Re: OT - why does everyone

On 2007-07-23, Rowland McDonnell <real-address-in-sig@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Whiskers <catwheezel@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Rowland McDonnell <real-address-in-sig@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Whiskers <catwheezel@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Rowland McDonnell <real-address-in-sig@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Whiskers <catwheezel@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
[snip]

it being the Norman-French for 'sheep' indicates that the Norman nobs
were pretty keen on it and wouldn't let the plebs get in first.
Lovely stuff, mutton.

Oh yes - but I've rarely eaten it. My mother never cooked it for
some reason.

You missed out. We got lots of mutton, because it was cheaper than beef.

It wasn't a meat that I heard of anyone I knew eating. Strange, that.
What happened, I wonder? It wasn't like my mother would shy away from
economical cooking. Always good solid food for growing lads, mind. If
only I knew the secret of her roast potatoes... Or even the bloody
flapjacks, that'd do me.

Mutton just seemed to vanish from the butchers' shops, sometime in the
late '60s I think.

Ah! That'd explain it. All I recall from the butcher is big lumps of
beef cut on the spot by the actual butcher for my dad; I got dragged
along shopping on Saturdays, you see. I have a suspicion that my dad
might have been able to get *cheaper*, but he was always after *better*
and we certainly got good meat.

Where I grew up, the local butcher bought his meat on the hoof in the
market his shop was next to, and put it in his own field until he was
ready to slaughter it, and then let the carcasses hang in the back of the
shop until it was 'mature' enough. That was good meat, that was, but a
scary shop. Sawdust on the floor, huge knives, blood-stained aprons, all
the traditional features. Probably illegal now.

I do recall thinking `What's ten bob?' when the price for the weekend
joint of meat was being discussed. Half a quid - and it fed the family.

Half a crown in my day.

I wonder if it had anything to do with the loss of the
British textile industry, thus meaning fewer sheep being kept for wool and
so fewer adult sheep?

Hmm. Had the industry gone by then, though? I thought there were signs
of decline in the 1960s from what I've read (me, being a '67 model,
doesn't recall the 60s), but wasn't it not until the 1980s that the big
collapse happened?

Lamb was once a luxury but now it's quite
commonplace.

Yes, and usually pretty poor stuff if on offer in the supermarkets.
Mind you, supermarket pork has gone down the tubes lately.

Chicken was a once-a-year special treat, in those days, but everyone
seemed to get pork, beef, or mutton, pretty routinely.

We didn't get a lot of chicken either - but mostly because my dad didn't
eat poultry at all (long story involving pet chicken and Sunday lunch)
and my mother wasn't keen on battery farmed chickens anyway.

My childhood pre-dates battery farms.

I read Lord of the Rings and later on found out about battery farms.
The comparisons - well, I *HATE* battery farms, and an awful lot of
modern farming practice. Where's the respect for the animals gone?

Real farmers treat their turnips better than the battery fowl are treated.

Chickens were for laying eggs, not
eating. Until the laying stopped - then you had an 'old boiler', so named
because it needed a lot of cooking to make it edible.

I'd worked that one out by the time I was about 12, I think. Took me a
while, mind.

Christmas involved a huge turkey and an unfeasibly large chunk of dead
pig which had to be cooked outdoors in a large stainless steel tub, plus
enough other stuff to feed a Bangladeshi family for at least a month.
There was always enough hungry mouths to demolish the lot. If I ate
like that these days, I'd be the size of the Hindenberg.

I don't think we ever stretched to half a pig,

<chuckle> I think I've given an exaggerated impression, there - more
like half a leg in the tub, from the appearance. Big lump of ham,
anyway. No, *HUGE*. Always too big for any saucepan in the house, and
we had some big ones.

but turkeys were certainly
the thing to have at Christmas - just replacing geese as the preferred
nosh, although I don't know why - goose is much nicer. Perhaps it was the
influence of all those US servicemen and their 'thanksgiving' feasts?

Either that, or turkeys work out better to rear in some fashion to do
with cost-effectiveness and `modern farming methods'.

Geese are very nasty to people they don't know, which makes turkeys look a
good idea to the farmers, I suppose.

--
-- ^^^^^^^^^^
-- Whiskers
-- ~~~~~~~~~~
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