An old biscuit tin

I thought I would post this, seeing as the horrific ex-boyfriend* who wanted me to write something for his history blog is clearly never going to.

*he's alright really.

These are pieces from an old biscuit box that my Dad has had in a cupboard for as long as I can remember.  When I was a kid I thought it was stuff which belonged to my Grandad during the war. I never met my Grandad – he died when I was about eight, and he didn’t have much contact with my Dad. Around the time he died I was shown a photo of him taken in 1944, in his army gear, feeding the pigeons in Trafalgar Square. So I always thought of him as a soldier, and I probably assumed the box had been his because it was from the war, and because I only ever (and only still) listen to and put together the bits of stories which I like or which grab my attention, and this usually leads to me accidentally making up a lot of stuff without realising.

When I persuaded my Dad to take the box down again and let me take pictures for this blog, it became obvious that this wasn’t my Grandad’s box. It turned out that it belonged to a guy called Robert William Sumpton, who was a boyfriend of my Gran’s. I was a bit pissed off about that to be honest, because it meant a bit of what I thought I’d known about my Grandad was gone, and that I only had the pigeons in Trafalgar Square. Then I started looking through it.

Magpies and bottles.

I spent a very odd Sunday exploring the Alton Bottle Fair. I think, ultimately, that weird events like this couldn't be held anywhere else other than Britain. I've never heard of bottle digging and collecting taking place in any other part of the world.

Fire and cake

I have long maintained that the North does a lot of things far better than the South. Two of these things are undoubtedly fire and cake: fire is always more welcome when you're freezing cold to begin with; cake involves stodge and fat, two Northern staples.

It is for this reason that I decided to spend Guy Fawkes' Night in the North. Standing near a bonfire in nearly-always-sweltering, always-orange-skyed London didn't seem that much fun, and so I headed up alongside some friends to a private bonfire we regularly used to politely gate-crash as teenagers.

My friend Lyndsey (her flickr stream is here) took some funky pictures:

 

My Dad, who has long refused to associate himself with anything with a hyperlink, made some parkin. I have never seen parkin in the south, and my Hampshireian boyfriend still has trouble pronouncing it's name or beleiving it exists. Parkin is basically an edible bonfire. It should be sweet, deep orange, spicy and stodgy. You should eat it outside in the freezing cold whilst you try and peer through the inevitable Northern drizzle at the fireworks. Basically it's the consolation for the bits of the bonfire where you're wholly wet and uncomfortable and not drunk yet. 

The recipe my Dad started with is here. He then doubled everything and, from what I can discern, poured in any left over treacle.

The stuff to the left is far too neat looking to be proper Parkin. It shouldn't be spongy, it should be so dense that when you swallow you can feel large blocks thumping into the bottom of your stomach. Consume with lots of very alcholic ginger beer.

Carrot and coriander soup

Apparantly we are still having an 'Indian summer'.

That's all very well and good, but in my opinion there is nothing wrong with having an autumn. Here is something which is sort of Indian (it has coriander in it), and sort of autumnal. 

Carrot and Coriander Soup

• 1 tbsp vegetable oil
• 1 onion , very finely chopped (red if you want more colour)
• 1 tsp ground coriander
• 1 potato, chopped up small
• 450g carrots , peeled and finely chopped
• 1.2l vegetable or chicken stock
• handful coriander (about ½ a supermarket packet

1. Heat the oil in a large pan, add the onion, then fry for 5 mins until soft. Stir in the ground coriander and potato, then cook for 1 min. Add the carrots and stock, bring to the boil, then reduce the heat. Cover and cook for 20 mins until the carrots are tender.
2. Tip into food processor with the coriander, then blitz until smooth. Return to pan, taste, add salt if necessary, then reheat to serve. 

Note: I've only said: chop things up small because my food processor is actually one of those whizzy stick things. I discovered whilst making this soup that if it goes anywhere near an actual chunk of food, it by all means chops it up, but in the process it sprays that food, and anything else surrounding it, all over the kitchen.

Coriander flavour is reduced by heating, so if you use soup for what I do (cooling and then reheating to take to work later) I would either keep adding fresh coriander or, less bother and less money, chuck a few cloves of garlic into the soup before blending.

Carrots have lots of Vitamin A in them, so this should help you get through the winter without suffering too much with colds. However, whisky also does that and drinking whisky doesn't involve spraying carrot up your walls.