Gardiner - From an Immigrants Oven A Casserole of Our Familys Potted History from the Vantage Point of My Stomach

Unclench your fists when you pray for peace.

From an Immigrants Oven

A Casserole of Our Familys Potted History
from the Vantage Point of My Stomach

by

ARTHUR GARDINER

with Illustrations by

GARRY SASQUATCH PECK

Recipes and anecdotes from our familys nomadic past, with a plethora of inappropriate aphorisms and useless trivia

Cure For Mange On Dogs :

10lb lard; 1lb sulphur; 1/ cups kerosene; 1/ cups vinegar. Melt the fat, add the ingredients in the order given above, and store in a wide mouthed jar. Wash the dog, apply the mixture liberally all over.

FROM AN IMMIGRANTS OVEN

A CASSEROLE OF OUR FAMILYS POTTED HISTORY FROM THE VANTAGE POINT OF MY STOMACH

Copyright 2017 Arthur Gardiner.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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ISBN: 978-1-5320-1245-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5320-1244-0 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5320-1243-3 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016920069

iUniverse rev. date: 12/16/2016

Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts. Albert Einstein

DEDICATION

Pour toute la famille, particulirement Bo et Colm, grce qui ce travail a t ncessaire et possible.

To all the family, especially Bo and Colm, who made this job both necessary and possible.

Aan alles van die gesin, besonder Bo n Colm, wie het hierdie werk nodig n moontlik wees.

Lifes greatest mystery is how that boy, who wasnt good enough to marry your daughter, is now the father of the smartest grandchild in the world.

Never look round to see whether any shall note it. Marcus Aurelius

INTRODUCTION

Somewhat bedraggled, after surviving vicious civil wars, dragging our unwanted butts from one country to the next, one continent after another, some of our family only finally landed in Canada in the 1980s and 1990s. Were a mongrel tribe, whose Scots and Belgian, with a sprinkling of English and Swiss, antecedents hit Africa in the late 19 th and early 20 th centuries: some of whom built businesses or farms; others, mines from raw bush. Another part of the clan, the Ukrainians, skedaddled from Eastern Europe between wars, coming directly to Canada.

Some of us suffered the ignominy of being stateless refugees, some lost citizenship, some our culture, our language: we all lost our homes. But, we survived; welcomed, to our surprise, by our new compadres. Some stayed in eastern Canada; some of the family came west. Originally, I compiled the recipes for the family, lest they lose their heritage entirely; but I was urged to share our past misfortunes with other Canadians, so they, too, can laugh at them.

Whence came the recipes? Many were from my mothers and grandmothers stained and dog-eared cookbooks; many evolved with the family, as recipes do; others I gleaned from the travels that my job entailed. Are they original? Some are, but many come from scraps of paper and the backs of my technical notebooks, linked to some weird reminiscences.

And to you Canucks who were here to welcome us so warmly: Merci, eh! and Bon apptit, and Enjoy.

Arthur Gardiner

2016-10-10

Ive changed most folks names, to protect the guilty.

A / inch slice of wine cork stuck behind the base of a picture frame will prevent a dark line on the wall paperyoull get a circle instead.

Never attempt to teach a pig to sing: it wastes your time and it annoys the pig. Robert Anson Heinlein

After existing for two weeks on a diet of tacos and beans in Honduras, at the first restaurant we reached as we came out of the bush, near Choluteca, we ordered their house specialty: grilled tilapia with baked potatoes and all the trimmings. Talk about fresh! As Gustavo and I enjoyed a couple of ice cold beers, the patrn dropped a line in his well-stocked pond beside the kitchen, while his spouse collected spuds, herbs and vegetables from the garden.

CONTENTS

I have observed that at almost every meal where there is convivial company, the discussion at table always turns to food; not only about the current meal under examination and consumption, but also of meals past, meals to come, restaurants visited, restaurants to be visited, recipes tested and tasted, recipes untried.

Why? Perhaps because the soul of a human is in his stomach.

Honey Sauce

In a double boiler, melt 2oz butter, stir in / cup honey, pinch of cinnamon and grate in a hint of nutmeg. Good on pancakes.

I like children - fried. W.C. Fields

At the tender age of seven I was consigned to a boarding school that was very similar to Hogwarts, without the magicians. Ah, what a school that was: up at six every morning; sprint down, bare-bummed, to the outdoor pool, summer and winter for a quick couple of lengths; then back to the dormitory to change for matins and one class before breakfast. They tried, mostly unsuccessfully, to turn us into young English gentlemen by beating an appreciation for literature, the classics, religion and the love of God into our bums with a birch cane.

There, I was ever envious of all my peers, whose tuck-boxes were always filled with shop-bought candies; while I had to make do with what my doting mother and grandmother had made for me. My peers, in turn, were all insanely jealous of the fact that my family took the time to make candies for me; whereas their parents had merely turned the task over to a mail-order factor.

What follows in this section are samples of my mothers, my grandmothers and my great grandmothers recipes.

Cure for Smokers Cough

To cure a persistent cough, my mother recommended a dose of Epsom salts to her friend, a pack-a-day smoker. When her gullible friend tried the prescribed medication, it did cure the cough, temporarily. Her friend was too nervous to cough, in case she spilled the beans, as my mother put it.

The friendship soured thereafter.

Wisdom is knowing what to do next. Anon