very personal way to rekindle the romance in a marriage after the ecstatic highs of the honeymoon phase have dwindled into the ‘ho-hum’ of everyday routine.

Remember, the letter you carefully write with love today, can end up becoming a treasured personal keepsake.

Maybe I’ll write one for Bill!

I have had yet another busy week in my family story keeper role, when I wandered down ‘memory lane’ as I sorted through my linen cupboard (a chore I have been putting off for quite a while). However, I find the Australian winter an ideal time to sort through and re-assess many of my family belongings, now that I am getting older.

I began with the serviettes (or you may call them napkins) and found some of my parent’s beautiful damask linen 15″ squares, and was reminded of whitening them with lemon juice and starching them with Star Starch. We all had our own serviette ring at our family dinner table when I was a child.

Then I found several sets of placemats and matching serviettes that I had embroidered at school to place in my Hope Chest, along with over a dozen embroidered huckaback hand towels and initialled handkerchiefs – I think the Sisters of Mercy hoped we’d all enter the convent!

I came across a cache of dressing table sets (1 large oval or square cloth and 2 smaller circular cloths), tray cloths, mats to place the bread board & carving tray, smaller cloths for cake plates & sandwich trays and even crocheted covers for sauce bottles! My goodness, we did make a lot of washing and ironing for ourselves, didn’t we? Some of these I’d made before I married and others were made by my mother, sisters and family as gifts (home-sewn gifts were highly prized when I was a young lady).

Right down on the second to bottom shelves, under the sheets, were several pairs of pillow shams, which Mum had embroidered and Nan had crocheted around the edges. They were so beautiful, I have decided to place them on my bed for the first time in years, when I am reminded of both Mum and Nan daily. There were also about six pairs of embroidered pillow slips and some darling, tiny baby pillow slips & bibs which I made for my children.

The family Christening gown lies in its box, protected by tissue paper, ready for the next generation of infants in our family, along with a tiny gossamer bonnet from the mid 1850’s. I handled these treasures carefully and lying them back in their protective box reverently, aware of the 70+ tiny infants who have worn these items, hand stitched with such love and tenderness, though the subsequent generations.

What treasures lie in your linen cupboard?

Is your cupboard filled with family heirlooms, stitched carefully with love for your mother’s Glory Box? Do you have a collection of family aprons through the ages – what stories could they tell about the everyday life of the woman who wore them daily?

Don’t just discard these old remnants for an earlier age – get them out, talk to your mother and female relatives to discover the stories attached to all of these memorable pieces of your heritage.