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Themes: Food and Drink
http://www.the-cbb.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4442

Author:  Róisín [ Wed Apr 30, 2008 5:16 pm ]
Post subject:  Themes: Food and Drink

Both food and drink play very prominent roles in the CS books. It could be said that food is practically a character in itself!

But does this have significance thematically? Is it a result of wartime deprivation, or is it there to emphasise the 'exotic' or the foreign setting of the books? Some food is compulsory for the girls, while other forms are forbidden (eg milk vs midnight feasts). In some situations, food is the metaphor used for more serious emotion.

Did all the food strike you as odd as a child/ when you first read the books? Does it now? Do you enjoy it or does it put you off? Do you think that all this food is *necessary* in the books?

Please go ahead and raise any discussion points you like below, to do with the theme of Food and Drink in the books :D

Author:  Emma A [ Wed Apr 30, 2008 5:27 pm ]
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Reading the books now as an adult, I'm always surprised by the amount of whipped cream on everything, and often (at least in the Swiss books, particularly), the sheer richness of the available food. It always amazes me that most of the mistresses and girls are not waddling around or bouncing around on sugar highs!

Some of the things they cook in Domestic Science lessons seem a bit utilitarian - rechauffee, for example, sounds a bit dull, yet I seem to remember that its cooking takes up about half the chapter in Exploits. And as for the garlic clove incident - surely Frau Mieders could have seen, even if not smelled, that they were not cloves?

Author:  Maeve [ Wed Apr 30, 2008 5:40 pm ]
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I can't recall any particular reaction as a child -- I suppose it was part of the exoticness of the books along with the setting and the multi-lingualness. What strikes me as an adult, though, is how samey the meals are. They always seem to be having stuffed veal and apfeltorte and potato balls (forget what those are called) and homemade lemonade, as if Karen has nothing else in her repertoire.

That being said, I'd love to a coffee with a featherbed of cream and fresh bread rolls with firm, ivory butter and black cherry jam!

Author:  Mel [ Wed Apr 30, 2008 6:37 pm ]
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I remember reading once in a critique of Children's Literature that food was the metaphor for sex in books for the young. Does that tell us something about EBD? Her love scenes are awful, but her descriptions of food are mouth-watering! It amuses me in the books that too many sweets are frowned on, yet sweet food, jam etc is fine! Joey (and therefore anyone sensitive/lady-like) hates fat in most forms and yet happily scoffs fried food, pastries, butter and cream! Food is used lavishly for celebrations and the cookery lessons are described in great detail so the message seems to be that food is very important.

Author:  Dreaming Marianne [ Wed Apr 30, 2008 6:47 pm ]
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She uses, IMHO, the "mistaken ingredient" plot line too often - and not convivncingly, I think. The clove one, for example, is just a bit silly, and I found the one where they mix up the fat for cooking doughnuts in just a bit silly - hang on - isn't saffron mixed up as well - that makes three - are there any others?

Chalet food never really appealed to me, largely I think because they never seem to eat fruit or vegetables!

Author:  Maeve [ Wed Apr 30, 2008 6:53 pm ]
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Isn't someone given something ghastly like tripe when they are sick? Eew-ew!

Author:  Fi [ Wed Apr 30, 2008 7:08 pm ]
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I love my coffee but I think that the amount that the staff and pupils seem to drink throughout the day seems a bit extreme. It's surprising that there weren't more insomniacs in the school as they must all have been high as kites on the vast quantities of caffeine that they imbibed.

As a child (and I still haven't changed my opinion), I thought that the idea of breaking bread into coffee was disgusting.

Maeve wrote:
Isn't someone given something ghastly like tripe when they are sick? Eew-ew!

I agree! Mind you It must have been a good deterrent for malingerers. I would never pull a sickie if that was on the menu.

Author:  Lesley [ Wed Apr 30, 2008 9:11 pm ]
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Well if I had been malingering and they gave me tripe I would genuinely be very ill then! :lol:

Author:  Lisa_T [ Wed Apr 30, 2008 10:28 pm ]
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Tripe is a very good, solid, nutritious food.





For dogs. :lol: :lol: :lol:

Actually, I don't think the caffeine would have hurt them. It's not double espressos every time, or even a cappuccino. It's very milky coffee... latte, perhaps? Or even au lait. I can't see either of those causing sleeplessness, and it is combined with drinks of milk as well. And I rather think the cream cakes are exceptional treats rather than everyday food.

Quote:
hey always seem to be having stuffed veal and apfeltorte and potato balls


This could be translated, in an English environment, to roast beef and spuds with apple tart or Eve's pudding for afters. I don't think it's that exotic, but oh, it sounds so much nicer! Personally, I'd rather have those potato ball things (I always imagine them as being more spherical versions of Bird's Eye potato fritters) than the over-cooked roast potatoes we had on Sundays at school.

And I did notice when in Florence last week that even now, much of this rich food is simply normal in Europe.

Author:  Alison H [ Wed Apr 30, 2008 11:02 pm ]
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The first time I went to Austria I was expecting the coffee to have some kind of magical powers and induce some kind of nirvana-like state and was rather disappointed when, although it was very nice, it didn't :lol: . Incidentally, was there any logical reason why they didn't have tea at the Swiss branch? Was it to force people to go round to Freudesheim for Joey's afternoon tea parties because it was the only way to get a cup of tea?

There is a lot of talk about food (personally I love cream so I love all the whipped cream talk!) in the CS books, but Enid Blyton's books are the same - people at Malory Towers are obsessed with midnight feasts, and the Famous Five are always having ginger beer and macaroons.

In the early books I think it's partly to emphasise the Continental setting of the books - Joey is bemused to be asked if she wants tea with lemon or rum rather than with milk, Grizel is not used to being abroad and doesn't know the names of the food whereas the Bettanys do, etc. Maybe later it's more to do with the wartime/post-wartime rationing issue.

Given EBD's generally condescending attitude towards the domestic staff, it's interesting that she always emphasises what strong characters and good cooks Marie and Karen are. The maids and the "handymen" are generally shown as being "stupid peasant" types, but the cooks are super-brilliant at their jobs :D . Maybe it's just because the job of cook and the job of head of the domestic staff went together.

And I suppose it was all the long walks but, oh to be able to eat all those cakes and all the rest of it and still be as slim as most of them seemed to be!

Author:  Tara [ Wed Apr 30, 2008 11:42 pm ]
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It's the sheer quantity that always amazes me. The amount they take on picnics (and have, therefore, to carry!) would keep them going for a week. Again, though, it's very typical of the books of EBD's early years, they're all quite lavish. Actually, looking back at Christmas meals, for example, when I was young, we did eat a lot - and we weren't well off at all, my mother did a great deal of scrimping and going without.The actual foreigness I loved (despite hating milk and cream!), it did seem very exotic, and it was much more 'different' in those days than it is in our homogenous present when you can buy most of it in the local supermarket.

Author:  Lisa_T [ Thu May 01, 2008 12:08 am ]
Post subject: 

Quote:
it was much more 'different' in those days than it is in our homogenous present when you can buy most of it in the local supermarket.


Apart from the pastries and buns, of course. Every time I'm in Europe I invariably find myself outside a patisserie or pasticceria and drooling. Not always because I want the food but simply because it looks so nice and pretty and artistic! And then you come home and walk into your local bakery and all you get is rows of gravy rings and wheaten leavened (no pun intended) by the odd croissant. :roll: :roll: So I think that even for people discovering the CS for the first time in 2008, the food is sufficiently different (especially in a boarding school context) for it to be a bit of a thrill. There's a lot of food in Harry Potter too, but some of it is literally magical, so you can't really draw a direct comparison.

The CS probably weren't that far off re all the milk and cream anyway. The press is always saying how important milk is for young girls in particular. Which makes me wonder, did the School keep a cow or three hidden somewhere? Because surely even the locals couldn't generate enough milk to supply a community of around 300 (including the staff) plus the San.

Author:  Lesley [ Thu May 01, 2008 3:49 am ]
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I think the School did have a cow (or possibly more than one!) during the War years. For the rest - the Swiss years makes a lot of mention of the many hotels in the region so I expect they had more than enough supplies to go round.

Author:  JayB [ Thu May 01, 2008 9:57 am ]
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I was re-reading Richenda the other day. Nanny gives Richenda tinnned apricots with ice cream or cream as a treat. That took me right back to my childhood; tinned apricots (or peaches) and cream would have been a treat for us too - although not so much when we were in our teens, probably. It made me realise how we take for granted the much greater variety of food available these days. Fresh fruit and veg year round, for example.

It must have been quite difficult to get fresh fruit and veg up on the Platz. We don't hear of them growing their own, as they did in the War years. I can't imagine enough was grown on the Platz to meet the needs of the School and San and all the hotels and pensions, and it would have been quite expensive to have large quantities brought up from Interlaken.

Author:  Alison H [ Thu May 01, 2008 10:44 am ]
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There's a reference somewhere to Karen getting vegetables from a local supplier but, as you say, there's no way that there can have been enough fresh stuff grown at the Platz to supply both the school and the San.

There are also mentions of Karen (I hope she got paid for all the overtime but I bet she didn't!) spending ages in the summer pickling and bottling fruit. Reminds me of when we were kids and we used to have days out at one of those "pick your own fruit" places and then my grandma used to make loads of jam and all sorts of other things ... :D . I can remember my grandparents (I don't think they ever got over rationing!) storing onions and various other things in the garage for use later in the year: they probably had things in storage at the school.

I'd still like to know why they didn't have tea at the school in Switzerland ...

Author:  JayB [ Thu May 01, 2008 10:58 am ]
Post subject: 

Quote:
I'd still like to know why they didn't have tea at the school in Switzerland ...

A case of 'when in Rome', probably - just as they have Continental breakfast, rather than 'full English'. And would 'English' tea, in the quantities needed to serve it to the school, have been easily obtainable in Switzerland in the early fifties?

Author:  Alison H [ Thu May 01, 2008 11:10 am ]
Post subject: 

I still think it was a conspiracy by Joey to make people to round to hers for afternoon tea - I bet no-one would have gone if they hadn't been desperate for a cup of tea :lol: .

Author:  Lolly [ Thu May 01, 2008 11:31 am ]
Post subject: 

Fi wrote:
As a child (and I still haven't changed my opinion), I thought that the idea of breaking bread into coffee was disgusting.

.


I did too until I went on a French exchange where I was initially horrified to see the whole family dunking croissants and bread into bowls of cafe au lait...but actually it's very nice - even for a milk hater like me

*ETA that when I lived in Switzerland we all used to bring over the biggest bags of 'English Tea' that we could every time we went home...by the end of the season you could practically use teabags as currency amongst all the English/Aussie/Kiwi staff - European tea is VILE*

Author:  Kadi [ Thu May 01, 2008 12:21 pm ]
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I don't think I would have done well at the CS. I am allergic to both milk and caffeine.

Author:  JayB [ Thu May 01, 2008 12:46 pm ]
Post subject: 

Alison H wrote:
I still think it was a conspiracy by Joey to make people to round to hers for afternoon tea - I bet no-one would have gone if they hadn't been desperate for a cup of tea :lol: .

I think I'd have managed to do without the tea if I had to put up with being jumped on and slobbered over by an enormous, badly trained dog in order to get it.

Nowadays of course the mistresses and probably the prefects too would have their own electric kettles and secret stashes of tea bags in their rooms.

Author:  Jennie [ Thu May 01, 2008 1:33 pm ]
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Presumably the staff all had trunks which they sent home and then sent back, using packets of tea as padding for the delicate items.

Author:  Luisa [ Thu May 01, 2008 3:00 pm ]
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Amazing what ex-pats will yearn for. We have to take vast quantities of English tea to the Netherlands, and we are now getting requests for mint sauce and Gentlemen's Relish (but not together)

Author:  evelyn38 [ Thu May 01, 2008 3:28 pm ]
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I loved the sound of the food when I was a kid - because it was different/exotic, I think - but as an adult, like Tara, I am amazed at the quantity they get through; three decent meals and 2 hefty snacks every day. There is also the presumption that if they don't get elevenses on time, something really bad will happen to them :lol:

The thing that really bothered me re-reading the books recently was "a boiled egg broken over breadcrumbs". What is that ??

Oh, and if you have been out really late/delayed/stressed in some way, why do you have to eat a "light" meal in bed. eg omelette and pudding, before going straight to sleep. Don't they get indigestion ??

Actually this is a very interesting subject :)

Author:  Dawn [ Thu May 01, 2008 3:38 pm ]
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Tara wrote:
It's the sheer quantity that always amazes me. The amount they take on picnics (and have, therefore, to carry!) would keep them going for a week.


I have 3 teenagers - Jess has never had a massive appetite, but eats well. The boys :roll: Matty ate 10 slices of pizza hut pizza in 20 minutes the other day because they had to get some lunch in a hurry and he was hungry....
And I know some teenage girls who just eat non stop - my best friend at school was stick thin and could out eat me any day


As for the tripe - when my nan lived with us, it was a real treat for her to have it, my mother hated having to cook it for her. And it was recommended as ideal for invalid diets when I did domestic science in the mid 1970s.

Author:  Karry [ Thu May 01, 2008 3:41 pm ]
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Wasnt it Mary-Lou who was fed tripe? There is a fish and chip shop near me that still does tripe and onions. My dad used to like it, mind you, he also liked calves' brains on toast!

Author:  Sunglass [ Thu May 01, 2008 10:39 pm ]
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As a vegetarian, I was always amused by the 'famine' episode in one of the Swiss books where bad weather means that meat runs out and they have to eat vegetables and small amounts of scrambled eggs for a couple of days. It's one of the few times we ever hear the suggestion of any real criticism of CS food, where the girls notice the lack of meat and the continual appearance of vegetables (for all of a day and a half).

But I suppose the emphasis on meat is a sign of the modernity of the CS - girls' stories from not all that much earlier saw meat as unsuitable food for adolescent girls. Also it's a sign of the CS's prosperity at a time when meat was expensive prestige food. There was a plot point in What Katy Did At School about the school feeding the girls cheap pudding as a first course at meals, to fill them up inexpensively ahead of the meat dish.

Author:  Pado [ Thu May 01, 2008 11:20 pm ]
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They do seem to eat quite a bit, but I wonder if the portion sizes were considerably smaller in those days?

I recently visited an exhibit of Presidential china and was fascinated to see how the plate size has increased over the years. (Granted, US portion sizes do much to explain US people sizes, but my assumption is that a similar increase has also occurred in Europe over the years.)

So if all of those "sandwiches" taken on picnics aren't actually full size sandwiches but smaller ones (tea sandwiches?) and the salad containers are equivalent to my very smallest tupperware snack size container, it might actually be a manageable portion.

Author:  Lisa_T [ Fri May 02, 2008 1:04 am ]
Post subject: 

Luisa wrote:
Amazing what ex-pats will yearn for. We have to take vast quantities of English tea to the Netherlands, and we are now getting requests for mint sauce and Gentlemen's Relish (but not together)


When my brother was in the States for a year, my parents used to regularly post out care-packs that included bread, baked beans, and chocolate. I always found that very funny, since America is so often stigmatised as a land of gastronomic excess!

Re portions, I noticed tonight while reading New Mistress that a full meal comprised 'creamy soup' followed by veal rolls and then pudding. Even when the mention the potato fritter things it always sounds like arty restaurant portions - a sliver of meat and three artistically arranged potato balls, complete with obligatory 'piquant' sauce. Plus, with all those walks and hikes and the size of the school physically, they'd have been burning a fair number of calories.

Author:  Miss Di [ Fri May 02, 2008 3:20 am ]
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I always think of the golden fried potato balls as 'noisy englishmen' (pommes noisettes gedit?) - is that what they are or are they more like chips?

Never liked the sound of the pies in jelly, yuk.

Author:  Liz K [ Fri May 02, 2008 5:30 am ]
Post subject: 

evelyn38 wrote:
The thing that really bothered me re-reading the books recently was "a boiled egg broken over breadcrumbs". What is that ??


Yes, this always puzzled me too.

Author:  Elle [ Fri May 02, 2008 6:17 am ]
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Miss Di wrote:


Never liked the sound of the pies in jelly, yuk.



I always assumed they were similar to pork pies, which have that manky jelly in them... Therefore I assume I would hate them too!

Author:  jennifer [ Fri May 02, 2008 6:41 am ]
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For me when I read the books I find the descriptions of some of the British food to be as exotic as the descriptions of Austrian and Swiss food. Things like rice pudding, kippers, Welsh cakes, gooseberries, or bread and milk suppers line up nicely against veal and cheese soup for exoticness. The continental breakfast of rolls, jam and coffee is certainly much more familiar to me than the concept of having oatmeal, kippers and fried bread first thing in the morning, or kedgeree, prunes and custard as an invalid snack.

I pictured the potato balls being mashed potatoes, moulded into a sphere and deep fried. When I was a kid, we'd use up leftover mashed potatoes by forming them into patties and frying them, so I imagine this would be similar.

It's interesting what you crave when you're away from home. I get care packages of spices. The things I crave but have trouble getting are good dark or rye bread, good stinky cheese and good, hoppy beer. I also have occasional cravings for sun dried tomatoes, deli olives, artichokes in any form, and zucchini.

Author:  JS [ Fri May 02, 2008 8:19 am ]
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Evelyn wrote
Quote:
The thing that really bothered me re-reading the books recently was "a boiled egg broken over breadcrumbs". What is that ??



I'd imagine it would be similar to what in our family we call a 'chappit egg'. I suppose it might mean 'chopped' but I don't think that gets the full sense of it - chappit somehow sounds more liquidy. You boil an egg for around three and a half minutes, then (and this is the hard bit because it's hot!) peel it quickly then put it in a cup and sort of beat it with a teaspoon. We would tend to have it with a piece of toast but you could easily have some breadcrumbs in the cup instead. One eats it with a spoon.

Author:  JayB [ Fri May 02, 2008 10:15 am ]
Post subject: 

Quote:
Plus, with all those walks and hikes and the size of the school physically, they'd have been burning a fair number of calories.


And their main meals are quite well spaced out, aren't they? Breakfast around 7.30, lunch at - what, 12.30 or 1.00? Then supper at 7.00. They'd need a snack in between.

I think it's recommended that people don't go more than three or four hours - forget which - without eating at least a snack, in order to stop blood sugar levels plummeting. I think the girls would need to be fed regularly, in order to keep up the level of concentration that's expected in lessons and prep.

Author:  Lisa_T [ Fri May 02, 2008 12:23 pm ]
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Actually, my own food at boarding school in the 90s in terms of meals was very similar to the CS:

7.30- Breakfast. This could be toast and yoghurt, or the works of toast, cereal, and cooked food. Fishfingers was a Thursday option and beloved by nearly everyone, much to the bemusement of outsiders. Milk, tea, coffee and orange juice. Always water too, obviously.

10.30 - break. In fifth form they changed the timetable so that lunch was later, so we started actually getting a 'proper' break instead of just buying junk from the tuck shop. Milk (full cream, too), tea and coffee on offer.

1.10 - Lunch. Main meal of the day. No three courses for us, though, and when I was there they were still rather light on the soup and salad options. Much better now though. Still a hefty feed if you had the main course and dessert and then cleaned your plate. And went up for seconds. Except for 'hunger lunch' for charity when we did get soup. But that was all. Just water to drink.

4.00 Afternoon tea. Milk, tea and coffee to drink, plus a range of very English accompaniments - eccles cakes, fruit cake, flapjacks (the flapjacks were just out of the oven, still hot... scrummy).. Not all on the same day though! Also loved the fruit cake which was the dark, rich fruity kind.

6.00 Supper. This varied. Often with chips. Sometimes it was leftovers from lunch. It was supposed to be a smaller meal - served on smaller plates - but if you had seconds it wasn't! Milk and water on offer for drinking.

9.00 For the girls up to 5th form, Suchard's hot chocolate and biscuits. When they started doing this, I was a sixth former and had the run of the kitchens in the sixth form block, but some of us used to walk over to the girls' boarding house just for the chocolate.

....so really, CS was probably quite moderate, and wouldn't have served a lot of the junk type food that we got, even if they did have creamy sauces or whipped cream. Swings and roundabouts, I think...

Author:  Sunglass [ Fri May 02, 2008 12:47 pm ]
Post subject: 

Lisa_T wrote:
Actually, my own food at boarding school in the 90s in terms of meals was very similar to the CS:

...
1.10 - Lunch. Main meal of the day. No three courses for us, though, and when I was there they were still rather light on the soup and salad options. Much better now though. Still a hefty feed if you had the main course and dessert and then cleaned your plate. And went up for seconds. Except for 'hunger lunch' for charity when we did get soup. But that was all. Just water to drink.



Did you find having your main meal in the middle of the day, with an afternoon of lessons to follow, a bit immobilising? I increasingly find that if I eat much starch, or anything heavy at all at midday, that half of the afternoon is lost to digestion and somnolence. Which is clearly why I'm trying to coast on through today without eating, as a better alternative - as having just come back, there's nothing in the fridge but a Sancerre and pasta!

On a more CS note, though, I suppose having a post-Mittagessen rest would have helped with that. I don't think I'd have much enjoyed the CS food, apart from the omnipresent coffee - even if I weren't vegetarian, I'm not at all sweet-toothed or keen on starchy food or creamy things, and one never hears a great deal about green vegetables, or in fact vegetables at all other than potato balls! As a huge cheese enthusiast, it does occur to me that other than the odd fondue blow-out on an excursion, very little cheese is mentioned in the CS, even in the Austrian and Swiss books.

Author:  Lisa_T [ Fri May 02, 2008 1:12 pm ]
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We had a very long lunch period - if you were in the Sixth and had no lessons before lunch, you could go at 12.50. Afternoon registration was at 2pm, and assembly started at 2.10, if I remember right, and finished at 2.30. I might have my times a bit out, but not by much, so I suppose to all intents and purposes we had a 'rest period' before actually having to do any work. It's interesting you say that though, because the reason they changed the timetable so that there was only one double lesson after lunch was because the pundits were saying that people didn't work well on an empty stomach. Therefore, instead of having a two - three - three breakdown, we ended up with a two - four - two structure to the day.

..and you're right about the cheese!!! How odd.

Author:  Bethannie [ Sun May 04, 2008 6:07 pm ]
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I am German on my mother's side, and have always felt I'd be at home with the chalet cuisine - although it does seem boring and repetative at times.

I have had a roll broken into a bowl of milky coffee - quite often. But I never put jam on the roll first! Just the roll, brioche is yummy, pulled, or cut if you must! into small pieces and put ina bowl with coffee and eaten with a spoon. You should try it!

I often wondered why the chalet girls eat so much veal. I know it was more common back then, but Austria and Switzerland do eat other meats! I think that EBD was somewhat limited in her food vocabulary. When the girls have rolls, they are filled with ham or meat ( or sometimes just lettuce?!), I'm sure this would be lots of lovely varieties of Aufschnitt (cold sliced meats).

I prefer to eat my main meal at mid-day and then have a lighter Abendessen. As a child this was normal practice and it's always been the way I prefer to eat.

Author:  Róisín [ Sun May 04, 2008 9:07 pm ]
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On the practical side of things, the production of vast quantities of milk has the byproduct of vast quantities of veal. And we know the first was encouraged - so perhaps the second as a choice was economical?

Author:  Pat [ Sun May 04, 2008 9:55 pm ]
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Maybe there was also the practical consideration that EBD was remembering what she's had to eat during her trip to the Achensee, and the veal stood out as something she hadn't had at home. As time went by she forgot the rest apart from those crispy potatoes that were fluffy in the middle!!!!

Author:  Sugar [ Sun May 04, 2008 10:13 pm ]
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Pat wrote:
Maybe there was also the practical consideration that EBD was remembering what she's had to eat during her trip to the Achensee, and the veal stood out as something she hadn't had at home. As time went by she forgot the rest apart from those crispy potatoes that were fluffy in the middle!!!!


I'd agree with that! When we went to Lithuania we were bombarded with food( family and food go together!) and looking back now there are certain foods that stand out as different and are the things I crave but other things have been relegated to the recesses of my mind. Strangely the things I first think of aren't the stereotypical stuff so maybe that was the case with EBD.

Author:  Sunglass [ Thu May 08, 2008 4:58 pm ]
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One food and drink matter occurred to me as I was reading Carola. It's Carola's first dinner at the CS, and there's a reference to Clem getting up after Grace, and going to the buttery hatch and coming back with plates of cottage pie for herself and Carola. Yet at other points, it's implied that school dinners are not self-service (are they served by maids then?) and there are certainly one or two references somewhere to someone with a small appetite (might be Naomi Elton?) asking the prefect who is dishing out food onto individual plates for a smaller portion. Does this change at various points, depending on where the school is, and its size, and presumably with the availability of domestic staff? I know the fact that the girls clear after meals is put down to the lack of maids, but I would have said that having a single buttery hatch and a large school would leads to endless queues and mess.

And does Kaffee und Kuchen remain self-service and informal throughout the school's evolution? I've always liked the descriptions from the Tyrol days of everyone sitting about in groups of basket chairs, and handing around the cups and food, but I can't think off hand whether this practice survives the war...

Author:  Rosalin [ Thu May 08, 2008 5:36 pm ]
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I think by the time they are in Switzerland they have Kaffee und Kuchen in the Speisesaal but I'm not sure if the mistresses are present.

Author:  Mel [ Thu May 08, 2008 6:05 pm ]
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I think it just depends what happens to pop into EBD's head at the moment of writing. Many ideas/customs are mentioned once and then forgotten. On food I seem to remember a criticism of bread and butter pudding from Mary-Lou (!) along the lines of "I hate this pudding - sloppy mess" Perhaps it was because Karen wasn't the cook at Plas Howell.

Author:  Mrs Redboots [ Fri May 09, 2008 7:40 pm ]
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I don't find the amount of meals they have surprising - we had the same, only not 3 courses at lunch or supper, and supper pudding was usually just fruit (occasionally a ghastly concoction called Instant Whip). School meals did go very downhill once the system was changed from meals prepared in the boarding-houses (thus for 30-50 people) to meals prepared centrally, thus for well over 300 people! Some things stick in the memory they were so vile....

EBD's school meals always sound delicious - but they wouldn't really have had tablecloths, I'm quite sure! Probably nasty rubber mats that smelt, like we did.

ETA I think people did eat more in those days as they took much more exercise - not necessarily formal exercise, just a far less sedentary lifestyle than ours.

Author:  Theresa [ Tue May 20, 2008 12:26 pm ]
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I've always thought the amount of coffee drunk by everyone at the CS was just revolting. I can't even stand the smell of coffee, let alone the taste, and whenever I've thought 'would I have liked it at the CS?' the first thing that has come to mind has been 'ugggh coffee'.

As far as that cloves incident goes... how thick were those girls? I have always been raised to believe I am an incredibly lazy and unhelpful child for not cooking for the family since the age of ten like my mother and hers before her, so upon reading this particular excerpt not so long ago, I was shocked to think that any children could be even less knowledgeable than myself in the kitchen (especially such olde-timey children, which I'd been led to believe were master chefs and homemakers from a young age. It's a class thing, I suppose, but it seemed so strange that they could do needlework and not tell garlic from cloves. Needlework is so much harder).

Another thing I thought was interesting was the way they go on all these long walks with nothing to drink until they stop for lunch or find some rustic hut full of bowls of milk, and then the mistresses won't let the girls drink from the lovely mountain streams. That seemed a bit cruel. How much worse can a bit of dirt in the water be than dehydrating as you climb a mountain? It would have killed me x_x

Author:  Katherine [ Tue May 20, 2008 12:51 pm ]
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I agree that the garlic thing is a bit far-fetched, but I think back then garlic would have been less familiar maybe.

Author:  Róisín [ Tue May 20, 2008 1:30 pm ]
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Probably garlic and cloves might not have been as familiar but ... they're just so differently-shaped! Plus one is dried (I think cloves are dried?) and one is fresh (well, less dry...). I find that slip-up hard to believe too :lol:

Author:  JayB [ Tue May 20, 2008 2:04 pm ]
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Quote:
Another thing I thought was interesting was the way they go on all these long walks with nothing to drink until they stop for lunch or find some rustic hut full of bowls of milk, and then the mistresses won't let the girls drink from the lovely mountain streams. That seemed a bit cruel. How much worse can a bit of dirt in the water be than dehydrating as you climb a mountain? It would have killed me x_x


I imagine EBD was thinking of the possibility of typhoid or cholera, which are transmitted by drinking contaminated water. The mountain stream might look clean, but you can't be sure someone upstream isn't using it for sewage disposal. Or to use the reason my dad always gave for not letting us drink from streams when on holiday in Wales, there might be a dead sheep lying in it further up.

Personally, I loathe milk, and I can't imagine it would be very thirst quenching. I don't know why they couldn't carry drinking water, or Karen's famous lemonade. Or a spirit stove to boil the water and make tea.

Author:  Theresa [ Tue May 20, 2008 3:26 pm ]
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I'm thinking particularly of one incident where the basket with all the drinks was left behind, and when I read it I was stunned that they didn't make an exception for the drinking from the river rule as the girls became increasingly thirsty. Of course, it's all coloured by my own personal experiences (for reasons of both my own particular health issues and the generation I belong to, death by dehydration is much more immediate to me than typhoid or cholera) but it certainly surprised me when I read it. I used to drink from streams all the time when I went camping as a child. :oops:

I am a big fan of milk, personally, but I've never found it thirst-quenching, as such. If I'm thirsty I want for water or juice, or something clearer than milk. Milk is for hungries. It is more a snack than a drink.

Author:  Tor [ Tue May 20, 2008 5:31 pm ]
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The idea of not being able to drink the water in the stream always made me feel desperately sorry for them (and they have to keep their blazers on the whole time... why can't they just put them on again when they have stopped?).

I get so thirsty when doing exercise that whilst on my usual run I have sometimes (though I stress, never acted on it) looked at dogs lapping up dirty puddles and been *almost* desperate enough to join in!

I have drunk out of many mountain streams and been none the worse for it, though I avoid the low down ones because I figure there is more chance of a dead sheep upstream in those. I was also was very naughty when working in French Guiana and stopped iodining my water (collected from a stream) because I decided there weren't enough human settlements/farms nearby to make it massively high risk, the water was fairly fast flowing, and iodine tastes disgusting at the levels needed to make it Giardia-free (the real reason).

However, I have been much better since purchasing a portable ceramic filter, and used it lots in Africa, North America etc until I destroyed it with glacial run-off water on Kilimajaro. They are great, and every modern CS mistress should carry one as a matter of course (except, perhaps the glacial runoff will be a problem in the Alps too :lol: )

Apart from water, I don't enjoy any food or drink when I am exerting myself - I just eat it because I have too. However, if I had nothing with me and I was starving, then milk would be very much appreciated! And pies with jelly. And crisp lettuce. And cake. And chocolate... yep just about anything. And a pub meal waiting for me at the bottom.

Author:  Sunglass [ Tue May 20, 2008 10:18 pm ]
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I entirely agree that, given the care of the CS girls health in all other respects, there was a risk of sunstroke and dehydration on those hot rambles! Why couldn't they carry water canteens? (Maybe EBD was trying to lull the reader into forgetting that she hadn't bothered restarting the Guide company after the move to Switzerland...) And yes, absolutely to stream drinking - though i say this as someone who assumes she is immune to all kinds of water-borne nasties, as I grew up drinking water from a spring that cows also drank at and wandered around in, rendering the water intermittently opaque, and am none the worse.

Mind you, our contemporary notions about the necessity to drink water almost constantly and the often-quoted 'two litres a day' rule, are pretty recent. When I was a student, it never occurred to me to bring a bottle of water to lectures, yet my students never attend a class or an exam without a drink. Distinct desire to suggest that they would need to work themseves into far more of a sweat than is usual in my seminars for there to be any danger of dehydration. The CS rambles, on the other hand, are presented as being pretty strenuous. (And all that coffee must be a bit of a dehydrating factor also...?)

My thought, for what it's worth on the garlic clove mistake, is a combination of the relatively unfamiliarity of garlic to the average English schoolgirl of the period, and the likelihood that very few of these girls (bar exceptions like Rosamund Lilley) would have spent much time in their kitchens at home, far less cooked themselves, or even helped their mothers. Presumably the idea of having cooking lessons in the first place is more to do with the idea of the angel of the house needing to be able to cook, even if the wealth of her husband made it unnecessary - and in later years, the lack of availability of servants meant that more of the girls would need to fend for themselves. Unless they had Anna.

Author:  Kathy_S [ Wed May 21, 2008 2:45 am ]
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I don't know whether I had a very old school scout leader or what, but during my early training in backpacking we were told that drinking water while hiking was an absolute no-no. Among other things, it was supposed to cause dire cramps.* If one couldn't deal with a little thirst, the proper thing to do was to have a pebble in one's mouth to keep it from getting too dry. However, in those enlightened days we were allowed to use sour balls/lemon drops instead of pebbles.

The canteens were reserved for official meal times, and usually doctored with lemonade powder or tea. All water sources except for certified springs had to be disinfected by boiling or tablets. The warnings against drinking from streams etc. do show up in very early Guide/Scout novels.

People with heat-related problems might be allocated a salt tablet.

*This kind of thinking wasn't limited to Girl Scouts, as in the family there is the sad tale of a 19th century aunt who came in hot from working in the fields and DRANK COLD WELL WATER. They warned her, but she didn't listen, and perished on the spot. I believe also that in Laura Ingalls Wilder, the day that Laura began haying, her mother put ginger in the water so that it was safe to drink as much as they wanted.

Author:  JayB [ Wed May 21, 2008 11:17 am ]
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Quote:
we were told that drinking water while hiking was an absolute no-no. Among other things, it was supposed to cause dire cramps....in the family there is the sad tale of a 19th century aunt who came in hot from working in the fields and DRANK COLD WELL WATER. They warned her, but she didn't listen, and perished on the spot.


I don't know about perishing on the spot - but gulping down very cold water or juice very quickly gives me tummy ache.

Quote:
The warnings against drinking from streams etc. do show up in very early Guide/Scout novels.


Early Guiding manuals may be where EBD got the idea from. Or maybe it was advice given to her on her visit to Austria. I imagine the chances of drinking contaminated water were much greater in rural Austria in the 1920s than in Switzerland in the 1950s.

Author:  Fi [ Wed May 21, 2008 12:01 pm ]
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JayB wrote:
The warnings against drinking from streams etc. do show up in very early Guide/Scout novels.


I would agree with this. Whilst working on a summer camp in the US, my cabin and I went backwoods camping in the Pictured Rocks. The kids and I all drank iodinised water from Lake Superior and streams throughout the trip but my co-counselor refused to add the iodine saying she didn't like the taste. Towards the end of the trip she was feeling increasingly unwell and when we got back to camp she collapsed in the middle of the night with agonising stomach cramps and ended up in hospital for a week with some sort of parasitic infection caught from the water.
After that experience I would never drink unpurified water from a natural source. I am definitely in favour of the "a little bit of dirt is healthy" arguement but dead sheep and cholera aside, you never know what microbes and parasites are lurking and I've seen the nasty after-effects.

Author:  Tor [ Wed May 21, 2008 1:02 pm ]
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totally with you on that Fi. I may have been alright, but if you are going away for a long time and can't carry enough clean water in with you, then you are generally being silly risking your health. I may have done, but I was (am?) silly, and wouldn't again (and I've seen/smelt friends ill with Giardia... it isn't pretty!)... especially since I discovered the amazingness of the ceramic filter (everyone should have one! :lol: ).

But on a day hike. Come on! Water is very important, especially at altitude. Definitely worth the weight carrying it.

Author:  Lesley [ Wed May 21, 2008 1:36 pm ]
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Especially as the weight quickly disappears as the water is drunk!

Author:  Jennie [ Wed May 21, 2008 2:10 pm ]
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And half a litre of water doesn't weigh all that much.

Perhaps they were meant to sweat out all that thye drank, as the school famously has no loos.

Author:  Theresa [ Wed May 21, 2008 2:13 pm ]
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Or perhaps the lack of loos is the real reason they don't want the girls drinking from the streams?

Author:  jennifer [ Wed May 21, 2008 2:37 pm ]
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Tor wrote:
(and I've seen/smelt friends ill with Giardia... it isn't pretty!)...


In Canada we call it Beaver Fever, because it's often transmitted by Beaver feces.

Author:  LauraMcC [ Wed May 21, 2008 3:58 pm ]
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I drank unpurified stream water many times while on DofE expeditions, and I wasn't ill, but then I do have a cast iron stomach! :D But didn't they always plan to take some sort of drink with them, only sometimes they forgot? Because the staff may have decided that dehydration was the better of two evils, especially as there were often Gasthaeuser along the way, where they could get something to drink, and it is perhaps better to be really thirsty than have dreadful stomach pains. And there wouldn't have been many shops once they had started on their hikes.

Author:  Clare [ Wed May 21, 2008 4:00 pm ]
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Theresa wrote:
Or perhaps the lack of loos is the real reason they don't want the girls drinking from the streams?


:lol: :lol: :lol:

Author:  Mrs Redboots [ Wed May 21, 2008 6:56 pm ]
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But this thing of staying hydrated is very recent. Forty years ago, the only refreshment allowed during a match, for instance, was a quarter of an orange - no water or other drinks. I think it was thought you would feel sick if you drank during exercise or games - quite the opposite to now, where you are supposed to drink constantly during exercise, and the water-bottle is as essential a part of one's kit as the clothes!

Author:  Róisín [ Wed May 21, 2008 7:54 pm ]
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From what I remember from passing quickly through a gym once :lol: there was a poster warning people not to drink water excessively during exercise - instead you are supposed to sip very small amounts, occasionally. But I'm not a gym person, maybe someone else here who is can correct me!

Author:  Kathy_S [ Thu May 22, 2008 3:17 am ]
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Here's another indication of the changing views on hydration, from the 1967 Boy Scout Fieldbook:
Quote:
On hot days, you may want to drink more water than is good for you. Even on a "scorcher" a canteen full of water should last the day. Don't let yourself think about how hot and thirsty you are, because your mind can play tricks on you and the easiest trick is thirst. Pour a little water in your cup and sip it slowly. If you drink directly from your canteen, you cannot judge your water intake; and, furthermore, this unsanitary practice makes your canteen as personal as your toothbrush.

Quote:
Don't drink from strange wells or springs, except in an emergency, and then purify the water with iodine tablets or by boiling it.


I'm not sure whether the CS even used canteens, though we know they carried individual bottles, such as the one Hilary put into her knapsack upside-down. (That one held milk!)

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