A Handful of Broken Biscuits: what Beth cooked and what she stored away.

The food described here, such as that in the cool pantry where Elizabeth (Beth) kept her preserves and pickled onions and eggs, is straight from my father's childhood; it is also a page out of mine. And a hint of the conservative eater that was my father.

Beth was a good cook and, though her family cramped her style with their conservative tastes, she persevered with the occasional new recipe she had seen in 'Woman's World'. Sometime, the experiment was not well received and would not be repeated after a few well chosen remarks about working fingers to the bone, people who didn't deserve good things for dinner and those who, if they thought they could do better, were welcome to try.

John often thought of his mother's rabbit pies: crisp light brown pastry crimped all round the side of the dish and with an upturned cup underneath to hold up the pastry in the centre. Two or three knife stabs were always made in the pastry covering to let the steam come wisping through. It made one feel hungry even at the bottom of the garden.

The other dish that particularly lingered in the mind was apple dumplings. Beth always used Bramleys -- always big apples. She cored and stuffed them with currants and covered them with a generous casing of suet pastry. Into the oven they went and when they came out half as big as footballs she would put them in individual dishes, douse them with a hefty sprinkling of sugar and perhaps the top of the milk. Ed could demolish a whole one at a sitting, but the children could manage only part each.

Besides all her jam and chutney making, Beth filled and sealed big one gallon jars of pickled onions, pickled red cabbage and pickled eggs, when the time was right. There was usually enough to last all year. She was proud of her store. The big jars lined the floor under the bottom shelf in her small larder and with home-made jam filling the top shelf she had enough food on hand to withstand a siege.