OneGuyFromBarlick

That reminded me of this image a a poor old bloke in sub-standard accommodation sitting in front of as very small fire. Look how close his feet are to the flame.

Looking at the pic of the old bloke well wrapped up in front of the fire reminded me of the constant refrain when I was a lad "Shut that door!" Our biggest enemy in those days was the dreaded draught! The living room downstairs was the only room in the house that was heated and of course the open fire needed a draught coming in to keep it burning. So we all lived on the hearthrug during winter. We only had one source of heat at Hey Farm in the early days, the Rayburn cooker in the kitchen. I remember coming in one November night, frozen stiff and wet through and sitting in front of the stove in my coat with a pot of hot tea when I heard a sound and realised it was the carpet flapping with the draught coming in under the back door. This would be in about 1960 and I tipped over the edge. We spent £350 on an oil fired boiler and four radiators and moved into the 20th century. The main thing I remember about it was that the house suddenly got bigger, we no longer had to live on the hearthrug.

Oh Stanley I'm so pleased that you had the 350 pounds.

Stanley wrote:That reminded me of this image a a poor old bloke in sub-standard accommodation sitting in front of as very small fire. Look how close his feet are to the flame.

My Blackburn grandma's cottage at Bottomgate looked just like that house, two low-ceilinged bedrooms upstairs, a kitchen at the back and a small room at the front. Her's too was so small that she sat up close to the fire, made worse by her having a piano against the back wall! If she found a length of wood on her daily walk to the shop she would sit there feeding it gradually into the fire.

Cathy, I can't remember whether we scraped the money together or what. I have an idea we paid in two payments, one before they started and one after. I remember that to bring the cost down I drilled all the walls for the 3/4" copper pipe run between the radiators and had to do them with an old fashioned star drill and a big hammer. The stones were blue limestone and were as hard as the hobs of hell! Dull red sparks came out of the hole when you hit the drill! Bill Entwistle came in one day as I was at it and told me not to waste my time. He said that there were no foundations and if I dug down about 9" I could poke a hole under the wall with a stick and then fill it with sand when the pipe was installed. He was right! Nothing was easy in those days.....

"she would sit there feeding it gradually into the fire."
I once nearly bought a farm near Milford Haven. On reflection I should have gone for it but we moved into Hey Farm instead. What struck me about the fire there was that they burned anthracite slack, very hard to burn. The did it by having a wood fire underneath fed by pushing long billats into the heart of the fire. They fanned out in front of the grate and you just kept kicking them further in. It made a good fire but needed tending all the time. Never seen that done before.

Save all the foil milk bottle tops and send them to charities. Does this still happen?

Use the old cardboard milk bottle closures as the base for making rosettes which could be stitched together to make heat proof mats. They had a central hole for a straw that could be pushed out and then wool was wrapped round the periphery from this centre to make a padded rosette.

reminds me of pompoms. I hope kids still make them, they were fun.

They were made using the milk bottle tops as well Cathy but you finished them by cutting round the periphery of the cardboard top, tying the bunch of wool round the middle and then cutting out the cardboard which was discarded. We used to do French knitting as well using a wooden cotton bobbin with four small nails driven in the top. The subsequent rope of wool could be coiled and stitched to make mats for the table.

When washing milk tins or anything connected with cheese, always scrub with cold water first before scalding. If you don't, the hot water bakes part of the residue onto the surface and it can build up into an impervious skin. I learned this when washing my milk tanker out and it's quite true. Bacteria could build in the reside and were impervious to even steam sterilisation.

It's called 'denaturing the protein' and is exactly what occurs when you heat egg albumen (egg white), and why articles contaminated with blood should be soaked in cold water to stop the blood albumen congealing.

Read this today relating to the mid 1940's. 'D'you remember George? You an' Nathan Barraclough would get two long iron bars an' lift that coke stove out into t'snow an' we women would shake Lux soapflakes all over t'floorboards. Mind you, it made 'em all sneeze but y'could waltz all night like a skater.'

Thanks for that China... standard practice in the dairy industry but I never understood the chemistry until now. The yellowy brown deposit that you got from baked on milk was tough stuff. We didn't like using abrasives because if you did it gave a key for the deposit to form on. We used some stuff called OCD which was very powerful and did the trick. Funny thing is that people that used it regularly almost always had bad stomachs, some even cancer.
Cathy, nice one! Lux soap flakes were the standard for washing woollens and mother used to put some in the bath water.

Over the years there has been a constant search for the perfect chopping board. I have never found anything better than the solution the cheese industry settled on from the very early days. The best wood is Sycamore and if kept clean is as germ free as any plastic or metal and kinder on the cutting edge of knives as well. I bleach mine about every five days and scrub it in between. Here's what a freshly bleached and scrubbed Sycamore board looks like.

Is it all woods or just some that have a natural disinfectant in them? I've tried a few types of chopping boards but always go back to wood ones, I find they have more grip.
I think some people like plastic ones because they can put them in the dishwasher.

You're right Cathy. Sycamore in particular has germicidal properties and this has been proved in rigorous tests. There was a vogue for plastic boards impregnated with germicides and even today food legislation favours these but experiments proved that in some cases they gave worse results than properly maintained wooden boards. Think of the traditional butcher's chopping block, never been bettered and still perfectly legal.
It was this germicidal property that made them the universal choice for the shelving in cheese stores where the cheeses sat for months to mature.

Wooden barrels and larger vessels (in brewing for instance) have been used for centuries and were OK as long as kept clean. In more recent times they were sterilised with steam. The antibacterial chemicals in wood are phenolic compounds which are the building blocks of the lignin, the stuff that makes wood `woody' and tough and form tannin.

I once used some beautiful recycled wood from the staves of a large vinegar vat at Barrowford to repair a teazle gig raiser at Helmshore. Every time the plane cut the wood it released a wonderful smell of vinegar!

To test eggs for freshness. Put into a bowl of cold water, if they float they are old/bad.

Bananas that have gone brown are not rotten, this happens when they are perfectly ripe and most of the starch has converted to sugar.

Stanley wrote:Bananas that have gone brown are not rotten, this happens when they are perfectly ripe and most of the starch has converted to sugar.

So then you should freeze them to use in cakes at a later date.

Either that or just eat them. Perfect for a banana butty....

If your honey crystalises or won't pour just pop it in the microwave for a few seconds.

That's a good one Cathy. My dad used to keep bees and our honey always set solid. It's not the be all and end all but is usually a sign of good honey.