Miss Eagle slips her lid

Yes, I did. I slipped me lid. I was washing up the lovely one pounder (5oo gram) clear green glass butter dish, the lid slipped out of control, and smashed to smithereens on the kitchen floor. Sadness! :-( :-( :-(

Now, Miss Eagle has to hunt, seek, and hopefully gather another one - lid that is, or, more probably, a whole new green glass butter dish with lid. So, in the weeks ahead, you will come across Miss Eagle a-hunting in Opp Shops across the eastern suburbs and The Hills.

However, dear Reader, could you help too - pretty please. Pretty please with sugar on? If you are opp shopping, could you please keep your eyes peeled and if you find such a pretty thing as a one pounder (500 gram) clear green glass butter dish with lid please email me off the side bar.

The new spatula is put to use...

Come in. Pull up a chair. Let's have a cup of tea. Coffee if you like. To celebrate having a spatula once more (see here), Miss Eagle made this traditional sponge cake. Would you like a piece? If you would like the recipe, click over to Food from Oz.

A flippin' good time ahead

Miss Eagle has been thrilled and much cheered, dear Reader, to receive a wonderful parcel from Lee-ann at Pear Tree Cottage!

The story of the parcel began with perfidy of Herself who surreptitiously chucked out this wonderful implement which had been in use for forty years flipping pikelets and pancakes and folding air and flour in lovely light sponge cakes.
Miss E was unable to locate a replacement spatula. They are not in kitchen shops or the kitchen section of supermarkets. Searches of opp shops in eastern Melbourne had not turned one up. Lee-ann, the opp shop aficionado, to the rescue all the way from country Victoria.
Not only was there a spatula there was a set complete with long blade spatula, a masher, and an egg lifter. All in Miss E's old school tie colours! And don't they go well with Miss E's collection of
T.G. Green's Cornish Blue.

Now Lee-ann does not stint. Along with the spatula set came a beautiful card (standing), and - to help in the restoration of Miss E's health (she has been a sick old bird for quite a while) - the March 2007 edition of Romantic Homes, a favourite at The Trad Pad. The magazine came with its own tea-dipped tag. Lee-Ann is clearly a romantic herself.

Thank you Lee-Ann you - and your blog - are a blessing.

Miss Eagle wishes you and your Dearly Beloved well since you have had poor health experiences lately yourselves.

Tupperware and a Drag Queen. But, oh, the Decor!

Over at The QueerPenguin, Sam has got himself into Tupperware. The hostess with the mostest for this mushroom-quiche-and-champagne event was Portia Turbo, a drag queen. Sam got bewitched, entranced and enthused and has purchased two hundred bucks worth of Tupperware.

Miss Eagle, dear Reader, finds this an absolute hoot! Tupperware and drag queens! The latest hot and gay thing to do! LOL, Roll, LOL, Roll, LOL, Roll.


In spite of only living two blocks away from a huge Tupperware distribution facility discreetly laid out in a landscape of white standard roses, Miss E has never been a big fan of Tupperware. In fact, she has only managed - in her long existence - two Tupperware parties. At one of them, many decades ago, she purchased this item.

Miss E thought this a good idea at the time for the honey and jam etc on the breakfast table (long before Rachel Ashwell taught us to do better). This item turned out to be a b-i-g nuisance in the pantry cupboard. It took up space. It was difficult to accommodate other items around it. Miss Eagle thinks she should have taken a clue from her friend Heather who had a cupboard specially built to accommodate all her Tupperware!

Miss Eagle is not the biggest fan of plastics except in certain limited situations. She prefers glass. The pantry is full of large glass jars for the flour, sugar, rice, etc. Small glass jars for the herbs and in between ones for the caster sugar and the lentils, etc. She rarely buys new. It is clear that everyone does not share Miss E's passion for glass in the pantry cupboard because she has picked up glass jars not only in opp shops but when left out for the taking when people shift houses.

But there are times when plastic is desirable - for storing left-overs in the fridge; taking lunch to work and so on. Miss E's favourite bit of plastic is Australian engineered, Australian made. These are the Decor products and its distribution centre - sans landscaping - is only a suburb away!

Miss E always recalls what her mother used to say about party-plan products that were not available through retail outlets. Phyllis always used to say "If these products are so good, why can't they be sold off the shelf where they have to compete against other products." Now, Phyllis was no market rationalist. Just very practical and full of the wisdom of good, old-fashioned common sense. So, yes, why can't party plan products compete? When you ask yourself that question, you might be surprised by the answer.

Give it to me slow and hot....

Clockwide from left: Aga; La Cornue; Bonnet; a Camp Oven

If there is a Trad Pad icon, it's an Aga stove. Not that I'm picky you know. I just love slow combustion stoves. I did have a great set up once - I had a bush kitchen. I lived in Mount Isa in north-west Queensland in the late 70s to the mid 80s. This was not the place to have slow combustion stoves indoors. Mount Isa's summer heat did not need any additional assistance. But my favourite stoves found me. There were three stoves. Indoors, in the kitchen renovations, went the electric stove I had drooled over when I was a new bride in the early 60s. It was dated but good as new and we got it cheaply. It was an eye level oven with pull-out coiled hot plates and behind them a heated glass area for keeping things warm. But who (and I expect it was a male) decided to put grills in eye level ovens? Some masochist who likes fat spitting in his eye? Then came the wood stove for free and, for $30 at an opp shop, an Everhot slow combustion stove which only needed a new firebrick. My Resourceful Husband - who built a stone wall and did the backyard stone paving - organised me an outdoor kitchen. The wood stove, with cast aluminium plates sitting on top, did duty as a barbecue. Next to the wood stove sat this five foot long stainless steel trolley purchased at an auction at the Barkly Hotel. Just the thing for putting all the cooking stuff on. Next to that sat the Everhot. Resourceful Husband built a huge table on either side of which went two upholstered forms (like school forms) which also came from the Barkly Hotel. The outdoor kitchen was where all the proper cooking got done. The Everhot, as slow combustion stoves do, did justice to slow cooking roasts and casseroles and, requiring a hotter oven, bread baking.

The love for Agas came from childhood. At Merinda, there was a huge range. My father used to cook steaks straight on the hotplates. At Queen's Beach, the Aga was smaller. I remember my father once doing a wonderful Magpie Goose casserole after a hunting trip. They weren't protected then. But I am realist. I saw my mother have too many difficulties when things went wrong with the stoves - and the least said about that the better.

Now Agas have achieved great status. But I have discovered there are two stoves even higher up the status rankings - both French. They are the La Cornue and the Bonnet - that come with six figure price tags. The Bonnet is custom made - I think you probably order by the foot - and is in the realm of high end chefs and restaurants. How did I learn all this? From this article. It is rather longish but a good read on kitchen technology, how useful it really is, and the current status of kitchens.

It says:

If Aga has a rival, it is the La Cornue stove—“the Rolls Royce of stoves,” as one owner described it to the New York Times. “Vikings are good, but this one has all the beauty you would associate with a nineteenth-century kitchen in Provence, and it’s state of the art. It took us ten years to get it, and it has our names on it,” engraved on a brass plaque. Even more rarified is the Bonnet, a stove the New York Times described as “custom-made by hand in France in solid cast iron with an installer
flown over to assemble it on site.” It can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

But all this wonderful stuff doesn't turn people into great cooks. It doesn't make them even mediocre cooks. You are either a cook or you aren't - and a good a cook can cook anywhere on anything - an open fire or a camp oven. The following para horrified me. This is even worse than Kathy Lette getting rid of her dining table.

Eating together is now so unusual that the Nickelodeon television network teamed up with the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) and declared the fourth Monday in September to be “Family Day—A Day to Eat Dinner With Your Children.” Families pledge to eat
together and turn off their television sets in the hope of sparking spontaneous dinner conversation (the irony of a television network urging families to turn off their TVs and have dinner together was evidently lost on organizers of the event).

I mentioned this development to Herself. She wondered why it was necessary. Didn't U.S. families get together and eat at Christmas, Easter, and Thanksgiving? But if you don't understand good food, don't eat good food, and don't bother to cook good food, why would you bother to take time to sit around a table and make the whole food thing a social event?