Rosemary's Kitchen

My mother-in-law Rosemary (aka "Mil") was an excellent cook. According to her children, her bread rolls were renowned throughout the District (this is possibly/most likely an exaggerated claim, but apparently anyone who tried them loved them).

Rosemary had a wicked sense of humor, often encouraging her sons to pull pranks on townies visiting the farm. She was very well read, and wrote poems to commemorate family occasions. Recently we found the following in her handwriting:

"Let the wealthy and great roll in splendour and state

I envy them not I declare it.

I eat my own lamb, my own chickens and ham,

I shear my own fleece and wear it.

I have lawns, I have bowers,

I have fruits, I have flowers.

The lark is my morning alarm.

So jolly boys now

Here's God speed the plough

Long life and success to the farmer."

She turned out meals for a family of seven and breakfasts, lunches and tea breaks for the shearing gangs, so was used to cooking for large crowds from her tiny, narrow kitchen. In the early years, she cooked on a coal range.

I remember her biscuits and jams/jellies-- excellent bran and malt biscuits, raspberry jam, marmelade, and red currant jelly. 

John and I spent most of the past weekend getting the new kitchen organized in the Homestead. We mused that it was a kitchen that she would have enjoyed using. Hence our decision to name it "Rosemary's Kitchen." We will frame and hang the early photograph of her below, which was taken before her marriage, so that she might supervise all that occurs.