TEDDY BEAR MEAT

That got your attention, didn’t it?

What do teddy bears mean to you?

These teddy bears belonged to my children:

My own teddy bear – sadly no longer alive – meant a lot more to me than a mere toy. Teddy – made out of sheepskin – was as brave as could be. He always slept next to me in my bed and was ready to counter the worst of any horrors that might even think of disturbing me during the night. Teddy was also very loving. I could tell Teddy anything and he always made me feel better! My own teddy bear definitely provided me with a sense of security and unconditional love.

I can imagine that teddy bears hold a special place in the hearts of many people who recall the love and comfort they provided during their early childhood. It is no wonder that they still count among the gifts given to infants, even 123 years after the creation of the first teddy bear by Morris Michtom – the name is said to be derived from President Theodore Roosevelt who, during a hunting trip in Mississippi in 1902, refused to shoot a bear that was tied to a tree.

In children’s stories and cartoons, teddy bears often personify loyalty, bravery, and friendship. Winnie-the-Pooh by A.A. Milne immediately springs to mind – the version illustrated by E.H. Shephard and not the Disney ones! How I loved first listening to, and then reading these stories on my own as well as to my children much later on. Paddington Bear by Michael Bond is still a perennial favourite. I rather enjoyed Baloo the bear in Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book, which I clearly recall my mother reading to us. Who can forget Goldilocks and the Three Bears – one of the earliest of the Ladybird Books which my children learned to read on their own (probably because they already knew the story off by heart!).

So much for love, comfort and security … what about eating teddy bears?

Scandinavians are known for eating smørrebrød, a traditional open-faced sandwich consisting of buttered rye bread topped with a variety of ingredients such as cold cuts of meat, cheeses, spreads, and condiments such as mayonnaise. Norwegians generally eat open sandwiches and so, I imagine this is where the appearance of the sandwich becomes important – perhaps especially for young children. Nonetheless, how do you feel about providing them with this?

Mortadella is a classic Italian sausage frequently used for sandwiches and pizzas. It has a smooth texture and is made from a very finely chopped or ground meat emulsion made exclusively from pork that typically includes shoulder, leg, belly, snout and jowl. I have no problem with the product – if you like that sort of thing, but …

Placing little bear (teddy bear) meat on your child’s open sandwich? Not for me!

Would you?

ABOUT FOOD

What is it about a gloomy afternoon that makes me think about food? Here are some random pictures of food during a day in my life – note the pictures were all taken on different days, but the idea is there. For me, food for the week begins with shopping for groceries almost as soon as the supermarket opens at half past six on a Monday morning. That is the day when pensioners receive a 5% discount in cash where I shop, which saves me from having to draw cash from an ATM.

I usually have breakfast on my return, once I have unpacked all the groceries. This means my ‘real’ day can begin, with the worst of the week’s tasks behind me.

The other day I used this recipe for Cabbage Carbonara, last used years ago. It is very simple to make and is surprisingly filling.

Teatime treats are not a regular occurrence in our home – it takes two of us far too long to get through one batch of baking, whatever I make. Yesterday, however, I baked this blueberry cake just for fun.

ANOSMIA AND FOOD

One of the side-effects of COVID-19 for many people was the loss of the sense of smell, which, of course, affected their sense of taste. Anosmia is the partial or full loss of smell: not being able to smell coffee or to enjoy the taste of curry was how one of my children knew for sure that he had succumbed to COVID-19 before the obligatory test had confirmed it. Other causes of anosmia could be from smoking, the side-effects of certain medication, or even having one’s nose blocked with mucus, such as when one has a bad cold. There is a definite link between smell and taste: tastes such as salty, bitter, sweet, and sour can be distinguished sans smell – the latter plays a strong role in our enjoyment (or rejection) of the flavours of other foods that we eat.

As a result of following a theme on senses during a stint of teaching at a pre-primary school many years ago, we provided samples of white substances on a ‘taste table’. These included cake flour, cornflour, salt, baking powder, mealie meal and castor sugar. While sight played a part in identifying these items, the young children had no real sense of the taste – despite sniffing the containers enthusiastically. A damp fingertip dipped into the containers soon sorted the ‘good’ from the ‘bad’ tasting items, with the sugar being loved by all. This exercise would probably be disallowed today because of concerns about health and hygiene … we took more chances in the 1980s. In another exercise, the children loved the smell of vanilla essence, which elicited all sorts of comments about ice-cream, icing and cake. That was until they were invited to taste the vanilla essence whilst holding their noses … yuck! It was while I was writing about the smell of apples yesterday that these memories came to mind.

Smell, scent, aroma … call it what you will (yes – stink too) … plays an important role in our enjoyment of food. So much so that our olfactory memories tend to remain strong. When you think about it, our olfactory memories have the ability to remember and recognize smells such as freshly mown grass, the tang of the sea, tomatoes, apples, cough mixture, or even the smell of a braai that can take one back decades to certain events in our lives or remind us of people from our past.

One of my granddaughters urged me not to ‘ever’ change my perfume “otherwise you won’t smell like Granny anymore.”

So, if you cannot taste food so well anymore because you can no longer smell it as well – or at all (the condition of anosmia seems to linger longer in some people than others), how can one make food seem enticing? We who take the smelling and tasting of food for granted, may not readily appreciate that enjoying food has also got to do with colour and texture.

Bear this in mind should you knowingly have a dinner guest suffering with anosmia by making a special effort to provide colourful food and a variety of textures.

HOME COMFORTS

Whether or not we are aware of it at the time, the food we grow up with plays an important role in the way we will view that food in the future. By way of illustration: when I was in boarding school, we were only allowed home for two weekends in the term. Heartily tired of hostel food by then, my brother would request beef curry and rice, and I always asked my mother for macaroni cheese ‘with lots of cheese’.

Travel can open our tastebuds to new experiences too. I grew up with curry and hot spices, so could empathise with friends who loved tasting local dishes during their trip through India. We were later treated by them to flavours from India for a while afterwards.

The comfort of home cooking returns though after a long absence; when we are feeling ‘world weary’; or simply long for the (unappreciated at the time) security of our youth. Several people who have made a name for themselves in the cooking world are happy to tell of how much they learned from their mothers or grandmothers from an early age. In their cases the comfort of home cooking extended into a career.

One of my sons loved my mother’s cottage pie so much that he once asked her to make it for our Christmas dinner while she visited us. To our great amusement, she did! My youngest granddaughter enjoys my home-made tomato soup, while her brother likes the way I make macaroni cheese. Another of my sons is partial to the bacon, pea and feta salad I prepare …

Christmas used to be very simple in terms of catering – sometimes (given how hot it can be in the southern hemisphere) we would have an array of cold meats and salads. As each of my children graduated from university, went out into the world, and returned with hearty, sophisticated appetites, so their requests became more specific.

I generally over cater anyway, so am happy to accept requests from whoever will be joining us for Christmas dinner. This way everyone has something that makes the celebratory meal special for them – all agree that we can never make too many roasted potatoes!

‘Home comforts’ consist of a lot more than a bed or a comfortable place to sit: food plays an important part in lifting our spirits, sparking off happy memories, as well as helping everyone sitting around the table to feel ‘at home’.

This has been a favourite ‘celebratory’ recipe for some years now:

HIGH SCHOOL ATHLETICS

No wonder sorting through a lifetime’s accumulation of things takes such a long time: another photograph fell out of an overstuffed box this morning. This one is of our high school athletics team in 1964. Looking at it – and reading the names on the back – dredged up all sorts of memories from those happy years – when we were so young, so fit, and filled with the joys of life. A time when we could cast aside any doubts or concerns about school work to concentrate on exercise and laughter. Yes, I remember a lot of laughter.

The curious will find me sitting third from the right in the second row.

The first term of every year was devoted to athletics: we used to have to do warm-up exercises before running around the field, practicing sprints and then race against each other. Once we were fit enough, we were taken through our paces for field events such as throwing the javelin, shot put (that was me), high jump, and long jump among others. I used to compete in the longer sprints, hurdles and loved the challenge of relay races. Boys and girls practiced at the same time on the same field, giving us ample opportunities to mix and get to know each other. How odd I found it when I was teaching in Grahamstown decades later to find the girls were unhappy about training where the boys could see them. When did such coyness (and missed opportunities!) set in, I wondered.

Before a school team was selected, there was the excitement of the inter-house athletic challenge. Oddly enough, our sporting houses were named after the Four Musketeers of Alexandre Dumas fame – was this to avoid a clash between the interests of English- and Afrikaans-speaking pupils? Who knows … we didn’t really take note of such things. I was in D’Artagnan House – which we all knew as Darts. The others, of course, were Aramis, Athos, and Porthos. Darts wore yellow ribbons.

What was fun about the inter-house challenges was that many parents came to watch the proceedings and one could buy long braided – and very sticky – koeksusters, or savoury jaffles, boerewors rolls, or pancakes sprinkled with lemon juice and cinnamon sugar. My mouth melts at the memory of these fund-raising efforts. Singing and chanting was as important as the running and other field events. The houses vied with each other, singing as loudly as they could, challenging each other, boosting their own teams, or singing for the sheer joy of it. I suppose we mostly sang songs in Afrikaans (it was the dominant language) yet I feel sure that there were some English ones too. Again, it was not something that bothered us. I taught at an Afrikaans-only school during my first year of teaching and was taken aback when the principal there told the children responsible for the house singing that they could choose songs from any origin – except English – as long as they were sung in Afrikaans.

Once the school team was selected, we were regularly put through our paces during the week as we travelled to other schools in the area for events on Saturdays. How well I remember the uncomfortable school bus, the boisterousness of the boys and girls, as well as the cuddling by senior pupils that would go on at the back of the bus …

I enjoyed athletics so much that I participated in running all the way through to matric. I turned up to the first meeting of the Athletics Club when I got to university and quickly backed out: they took competition far too seriously and so I joined the Mountain Club instead – what an excellent choice that turned out to be!