Wouldn't it rot your socks!

I feel this weather would rot anyone's socks, - & probably while they are wearing them!
It has blown, & howled & rained all night! Great gusts of wind, trying the windows, & sneaking in cracks. Thrusting against tree trunks, forcing the palms almost double.

This is the dismal view from our lounge window. Grey on grey, with more grey for salsa.


We have watched all our taped & DVD entertainment. I am trying to locate some tempting books to read, but Gom, the meddler Efficient, has taken them all out of the bookcase by the bed. grrrr.

No doubt they are squirrelled away down in the garage. It will take me a week of searching to locate them. *^%$$@!

No bread for toast in the house, meant I had to be creative, with my breakfast choices. I actually dislike toast, it mostly tastes like cardboard. I also detest cereal, due I suspect to the sickening -as in vomit- effect of milk when I was young.

I decided to treat myself to hash browns, bacon & eggs, this morning.

As I cooked the bacon, I was swept back to my childhood, when my Grandmother used to cook us breakfast every morning, & made sure we left for school, with a full nourishing hot meal to begin our day.

I remembered how she used to cook the bacon in the huge cast iron frying pan, which was covered in pale green, cream speckled, enamel. It was a very heavy pan, & the bacon would crisp up nicely. To avoid the spatter factor, my Grandmother would take a sheet of brown paper, & tear a small hole in the center of it, then place it over the top of the pan.

I would watch as the grease spatters gradually turned the paper to 'greased' paper.

She would place the bacon on more brown paper, which was crinkled up, so that the bacon fat drained off, & place the plate in the oven, on the warming plates for our breakfast. Those days were before Paper towels had become a household staple. Groceries still came in brown paper bags, & the butcher wrapped the meat in nice clean sheets of white paper, with a final wrap of brown paper. No plastic to pollute.

The eggs were always cooked in the fat from the bacon, & she would ladle, flick, or spoon, the fat over the yolks, so they turned white, & were cooked, but not hard. We would usually have toast under the eggs, or beside the eggs.

We walked, or rode our bikes to school, so I suppose we burned off the fat! It was always butter for the toast too, as margarine was yet to be introduced to New Zealand.

Some days we had hot baked beans on toast, or tinned spaghetti, or creamed corn. And other days there would be poached eggs, or delicious scrambled eggs.

My tastes must be changing, because I was never one for sauces on foods. My mother loved Worcestershire Sauce, & we always had Tomato sauce in the cupboard, but I was happy not to use either.

I was never very keen on the taste of Worcestershire sauce, & when I became pregnant with my son, I could not stand the smell of it, & it is an aversion I have until this day.

My Mother & Father in law used to make delicious tomato sauce, & I did occasionally eat some on meat. We never did get the recipe from them, & so now it is lost to us forever.

Lately I have taken to having a little tomato sauce on bacon. I am surprised with myself.

When I think of my Grandmother, or my Mother & their cooking I am always reminded of words from a Phoebe Snow song, Sweet Disposition-
"You have got a sweet disposition,
Warm like the oven, in my mother's kitchen."

There must be 'something in the air'. I have just received an email from my Beloved Brother, with memories of the eggs I have been posting about!


Pink Floyd, Wish You Were Here.