No space for dinner 

With four pans in action, cooking in a timed sequence, about 100 toffee apples could be covered in a half hour. Then, once covered in the hot toffee, the apples had to harden, before they could be cellophane plastic wrapped and put into the box for the fete or fair. That took around another half hour, So making several hundred toffee apples took well into the night. That was, if all went to schedule. The process took up time and space. Since the table was covered, half in butter to prevent the hot toffee from sticking to it, and the other half in wrapping plastic and utensils, there wasn’t much space for making dinner for everyone. 

We still had to make sure everyone had dinner, which if we did in that kitchen, would take some of the pans and elements out of production and tie up the room for an hour at least. So, if we were lucky, some Friday nights when we were in toffee apple production, became ‘chip night’. It was real ‘treat of the week’. Fish and chips covered with vinegar (this was apparently a throw back to the English heritage of my mother).

Our ‘local’ fish and chip shop was run by a Dutchman, a thin balding man, and his family, who seemed to work all hours. He opened in the mornings around 10am (we could see him from the school grounds of the primary school I attended at the time), and I know he was often working till late into the night. He would be preparing the battered fish for the evenings orders. The first dip and par cooking of the battered fish, before putting it into the cool room. There was always someone in the shop for whom he was making an order for his fish and chips. The store was around a mile from where we lived, so if the order was placed on the telephone, by the time one of us with a bike had cycled down the valley, the packages were usually just about ready. Except for close to holiday weekends. Then it seemed twice as many people wanted fish and chips. If the bicycles were out of action (as was often the case), we always seemed to have a puncture in one tyre or another. (Back then the tyres were very thin. No such thing as BMX or off road like today’s bikes). If the bikes were out it meant a walk about 15 mins each way, and in a cold and wet Dunedin winter, there was nothing quite as cosy as walking home with the packages of newspaper (they always used to be wrapped in newspaper in those days) containing the fish and chips tucked inside you raincoat, warming all around the chest, regardless of the weather.

(continued tomorrow)