When I was very small she and her brother lived in the family house next door to us. When my uncle died, she moved into the town, so we had to take a bus trip to see her so it became a different sort of treat than spending time with my favourite Uncle john pottering in the garden.
Kate was a large, well lets face it huge lady, with the beginning of a moustache which tickle me something awful when I was made as a child to kiss her. But her saving grace was she was a tea fan, the teapot was always on the go.
What I am remembering now is that she never had fresh milk, unlike our house which always had full cream gold top milk which I still refer to this day to the water down semi skimmed variety that is all the rage in the UK. Instead she had tubes of evaporated milk, yes if you’ve never seen them they did exist, believe me. Like the stuff you get now in tins, but a much thicker consistency, more like that of toothpaste. In tea, it gives a quite distinctive, sweeter flavour.
Little did I know that years later I would be sitting sipping tea in Nigeria with, yes, you guessed it, evaporated milk. I’ve yet to see fresh milk here at all , although you can get yogurt, and cheese if you pay for it – 840N for 200g of cheddar, ouch! – that makes cheese omelettes a real treat. More about prices of stuff coming in a future post.
My family always had a tin or twenty of evaporated milk. In fact, we almost always used it in tea rather than milk. And tea was always on at our place too especially with my grandmother when she lived with us. I hardly ever get the tins now....but occassionally I will buy some in case i run out of milk...which happens then I open up the tin and it is a strange memory and treat!
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