The Tingle Factor Box

Roy Creates Delicious Cheese Pots

A few weeks ago, Roy made a delicious potted blue cheese. Many of his friends have since told him that they wondered if he had a recipe for a normal potted cheese, using cheddar or other hard cheeses. Roy always loves to fill recipe requests, so he decided it was time to try out another recipe. With a little trial and error, and some help from Grandma, he came up with a delicious cheese pot, perfect for sharing at a Fathers Day Feast, or giving away as a gift. So this week, Roy Creates Delicious Cheese Pots

You Will Need:

• Hard cheese. Roy used scraps of cheddar and manchego, but you can use whatever you have on hand.
• Butter. You will need about half as much as you have of cheese.
• Cayenne pepper to taste
• 1 clove of garlic, minced
• Optional: Red wine (how much you need will depend on how much cheese you use). The wine preserves the cheese, if you plan to keep it.

Method:

• Cut any ‘suspicious’ pieces off the cheese, including the rind or paper around the outside.
• Roughly chop the cheese and use a food processor to finely cut it up

• Mix the cheese, butter, minced garlic and cayenne pepper together in a bowl

• Add enough wine to make into a paste consistency.

• Transfer the cheese mixture to a pot or bowl, cover and store in the fridge for at least 12 hours to mature
• Enjoy with bread or crackers.

Related articles

Roy Creates A Delicious Blue Cheese Pot

Roy Creates Labna

Is It For Extracting Elephant Teeth? Ice Tongs

Imagine you are living in the early 1900s in America. Refrigerators don’t exist yet and the only way to keep your food cold and fresh is with big blocks of ice. You even have a special ice chest to hold the ice and the food you want to prevent from spoiling. The blocks of ice are huge, and the man who brings them uses a big set of tongs to lift them. You imagine cutting the ice must be incredibly hard work!

When I showed these ice tongs to the children, they at first thought they must be some sort of medical instrument. One child told me ‘they look like they were for holding somebody still while you cut their leg off’. The most amusing guess was that it was a tool for pulling elephant's teeth out, but one child was closer when they suggested it was a tool ‘like a stone mason would use’. They were amazed to discover that people used to have such huge blocks of ice, and even more amazed to think about having to keep all their meat and other perishables cold this way. As one child said ‘all my ice cream would melt!’

When we think of ice tongs, we usually think of the little sets of tongs we use to pick up ice cubes and put them into our drinks. When they first started to be produced in the 1800s though, they were used for far more serious purposes. They were used in all stages of the ice business, from the people who harvested the ice, to the homeowners who needed to put the huge blocks into the ice chests. The ice business was very important, as before refrigeration ice was the only way to keep food cold and fresh. At first, ice was harvested from natural sources. In winter, lakes froze and the ice was cut, removed and stored in sawdust in specially built icehouses. The icehouses had double walls, with sawdust stuffed in between to prevent the ice from melting too quickly. With lots of blocks of ice in the special house, the ice could be stored for some time. Other icehouses were built underground to keep the temperature cool. Using these ice houses, ice could be stored for many months – sometimes even until the next winter!

Ice had been harvested for many centuries, but it was a difficult job. The ice was hard to cut, but even harder to pick up. With freezing and slippery surfaces, lifting the ice from the lake and carrying it any distance was very difficult. In the 1800s though, ice tongs were created, with sharp points on the end to help carry blocks of ice. Some could even be suspended by a pulley and lifted by horse! Later, these same tongs were used to transport ice around factories which were creating specially frozen ice, and even used by the people who delivered ice to households. A few homeowners had sets too, but often relied on the iceman to move the ice for them. The ice tongs I showed the children were made for Oak Cliff Ice Delivery Company (America), and may have been used to deliver ice to businesses and households with iceboxes, or to move blocks of ice around the Oak Cliff factory.

Roaming Roy VIsits Half A House! Mungerie House

This week Roy decided he wanted to visit somewhere interesting and where he could get a nice lunch. He knew some of his online friends were looking for somewhere they could take their Father for Fathers Day, and thought Mungerie House would be perfect. With a lovely house museum and cafe full of delicious food, it is ideal for a family celebration. This week Roy will look at the house and next week he will tell you about the cafe.

If you would like to visit Mungerie House it is located at 16 Bellcast Road, Rouse Hill. The house is not far from Windsor and not only is there a wonderful house and cafe to enjoy, there is an excellent playground only a short walk from the house. It is the perfect spot to enjoy a family outing.

Mungerie House has a fascinating history. According to local legend, it did not start its life on the site where it stands today, and in fact it started out as the top floor of another house altogether! Hambledon House was a grand, two story house which once stood where Castlebrook Cemetery is today and what we now call Mungerie House was apparently its second floor. In the 1870s though, Hambledon House was demolished. Later, the top floor was salvaged, put on logs and pulled by a bullock team to the site where it currently stands.

This isn't the full story though. The top floor was quite small and although it may have been used to help construct the weatherboard Mungerie House, the house was extended. Some think that the story of moving the top floor is not true at all and suggest that Mungerie House was newly built by Robert Woodward Pearce in about 1895. Throughout the 1900s land around the house was variously used as an orchard, farm, even a golf course, and the house changed ownership many times. In about 1985 the house was bought by Landcom and in 2008 the house was beautifully restored. As of 2009, Mungerie House became a Visitor Information Centre.

Roy Creates A Delicious Citrus Jelly

This week, Roy was looking for a light and tasty dessert to follow a rather heavy lunch meal he was planning for a Birthday celebration. With roast meat and vegetables, he wanted something fresh to finish with, and decided a jelly would be perfect. He knew that there were lots of wonderful citrus fruits in season and wanted to try making a jelly with slices of various citrus set into it. The results were spectacular looking, and tasted even better. So this week, Roy Creates A Delicious Citrus Jelly.

You Will Need:

• Lots of citrus fruits. Roy used navel oranges, blood oranges, tangelos, ruby red grapefruit, ‘normal’ grapefruit and a few pieces of mandarin. You need enough to make at least a generous 3 cups when sliced
• 2 tablespoons of fresh orange juice (you will get this when you cut them up.) For adults, you might like to use an orange liqueur instead.
• 8 teaspoons of powdered gelatine
• 3 and a ½ cups of apple juice
• 6 tablespoons of castor sugar
• Mint leaves

Method:

• First, cut your fruit up. Peel the citrus and carefully cut the segments out, trying to avoid the white membranes. You want 3 generous cups of fruit in total. Roy used a cup of orange, a cup of grapefruit and a cup of tangelo and mandarin.
• Put the fruit into a bowl and add the 2 tablespoons of orange juice. Let the fruit sit for about 2 hours.

• Heat the apple juice and sugar over a moderate head until it is hot and the sugar is dissolved, but not until the liquid is actually boiling
• Add the gelatine (sprinkle it over the surface), and stir until it is all dissolved.
• Rub a little vegetable oil around the inside of a terrine dish and line it carefully with lots of clingwrap. This will help you remove the jelly when it is set.

• Arrange some mint leaves in the bottom of the dish and add a little of the apple juice mixture. Let it start to set.
• Add the fruit to the terrine. Roy arranged his to make sure the different citrus were evenly distributed, but you can just tip it in if you prefer.

• Pour the rest of the apple juice over the top of the fruit and add a few more mint leaves. If you have apple juice mixture left over, you can set it in glasses as a special ‘cooks privilege’. Roy had just the right amount.
• Cover the jelly with clingwrap
• Allow the jelly to set in the fridge overnight.
• When you are ready to serve, remove the clingwrap cover, put a plate over the top of the terrine and turn it to the plate is on the bottom. You can use the clingwrap you lined the terrine dish with to ease the jelly out of the dish.
• Peel away the clingwrap, serve and enjoy!

Is It For Watering Tiny Gardens? Ironing Sprinkler Bottle Top

Imagine you are a housewife living in the early 20th century. You always have so much to do, but the thing you dread most is the ironing. Heating the iron on the stove, avoiding burning yourself on it, ironing a shirt, then reheating the iron for the next shirt is so tedious. Of course, you also must remember to sprinkle water over the fabric, otherwise you will scorch the clothes. Luckily you have a lovely little gadget to fit the end of a bottle which makes sprinkling the clothes with just the right amount of water easy.

When I showed this ironing sprinkler bottle top to the children, their guesses were amusing. Most had no idea what it could possibly have been used for, and the first guess was ‘something to do with salt or pepper’. Soon, the children were guessing it was for ‘watering a tiny garden’ (and in fact, it proved useful for watering the seeds the children planted that day!) None imagined it could possibly be for sprinkling the ironing with water. For children today, they assume that the iron itself does everything, and indeed many modern irons have steam settings. They were surprised to realise that in the past, ironing was a much more labour intensive process.

Today, ironing is a task which is relatively simple. Irons come with all sorts of settings to make ironing easier, and in fact modern fabrics and even modern washers and driers can almost eliminate the need to iron at all. Yet in the past, doing the laundry, and of course the ironing, was an incredibly labour intensive task. Women took pride in their laundry, and it was all done in a very orderly fashion. Whites, towels, colours and sheets would be washed separately and various additives,especially a "blue bag" would be added to the wash water to make sure the laundry was ‘perfect’. After washing the clothes, and drying them in the sun, the housewife would have to collect the clothes to bring inside. Many would fold the items as they were taken from the line, and sort the washing into things which required ironing, and things which did not.

The next step would be the ironing, which was a two day process! First, the clothes which needed ironing would be sprinkled with water from a ‘sprinkler bottle’, with a top like the one I showed the children (it may have originally had a cork to hold it in the bottle). Then, the clothes would be rolled up and left overnight to ensure the water was evenly distributed. Ironing clothes which were dry meant that scorch marks were very likely, and these would ruin the clothes. In the early 1900s ironing was done with a flat iron like the one shown here. This would be heated up on the stove each time it was too cool to work effectively. If the clothes seemed too dry, more water would be sprinkled over them and another sprinkler bottle would be used to add starch to shirts to ensure crisp, stiff collars. Later the ceramic top was replaced by a metal one, or even just a bottle top with holes punched in it.The sprinkler bottle top I showed the children might be a small and humble item, but it certainly played an important role in the life of a housewife!Modern housewifes can certainly be thankful for the steam iron.

Rover Bridges History - Pyes Creek Bridge

This week, Rover decided he would like to do some independent visiting. He wanted to check out something Roy had been telling him about. Rover, like Roy is always fascinated by the historic relics which are to be found around Australia, and when he learned that there was an old convict bridge hiding away in a park in Cherrybrook, he had to see it for himself.

If you would like to visit the remains of the Pyes Creek bridge, they are in a park just at the end of Woodlark Crescent in Cherrybrook. It is an unassuming place to find such historical relics! The bridge itself no longer spans the creek, and the creek was, when Rover visited, little more then a trickle. It was not hard to cross to the other side and the relics to be found there using the stepping stones.

Pyes Creek is only a small creek, about 6 kilometres long which rises in West Pennant Hills before emptying into Berowra Creek not far from Hornsby. It is named after James and Thomas Pye, brothers who were some of the earliest settlers in the area. They received a grant of 60 acres in 1819 and were left several other properties in Baulkham Hills by their father. The bridge itself was built on the 60 acre grant given to James Pye in 1819.

So when was the bridge built, by whom, and why? We know that the bridge was built by convicts and that it was one of the links in the Great North Road, but nobody seems to know exactly when it was built. In fact, people don't even appear completely certain whether the bridge was part of the first line of the road, or whether it was built when the road was realigned later on, soon after the original road was completed. However, research does suggest the bridge was on the original alignment of the road, but it could have been built over the creek in later years. Whatever the case, the remains of this bridge are a wonderful suburban reminder of the original route between Sydney and the Hunter Valley.

Roy Creates 'Real' Kedgeree

Roy has been reading some old, English books, and found that lots of the characters were enjoying dishes like Kedgeree for breakfast. Roy was curious about this dish and decided to do a little research. The classic kedgeree appears to be made with smoked haddock and curry powder, but Roy discovered that the original was actually quite different. Originally, kedgeree was called khichri and it was enjoyed by people in India. English expatriots bought the dish home from India, and here it was transformed to include curry powder and smoked fish. The original however often used fresh fish and had no curry powder in sight. Roy decided to try out the earliest recipe he could find (by Colonel A. R. Kenney-Herbert in 1869 and found on The Great British Kitchen) and discovered it was delicious! So this week, Roy Creates Real Kedgeree.

You Will Need: (To serve 4 as a main meal for dinner)

• 2 cups of raw, basmati rice, cooked and cooled.
• 1 tablespoon of butter
• 1 tablespoon of olive oil
• 1 teaspoon of turmeric powder
• Minced parsley to taste
• Fish. Roy used hot smoked salmon, but you could use any fresh or smoked fish you liked.
• Fresh ginger. Roy used a knob about 1 inch square
• Fresh green chilli. Roy likes it hot, and used a whole chilli in this recipe but sometimes uses two! If you are worried about the heat, remove the seeds and be careful to wash your hands after handling chilli as it stings if you rub it in your eyes or elsewhere.
• 4 hard boiled eggs
• Fried shallots (you can usually buy these from the Asian section of the supermarket)
• Fresh shallots

Method:

• If you are using smoked fish, cut it up or flake it. If you are using fresh fish, cook it, and then cut into chunks or flake it.

• Cut the ginger and chilli into thin strips. You can use as much or as little as you like.
• Chop the hardboiled eggs
• Slice the shallots
• Heat the oil and butter in a frying pan
• Add the cold rice and break it up. Fry the rice until it is light and fluffy

• Add the turmeric and fry off

• Add the parsley and fish
• Divide the rice mixture among serving plates.
• Top with the sliced shallots, fried shallots, egg, chilli and ginger
• Enjoy!

It's Beautiful - Sheet Music

Imagine you are a young piano player living in the 1920s. You are always looking for new pieces of music to play and add to your repertoire. You love searching out new sheets of music to add to your collection - the shops aren't just places of music, they are almost like art galleries! Every sheet which you see now seems to have a beautiful cover, with a simple black and white illustration or even a full colour image. It is just wonderful to see music and art in such a close relationship!

When I showed these sheets of music to the children, they were enchanted by the beautiful images on the covers. Many of the children play instruments and are familiar with sheets of music, but they were not used to such beautiful illustrations going with them, especially as most of the children use music books, not single sheets. They were amazed to see such beautiful art on the covers of sheets of music, and wondered who the artists were who illustrated them. When I told them many of the artists remain unknown today they thought it was rather a shame. 

Music has been part of human history for thousands of years, but it was not until the late 1800s that published music began to become popular. Before this, copyright did not cover music and so popular songs could be performed and passed on without being legally purchased and many songwriters lived in virtual poverty. Until the 1880s most music publishers saw printing popular music as secondary to serious classical music printing, and although it often had covers featuring fancy lettering, it only occasionally featured images. By the 1890, popular sheet music was beginning to sell in huge quantities, with one song, 'After The Ball' selling 1 million copies in 1893 alone. 

As popular music began to sell, publishers began to take publishing it more seriously. Popular music began to feature more elaborate and eye-catching covers and by the 20th century, cover artwork was becoming common, especially as advancing printing techniques made printing artistic and even colour covers easier. Where early covers which featured artwork used 'stock' images, publishers began to focus on making the cover of the music match the style and theme of the song. By the 1920s almost all published music had covers designed specifically for the song printed inside and the art was both elaborate and beautiful. Today, these pieces of music are much loved for their covers, but unfortunately, some sellers remove the music and sell the cover alone. It is a shame to see the essence of the music damaged and removed, especially when the cover can easily be framed and displayed with the music intact.

Roaming Roy Finds Someones Folly - Gladesville Hospital Folly

This week, Roy decided it was time to take his friends to a place which has fascinated him since he first visited a few years ago. Roy loves ruins, and particularly those with an interesting story attached, so when he was wandering the grounds of the old Gladesville Hospital a year or two ago, and stumbled over a gothic appearing ruin, he was intrigued. When he discovered the story of this odd ruin, he was even more interested, and decided it was time to share the photos he took with his online friends.

If you would like to visit the ruins at Gladesville Hospital, they are located in Bedlam Bay, just up from the old boathouse. You can enter the grounds of the old hospital from Campbell Drive, and walking along this road you will soon come to the ‘ruins’. Close by there is a large, open oval, perfect for kicking a ball, or flying a kite, and there is plenty of room to enjoy a picnic.

The beautiful ruins which Roy loved are actually a folly, also known as the Bush House. The folly is part of a 19^th century garden which was built in the grounds of Gladesville Hospital, which was then a lunatic asylum. The folly itself was enclosed in cyclone fencing when Roy visited, as it is unstable, but nearby there are other ruins to explore, including the remains of a glasshouse and a lavatory block. The folly is a beautiful building, which Roy was surprised to discover in the grounds of a place which, he assumed, would have been miserable – a lunatic asylum. He was curious to find out why the building was there, and whether his assumption about a mental hospital in the 19^th century being a horrible place, could be wrong.

When the folly was built, Gladesville Hospital was home to a group of mental health patients, who had been sent to the hospital for treatment. In popular culture a lunatic asylum of that era was a horrible place, but Gladesville Hospital in the 1870s, when the folly was built, was actually a very progressive hospital. Under the leadership of Frederick Norton Manning, the hospital sought to use gardening and nature to treat his patients. Dr Manning believed in humane treatment of his patients, and the folly reflects his desire to create gardens and grounds which could foster better health. Once, the folly was surrounded by terraced rose gardens, full of sweet smelling flowers while other areas of the grounds housed animals and birds to entertain the patients.  

Roy Creates Aunty Jills Date Slice

This week, Roy needed to make a delicious slice for a morning tea with some friends. He knew that one of these friends loved dried fruit and particularly dates, so thought he would make something using dates. Luckily, one of his other friends, Aunty Jill, had recently shared her recipe for a superb date slice. Best of all, the slice was quick and easy to make. His friends loved the slice and asked if he would share the recipe. After getting permission, he agreed and so this week Roy Creates Aunty Jills Date Slice.

You Will Need:

• 125 grams of butter
• 3/4 of a cup of brown sugar
• 3/4 of a cup of chopped dates
• 1 egg, lightly beaten
• 1 cup of plain flour
• 1/2 a teaspoon of vanilla essence

Method:

• Preheat the oven to 180 degrees and line a slice tin (20 by 27 centimeters) with baking paper

• Combine the dates, butter and brown sugar in a saucepan and melt everything together. Set the caramel date mix aside to cool.
• When the date mixture is cool, add the egg. If you are concerned there might be enough heat left to scramble the egg, put a bit of the caramel into the lightly beaten egg and mix, then pour the egg into the remaining mix.

• Add the vanilla and flour and mix everything together thoroughly.

• Pour the mix into the slice tin, smooth the top and bake for 30 to 35 minutes.
• Let the slice cool in the tin and then turn out, cut into squares and enjoy.