New Zealand Memories Issue 160

STORY
1955 Sunday best from left: Esther (8), Chris (5), Mary (7), Dad (Elmer), Mum (Erica), Eunice (7 months), Dave (2)
and Ruth (13).
we migrated south from Waikanae to Lincoln a year ago. Luckily the family hasn’t cross-examined me about
disposing of some of the family heritage.
I have no memory of using the dinner set when we were young. Our everyday one was a big Arcoroc set,
manufactured in France. We bought it in the early ‘60s and it came in a wooden packing crate. I remember
helping unpack it in our dining room. We had dinner plates, bread and butter plates, pudding plates, mugs,
saucers and teacups. They were solid and long-lasting, but not so good if you dropped one of them on a really
hard surface causing it to shatter into a thousand pieces.
Silverware we still have. Originally a 24-piece setting of forks and spoons, I have half of it. On the handles
there is a griffin from the Grantham family crest. We used bone-handled knives as kids and still use replacement
ones today.The original glasses for water have well gone, but as we always had water with our dinners; my sister
Eunice supplied the glassware and water jug.
Sunday dinner was usually a forequarter of mutton. Mmm – the problem was, where could we get one these
days? I tried three butchers in Christchurch and came up with nothing. Then the first one Eunice tried, she
came up trumps – Fresh Meats, Barrington. The kitchen in the family home had a gas stove, so the forequarter
was put in to roast before we left for church. Redcurrant jelly was always an accompaniment to the roast; for our
replica dinner, we were able to buy a jar from the local New World supermarket. Back in the day, we fluctuated
between Ilam Hardy and Chippewa potatoes, and later Ruas. Eunice found some Chippewas at Raeward Fresh.
Tinned peas are still available in supermarkets; and, obviously, fresh carrots were not a problem to find. Another
dish Mum often made was red cabbage with Granny Smith apples, so that became part of the 2022 menu. We
always had puddings as kids, usually milk puddings – junket, sago, rice, tapioca or custard – accompanied by
fruit. Our mum was Swiss, so for our down-memory-lane dinner we settled on one we called Swiss pudding. It
probably goes by other names, but it was a custard made with the yokes of several eggs; the whites were beaten
later, raspberry jam added and the mixture spread on top of the custard. (And, no, the pudding wasn’t put in
the oven to turn the egg white mixture into a meringue; we ate the egg whites raw.)
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