U3A Benalla and District Inc.
  • Home
  • Benalla
    • Benalla
    • Benalla District
    • Who, What and Where? - Benalla Rural City
  • About
    • Our U3A
    • President's Page
    • Executive Committee
    • Policies
    • Convenors >
      • Convenors
      • Convenors A - Z 2025
    • Program Ideas
    • Newsletter
    • Website
  • Groups
    • Groups A - Z
    • Recent Groups >
      • Armchair History
      • Chess
      • Cooking Solo
      • Demystifying Psychology Course
      • Enjoying the Internet (S2)
      • Family Research Drop In
      • Sky's the Limit
    • Archived Groups >
      • A - M >
        • A Different View Of German History
        • Armchair History (British)
        • Armchair Traveller
        • Booker Reading Group
        • Bushwalking - Mid-week Walks
        • Comparative Religion
        • Facebook for Mentors
        • Family Research - Advanced
        • German - Beginners
        • Google Apps/TS Plus
        • History - An Introduction to Western Civilization
        • History - Moments in Australian History
        • Hot Topics/The News - Fact or Fiction?
        • 'In the Lap of the Gods'
        • Investment I (1996 -2015)
        • Jane Austen Book Club
        • Legal Matters (Short Course)
        • Meditation
        • Making the Most of the Internet
      • O - Z >
        • On Target - Learning to Shop Online
        • Opera
        • 'Over There'
        • Rail and Tourism
        • Russian Literature
        • Tech Savvy Apple - 'Pages'
        • Tech Savvy Apple Devices - Intermediate
        • Tech Savvy Community Projects
        • Travel Group
        • Wise Guys Book Group
        • Zoom Short Course
  • A-Ch
    • A-Ch
    • 'A Taste of Art'
    • American History
    • Art Appreciation
    • 'As Time Goes By'
    • Australian Shares and Stock Market
    • Be Connected - Android
    • Be Connected - Tech Advice
    • Birdwatching
    • Brain Games
    • Bushwalking - Easy Walks
    • Car Torque
    • Cards '500'
    • Chat n' Chew
  • Co-E
    • Ch - E
    • Coin Collectors
    • Collectors
    • Colour Mixing and Watercolour Techniques - Botanical
    • Come and Learn Croquet
    • Community Singing
    • Creative Writing
    • Demystifying Psychology - Discussion Group
    • Demystifying Psychology - Perception
    • Exercises for Fun
    • Exploring the Universe
    • Exploring Writing Children's Books
  • F-Pa
    • F- Pa
    • Family Research
    • Film Discussion
    • French at the Table
    • Garden Appreciation
    • Garden Team
    • German >
      • German Home
      • Lessons
    • Let's Talk Books
    • Lifeball >
      • Home
      • Lifeball Videos
    • Mahjong
    • Meet and Mingle
    • Music Appreciation
    • Page Turners
    • Patchwork and Craft
  • Ph-W
    • Ph -W
    • Photography
    • Play Reading
    • Politics & Current Affairs
    • Recorder
    • Singing for Fun
    • Spanish
    • Stock and Land
    • Sustainability
    • Tech Talks
    • Train Buffs
    • Ukes4Fun
    • Wine Appreciation
  • Join
    • Join Us
    • Membership Application/Renewal Form
    • Program Guide
    • Timetable with Dates
    • Venues and Maps
  • News
    • News Update
    • May Newsletter
    • 'What's On' Calendar 2025
    • Monthly Calendar
    • Website & Facebook
  • FB
  • Gallery
  • Links
    • Resources and References
    • U3A Network Victoria
    • Seniors Online Victoria
    • U3A Albury Wodonga
    • U3A Beechworth (Indigo U3A)
    • U3A Bright
    • U3A Goulburn Valley
    • U3A Murrundindee East
    • U3A Wangaratta
  • Contact

'Shaped by Childhood', by Carmyl Winkler

7/5/2023

0 Comments

 
Only this morning, I was spreading grapefruit marmalade on my toast and remembering Dad doing exactly the same. I didn’t ever eat marmalade then – I was a Vegemite girl. But the memory was less about eating the marmalade than making it. I have never bought a jar of marmalade in my life and the number of jars of jam I’ve bought is probably fewer than the number of my fingers.
​

Money wasn’t plentiful at our home and my mother was an expert at making it stretch a long way. We always had a vegetable garden and usually half a dozen chooks. Every year Mother preserved beans by putting the cut-up beans in a big pottery jar in between layers of salt. She rubbed eggs with a substance called Keepeg – it was supposed to seal the shell so you could use the eggs when the chooks stopped laying. It more or less worked – the eggs were OK to use in cooking except for the odd one that definitely didn’t seal and you could smell that a mile off as soon as you cracked it open.
We saved the fat from the roasts and this was put in a container with some water, brought to the boil and then cooled. The clarified dripping had risen to the top and was taken off and stored until there was enough to make soap.

Then there was the jam making – apricot and plum mainly, then marmalade in the winter. Fruit and tomatoes were preserved in Fowler’s jars. Mother also made plum sauce.

Saturday’s main meal was a roast, Sunday’s lunch was cold meat and salad, Monday the rest of the roast minced up to make Shepherd’s Pie. Sunday night was always soup.
Baking was up to we three girls and we could make what we liked as we were the main one’s who ate it.

When I got married, I assumed my mother’s methods were what everyone did. I was working five days a week so Saturday had to stretch to the week’s washing, the weekly shopping as well as the Saturday roast. We tried this once. Then we discovered you could buy four slices of salad meat for ten pence at the local deli. That was the end of the roast dinner. Life got even easier when Don made a regular bike ride to Sydney Road and managed to bring home the week’s shopping in between his university lectures.

However many childhood ways of running a household remained. I drew the line at salting beans and I certainly wasn’t going to use Keepeg. But to this day I still make jam and marmalade, preserve a few jars of fruit or tomatoes (that was a forty jar a year job when all the family was home), make tomato sauce and have home-made biscuits in the cupboard.
Soup is also home-made, but I haven’t really had a go at Beef Tea, which I remember as delicious. Mother’s recipe says ‘Cook in a double saucepan. It should never boil but heat slowly for 2 – 3 hours’. Oh for the days of the wood stove!

​Carmyl Winkler
​May 2023
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    'Shaped by Childhood'

    Describe a formative experience from your childhood, and how it helped shape the person you grew up to be. It could be a treasured family ritual, an early friendship, an influential teacher or your first experience of losing a loved one.   Think about an experience or person that’s influenced you and share this with us.

    Categories

    All
    Beverley Lee
    Carmyl Winkler
    James Davey
    Neville Gibb
    Tom Barnaby
    Trish Rogash

    Archives

    May 2023

    RSS Feed

We acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which we meet and pay our respects to their elders - past, present and emerging.
Picture
News
​Newsletter
Facebook Page
​
Program Suggestions
​CO-VID Safety

U3A Benalla & District Flier 2025
Membership Application/Renewal 
​
Semester 1 Program Guide 2025
Semester 1 Timetable with Dates 2025
Developed and maintained by members, this website showcases U3A Benalla 
​Photographs - U3A members; Benalla Art Gallery website; ​Weebly 'Free' images;Travel Victoria and State Library of Victoria