Aunty Elsie

Stock photo of Crantock beach, Pentire head beyond the Gannel

Aunty Elsie lived in Crantock and this alone was sufficient qualification.  But she also had a small shop in which was, oh joy, a loom and a spinning wheel and she actually spun and dyed her own wool and wove it into cloth to make garments and such like. And she fed us (cream teas?) and walked us to the beach, explained the dangers of the River Gannel. And she actually liked us children!
What more could we want of an aunt? And yet she was actually only a friend of our Nana and thus not our aunt at all.

Using a treadle fret saw (which I now have) like the one above my father used to cut out plywood handles to complete the hand woven shopping bags Elsie sold in her shop.

In this photo she is garbed in orange on the steps in her front garden holding my baby sister Heather, my mother on her left, Margaret on her right.

Here we are on Crantock beach, Elsie on the left. No Heather so perhaps this photo predates her. I think the dog is Chum. I am of course at my favourite occupation.

Forever Newquay and Crantock will remain dear in my memories on account of Aunty Elsie and all she stood for. I will never forget how dangerous the Gannel is. Forever I will long to return to Cornwall, a place worthy of dreams, a place of idyllic happiness, contentment, of clotted cream and scones, ice cream locally made with clotted cream and in a zillion different flavours, real Cornish pasties freshly baked from Rock, long sandy beaches, rock pools...

To add to the magic of the place there was also the mystery behind a carving on a low-tide cave which my sister remembers visiting but I do not - perhaps it was considered too dangerous at the tender age I was back then?

Mar not my face but let me be,

Secure in this lone cavern by the sea,

Let the wild waves around me roar,

Kissing my lips for evermore.

I am hoping my sister(s) will contribute to this page to fill in any blanks in my memory...

Another ancient recipe, this time Cornish in origin

Some while ago I shared an ancient recipe.  Here is another which I have mentioned (although the location was Wadebridge, not Padstow) but not experienced recently until this evening when Ali happened to have brought clotted cream back from her visit to Devon and we happened to stumble upon some bargain jam tarts in Lidl.

The ingredients

Remove two jam tarts from the package

Load each tart with clotted cream

Enjoy!

The recipe is quite simple, as you can see. I regret the gastronomic experience did not quite match my memory, partly because the jam tarts were inferior. They had too little jam in and the jam was all the same colour. The correct ones should be in a choice of red, orange and green flavours.  Maybe next time...

Clotted cream

Clotted cream tea, courtesy Imen

I think I may have mentioned that a high point of my childhood was the annual holiday, and that our favourite venue was Cornwall. Clotted cream is particularly associated with the West Country of England but it is my theory that it is the richest in Cornwall. There was an unassuming upstairs restaurant in Padstow that we frequented that served a variety of deserts all accompanied by the magic substance.

Commercial jam tarts

One of these deserts consisted of a couple of commercial jam tarts, the sort that Mr Kipling makes so exceedingly well, with a very generous glob. Can you believe that such simple fare could be so heavenly?

I used to save my pocket money before the holiday and would eek it out to include at least one clotted cream ice cream per day. I am not talking about the inferior stuff churned out by the likes of Mr Walls. It has to be made locally to be good. Most of the world lives in ignorance or deception - take for instance this ridiculous quote "Give a generous dollop of this delicious cream on pies, cakes, or biscuits for a luscious taste that's a cross between ice cream and whipped cream, a traditional English favorite!"