On level 1 there are 2 exhibition halls full of Kader Attia artworks in mulimedia.
(Photos attached)
Stay tuned - to be continued
I arrive early outside Susannah Place - 11.00 am and I am the first person to arrive to get my name marked off a list of 17 people on the the Eat Your History Common Sense Cookery tour.
The tour is fully booked and there was a wait list. People on the tour did not start arriving until after 11.15 am and only 1 person could not make it for the tour. The tour started at 11.30 am and finishes at 1.30 pm ( with refreshments of homemade lemonade and carraway seed cake served during our tour in the kitchen area behind the store). I used the time between 11.00 am and 11 30 am to blog and sat out in the sun on the cobble steps outside the Cheap Cash Grocery Store @ Susannah Place Museum.
The tour begins in the Cheap Cash Grocery Store where we cloak all our bags under the counter due to lack of space within the 4 tiny 2 storey 4 room terrace houses that make up Susannah Place Museum. We are then split into 2 smaller groups - one group starting in the store and upstairs kitchen behind the store and given a talk and tour of the store and kitchen on the history of cookery taught at school during the early 1900s through recipes, cookbooks, photographs ,documents, research, oral histories of families and through the eyes of Dolly Youngein's Fort Street School Cookery Class Homework Book - the other group (which I was in) starting with a tour of each of these 4 tiny houses and given a talk and tour of the history of each of them - it wasn't a full tour of the houses as we never ventured uptairs in any of the houses, just the main ground floor rooms and downstairs kitchens - and how they were used over time and its occupants. Hard to imagine living in any of them as there was no electricity most of the time, no hot water or running water and sometimes there was gas unless the occupants decided not to have this installed in their house which if they decided to had to pay extra for it in rent or use a pay gas meter which required coins to be inserted into a meter to keep it running.
Groups then swapped tour guides with the 2 groups coming back together for the final part of the tour - a hands on cookery class where we made date pudding to take home and cook, a recipe from Dolly's Fort Street School Cookery Class Homework Book.
I could write so much more about this tour as it was abolutely fascinating! Some things never change such as :
1. Whoever thought store loyalty programs such as Flybuys or Woolworths Rewards are actually not a new concept? Mr Youngein's cheap cash grocery store had a loyalty program in place way back in the 1900s where if you shopped enough there you earned green stamps which you could take to a supply store and exchange for something such as cutlery or crockery perhaps - maybe a grandfather clock?
2. Whoever thought ingredients such as tapioca or sago existed back in the 1900s and were used as a thickening agent or to add texture as they are used today commercially - if you look at some fruit pudding recipes today there are some that use tapioca or sago and on the back of commercially available products in supermarkets it lists tapioca or sago or their derivatives as a thickening agent in the ingredients list.
3. Coffee and chicory according to historical bookkeeping and inventory records were in demand even back in the 1900s. Today unlike the 1900s chicory can be still found in certain supermarkets but is less common and is probably used as a flavouring agent for smoking food rather then when it was used back in the 1900s to "substitute" coffee with as chicory is less expensive then coffee.
4. Tea - like today tea was also a popular beverage back in the 1900s and what has remained unchanged is "tea blending" .Again back in 1900s tea blending was mixing cheaper tea leaves with more expensive tea leaves to form a "house blend" Today tea blending is about achieving as many different exotic flavours of tea, making tea drinking more enjoyable although not more inexpensive. Also tea blending may also be for therapeutic or medicinal purposes such as calendula and dandelion which was a tea blend Potions and Lotions used to make up for me to drink as a form of relief for my eczema inflamation.
5. Chocolate - ? Did chocolate even exist in the 1900s? There was no mention of this at all during the tour. Attention the Curator & the Cook - would someone like to research this? I did notice that one of the items from the archeological digs found around the Hyde Park Barracks was a very old tin or bar of what looked like Nestle Chocolate or some sort of chocolate.
Photos attached
Inside The Cheap Cash Grocery Store
The Upstairs Kitchen Behind The Cheap Cash Grocery Store
The Exteriors & Interiors of Each of the 4 Houses @ Susannah Place Museum
The Downstairs Kitchen Area Where We Made The Date Puddings
PS. I didn't have time to cook my puddings when I arrived home that day as it was recommended to steam or boil our small puddings for 1 hour therefore I placed them in the refridgerator and the following day placed them into an opal ceramic bowl (nice and snug) in the top level of a double steamer with the level of water quite close to the rim in the bottom pot. I steamed the puddings for a little over an hour while I prepared a butter scotch type syrup/sauce to pour over and soak my warm date puddings. I made this butter scotch type syrup by reducing golden syrup, a dash of milk, dates and a small amount of unsalted butter in a small pot - strirring it often. To ensure the syrup was smooth (there is nothing worse then a broken tooth as a result of a rebel date pit!) I strained it through a sieve before pouring it over the perfectly shaped and steamed date puddings. Absolute Yumminess!!!! Will have to make a variation of this recipe again.
Back to the members lounge @ the MCA to have some take away lunch , refill my water bottle and catch up on my blogging before a toliet break, checking my backpack in on the 1st floor and heading up to the 3rd floor of the MCA to see the New Australian Art exhibition for the last 45 minutes or so before the MCA closes @ 5 pm.
Photos attached
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