I see that Clarissa Theresa Philomena Aileen Mary Josephine Agnes Elsie Trilby Louise Esmerelda Dickson-Wright, the last of the Two Fat Ladies, died today. I liked her honest plain-spoken approach to food, cooking and life generally.

But seeing as she was only 66 I think I too had better go easy on the red wine as I toast the passing of another foody of the old school.

I wouldn't worry too much about the red wine, MM.  One of our former All Blacks, Frank Oliver, known as indestructible on the field, has died aged 65 today.  Suddenly which I take to be a heart attack.  He must have been plenty fit in his day, though it was during the time when young players weren't so strictly chaperoned and alcohol consumption was, by all accounts, reasonably high.  So perhaps the red wine didn't help (though I am sure beer was, and no doubt still is, the liquor of choice with rugby players in NZ).

Clarissa Dickson-Wright was great to listen to - though there are far too many cooking programmes on television now, and if I need a recipe it never comes from any of these, delicious though they often sound.

She had a fascinating life, but "all things in moderation" was perhaps a precept unknown to her.

My doctor has recommended one small glass of good red wine a day, but the temptation to save them all up for Saturday night/Sunday lunchtime is enormous. And that, apparently, is the worst - most dangerous - thing you can do.

Nothing in excess - sigh.

Some of Clarissa's "best moments" here:


http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/tvandradioblog/2014/mar/17/celebrity-chef-clarissa-dickson-wrights-greatest-tv-moments

And here's Lard, Lard, Lard (sort of Spam, Spam, Spam, but for posh people).

The caveman diet:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleolithic_diet

It doesn't mention life expectancy, that diet suggestion, Trike.

Life expectancy is a very tricky subject, Priscilla, as a it is also heavily influenced by violence, accidents and disease.

Going by the table on this link, it is only in the last century, with greatly improved medical knowledge that the average human lifespan has increased much beyond the age of 40;

http://www.beyondveg.com/nicholson-w/angel-1984/angel-1984-1a.shtml




"If God wanted us to be vegetarians, why did he make animals so tasty" Homer Simpson

Though anyone wanting to live to 122 is advised to eat 1kg of chocolate each week;

Health and lifestyle

Calment's remarkable health presaged her later record. At age 85 (1960), she took up fencing, and continued to ride her bicycle up until her 100th birthday. She was reportedly neither athletic nor fanatical about her health. Calment lived on her own until shortly before her 110th birthday, when it was decided that she needed to be moved to a nursing home after a cooking accident (due to complications with sight) started a small fire in her house. However, Calment was still in good shape, and continued to walk until she fractured her femur during a fall at age 114 years 11 months (January 1990), which required surgery.
Calment smoked cigarettes from the age of 21 (1896) to 117 (1992), though according to an unspecified source, she smoked no more than two cigarettes per day towards the end of her life. After her operation, Calment needed to use a wheelchair. In 1994, age 119, she weighed 45 kilograms (99 lb).
Calment ascribed her longevity and relatively youthful appearance for her age to a diet rich in olive oil (which she also rubbed onto her skin), as well as a diet of port wine, and ate nearly one kilogram (2.2 lb) of chocolate every week. She also credited her calmness, saying, "That's why they call me Calment." Calment reportedly remained mentally intact until her very end.^[4]
On 4 August 1997, at 22:45 Central European Time, Calment died, aged 122. After her death, 116-year-old Marie-Louise Meilleur became the oldest recognized living person.
"I’ve never had but one wrinkle, and I’m sitting on it."
Jeanne Calment

Anyone feeling a bit peckish should pop into the local thermopolium;

http://www.romanarmy.net/thermopolium.shtml

In China, food catering establishments which may be described as restaurants were known since the 11th century in Kaifeng, China's northern capital during the first half of the Song Dynasty (960–1279). Probably growing out of the tea houses and taverns that catered to travellers, Kaifeng's restaurants blossomed into an industry catering to locals as well as people from other regions of China. Stephen H. West argues that there is a direct correlation between the growth of the restaurant businesses and institutions of theatrical stage drama, gambling and prostitution which served the burgeoning merchant middle class during the Song Dynasty.^] Restaurants catered to different styles of cuisine, price brackets, and religious requirements. Even within a single restaurant much choice was available, and people ordered the entree they wanted from written menus An account from 1275 writes of Hangzhou, the capital city for the last half of the dynasty:

Quote :

The people of Hangzhou are very difficult to please. Hundreds of orders are given on all sides: this person wants something hot, another something cold, a third something tepid, a fourth something chilled; one wants cooked food, another raw, another chooses roast, another grill.

The restaurants in Hangzhou also catered to many northern Chinese who had fled south from Kaifeng during the Jurchen invasion of the 1120s, while it is also known that many restaurants were run by families formerly from Kaifeng.

Advert for McDonalds from Joliet, Illinois 4 April 1959;

Fish & Chips;

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8419026.stm

Local fishermen always claimed that the Romans seeded the entire Blackwater estuary to provide oysters for  themselves. ... as if it happened sometime last year. They also called the river  the Panta - which it is in the battle of Maldon also and the name of a small stream Braintree way that feeds into it somewhere.
Did the Romans also introduce rabbits? and was the introduction for food? Certainly the snails found here are ones they brought in - ought to be edible as they omly eat the best veg in my garden., but I resist. Neither are included on the above  Roman menu. Not sure about chickens. Are ancient chicken bones ever found up in Roman sites?

Priscilla wrote:

Did the Romans also introduce rabbits? and was the introduction for food? Certainly the snails found here are ones they brought in - ought to be edible as they omly eat the best veg in my garden., but I resist. Neither are included on the above  Roman menu. Not sure about chickens. Are ancient chicken bones ever found up in Roman sites?

Rabbits for certain, Priscilla;

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/norfolk/4439339.stm

Chickens were already here, but not for food;

Carlisle Old English Game


When the Romans invaded Britain, Julius Caesar wrote in his commentaries that the Britons kept fowls for pleasure and diversion but not for table purposes. Many well-known authorities have considered that cock fighting was the diversion. In 1849 an Act of Parliament was passed making cock fighting illegal in this country, and with poultry exhibitions then taking root, many breeders began to exhibit Game fowls.

http://www.poultryclub.org/breed-gallery/chickens/

Re Roman snails - As far as I am aware all european snails are edible, and indeed have often been a stable source of protein for the poor, or in times of crisis, since at least Neolithic times. When I lived in England I regularly harvested wild edible/roman/burgundian snails, call 'em what you like, from Box Hill in Surrey (I think that colony was introduced from France by some Duke or other, but they have subsequently made themseves very much at  home).

Here in southern France we don't actually get the big fat roman snails (it's too dry), but there are still plenty of the ordinary garden snails and in damp weather they can be almost as big, although with a slightly stronger flavour, as the 'edible' ones. Snails, often rather euphemistically called wallfish, are also a long-established feature of the cuisine of southern England  from the Mendips to the South Downs (and particularly where the under-lying rock is limestone - snails like that) . And yummy they are too!

The humble and undervalued snail has had an important place in history it seems:

[land snails] together with a few other similar molluscs,... have – or ought to have – an honored placed in the history of food. For they represent the key and perhaps the solution to one of the greatest mysteries of our story : why and how did the human animal begin to herd and breed other animals for food ? (Fernández-Armesto, 2002, p. 56).

http://www.manandmollusc.net/lubell_ljubljana1.pdf

I would have quite enjoyed being a mesolithic snail herder. Of all the possible tasks, corralling some frisky snails must have been a lot better than taking down an auroch and you'd always have the makings of a fast (or, rather, slow) snack to hand.

Herding snails is as I recall harder than it sounds. As children we had stables of them painted in our own racing colours. They must live a long time because I recall my father's astonishment several years later when he found one with orange stripes...... not my stable tho. We just couldn't keep them in order. I guess one cooked them in fire embers in the old days. Nah they'd hurry out. Boiled like winkles? Lidded saucepan needed for those for similar reasons.

Columella suggests a bird like the Dorking as the best table fowl - http://www.poultryclub.org/dorkingclub/ IIRC when Hugh F-W carried out a comparative trial, the Dorking was the winner (I suppose, if you were the Dorking in question, that might be better expressed as "most favoured loser").

It isn't clear if the original Roman introduction of the rabbit died out and it is a Norman re-introduction. Certainly, they were only able to establish themselves in the wild after centuries of being protected and nurtured in coneygres. http://www.blisworth.org.uk/images/Articles/pillow_mounds.htm

Dish of the day - stuffed Salmond?

Quote :

Dish of the day - stuffed Salmond?

... or a gutted Sturgeon?

But then I'm not sure that the usual fare of, 'Fat Cat à la Westminster', or even a local dish of, 'Rich-trotters-in-the-pie', are any more palatable. Neh?

Here are eight receipes from ancient Rome, not half bad either.

http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/233472.html

And this conversion table for Roman weights and measures, to enlarge just click on the picture.

http://phdiva.blogspot.it/2014/09/sarah-e-bond-visualizing-roman-weights.html

Interesting that two of the Roman weight names remain in use. French usage is (or was till very recently) to call a half-kilo a livre, and in the avoirdupois weight system the drachm or  dram (1/16 oz), though less popular than the other sort of dram, still finds a use - weights in fishing contests are usually expressed in lbs oz dr - a fish too small to register on its own being traditionally credited as "4 drams".

The scruple (scrupulus) and ounce (unica) are also still used in the jewellery trade when referring to the weights of precious metals, a scruple being 1/24th of a Troy ounce. The Troy ounce although a non SI unit was retained in the international precious metals business to maintain continuity of purity controls, since many old 'good-delivery gold bars' from many decades ago are still in circulation, or at least held in bank vaults. A standard gold bar, even if manufactured just yesterday, will therefore still weigh exactly 400 Troy ounces (440 Imperial ounces or 12.44139 kg).