The Bluestocking, where the short days shorten and the oaks are brown

[MarieDeGournay]

Welcome all, regulars and newcomers, to the Bluestocking Women's Pub, a place of refuge and inspiration and camaraderie and silliness, where all alcoholic drinks are non-intoxicating, cakes contain no gluten, sugar or calories, but still taste yummy, and the attentive staff are small but very professional rodents wearing snazzy little outfits.

Other roles - such as acting as foot stools, looking decorative in the garden, or just being impossibly cute when you need something impossibly cute to go awwww at - are filled by a team of miniature pigs, quokkas, wombats, etc etc.

If real life is difficult, you can bring your troubles to the Bluestocking and a comfy chair will be found for you at a roaring fire, a miniature pig will settle down happily to support your tired feet, and a gerbil will serve you promptly with a comforting drink - very large G&Ts or massive mugs of hot chocolate with extra cream and marshmallows are popular choices [don't forget: no calories in the Bluestocking].

That is, i agree, better with canned corned beef, leaving the spam for use in fritters.

Yep, we had that. Served with congealed baked beans for variety.

Boiled sausages, again with lukewarm lumpy mash?

I sense @Bannedontherun is looking more like the ancient ancestor with every additional post.

That disapproving side-eye.

😂😂😂

The school boarding house I lived and worked in as an undergraduate mostly had excellent food, but Sunday (Cook's afternoon off) tea of corned beef, pickled beetroot. and rice crispie buns is not a meal to spark happy nostalgia.

Oh god what memories i used to stand in the food hall in the queue clutching plate ever hopeful of chips (the one thing they could not murder)

i would say i will have the cheese pie and dinner lady would say rather curtly “its quiche”

Chips? Chips?! My school only started offering chips after I left! Honestly, call yourself hard done by...

Chips….mushy peas and wait ……for it curry sauce you know like them vesta curries with currents in.

a rare treat.

I've often wondered how school chips could be so bad. We were in a culture where it shouldn't be possible to get chips wrong.

Though, as I'm sure I've mentioned, there are certain places you can go in Belfast where you can get chips with melted cheese and thousand island. Yum!

During lockdown we had to shield completely, and couldn't get any food (online deliveries refused to come out to us for 3 weeks) so we lived on the only delivery I could get....pasties!

I lived in Cheshire at the time chips were done proper

Well where I come from, school dinner was a 'sangwitch' - jam, or maybe tomato, v. occasionally sangwitch spread, and milk which was brought to school in a small whiskey bottle.

They are trying to introduce hot meals into schools here - maybe if anybody in the Dept of Education, or the NSPCC, is reading this thread, they'll abandon the plan instantly - children suffer enough!😱

Needless to say, getting hot lunches to every wee two-teacher school in the country, and serving them, is proving to be very tricky, and I bet they're sorry they committed to it now. Election promises, eh? 🙄

My guests are about to arrive, so I'm outta here for now, have a good evening, Stockingers!
And Magpie - thanks for getting my Curtly Ambrose reference, a bit obscure I admit

Gawd! Spam fritters. Although spam may soon be having its moment. It seems to pop up in Korean food, possibly other countries in that region. I think it's popular there, a weird relict of ww2. With Kpop being so popular and general increase in interest in Korean culture and cuisine.

We rarely had chips in primary school, the mashed potato was notorious. I don't think I've had semolina since I left. No great loss, but jam roly poly, spotted dick, have also been missing from my diet since then.

Bar gerbil? Could I have a slab of jam roly poly? Raspberry. Also, vanilla custard, hot, in a blue and white striped jug? Fantastic! Thanks 😊 No I don't think I'll need the custard bowser. A pot of tea though would be wonderful.

Ooh, jam roly poly! Now you're talking! Same here please, bar gerbil, with a hot chocolate.

<shifts bar stool slightly>

plate of snowballs, pint of gin please

Gemini is having a fit of the vapours about creating images of animals doing human things like bartending, so instead I will reuse an old image.

Ice cream served in a shallow bowl of custard. Very bizarre.

Offered beef casserole and lamb stew with dumplings in hospital. It was very like school dinners. Fortunately all the veg were boiled to death so there was no possibility of being served decent meals.

I read all these school dinner horrors and raise you...
Bright pink rubberised gammon steaks, which actually bounced the day that someone dropped a metal dish of them. Boing boing merrily across the floor...

How about some gooseberry pie to finish with?
No sugar of course. Just gooseberries wrapped in concrete.

<Sucks cheeks in>

I think Edith might win the school dinner competition. Not even my weekly "pudding" of a cubic centimetre of warm, mild cheddar with two stale Ritz crackers can beat sugarless gooseberry pie.

School dinners are what put me off chocolate cake. Anyone else have dry chocolate sponge cake with congealed tepid "chocolate" custard for their school pudding?

<shuffles deck> <rubs chin with poker face>

Canned prunes including the liquid and lumpy custard!!!!

@ChristmasStars oh bugger i do remember that

Sorry for bringing up a bad memory @Bannedontherun and yes I remember those prunes and custard too.

I was once at a conference in Hungary and we were served a bowl that looked like school prunes and custard. I wasn't too keen but figured it would be better than nothing. I had a bit of a shock when I took a spoonful and it turned out to be some kind of savoury sauce, and what I thought was a prune was an unidentified lump of meat.

Yep. Special occasions pudding, that was!