Food Glorious Food!

I couldn't blog about an Enid Blyton styled cottage without mentioning food. Her books are full of mouthwatering descriptions of food, which is always fresh from the farm and plentiful, even ordinary tinned foods are made to sound exotic and adventurous. Sardines at a midnight feast! Dick's eyes gleam when they raid Aunt Fanny's store cupboard in Five Run Away Together "Soup -tins of meat - tins of fruit - tinned milk - sardines - tinned butter - biscuits - tinned vegetables! There's everything we want here!" 

In between meals there are icecreams, lemonade, ginger beer and macaroons to be eaten on the beach or in teashops as well as bars of chocolate in back pockets with bags of sweets. Truly a child's heaven.

poke me for more detail

So with all these things in mind I knew that food would be plentiful in Hollyhock Cottage... until I began to research and learned about strict war time rationing. Before the war 70% of Britain's food was imported, mostly by shipping which immediately made it vulnerable to attack. Labour was down as men went to fight for their country and soldiers had to be fed so rationing was introduced to ensure that all would have food. This continued for years becoming stricter after the war with foods such as bread and potatoes being added to the rationed list. Publishing was down too, due to paper restrictions, yet, like the food in her stories, Enid Blyton seemed unaffected, publishing nearly 100 books during the war years. 

 

My main goal was to get some more building done this week, but alas, to go further I have to finish the larder which will be impossible to reach once the walls go up, so with food in mind I pulled out the Sculpey and set to. Fortunately I had made a number of items such as carrots, potatoes and honey pot a while ago plus tinned goods from some of the free printable sites found online and jars using the resin and pencil eraser method. Sorry, I didn't know to save links then. 

Even more fortunately given my limited Sculpey skills, a lot of my food won't be very visible, but I like to know it is there. 

There are always sausages in the stories, the dog usually under suspicion when they disappear, so they were a must. A meat pie and a tart were necessary too as well as the jug of creamy cold milk. As I haven't been able to source liquid Sculpey I had to improvise, so waterbased varnish mixed with paint made nice gravy and cherries were once sago, coloured with food colouring and soaked in cochineal tinted varnish. I loved the chalk artists pastels for colouring and they made the 6 Sculpey colours I have - green, translucent, white, yellow, black and red  more flexible, although my swedes have a definite peach look about them. My first 2 loaves of bread would have fed the 5000 with no problem so these were the second attempt - I have to keep scale in mind! Actually bread is a problem with me - my very first loaves using the flour/salt recipe were casualties of my 'flood' and my breadbin, made using the same method as my bucket, ran when I applied the nail varnish - obviously permanent marker isn't nail polish proof!

I have cannisters and odds and ends waiting to go onto the shelves when they are installed and think a ham hanging from a ceiling hook might be nice too...and maybe a pudding in a bowl... 

We'll see!

 In time for the feasting are my 2 new followers!

Carey at Chicory Nits who is preparing for Christmas (in pink!) both in her real house and in mini - scroll back to admire her gorgeous little Christmas house.

and Dee who I can't find a blog for yet, so please contact me Dee with a link.

Every now and then the numbers go up but no new pictures are added, so I sometimes wonder if people are following privately and would prefer not to be introduced to the rest of the gathering?  I love seeing you here and love visiting in return. It is amazing how much talent and imagination is out there!

Once again, thank you all for calling by.