In which we start a new project and make Bosworth Jumbles

On Wednesday Hannah and I were catching up on Great British Bake Off and one of the history of food sections was about Cornish saffron buns. We reflected that we hadn't tried those on our recent holiday in Cornwall. I was about to suggest we made some when an idea for a whole project embracing geography, history and cookery burst fully formed into my brain. We would print off a map of the counties of the UK, one which could be coloured (Hannah has only a very shaky idea of how the country fits together so this will help her understand it better). One by one we  would make a local speciality from each county and look at its history, make it...eat it obviously..and colour in its county of origin on the map.

Today we decided on Bosworth Jumbles, from Leicestershire as suggested by someone on Learning Under the Trees. I googled it and found a recipe on the ITV website from Ade Edmondson's programme on cooking local dishes. He used to come into the bookshop where I worked as a new graduate and was lovely so I felt warmly inclined towards his method, which you will find here. This S shaped biscuit is from a recipe supposedly left behind at the Battle of Bosworth (1485) by Richard III's cook! Although a different website suggests a far simpler recipe which seems much more likely than the lemony version we made. All I can say is Richard III may have lost his horse, his kingdom and his life at Bosworth, but at least he had damn fine biscuits!

I should add the not-very-S-shaped one is not badly made but half-eaten!

In which we experience an air raid...

...in a manner of speaking! After playing with a friend who goes to school and is currently doing WW2, Hannah came home expressing a desire to build an Anderson shelter. Not, as her friend  had done, from a cardboard box, but properly, in the garden, from scrap metal. I took a deep breath. I thought about the possibility of getting scrap metal. I discounted that and offered large cardboard boxes instead, but in an unused bed in the garden with a wooden frame. Hannah accepted but then we considered the fact that we have a metal shed in the garden. That would work,we thought. We spent a bit of time researching shelters and air raids and decided on what she would need to have in the shelter.

Yesterday she made herself a gas mask out of a pair of goggles from a chemistry set, some dark fabric, a toilet roll inner tube with metal mesh from the craft box on the end. She planned her wardrobe, a dress (those of you who know Hannah will know how unusual *this* is), a hand-knitted cardigan, knee-socks and boots. She decided which toys and books would be appropriate..and ended up reading The Children of Cherry Tree Farm, which was published in 1940 (we checked!).

Today, while she got dressed into her wartime clothes, I went down and made up a make-shift bed in the shelter. She had some home made leek and potato soup (wanted it to have been feasible for a 1940 lunch) for lunch and packed a canteen of water, a thermos of soup and a roll in her case. Then I played an audio clip of the air raid siren and she picked up her bag and coat and went calmly down to the shelter with the dog.

They stayed in there for two hours, which is probably long enough to get a sense of what the waiting for the all clear might be like. The dog fell asleep, Hannah read a bit of her book and played with her toys. She wrote a diary entry. Then she emerged into the daylight after the all-clear!