(Piano music)
00:09 This podcast was recorded at State Library Victoria on Aboriginal land, the land of the Wurunjeri people of the Kulin Nations. We pay our respects to their elders past and present.
00:22 (phone dialing)
CHRISTINA: Hello. How are you?
PENNY: Alright. I think I've worked it out.
00:29 (piano music)
PENNY: Hello. Welcome to In Those Days. I am not with Christina Adams today but I've got her on the phone. Hello Christina.
CHRISTINA: Hi Penny. Hello, isn't technology wonderful.
PENNY: Oh look, we're hoping it's wonderful. Okay, well today, special episode because we're going to talk about the festive season. We're going to talk about Christmas.
CHRISTINA: That's very exciting Penny.
PENNY: And how are you feeling about Christmas this year?
CHRISTINA: Well, disorganised would be a good describing word. Yeah not ready for Christmas this year would be how I'm feeling. How 'bout you?
PENNY: Very much ready. Extremely not ready. And, but I mean I'm not usually terribly organised. Are you usually organised?
CHRISTINA: No. Every single year we say, 'Do you know, next year we're not going to be in that mad rush. We will start shopping in September and we'll have a list and we'll just get moving. And every year we find ourselves with a couple of weeks left in all sorts of drama. So that's where we're at right now.
PENNY: Yeah, look there are people, my mother-in-law I think just shops throughout the year. When she sees things she puts them aside and.
CHRISTINA: I think that's the sign of someone who's got a lot going on and probably has a really organised freezer as well, you know. No surprise guest would throw them off. She'd be ready for all takers.
PENNY: She is very good at meal planning. Yes, she always knows what we're gonna have in advance.
CHRISTINA: I'd like a little bit more of that in my genetic profile than I clearly do have.
PENNY: I bet your mum's organised.
CHRISTINA: She's very organised. Lots of zip-locked bags at Mum and Dad's house and she'll often say that she just, you know, had a quiet afternoon so she reorganised the linen cupboard. The linen cupboard at their place always looks on point so I'm not quite sure what you were reorganising, but okay.
PENNY: You know what I've started doing recently and I'm very excited about it. Is I've stared doing the thing where you put the sets inside one pillowcase.
CHRISTINA: I have not heard of that exciting technique.
PENNY: It is really good so you have, if you've got like the doona cover and the pillow slips that match, and maybe a fitted sheet as well. Then you put all the rest, you fold up all the rest of the stuff into a pillowcase size and then it in one pillowcase and then they kind of, it looks very neat in the cupboard.
CHRISTINA: That's very gamechanger isn't it. Maybe you could start a Tik Tok with all of your household hints and techniques.
PENNY: You know the comedian Kirsty Webeck.
CHRISTINA: Yeah, yep.
PENNY: I follow her on Twitter and she said it one day and it was like, amazing. Do you remember that, this is not about Christmas at all, do you remember that sketch we did years and years ago.
CHRISTINA: I was thinking of that sketch, yes about folding fitting sheets. Yes it was a, we dropped the c-bomb live on stage and my parents have never looked at me the same since.
PENNY: But it was one of the funniest things you've ever written. Like, I remember you came up with that line and I was like, oh that is very funny.
CHRISTINA: Yeah, I thought it was funny. Because it was out of line with everything else we were saying. I don't like gratuitous swearing but I do appreciate a well-placed one.
PENNY: Yeah, we came out in like aprons and we looked like kind of prim 1950s housewives. Yeah, you said it. You said, 'Penny, I've find that fitted sheets are a (piano sound) to fold'.
CHRISTINA: That's right and then we tried to work out how to fold them.
PENNY: And I'd seen it on, I think I'd seen Martha Stewart do it on Oprah or something. I'll get onto Christmas.
04:17 (piano music ending on God Rest ye Merry Gentlemen)
PENNY: Christmas. It's a big topic. Obviously there's a lot of articles in Trove about Christmas. I searched for 'Australian Christmas traditions' and that was really all I needed. Even though Australia only became a 'nation' or a 'jumped up collection of colonies' as Milton would say in 1901, still referred to as Austaralia sometimes before that. So I found articles back into the 1860s about an Australian Christmas. Because obviously when Europeans came to Australia they brought their traditions with them, as well as, you know, ruining the traditions and lives of First Nations People, they also celebrated their own traditions. And one of the biggest, and most enduring Christmas traditions we have here in Australia is actually whinging about Christmas.
CHRISTINA: Yes, we do do that really well.
PENNY: There's a lot of complaining about Christmas and I found definitely in the newspaper archives. So this is one article from Christmas 1879. I will say that in the 1870s people are very, very wordy. it's very flowery.
CHRISTINA: Okay.
PENNY: It's by a guy called W.H. Traill and it was published in the Sydney Mail 27th December 1879.
05:42 (piano music Deck the Halls)
PENNY: "Christmas. In Australia, Christmas has to contend, more than any other festivity, with the rupture of associations. In that sense it becomes, at the antipodes of the Old World, hopelessly exotic. Christmas customs are also winter customs, and when transplanted to our burning soil they thaw inevitably and inexorably, and it requires the stoutest determination to preserve them at all. Undeniably the sportive spirit of the season suffers. A jolly abandon is the very essence of it, and no two frames of mind could have less compatibility than determination and abandon."
So that's basically just a big whinge about it's hot at Christmas.
CHRISTINA: I did like the term 'jolly abandon' I think that does sum up everyone's approaching to eating on Christmas Day.
PENNY: Yes, there is a fair bit of jolly abandon.
CHRISTINA: That's right. Well, fuck it, it's Christmas, just eat it, it's fine.
PENNY: I have had most of my life's Christmases, have been hot, so I'm like completely used to it. Have you ever had a Northern Hemisphere Christmas?
CHRISTINA: No. I have not. I have always been in Victoria at Christmastime. I've never, never been elsewhere. But you have.
PENNY: I had two but I really wanted it to snow. I was in, one time I was in Washington DC, and the other time we actually went to Mexico City on Christmas Day, which was really weird. It didn't, when I was in DC I was really hoping it would snow, it didn't. But the thing that, when I was in America, it happened so many times that Americans, I'd be talking to them about something and then all of a sudden they'd have this lightbulb moment and they'd go, 'oh it must be, it must be hot at Christmas in Australia.'
CHRISTINA: Oh, the sudden revelation.
PENNY: I'd be like, 'yep'. There it is.
CHRISTINA: Yep, pretty much.
PENNY: Because we're all just so used to the idea of it, that the image of Christmas of like the Santa and the cold and the snow and stuff is
CHRISTINA: Yeah, the snow.
PENNY: It's very different from what actually happens and we're all just completely used to that.
CHRISTINA: It is quite weird. It's like we have our own little alternative just happening down in the Southern Hemisphere that the rest of the world forgets about.
PENNY: Yeah, exactly. But I mean the whole thing is imaginary. I mean, I don't, like there's a lot of imagination involved in Christmas anyway so,
CHRISTINA: Well that's right. It doesn't really matter where the man in the red suit is visiting it's all a bit far-fetched whether it's hot or cold really.
PENNY: Exactly. But anyway, this article does go on and Traill says,
"An Australian Christmas can never be organised into even a faint resemblance of an English one. What is Christmas without the grey or steely sky, the grim twilight, and long black night? How can the roaring Yule-log, the mighty baron of beef, the tremendous pudding in its fiery shroud of flaming spirits, the reeking wassail-bowl"
Do you know what a wassail-bowl is?
CHRISTINA: No.
PENNY: It actually sounds really nice. It's like a mulled wine, a bowl of mulled wine that you sort of carry around.
CHRISTINA: Oh, that sounds pleasant.
PENNY: When you're singing and annoying the neighbours. Look it does sound like a nice idea but I would not like to have one in December.
CHRISTINA: No, probably a June/July extravaganza.
PENNY: Anyway,
"The reeking wassail-bowl be suggestive of comfort in a country where the thermometer oft times marks ninety degrees in the shade at Christmas time, and where, instead of trusting robin-redbreasts and blackbirds, tamed by hunger, flocking before the window for elee"
Sorry this is a big word for me.
"for eleemosynary crumbs"
CHRISTINA: Wow.
PENNY: "a host of blood thirsty mosquitoes settle upon perspiring guests?"
CHRISTINA: Yes, he's a bit jaded, isn't he?
PENNY: He's not selling it. He's not making it sound like it's very nice.
CHRISTINA: No, he's missing the old-country.
PENNY: This bit, this is an interesting, I think this tells us more about him than it does about Christmas in Australia.
"Charity may be awakened by the frosty little feet of poor children and the painful shiverings of thinly clad age, and generosity may arouse to warm the distressed with glowing fires. But everything here is unfavourable to such adventitious spurs to humanitarianism. Panting mankind can scarcely help envying ragged penury the luxury of self-ventilating clothes, and if the wretched are too warm to be entirely comfortable, so also are the rich and powerful, and the idea of alleviating this sort obf suffering by throwing open a commodious refrigerating chamber to all comers is too tremendously novel to be entertained."
CHRISTINA: Oh god.
PENNY: So basically you can't feel sorry for anyone when you're hot.
CHRISTINA: No. There's a definite Ghost of Christmas Past feel about it. His attitude.
PENNY: He's kind of basically going, look I was hot I couldn't have any empathy for anyone. Which would basically
CHRISTINA: No, why were we eating plum pudding when it was 35 degrees.
PENNY: There was some poor people, I didn't give a shit because I was sweating. Maybe that
CHRISTINA: I was conflicted whether to have a hot or cold meal, I don't know.
PENNY: And maybe that does explain colonialism, like that's how it happened. 'Oh, we were hot.'
CHRISTINA: In some flowery terms. So we sort of forgot our empathy.
PENNY: 'We didn't realise they were people because we were hot.'
Although it's funny at the end when he says 'oh you can't just throw open a commodious refrigerating chamber'. I tell you what you can. Nowadays with air-conditioning.
CHRISTINA: You can. Welcome to my air-conditioned house. Please come in.
PENNY: And many a Christmas location has been decided based on air-conditioning.
CHRISTINA: Yeah, whose house is the least offensive climate-wise.
PENNY: Anyway, this guy then goes on, his other complaints about Christmas in Australia is that there's no mistletoe. And that causes a problem because people have been, young men have just been using any old shrub to kiss under and then people
CHRISTINA: Who's kissing under a shrub?
PENNY: Well they just hold up any old twig and kiss the girl then everyone goes, 'When are you getting married?' And it's really awkward. Like,
CHRISTINA: I think that's probably a deeper issue in society than the lack of mistletoe if that's what's going on.
PENNY: You can't have empathy and you can't sexually harass people with impunity. It's terrible here in Australia.
CHRISTINA: Terrible time of the year.
PENNY: And he also says it's too hot for ghost stories. I don't think ghost stories really are much of a tradition here so maybe he's right.
CHRISTINA: Yeah, I don't think we tend to focus on those over here do we?
PENNY: Not at Christmas time, no. So that was in 1879. Now nearly 15 years later Australians are still not very happy with Christmas. This is an article from the Adelaide Register, which was published on the 13th of December 1901.
12:40 (Piano music Silent Night)
PENNY: And it's called "Christmas Pudding Reform"
CHRISTINA: Oh dear.
PENNY: "The ideal way of spending Christmas Day in a country where the festive season falls in the midst of summer has yet to be discovered."
CHRISTINA: Similar theme.
PENNY: Yeah.
"Certainly it should differ in many important respects from the conventional mode of keeping holiday and partaking of good cheer as practised by the British race in their original home. The principal feature of an Australian Christmas which needs reforming is the dinner, and particularly the pudding portion of that fearful and wonderful repast."
Now, Christina, pudding. What are your thoughts? Because it is controversial.
CHRISTINA: Look, I still quite like a pudding on Christmas Day I have to say, I do. But it is always up for debate in our family. I know we have had some years we've had an ice-cream pudding.
PENNY: And how did people feel?
CHRISTINA: Mixed emotions. And I mean, I'm sure this happens in your family too. People do get quite heightened with food choices and menu selections around this time of year. I think if it was left up to my mum we would have been planning solidly since October but I've been pushing that out further and further because I suppose probably for the past ten years or so we did the big shift from the hot meal to the cold meal and now we sort of hover between the two. We have some hot dishes and some cold dishes now.
PENNY: Yeah, well what we have done few times is had. There's a few things that are cooked in the oven but it's been mainly salad to go with it and not roast vegetables. I remember one year we were having at our house. And I'd planned this, this is what we were doing. It was all organised. Everyone was bringing stuff and then just at the last minute Lincoln goes, 'No. My dad won't cope without roast potatoes.' And I was like, 'Really? I have never got the impression from your dad that he's particularly inflexible or that roast potatoes are super super important to him.' Anyway, I put my foot down, I said, 'Rubbish, he will cope. Let's watch him.' And he did cope. I don't know if he got home and cried, but on the day he held it together.
CHRISTINA: Well, that is interesting because roast potatoes has been a contentious menu item here as well. Similarly, my dad apparently won't cope without roast potatoes. But I'm sort of on team roast potato. So I'm also quite keen.
PENNY: I mean they are good. They are good.
CHRISTINA: They are good. But my aunt apparently doesn't like roast potatoes and I'm not quite sure where that's come from because I've seen her eat them quite happily. No, but again it creates controversy because people have their things that they're attached to. I get really focused on, there must be dinner rolls for Christmas. I don't know why. I never buy them any other time of the year. But if there are no dinner rolls I'm gonna lose my shit.
PENNY: Yeah, look, I love dinner rolls.
CHRISTINA: They're good. And particularly, you've gotta buy enough so that you've got some leftover ones to have with, with leftover food from Christmas Day. It's very pleasing.
PENNY: Actually, this is a good idea, I might introduce it. This year. Become obsessive about it.
CHRISTINA: Yeah, exactly. Just say you won't cope if there aren't
PENNY: 'Penny won't cope if there's not dinner rolls'.
CHRISTINA: No exactly. She's put her foot down.
PENNY: Okay, now, the article goes on to give a recipe for John Bull's own plum pudding. And this is the recipe:
"One pound of suet"
I don't know what suet is. Do you know what suet is?
CHRISTINA: It's animal fat.
PENNY: Good.
CHRISTINA: Healthy for all.
PENNY: "One pound of moist sugar"
I don't know what moist sugar is.
CHRISTINA: Is that living in Queensland again.
PENNY: I dunno. Is it like brown sugar? Dunno.
"One pound each of currants, ordinary raisins"
There's no need to be splashing out on extraordinary raisons.
CHRISTINA: No, noone needed superior raisons.
PENNY: Not special raisons. Just ordinary ones. Don't get up yourself.
CHRISTINA: Don't go crazy.
PENNY: "and sultana raisins, one pound of candied peel, half a pound each of breadcrumbs and flour, one teaspoonful of salt and one of mixed spice, eight eggs"
That's a lotta eggs.
"And a quarter pint of brandy. When the pudding has been made, mixed, and tied down in a scalded and floured cloth, it is then boiled for thirteen hours."
And my god if something has been boiled for 13 hours you know it's good.
CHRISTINA: Yeah, it's really melted that suet in.
PENNY: Sounds gross.
CHRISTINA: And that was another controversial ingredient you listed earlier too, the candied peel.
PENNY: Not everyone likes it.
CHRISTINA: No it's a dividing ingredient. It's not something I'm a fan of.
PENNY: So you say no.
CHRISTINA: I say no to the peel.
PENNY: Okay.
"This, passed round in blazing spirit, as the conclusion of a meal which has included sirloin of beef and turkey, served as hot and as fat as possible, is enough on an Australian Christmas Day with the thermometer at 100 in the shade to make a man forswear Christmas dinners for the remainder of his life."
Now, you're a vegetarian Christina. Is that, or a pescatarian?
CHRISTINA: Look, I'm hypocritical but I do eat seafood. So, yeah, I guess because of my dietary choices everyone else has had to fall into line.
PENNY: Everyone else can't have good old-fashioned suet in their pudding.
CHRISTINA: No suet for you, no duck fat potatoes either.
PENNY: No sirloin of beef. Well, they can have the sirloin of beef. What do you have? What's your special?
CHRISTINA: Well, Dad and I are the only two people who like oysters so we become quite fixated on that as an idea and.
PENNY: Christina and Ian won't cope if there's not oysters.
CHRISTINA: Yeah, so we just sit and keep going 'Why doesn't anyone else want an oyster?' And we know noone else eats them but we, you know, make a big song and dance over it every year. We usually have some prawns and some smoked salmon and then there will be like lots of salad and vegies and so on. I have noticed a bit of a trend for some more meat creeping in, which always lights my mother's face up. She loves getting that across the line. So usually, actually, we've started doing a big piece of salmon that we might cook as well, so it's, to be honest it doesn't really feel like there's a lot holding the meal together in terms of a theme it's just 'Well, I liked this last year, so I'm doing this again, kind of thing.' We're a bit loose like that.
PENNY: I think that's nice.
CHRISTINA: And I like to have lots and lots of nibbles beforehand. I like to go a little bit over the top with pre-dinner food. I don't know why that's so exciting but it really is.
PENNY: And do you usually go to your parent's house or do they come to you?
CHRISTINA: No we've been hosting it down here for a few years now, which has been quite good because Mum and Dad will come and stay.
PENNY: That's relaxing.
CHRISTINA: Yeah. Mostly.
PENNY: Well not having to drive is relaxing.
CHRISTINA: Yeah, exactly. And I think they bring an awful lot of food and wine down with them and it's good, because I guess they're here for Christmas, well they're here Christmas Eve and then we'll all sort of prepare food in the morning, Christmas morning and you know, get in each other's faces in the kitchen. All that sort of stuff. What about you? Where are you having Christmas this year?
PENNY: We're going to George's my sister's again this year and then doing something else on Boxing Day as well because my sister's not in her normal house so it's not quite as big so we have all benefited very greatly from my sister's husband being a very, very good cook and a very enthusiastic one.
CHRISTINA: I was going to say that. I knew that Llew was very excited by all things culinary so I was wondering if he sort of took charge of a lot of the cooking.
PENNY: Yeah, we're very lucky. I mean, I am, I'm not making it. I have done desserts and stuff. I often do dessert.
CHRISTINA: What do you make for Christmas dessert, Penny?
PENNY: Well I don't do a pudding, I don't like them. But often there is a pudding as well, like someone else does that. But my sister Georgina is gluten-free so we
CHRISTINA: There's always one.
PENNY: So that's, I quite like that, that's a parameter. You know, because otherwise it's a huge, the choice is too big, but if it has be gluten free, often it's got something to do with meringues. Last year I made a cake and I really cracked it, because it was on a lean. I just got really angry about it. Because it had been a lot of work. It tasted good and it was fine if you sort of tilted your head but I just was really cross at it, like I just thought.
CHRISTINA: But I think that happens at Christmas time, you become irrationally invested in what you're making and then if it doesn't turn out exactly like Donna Hay's version or whatever you just a little bit frustrated. It's like the whole year catches up with you emotionally and it's all channeled at that failed piece of cooking.
PENNY: This is all my failures.
CHRISTINA: Yeah. This is Covid lockdown in a cake. Because this is where we're at.
PENNY: Alright I'm going to keep going with this article because it actually gets quite offensive now.
CHRISTINA: Oh good.
PENNY: Okay.
"Yet in that 'gracious and hallowed' season, when all are bent on doing their best to brighten the lot of others, the considerate husband, who knows how much loving care his wife has bestowed upon the preparation of a British Christmas dinner of the ancient type, tries hard to eat heartily and to look as if he's enjoyed it."
CHRISTINA: Oh god.
PENNY: "He makes a few preliminary enquiries from the partner of his joys and sorrows regarding the direction in which the 'pay streaks' of silver coin run through the steaming mass of the pudding, and by this cautious prospecting he succeeds in rewarding the search of the youngsters without absolutely ruining their digestions with a surfeit of the indigestible."
I think that's all about him cutting the pudding, and trying, I think they used to just throw a whole lot of coins and what-not in the pudding.
CHRISTINA: Yeah, I remember we did that when I was younger but that hasn't featured for a very long time now.
PENNY: Yeah, there was probably a bit lead poisoning or something. Put people off.
CHRISTINA: Probably. yeah.
PENNY: "If the weather be sufficiently hot, however, even a small portion of old fashioned Christmas dinner will make mischief in the Australian human system. 'Boxing Day headache' is a recognised institution, not only with those whose conviviality leads them to imbibe too much liquid refreshment, but also among those who have merely made conscientious efforts to absorb an old-style Christmas pudding."
So how do you feel about Boxing Day Christina? Cos I hate, I don't like it.
CHRISTINA: I think it's a great lazy day but it's a bit of a nothing day, really. It just feels like the day of leftovers.
PENNY: It's a big old anti-climax for me usually. It's like the excitements over.
CHRISTINA: When you're little and you got lots of presents you probably spent of quality time with them on Boxing Day but you know, looking through your vouchers or whatever's not quite as exciting.
PENNY: Do you do Boxing Day sales or anything?
CHRISTINA: No, I could not think of anything worse. Do you?
PENNY: No. Although one time we did go to the Salvos. Cos we like, everyone in my family quite likes op-shop shopping. So we went. Anyway, so, have I told you this?
CHRISTINA: No.
PENNY: Me and Bonnie set off, we were going to meet the other half of the family. So me and one of my sisters we were going to go meet Mum and the other sisters at a Salvos and it was meant to be in Ringwood. So we get in the car, I'm driving. Bonnie puts the address in her phone, she's telling me where to go. Anyway, we get to the Salvos, we go in we're shopping shopping. And then we're like, 'oh the others aren't here yet. They should be here.' So we called them. And they were like 'We're here,' and we're like 'Where?' Anyway, it turned out we were not in Ringwood. We were in
CHRISTINA: Oh excellent.
PENNY: We were in Greensborough.
CHRISTINA: You were at a completely random Salvos store.
PENNY: Yeah, we were in Greensborough. Which is really not
CHRISTINA: Yeah, not really close.
PENNY: And I've lived in Melbourne for a long time so I probably should have realised that I wasn't in
CHRISTINA: You hadn't passed Eastland or any of those things.
PENNY: I had noticed that we'd gone a different way but I hadn't been to this. Anyway, that was my excuse. So anyway we're like 'It's alright. Get back in the car we'll drive over to the Ringwood Salvos.' So we get in, Bonnie's giving me instructions. And Ringwood is like a sort of a, it's an outer suburb of Melbourne. And we're going a bit of a funny way but I've never driven from Greensborough to Ringwood. I didn't know. And then all of a, I was like 'Shouldn't we be there pretty soon?' And Bonnie's like 'Hmmm, yeah.' And then all of a sudden Bonnie just goes 'Oh no!' And I'm like 'What Bonnie?' And she goes, 'I can see a tram.'
CHRISTINA: Oh God. Where were you?
PENNY: We were in Coburg. Which, is not
CHRISTINA: Is this one of the reasons you don't drive very often Penny?
PENNY: Anyway, so then we had to tell the family that we weren't gonna make it. Because after that I was just like, I can't.
CHRISTINA: I would have been irate after that. No Boxing Day catch up required.
PENNY: And then, and everyone, like we laughed a lot but. And Bonnie, my sister Bonnie has got kind of a family history of doing this sort of thing. Of getting lost. But I was, everyone actually blamed me. They were like, 'Penny, you live in Melbourne why did you keep following her instructions. You should have known. And I was like 'Oh, I just wanted to give her a chance.'
CHRISTINA: I was just rooting for her, I really wanted to get her through.
PENNY: Anyway, so that is what happened the time I tried to go to the Boxing Day sales.
CHRISTINA: Yeah, no. I'm with you, Boxing Day is a nothing day.
PENNY: Alright, well, this article continues:
"The miseries caused by the too slavish attempt to transplant winter customs into the Australian Christmas are almost calculable. A wide field of usefulness is obviously open for the ingenuity and labour of some gifted Australian woman who shall devise and introduce the right sort of Christmas dinner for the southern climate. It must, of course, retain something of the time-sanctioned appearance of the John Bull festival repast; but still must deal as much as possible with cold meats and plain puddings, cooling drinks, and open-air ceremonial.
CHRISTINA: Wow.
PENNY: "If any Australian woman would but accomplish for the people of the Commonwealth this much needed reform, her reward in the gratitude of Australians would be great indeed. Her children would rise up and call her blessed even if the doctors and the chemists disapproved of her."
PENNY: I think that's cos they want everyone to be miserable and need drugs.
CHRISTINA: Yes.
PENNY: "In their love for perpetuating the old English Christmas sentiment men have been as much to blame for the anomalies of the summer Christmas dinner as the women;"
CHRISTINA: Not a gender issue.
PENNY: This is very big of this writer to admit that.
"But in this matter the skill of the reforming genius woman must be displayed. She must enact a truly pious fraud upon those for whom she caters by making the pudding look like the old John Bull winter variety, and yet she must give wholesome summer victuals all the same."
CHRISTINA: This must be cue the ice-cream Christmas pudding.
PENNY: Well, you're close Christina but not quite because people did start coming up with recipes for Australian Christmas fare but it wasn't ice-cream. I found quite a number of recipes, but there was one article that had heaps of them. And all the recipes have a particular theme.
CHRISTINA: Right.
PENNY: That I think you'll get pretty soon. So this article is from the Newcastle Morning Herald from 24 December 1935. Which is really leaving your run a bit late, if you're planning your menu on the 24th of December but anyway.
CHRISTINA: It sounds like me. That article would be very helpful to me.
30:02 (Piano music The First Noel)
PENNY: So this article is titled "An Australian Christmas Dinner: cold dishes for choice". And she starts off saying, the dinner should be cold, basically, the same thing that everyone's always whinging about. Then she has some suggestions. This is for a salad, it's a Viennese salad.
"Cook 3 cupfuls of tomato pulp with one bay leaf, 4 cloves, 4 teaspoonfuls of sugar, 1 teaspoonful of salt and 1 small teaspoonful of mustard"
I think that's okay. I don't really see
CHRISTINA: It sort of sounds like a pasta sauce.
PENNY: Yeah. It's not a salad yet, but it's fine.
CHRISTINA: Yeah, okay.
PENNY: "When cooked remove the bay leaf and add 2 desert spoonsful of gelatin dissolved in half a cupful of hot water. Place slices of hardboiled egg in individual moulds. Stand 4 or 5 asparagus tips round the side."
CHRISTINA: Aw, festive.
PENNY: "And add the tomato mixture. When set turn out and serve with seasoned cream and lettuce hearts."
CHRISTINA: Oh that's filthy.
PENNY: So it's basically. It's a jelly salad. With some sticks of asparagus coming out the side.
CHRISTINA: No. There is just no need. There is never a need to set something with gelatin. I just don't feel we need it.
PENNY: Well, so, I. Can I tempt you with a chicken mould? Here's another recipe.
"Simmer a chicken in water".
CHRISTINA: Wow has it got aspic in it?
PENNY: Yeah, definitely aspic recipes in this article, yes.
"Simmer a chicken in water or stock with seasoning to taste until tender. Allow to become cold and remove the meat from the bones. Remove fat from the chicken stock, strain and measure. Dissolve 1 teaspoonful dessert spoonful of gelatin in each"
CHRISTINA: Yay!
PENNY: "In each half pint of stock. Add a little lemon juice. Pour a little into a plain mould. When firm arrange slices of hardboiled egg and gherkins."
Because is it a jelly without some hardboiled egg?
CHRISTINA: I mean you've gotta make it look nice.
PENNY: Exactly. And what is more festive than a hardboiled egg.
"Chop chicken meat with 4 ounces of cooked ham. Put into the mould. Add the rest of the liquid. Turn out when set and garnish with slices of tomato, lemon, beetroot and a sprig of parsley."
Yum, yum, yum, yum, yum
CHRISTINA: It's getting bleak, isn't it?
PENNY: Okay, plum pudding. This is the suggestion. Not an ice-cream dessert, this is the suggestion to a hot plum pudding.
"Place 3 cupsful of milk and 3 tablespoonsful of cocoa in a saucepan. Bring to the boil."
CHRISTINA: So far I'm okay.
PENNY: It's fine so far.
"A 4 ounces of chopped nuts and citron peel."
Sorry.
CHRISTINA: Yeah. I could omit that for something else.
PENNY: Half a cupful of chopped raisons, half a cupful of chopped figs, and half a cupful of chopped preserved ginger."
I hate preserved ginger so that's not for me.
CHRISTINA: No.
PENNY: "Sweeten to taste with 4 ounces of sugar and add a pinch of salt. Allow to cool and then add 3 heaped desert spoonsful of
CHRISTINA: Gelatin!
PENNY: "Gelatin"
CHRISTINA: Excellent. There should be no movement in your dessert.
PENNY: Exactly. It's a jelly but it should be structural. You should be able to build a house on this pudding.
CHRISTINA: Exactly, or at least rest a teacup and saucer on it.
PENNY: Exactly.
"Dissolved in quarter of a cupful of hot water. Stir all well together and then flavour with half a teaspoonful of vanilla essence. Pour into a mould and allow to set. Turn out and decorate each helping with a sprig of holly. Serve with whipped sweetened cream.”
So it's a jelly pudding.
CHRISTINA: What's wrong with a cake, if it's hot? If the issue is you don't want a hot pudding, just have a cake. Why do we need to have a cold, nasty gelatin pudding?
PENNY: You can make it the day before. Basically, at this time, when people thought let's do a cold Christmas, they just jellified everything.
CHRISTINA: Just so bleak. You know, if you still want your meats, just have it cold. There's a thought.
PENNY: I guess if you were just eating all of these savory jellies all the time maybe you'd get used to it, I dunno.
CHRISTINA: Well if the complaint in the original guy's article was that you'd get weird digestive issues, like I don't think consuming your body weight in gelatin going to do wonderful things for your digestive system.
PENNY: That's a really good point. I think the chemists and the doctors are gonna do just fine on Boxing Day.
CHRISTINA: I think they will. And to be honest if you were eating that you would have to drink a hell of a lot of alcohol to get that down.
35:03 (piano music We Three Kings)
PENNY: Do you have anything else to say about Christmas.
CHRISTINA: I don't really. I just need to get organised and I've left my run too late to do that online so I will have to go live and in person to the shops.
PENNY: That is the annoying thing isn't it, when you think, if I just had of done this 3 weeks ago.
CHRISTINA: Yeah, even 2 weeks ago. I could have pulled it together but I haven't have I?
PENNY: I dunno.
CHRISTINA: I'm just disappointed in myself.
PENNY: Well I think that's what I discovered from looking in Trove, lot of whinging about Christmas.
CHRISTINA: We are a pack of whingers in this country, aren't we.
PENNY: I am very happy to keep that grand old tradition going. I would love to know when people started complaining about Christmas being earlier each year.
CHRISTINA: Yeah I don't know. I think it's funny because it, when you're a kid it just feels like it takes forever to come around and now it just feels like we had Christmas 3 months ago.
PENNY: I guess it is a, proportionally, a smaller portion of your life.
CHRISTINA: Disturbing.
PENNY: Cos it's only gonna get quicker and quicker. Christmas is gonna be every 2 weeks by the time we're in our 90s.
CHRISTINA: Yeah, something to look forward to.
PENNY: Aw, Christmas in nursing homes. They try. They do try.
CHRISTINA: I feel like some gelatin might creep into that menu.
PENNY: Yeah, some people must have liked it back in the day. Because Julia Childs used to use a lot and she was a great chef and she used a lot of aspics.
CHRISTINA: Yeah. I think it just seemed to be the fallback ingredient.
PENNY: And I guess, I mean if you did eat it all the time, maybe it wouldn't just have that. Cos, savory jelly, you just don't come across it now.
CHRISTINA: And if you do, you probably go in the opposite direction.
PENNY: Exactly. But anyway, so there's a lot to look forward to.
CHRISTINA: There is. There is a lot to look forward to.
PENNY: Coming up. And I hope you have a very nice festive season.
CHRISTINA: Thanks Penny. You too.
37:00 (piano music. End of Good King Wenceslas then theme music)
PENNY: I wonder if that's recorded. That'll be interesting. I hope so.
CHRISTINA: Or else we just had a themed conversation.
PENNY: Worse-case scenario I got to spend some time in a room by myself.