Cevaps and pancakes.

The Cevaps and grandsons with Milo

This last week has been spent nursing a well earned cold. My dad used to shout, “close the door”, over and over again, often to no avail. As kids we never did, as cold wasn’t something we felt. In fact we were always warm and running. Dad was the keeper of our warmth in winter and felt it his duty to keep living areas warm. He was the stoker of fires. It is strange how men are drawn to fire much more than women. In the period between post WW2 and pre our migration period, heating by dad was done with the help of coal in ornately decorated cast iron combustion heaters. The coal was taken up two flights of stairs in jute bags carried on the back of strong Dutch coal carriers. Mum used to put drop- sheets down from the bottom of the stairs all the way to the top and leading through a corridor to the back balcony were the coal was dumped in a small coal shed. The jute bags would be  taken back empty. It was one of those yearly events in early autumn for the coming winter. My mother’s job would be to make the amount of coal last as heating was expensive. A severe winter was never welcome.

These were some of my limpid flu inspired  thoughts trying to make the best of the situation as well as having two of our grandchildren for a couple of days giving their mum a break. She had to work and school holidays are not easy on working mums. Both grandsons have a father born in Australia but from Croatian background. No need to dwell on its history but most will agree that the eating of chevatis always played a big role not just with Croatia but also Serbia and surrounding States, that vacillated between bloody endless wars with each other, yet never forgetting that sharing the cevaps also held promise of peace between neighbours. With that in mind and a promised barbeque made inescapable by gloriously warm weather I made my way to Woollies with grandsons hopping behind and around me,  busy on IPhonic mania of which I have long given into and surrendered.

I love the Super market’s somewhat hidden  counter proudly displaying the items ‘close to out of date’ and spotted a packet of twelve cevaps for just $ 5.75 reduced from $7.85 and still two days left till being be a bit off or rotten. I bought them quickly and after buying a loaf of white sandwich bread rushed home. The kids were ravenous and probably ready to eat anything irrespective of any dates. The rugged Croatian blood line and the frugal Dutch a perfect combination. I pointed out to grandsons that we should be so happy to have rescued those almost out of date cevaps from getting thrown out. Many in this world go hungry, why waste food at all?

Thomas looked a bit serious after that little sermon. He could well end up telling his mum to go and loiter around the ‘out of date’ food items, which might be a good thing apart from saving money. I lit the barbeque and all twelve but one of the cevaps were packet between the white bread and eaten quickly. My flu symptoms were pushed  in the background by the show of grandsons concentrated enthusiasm for their, no doubt inherited love, for the Croatian  cevaps. It was a joy to watch. Next morning it was always going to be pancakes. I mentioned many posts ago about having an inscription;  ‘Here rests a good Opa, he made very fine pan-cakes and loved bargains.’ For those that wondered about the twelfth cevaps, that was given to Milo.

“Fat is Good,” so is Spam

“Fat is Good”, so was Spam.

I like spam. Back in the late nineteen fifties I was living in a sparsely furnished room at a Paddington Boarding House. The front door had a sign “Migrants Welcome”. The boarding house was run by a Maltese woman. Her husband was a butcher. They were a good and devout family and a loaded shotgun was kept in the wardrobe.

On the wall and above my bed was a picture of a Jesus cruelly nailed to a wooden cross. What was disconcertingly spooky, depending on what angle this picture was viewed at, that its eyes would open and shut alternatively when stepping past.

When the Jesus had its eyes open they were piously cast upwards. Perhaps the subliminal message and hope being, that the viewer would also become pious and work towards that upwards heavenly goal as well. It turned me off 3D pictures and holograms for life.

At night, and before hopping into my bed, I would turn the picture facing the wall. During the day and before going to work I would always politely turn Jesus back again allowing it to ponder and gaze over my bed. It would, at least during daytime, allow Him to cast his eyes, perhaps in a despairingly manner, heavenly upwards again for anyone passing my bed during the day. I did not want to upset a devout family with a shotgun in the wardrobe.

Sometimes, most often after work and tired, I used to sit on the edge of my single bed, open a tin of spam with that handy little tool that was attached to the top and ever so slowly (in order not to break it) turn and twist the lid off.

One was greeted by a little white coloured blubbery bit of fat coagelatined to the top hiding its deliciously pink coloured innards. The bouquet of the spam greeting the nostrils was always immensely pervasive. Scooping it up with a teaspoon while turning the pages of V.Woolf’s Orlando, was one of those little pleasures of bachelorhood that  gets forgotten once married, and sitting and eating on the edge of a bed becomes, very sensibly IMHO, banned forever. I remember it though as if yesterday.

Now the original and true meaning of ‘spam’ is lost  and for baby boomers that joy forever denied, even though, while sauntering past the acreages of Woolies isles I sometimes still spot a  tin of Spam, proudly and defiantly competing with more modern delicacies such as the cryonically preserved  Crunchy Chico Bar or boxes loaded with healthy  Fruity Loops.

So much now is lost and gone into the bowels of history forever, the same as so much else during that era. We have all but  forgotten the pungent smell of the spattering mutton legs on Friday afternoons together with mum’s baked pumpkin and spuds, and  happy kids hurtling  down-hill on Billy carts, all at Redfern’s or Rockdale’s back lanes.

And yet, looking at photos from the fifties and sixties, there is striking difference between then and now. We were all skinny. Well, skinny, not really, but compared with now, sure, skinny! Hardly a fat person is in sight. Now, here  surely  is something to ponder about? The latest information on obesity puts the blame on diets.

The question that never seems to get asked is; if we were all so slim and taut some fifty years ago, and Spam and Mutton was one of our most staple diets, how come we were all so much slimmer?

The answer might well be because of spam and mutton spatter with lashes of salty larded on white Tip-Top. Let’s go back, if that’s the way to beating obesity.

I have noticed that canny advertisers are quick in the uptake to grab the dollar and turn a perceived adversity into a handsome profit.  All of a sudden we have the most glorious and lusciously full ample bosomed and ravishingly beautiful size eighteen models lolling and rolling around on our TV screens and on beaches. They are shown on the advertisements seducing equally larger men that drive around Volvo’s or seen walking into banks for larger mortgages.

Larger men are also now used in advertising with huge bums sticking out of large cars strapping in the large toddlers with the large wife looking on with smiles of conjugal promises and/or generous approval. Yes, definitely, model agencies are looking for larger people now and those anemic looking bone skinny girls on catwalks will soon be given the flick. About time too ,we all need more room, move over. C’est la vie.

Obviously, those large Insurance companies have done their homework and also assiduously studied the latest statistics. They don’t seem at all alarmed or daunted by large people. They wouldn’t advertise them would they? Is ‘fat is good’ replacing ‘greed is good?

As for those boarding rooms in Paddington, they are all gone now. The Maltese family most likely retired in Santa Magdalena retirement villa on Rosella’s circuit at Dooley-Vale. The picture of Jesus and the roving eyes having survived all. It’s hanging above their double bed, the loaded shotgun never used. They were a devout family.

“Fat is good”.