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OILY
RAG
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Good Yarns and "I remember when . . ." stories
Ketchup
chaos!
I was given a catering size can of pulped tomatoes, so decided
to make ketchup, using a tried and tested recipe. All went well
and I found plenty of containers to store it in. The problem
came a couple of months later when I opened one of the large
bottles to fill up the table bottle.
The contents exploded all over the kitchen, the benches,
the floor, the walls and up the curtains, not to mention myself.
I was supposed to store the large bottles in the fridge to stop
them fermenting! -Mean Girl",
Hastings.
Tasty
shampoo!
This is
an incident I remember from my childhood. My Mother, always good
at living on the smell of an oily rag in the post war years, had
'prepared' the egg shampoo for the family bath night by pouring
some into a glass and adding water to make it go further.
Father goes up to the bathroom and feeling thirsty after a hard
day in the allotment, takes a swig of the 'orange juice' (the UK
welfare variety as he thought). Such yelling and cursing I
had never heard in all my young years! and she never lived it
down. - KEW, Auckland.
Those
were the days!
My
Mum used to whiten her unbleached sheets by hanging them out at
full moon, when there was a frost. Don't ask me how, but the
combination of frost and lunar beam made them snow white.
Old time flour bags were good calico, but all had Champion
Roller Flour Mills stamped firmly on them, not a nice sight to
behold on a girls knickers when she bent over! So, goodly old
Sunlight soap was rubbed on well, the damp bundle wrapped
up and left for a few days. Result? After a good
boil in the old copper they were snow white, hey presto, no
longer labelled. I realise there is no unbleached sheeting, OR
knickers made of flour bags, how the modern kids would have
hysterics at the thought eh? Good old remedies they were.
- P.M.
Soap
making yarn
Dad had one of his bright ideas. The idea wasn't original, but it was for Dad -
he didn't have bright ideas very often! Off to the local library he went. Back
he came with an Aunt Daisy soap-making recipe. As proud as a peacock at a garden
party, he said he was going to show us how to make soap, and in the process show
us how clever he was.
Off to the kitchen he went. That was strange enough in itself - to see Dad
clanging pots and pans was a real sight. We peeped through the outside window.
Dad pretended not to notice us.
Into one of Mum's biggest pots he put some rendered animal fat he had collected
from home kills. Before too long the fat was at a boil. Things appeared to be
going quite well, and judging by the smirk on Dad's face we could tell he
thought he had it sussed - that is until he added caustic soda and Lux flakes to
the broth. The boiling solution immediately expanded in size and frothed up and
up and over the pot. "Bloody hell," said Dad. We crept lower behind
the windowsill.
Unfortunately for Dad the frothing solution kept growing; onto the stove it
erupted, the molten solution flowing along the bench, into some drawers, and
onto the floor.
"Bloody hell!" said dad again, but this time we could tell he really
meant it. Us kids looked at each other, realising lives were at risk - our
lives. It was one of those situations - being in the wrong place at the wrong
time.
Right at this moment Dad panicked. He grabbed the overflowing pot and took the
shortest route to the nearest exit, crashing over and through furniture in the
process. As he burst through an open door he heaved the still foaming pot onto
the front lawn. It is fair to say that we were keeping a low profile.
Back into the house dad stormed. "That bloody Aunt Daisy!" he said as
he disappeared back into the kitchen. We beat a hasty retreat to a neighbour's
place. It was some hours later before we dared go near the house again. By then
things had returned to their normal state - at least as normal as things could
be. No one ever said anything about Dad's soap making idea, and Dad never tried
to make soap again.
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