Things to do in Summer - indoors!

Last week I was flicking through an old-fashioned recipe book and my eye lit on a Dundee cake. I like these at Christmas because they have less fruit than trad cake [therefore less expensive].  I just fancied making one - so: 

 Trouble is, the directions say, 'will improve and develop in flavour if it is kept 2 or 3 days before eating.'  Hmm Thinking....

Parents
  • Looks like a lovely cake, I like a Dundee cake too. But didn't having the oven on make the kitchen hotter?

    I spent all day in a cool room doing my ancestry, I had to stop when my eyes and brain got a bit boggled, I'd forgotten how energy intensive research can be.

  • how energy intensive research can be.

    It certainly is. That's why I've given up writing at least for Summer. I remain very impressed by your ancestry research. I doubt many have gone so far back - it must have been a huge effort. 

    didn't having the oven on make the kitchen hotter?

    Luckily my landlord installed an extra vent fan a few weeks ago, which is really effective. 

  • I've been able to go back so far because most of my ancestors never went anywhere and are in very localised clusters, a couple of the names are uncommon too, one is pretty uch only found in the area they orriginate from. When you've got such a tight cluster, you can start asking questions like who owned the land they lived on when you run out of records for individuals, then look at what was there, if anything, in the Doomsday book and any mentions or even inferences you can draw from Saxon charters, naming patterns etc. I've totally lost one branch of the family in Birmingham, which must have been a real melting pot in the early 1800's, some places like Birmingham have very poor records anyway and a lot of misspellings, some of them I suspect deliberate, some lazy and others just incomprehension of the dialect ordinary people spoke compared to the educated registrars. The Irish ancestors are surprisingly easy as clan names can be traced back if they're from Ireland itself rather than transplanted.

Reply
  • I've been able to go back so far because most of my ancestors never went anywhere and are in very localised clusters, a couple of the names are uncommon too, one is pretty uch only found in the area they orriginate from. When you've got such a tight cluster, you can start asking questions like who owned the land they lived on when you run out of records for individuals, then look at what was there, if anything, in the Doomsday book and any mentions or even inferences you can draw from Saxon charters, naming patterns etc. I've totally lost one branch of the family in Birmingham, which must have been a real melting pot in the early 1800's, some places like Birmingham have very poor records anyway and a lot of misspellings, some of them I suspect deliberate, some lazy and others just incomprehension of the dialect ordinary people spoke compared to the educated registrars. The Irish ancestors are surprisingly easy as clan names can be traced back if they're from Ireland itself rather than transplanted.

Children
  • What  an amazing journey you've been on. You could write a book on how to go about this - if you could find time! I suppose in times past, few left their villages or hamlets. My granny never did until she married. It's not only the slog of research, though, I suppose you have to find strong motivation to keep going. I guess yours is sheer love for history? It sounds a fascinating project.