Sepia Saturday 315: 30 January 2016

This week's Sepia Saturday prompt gives us plenty of room to manoeuvre but I'll just stick with the temperature theme, given my current condition.

Young ladies checking the oven of the combustion stove to see if their cake is cooked. They are participating in the Domestic Science class at Stanthorpe State School. The girls are wearing caps and aprons. Negative number: 194280 Copied and digitised from an image appearing in The Queenslander, 9 March 1933. Picture courtesy of John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland. Out of copyright.

I write this post to you from the oven that is Brisbane.  Many of your in more northern climes would be huddling up next to the oven to defrost your tootsies or your mitts.  It is after midnight here in BrisVegas and it is a balmy (barmy) 24 degrees Celsius. Perspiration pours from my brow and I have done nothing more exerting this evening than running my fingers over the keyboard and mouse, after preparing dinner.  

I look at the stove in this picture and am prompted to look for an old toy of mine ... I don't know where I got it from but I happily spent many hours playing with it when a child although it was way too big for any dolls-house.  It's missing a few hotplates now but I still have the coal scuttle and shovel.  I love it dearly.  

I do delight in collecting old cookery books too and was fascinated to find one at last year's Lifeline Bookfest called Snacks from the Radiation Research Kitchen.

I am not quite sure when this little pamphlet would have been published but it boasts recipes from the "Radiation Research and Demonstration Kitchen which is completely fitted with the most modern equipment for extensive research and experimental work in cooking."

Wait for it.  Here they are - the examples of modern equipment.

Haven't we come a long way?

Here are some of the recipes in the book:

Cigarettes of Ham
Kidneys a la Turque
Kromeskies (che?)
Liver Rolls (mmmm mouth-watering)
Savoury Eclairs (who knew?)
Waterlily savouries 

But because we live in the Banana-bender state I think it is only fair that I share with you the recipe for.....wait for it...

Baked Banana Steak

Ingredients
1/2 - 3/4 lb fillet steak
Salt and pepper
Grated nutmeg
2 bananas (small) - we call them lady fingers in Queensland
1 teaspoon sugar
2 or 3 slices of bacon
Water

Garnish
Parsley or water-cress

Method
Choose a tender piece of steak 1in. thick.  Wipe it and split it open, leaving one end uncut so that it opens like a book.  Season with sat and pepper and a little grated nutmeg.  Cut the bananas in slices, lay them on one side of the opened steak, sprinkle with the sugar and cover with the other half of the steak.  Place thin slices of bacon on top and fasten together with a small skewer.  Place in sa small meat tin with a little water and bake in the oven for 25 minutes, with the "Regulo" at Mark 8.  Serve garnished with parsley or watercress.  

Go on - dish that up for dinner - I dare you.

Look!  Here are some New South Welshmen from Murwillumbah harvesting bananas. Don't chop your fingers off chaps!  My husband's grandfather Robert William Daw lost a few of his fingers while learning the ropes on a banana farm as a young man - the perils of manual labour.

One man is standing on a ladder unwrapping a hand of bananas growing on the banana palm, while another man stands on the ground holding two cut bunches of bananas.  Negative number: 204439  Courtesy of John Oxley, State Library of Queensland.  Out of copyright

Right.  That's enough from me.  I've managed somehow to go from ovens to bananas to amputation.  This heat has sent me troppo.  Time for bed. 

To see what others have cooked up this week go here.