The coal fire was very important in the lives of the relatively poor during my childhood
There was always a kettle on the fire in case anyone popped in for a cup of tea and in any case
my mother drank tea every hour with lots of sugar,
I didn’t know then that this was because of lack of food
I remember my brothers going to the grocers on Saturday morning
They would come back with 8 lb of sugar. So six of us got through this sugar in one week in tea and on cereal and in milk puddings etc..
As well as boiling the kettle on the fire my mother used to cook a variety of things of which my favorite was Apple dumpling.
This was cooked in a brown pot made of earthenware and it was lined it was suet pastry then filled with sliced apples and chopped with more pastry and my mother steamed this or boiled it on the fire and it was the most delicious thing I’ve ever tested I only wish I could eat some now.
The suet pastry was filled with a hot apple juice when we took it out of the pan
In the evening my mother would boil our handkerchiefs in an old saucepan on the fire and then they had to be scrubbed with a scrubbing brush before being rinsed and dried. After that we had to iron them as well so it was an extra burden for women.
No wonder we werw thinner then despite eating a lot of pastry
