When we were full and plenty

Jean's Journal by Jean Farrell

To celebrate International Women’s Day The Irish Times published an article which showed the history of our mothers’ lives in pictures and words. I have tried to do the same here, in my picture.

I found a scapular and a leaflet with it. This informed me that Our Lady Of Mount Carmel was told by The Blessed Virgin that ‘Whosoever dies wearing this scapular shall never suffer eternal fire.’ Such simple faith.

Remember wearing a miraculous medal on a piece of blue wool, especially during the month of May. A rosary beads is also in the photo. And of course, I had to add a wooden spoon, as well as the packet of cigarettes! The school books are included because our generation of mothers knew the value of education.

However, some very obvious things are missing from my picture. An old wireless should be there. We listened to The Kennedys of Castleross and Mícheál O’Hehir on ours. Also missing is a picture of The Sacred Heart and some statues. Perhaps a fine comb should be included too!

In the article, in The Irish Times, they have added a ‘Dear Frankie letter.’ Her programme always ended with, ‘The problems we’re discussing today may not be yours but they could be some day.” Another agony aunt was Angela McNamara, from whose advice I learnt ‘the facts of life.’

The Irish Times article referred to our Communion dresses, mantillas, carbolic soap, bicycles and Mary Robinson. Her election as president of Ireland, in 1990, marked the beginning of a more liberal time.

I bet you remember Maura Laverty’s cookery book called ‘Full and Plenty.’ I have spent the last few days reading it. It’s a treasure because not only does it contain excellent recipes, it also contains a story at the beginning of each chapter. I’m going to quote from her book now and can I ask you to put aside our modern ‘liberated’ notions of housework, for a minute.

Maura Laverty wrote, “I love kitchens. The preparation of food has always been for me what literature or music or painting is to others.”

She continues, “Cookery is the poetry of housework. And it does your nerves a power of good, too. Peel a basket of apples and watch the soothing feeling that comes over you as the knife slides smoothly between skin and juicy flesh – round after round, round after round, until each peel drops in a long unbroken curl. Or, rub butter into flour for scones – this is something that I would recommend to neurotic people as a better tonic than anything their doctor could give them. The purity of flour, the cool velvety feel of it, the gentle incessant calm giving motion of the finger tips – no tangle or turmoil could hold out against such homely comforting.”

Maura Laverty wrote her book in 1960 and in it she states the following. “Good ingredients are more readily available in Ireland than in any other country in the world. An American agricultural expert once told me that we should go down on our knees and give thanks for those easy-going ways of ours which economists bewail. Thanks to the fact that our soil has not been worked to dust, we enjoy better flavoured meat, more succulent vegetables, creamier milk, richer butter and more nourishing wheat.”

I wonder does ‘easy-goings ways’ mean lazy farmers? I don’t know, but do we still have ‘soil not worked to dust’ sixty years later?’ I hope so.

Each chapter in her book deals with some different aspect of cooking or baking, and each begins with a story.

The section on bread starts, ‘It was Polly Sweeney who can be thanked for teaching Ballyderrig to rise above soda bread. One day she…….”

Her chapter on sauces begins, “The Foleys were nearly a year married before Sheila discovered that a wife’s first duty to her husband is to cook him the kind of meals he likes, and that no marriage can be really happy unless a man is satisfied with his table treatment.” (I have to tell you more of this story. Sheila had come down from Dublin and married a local farmer.) “Sheila’s trouble was that she had been reared by two refined maiden aunts who believed that if you had enough cutlery, glass and lace mats on the table, nothing else mattered. Their idea of a good square meal was a triangle of toast trimmed with a dab of dressed crab and a sprig of parsley.” And on it goes!

You might assume from all the above that Maura Laverty was a country woman who never went far from her home place. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Google tells me that Maura Laverty was born in 1907. Aged 17 she moved to Spain where she took up a position as governess and later became secretary to Princess Bibesco. Eventually she became a foreign correspondent based in Madrid. Maura Laverty returned to Ireland for the remainder of her career and worked as a journalist and broadcaster in Dublin for Radio Éireann. She wrote some novels as well as Tolka Row, our first soap opera on television.

Her book ‘Full and Plenty’ has been reprinted a few times and is always in demand. I am very fortunate to have an original copy, inherited from my mother. I’m told it’s worth money, at this stage.

If you can lay your hands on this wonderful book you will enjoy every word and every recipe! I recommend it highly.