Academic literature on the topic 'Cookery (Whiskey)'

Abstract A multiresidue method for the quantitative determination of organophosphorus pesticides in foods from the Food and Drug Administration's Total Diet Study is described. The organophosphorus pesticides are separated on the basis of polarity and determined in both fatty and nonfatty foods with a minimum of interferences. The foods analyzed included raw and cooked individual foods as well as combination dishes, water, and whiskey. Recoveries of 17 organophosphorus pesticides in 41 foods ranged from about 80 to 118%.

Agri-industrial by-products are valuable resources that can become ingredients for obtaining value-added products, thus supporting the circular economy. Spent grain is the primary by-product from the beer and whisky industry, is rich in fiber and protein, and can be successfully incorporated into pasta production. After dough properties were assessed, the resulting pasta was evaluated for chemical composition, phenolics content, as well as antioxidant activity. The cooked pasta quality was similarly evaluated on its physical properties, hardness, color profile of dry and hydrated pasta, and its sensory characteristics, as well as on the microstructure of the final products. Non-traditional ingredients such as spent grain and spelt flour influence the rheological properties of the dough and sensory acceptability and quality of the final cooked product. Spelt flour with the addition of spent grain can be used to obtain dry pasta of acceptable quality, with a high fiber content and biologically active compound, such as phenolic compounds. Using appropriate technologies, but also balanced recipes can incorporate suitable amounts of spent grain in pasta, resulting in final products characterized by desired dietary-nutritional values, as well as optimal sensory properties.

Khao Mak is a sweet fermented rice-based dessert with a unique flavor profile commonly found throughout Thailand. The traditional starter culture (Look Pang) contains yeast, mold and herbs, which is used to ferment cooked glutinous rice. This research studied production of Khao Mak which resulted in volatile flavor compounds that were affected by rice varieties, including white glutinous rice (Kor Khor 6), Japanese rice (Hitomebore) and black glutinous rice (Kam Doi and Leum Phua). Total soluble solids (TSS) as degree Brix, pH, and alcohol concentrations were measured daily during the fermentation period. Volatile flavor compounds were separated and identified by gas chromatography mass spectrometry (GC-MS). At the end of the fermentation, samples had pH ranging from 3.91±0.16 to 4.30±0.09, total soluble solids of 32.65±1.65 to 44.02±1.72°Brix, and alcohol concentrations between 0.33±0.03 and 0.38±0.03% (v/v). The potent odors associated with Khao Mak were alcohol, wine-like, whiskey-like, solvent-like, sweet and fruity. The major volatile compounds, which have stimulant flavor in Khao Mak, included 1-propanal, 1-propanol-2-methyl, 1-butanal-3-methyl and acetic acid ethyl ester. Among all rice varieties tested, the white glutinous rice produced Khao Mak containing the highest TSS, alcohol concentrations followed by Hitomebore rice and black glutinous rice, respectively.

Introduction: From Trifle to Tiramisu Tiramisu is an Italian dessert cake, usually comprising sponge finger biscuits soaked in coffee and liquor, layered with a mixture of egg yolk, mascarpone and cream, and topped with sifted cocoa. Once a gourmet dish, tiramisu, which means “pick me up” in Italian (Volpi), is today very popular in Australia where it is available for purchase not only in restaurants and cafés, but also from fast food chains and supermarkets. Recipes abound in cookery books and magazines and online. It is certainly more widely available and written about in Australia than the once ubiquitous English trifle which, comprising variations on the theme of sherry soaked sponge cake, custard and cream, it closely resembles. It could be asserted that its strong coffee taste has enabled the tiramisu to triumph over the trifle in contemporary Australia, yet coffee is also a recurrent ingredient in cakes and icings in nineteenth and early twentieth century Australian cookbooks. Acknowledging that coffee consumption in Australia doubled during the years of the Second World War and maintained high rates of growth afterwards (Khamis; Adams), this article draws on examples of culinary writing during this period of increasing popularity to investigate the use of coffee in cookery as well as a beverage in these mid-twentieth century decades. In doing so, it engages with a lively scholarly discussion on what has driven this change—whether the American glamour and sophistication associated with coffee, post-war immigration from the Mediterranean and other parts of Europe, or the influence of the media and developments in technology (see, for discussion, Adams; Collins et al.; Khamis; Symons). Coffee in Australian Mid-century Epicurean Writing In Australian epicurean writing in the 1950s and 1960s, freshly brewed coffee is clearly identified as the beverage of choice for those with gourmet tastes. In 1952, The West Australian reported that Johnnie Walker, then president of the Sydney Gourmet Society had “sweated over an ordinary kitchen stove to give 12 Melbourne women a perfect meal” (“A Gourmet” 8). Walker prepared a menu comprising: savoury biscuits; pumpkin soup made with a beef, ham, and veal stock; duck braised with “26 ounces of dry red wine, a bottle and a half of curacao and orange juice;” Spanish fried rice; a “French lettuce salad with the Italian influence of garlic;” and, strawberries with strawberry brandy and whipped cream. He served sherry with the biscuits, red wine with the duck, champagne with the sweet, and coffee to finish. It is, however, the adjectives that matter here—that the sherry and wine were dry, not sweet, and the coffee was percolated and black, not instant and milky. Other examples of epicurean writing suggested that fresh coffee should also be unadulterated. In 1951, American food writer William Wallace Irwin who travelled to, and published in, Australia as “The Garrulous Gourmet,” wrote scathingly of the practice of adding chicory to coffee in France and elsewhere (104). This castigation of the French for their coffee was unusual, with most articles at this time praising Gallic gastronomy. Indicative of this is Nancy Cashmore’s travel article for Adelaide’s Advertiser in 1954. Titled “In Dordogne and Burgundy the Gourmet Will Find … A Gastronomic Paradise,” Cashmore details the purchasing, preparation, presentation, and, of course, consumption of excellent food and wine. Good coffee is an integral part of every meal and every day: “from these parts come exquisite pate de fois, truffles, delicious little cakes, conserved meats, wild mushrooms, walnuts and plums. … The day begins with new bread and coffee … nothing is imported, nothing is stale” (6). Memorable luncheons of “hors-d’oeuvre … a meat course, followed by a salad, cheese and possibly a sweet” (6) always ended with black coffee and sometimes a sugar lump soaked in liqueur. In Australian Wines and Food (AW&F), a quarterly epicurean magazine that was published from 1956 to 1960, coffee was regularly featured as a gourmet kitchen staple alongside wine and cheese. Articles on the history, growing, marketing, blending, roasting, purchase, and brewing of coffee during these years were accompanied with full-page advertisements for Bushell’s vacuum packed pure “roaster fresh” coffee, Robert Timms’s “Royal Special” blend for “coffee connoisseurs,” and the Masterfoods range of “superior” imported and locally produced foodstuffs, which included vacuum packed coffee alongside such items as paprika, bay leaves and canned asparagus. AW&F believed Australia’s growing coffee consumption the result of increased participation in quality dining experiences whether in restaurants, the “scores of colourful coffee shops opening their doors to a new generation” (“Coffee” 39) or at home. With regard to domestic coffee drinking, AW&F reported a revived interest in “the long neglected art of brewing good coffee in the home” (“Coffee” 39). Instructions given range from boiling in a pot to percolating and “expresso” (Bancroft 10; “Coffee” 37-9). Coffee was also mentioned in every issue as the only fitting ending to a fine meal, when port, other fortified wines or liqueurs usually accompanied a small demi-tasse of (strong) black coffee. Coffee was also identified as one of the locally produced speciality foods that were flown into the USA for a consulate dinner: “more than a ton of carefully selected foodstuffs was flown to New York by Qantas in three separate airlifts … beef fillet steaks, kangaroo tails, Sydney rock oysters, King prawns, crayfish tails, tropical fruits and passion fruit, New Guinea coffee, chocolates, muscatels and almonds” (“Australian” 16). It is noteworthy that tea is not profiled in the entire run of the magazine. A decade later, in the second half of the 1960s, the new Australian gourmet magazine Epicurean included a number of similar articles on coffee. In 1966 and 1969, celebrity chef and regular Epicurean columnist Graham Kerr also included an illustrated guide to making coffee in two of the books produced alongside his television series, The Graham Kerr Cookbook (125) and The Graham Kerr Cookbook by the Galloping Gourmet (266-67). These included advice to buy freshly roasted beans at least once a week and to invest in an electric coffee grinder. Kerr uses a glass percolator in each and makes an iced (milk) coffee based on double strength cooled brewed coffee. Entertaining with Margaret Fulton (1971) is the first Margaret Fulton cookery book to include detailed information on making coffee from ground beans at home. In this volume, which was clearly aimed at the gourmet-inclined end of the domestic market, Fulton, then cookery editor for popular magazine Woman’s Day, provides a morning coffee menu and proclaims that “Good hot coffee will never taste so good as it does at this time of the day” (90). With the stress on the “good,” Fulton, like Kerr, advises that beans be purchased and ground as they are needed or that only a small amounts of freshly ground coffee be obtained at one time. For Fulton, quality is clearly linked to price—“buy the best you can afford” (90)—but while advising that “Mocha coffee, which comes from Aden and Mocha, is generally considered the best” (90), she also concedes that consumers will “find by experience” (90) which blends they prefer. She includes detailed information on storage and preparation, noting that there are also “dozens of pieces of coffee making equipment to choose from” (90). Fulton includes instructions on how to make coffee for guests at a wedding breakfast or other large event, gently heating home sewn muslin bags filled with finely ground coffee in urns of barely boiling water (64). Alongside these instructions, Fulton also provides recipes for a sophisticated selection of coffee-flavoured desserts such as an iced coffee soufflé and coffee biscuits and meringues that would be perfect accompaniments to her brewed coffees. Cooking with Coffee A prominent and popular advocate of Continental and Asian cookery in Melbourne in the 1950s, Maria Kozslik Donovan wrote and illustrated five cookery books and had a successful international career as a food writer in the 1960s and 1970s. Maria Kozslik was Hungarian by birth and education and was also educated in the USA before marrying Patrick Donovan, an Australian, and migrating to Sydney with him in 1950. After a brief stay there and in Adelaide, they relocated to Melbourne in 1953 where she ran a cookery school and wrote for prominent daily newspaper The Age, penning hundreds of her weekly “Epicure’s Corner: Continental Recipes with Maria Kozslik” column from 1954 to 1961. Her groundbreaking Continental Cookery in Australia (1955) collects some 140 recipes, many of which would appear in her column—predominantly featuring French, Italian, Viennese, and Hungarian dishes, as well as some from the Middle East and the Balkans—each with an informative paragraph or two regarding European cooking and dining practices that set the recipes in context. Continental Cookery in Australia includes one recipe for Mocha Torte (162), which she translates as Coffee Cream Cake and identifies as “the favourite of the gay and party-loving Viennese … [in] the many cafés and sweet shops of Salzburg and Vienna” (162). In this recipe, a plain sponge is cut into four thin layers and filled and covered with a rich mocha cream custard made from egg yolks, sugar and a good measure of coffee, which, when cooled, is beaten into creamed butter. In her recipe for Mocha Cream, Donovan identifies the type of coffee to be used and its strength, specifying that “strong Mocha” be used, and pleading, “please, no essence!” She also suggests that the cake’s top can be decorated with shavings of the then quite exotic “coffee bean chocolate,” which she notes can be found at “most continental confectioners” (162), but which would have been difficult to obtain outside the main urban centres. Coffee also appears in her Café Frappe, where cooled strong black coffee is poured into iced-filled glasses, and dressed with a touch of sugar and whipped cream (165). For this recipe the only other direction that Donovan gives regarding coffee is to “prepare and cool” strong black coffee (165) but it is obvious—from her eschewing of other convenience foods throughout the volume—that she means freshly brewed ground coffee. In contrast, less adventurous cookery books paint a different picture of coffee use in the home at this time. Thus, the more concise Selected Continental Recipes for the Australian Home (1955) by the Australian-born Zelmear M. Deutsch—who, stating that upon marrying a Viennese husband, she became aware of “the fascinating ways of Continental Cuisine” (back cover)—includes three recipes that include coffee. Deutsch’s Mocha Creams (chocolate truffles with a hint of coffee) (76-77), almond meringues filled with coffee whipped cream (89-90), and Mocha Cream Filling comprising butter beaten with chocolate, vanilla, sugar, and coffee (95), all use “powdered” instant coffee, which is, moreover, used extremely sparingly. Her Almond Coffee Torte, for example, requires only half a teaspoon of powdered coffee to a quarter of a pint (300 mls) of cream, which is also sweetened with vanilla sugar (89-90). In contrast to the examples from Fulton and Donovan above (but in common with many cookbooks before and after) Deutsch uses the term “mocha” to describe a mix of coffee and chocolate, rather than to refer to a fine-quality coffee. The term itself is also used to describe a soft, rich brown color and, therefore, at times, the resulting hue of these dishes. The word itself is of late eighteenth century origin, and comes from the eponymous name of a Red Sea port from where coffee was shipped. While Selected Continental Recipes appears to be Deutsch’s first and only book, Anne Mason was a prolific food, wine and travel writer. Before migrating to England in 1958, she was well known in Australia as the presenter of a live weekly television program, Anne Mason’s Home-Tested Recipes, which aired from 1957. She also wrote a number of popular cookery books and had a long-standing weekly column in The Age. Her ‘Home-Tested Recipes’ feature published recipes contributed by readers, which she selected and tested. A number of these were collected in her Treasury of Australian Cookery, published in London in 1962, and included those influenced by “the country cooking of England […] Continental influence […] and oriental ideas” (11). Mason includes numerous recipes featuring coffee, but (as in Deutsch above) almost all are described as mocha-flavoured and listed as such in the detailed index. In Mason’s book, this mocha taste is, in fact, featured more frequently in sweet dishes than any of the other popular flavours (vanilla, honey, lemon, apple, banana, coconut, or passionfruit) except for chocolate. These mocha recipes include cakes: Chocolate-Mocha Refrigerator cake—plain sponge layered with a coffee-chocolate mousse (134), Mocha Gateau Ring—plain sponge and choux pastry puffs filled with cream or ice cream and thickly iced with mocha icing (136) and Mocha Nut Cake—a coffee and cocoa butter cake filled and iced with mocha icing and almonds (166). There are also recipes for Mocha Meringues—small coffee/cocoa-flavoured meringue rosettes joined together in pairs with whipped cream (168), a dessert Mocha Omelette featuring the addition of instant coffee and sugar to the eggs and which is filled with grated chocolate (181) and Mocha-Crunch Ice Cream—a coffee essence-scented ice cream with chocolate biscuit crumbs (144) that was also featured in an ice cream bombe layered with chocolate-rum and vanilla ice creams (152). Mason’s coffee recipes are also given prominence in the accompanying illustrations. Although the book contains only nine pages in full colour, the Mocha Gateau Ring is featured on both the cover and opposite the title page of the book and the Mocha Nut Cake is given an entire coloured page. The coffee component of Mason’s recipes is almost always sourced from either instant coffee (granules or powdered) or liquid coffee essence, however, while the cake for the Mocha Nut Cake uses instant coffee, its mocha icing and filling calls for “3 dessertspoons [of] hot black coffee” (167). The recipe does not, however, describe if this is made from instant, essence, or ground beans. The two other mocha icings both use instant coffee mixed with cocoa, icing sugar and hot water, while one also includes margarine for softness. The recipe for Mocha Cup (202) in the chapter for Children’s Party Fare (198-203), listed alongside clown-shaped biscuits and directions to decorate cakes with sweets, plastic spaceships and dolls, surprisingly comprises a sophisticated mix of grated dark chocolate melted in a pint of “hot black coffee” lightened with milk, sugar and vanilla essence, and topped with cream. There are no instructions for brewing or otherwise making fresh coffee in the volume. The Australian culinary masterwork of the 1960s, The Margaret Fulton Cookbook, which was published in 1968 and sold out its first (record) print run of 100,000 copies in record time, is still in print, with a revised 2004 edition bringing the number of copies sold to over 1.5 million (Brien). The first edition’s cake section of the book includes a Coffee Sponge sandwich using coffee essence in both the cake and its creamy filling and topping (166) and Iced Coffee Cakes that also use coffee essence in the cupcakes and instant coffee powder in the glacé icing (166). A Hazelnut Swiss Roll is filled with a coffee butter cream called Coffee Creme au Beurre, with instant coffee flavouring an egg custard which is beaten into creamed butter (167)—similar to Koszlik’s Mocha Cream but a little lighter, using milk instead of cream and fewer eggs. Fulton also includes an Austrian Chocolate Cake in her Continental Cakes section that uses “black coffee” in a mocha ganache that is used as a frosting (175), and her sweet hot coffee soufflé calls for “1/2 cup strong coffee” (36). Fulton also features a recipe for Irish Coffee—sweetened hot black coffee with (Irish) whiskey added, and cream floated on top (205). Nowhere is fresh or brewed coffee specified, and on the page dedicated to weights, measures, and oven temperatures, instant coffee powder appears on the list of commonly used ingredients alongside flour, sugar, icing sugar, golden syrup, and butter (242). American Influence While the influence of American habits such as supermarket shopping and fast food on Australian foodways is reported in many venues, recognition of its influence on Australian coffee culture is more muted (see, for exceptions, Khamis; Adams). Yet American modes of making and utilising coffee also influenced the Australian use of coffee, whether drunk as beverage or employed as a flavouring agent. In 1956, the Australian Women’s Weekly published a full colour Wade’s Cornflour advertorial of biscuit recipes under the banner, “Dione Lucas’s Manhattan Mochas: The New Coffee Cookie All America Loves, and Now It’s Here” (56). The use of the American “cookie” instead of the Australian “biscuit” is telling here, the popularity of all things American sure to ensure, the advert suggested, that the Mochas (coffee biscuits topped with chocolate icing) would be so popular as to be “More than a recipe—a craze” (56). This American influence can also been seen in cakes and other baked goods made specifically to serve with coffee, but not necessarily containing it. The recipe for Zulu Boys published in The Argus in 1945, a small chocolate and cinnamon cake with peanuts and cornflakes added, is a good example. Reported to “keep moist for some time,” these were “not too sweet, and are especially useful to serve with a glass of wine or a cup of black coffee” (Vesta Junior 9), the recipe a precursor to many in the 1950s and 1960s. Margaret Fulton includes a Spicy Coffee Cake in The Margaret Fulton Cookbook. This is similar to her Cinnamon Tea Cake in being an easy to mix cake topped with cinnamon sugar, but is more robust in flavour and texture with the addition of whole bran cereal, raisins and spices (163). Her “Morning Coffee” section in Entertaining with Margaret Fulton similarly includes a selection of quite strongly flavoured and substantially textured cakes and biscuits (90-92), while her recipes for Afternoon Tea are lighter and more delicate in taste and appearance (85-89). Concluding Remarks: Integration and Evolution, Not Revolution Trusted Tasmanian writer on all matters domestic, Marjorie Bligh, published six books on cookery, craft, home economics, and gardening, and produced four editions of her much-loved household manual under all three of her married names: Blackwell, Cooper and Bligh (Wood). The second edition of At Home with Marjorie Bligh: A Household Manual (published c.1965-71) provides more evidence of how, rather than jettisoning one form in favour of another, Australian housewives were adept at integrating both ground and other more instant forms of coffee into their culinary repertoires. She thus includes instructions on both how to efficiently clean a coffee percolator (percolating with a detergent and borax solution) (312) as well as how to make coffee essence at home by simmering one cup of ground coffee with three cups of water and one cup of sugar for one hour, straining and bottling (281). She also includes recipes for cakes, icings, and drinks that use both brewed and instant coffee as well as coffee essence. In Entertaining with Margaret Fulton, Fulton similarly allows consumer choice, urging that “If you like your coffee with a strong flavour, choose one to which a little chicory has been added” (90). Bligh’s volume similarly reveals how the path from trifle to tiramisu was meandering and one which added recipes to Australian foodways, rather than deleted them. Her recipe for Coffee Trifle has strong similarities to tiramisu, with sponge cake soaked in strong milk coffee and sherry layered with a rich custard made from butter, sugar, egg yolks, and black coffee, and then decorated with whipped cream, glace cherries, and walnuts (169). This recipe precedes published references to tiramisu as, although the origins of tiramisu are debated (Black), references to the dessert only began to appear in the 1980s, and there is no mention of the dish in such authoritative sources as Elizabeth David’s 1954 Italian Food, which features a number of traditional Italian coffee-based desserts including granita, ice cream and those made with cream cheese and rice. By the 1990s, however, respected Australian chef and food researcher, the late Mietta O’Donnell, wrote that if pizza was “the most travelled of Italian dishes, then tiramisu is the country’s most famous dessert” and, today, Australian home cooks are using the dish as a basis for a series of variations that even include replacing the coffee with fruit juices and other flavouring agents. Long-lived Australian coffee recipes are similarly being re-made in line with current taste and habits, with celebrated chef Neil Perry’s recent Simple Coffee and Cream Sponge Cake comprising a classic cream-filled vanilla sponge topped with an icing made with “strong espresso”. To “glam up” the cake, Perry suggests sprinkling the top with chocolate-covered roasted coffee beans—cycling back to Maria Koszlik’s “coffee bean chocolate” (162) and showing just how resilient good taste can be. Acknowledgements The research for this article was completed while I was the recipient of a Research Fellowship in the Special Collections at the William Angliss Institute (WAI) of TAFE in Melbourne, where I utilised their culinary collections. Thank you to the staff of the WAI Special Collections for their generous assistance, as well as to the Faculty of Arts, Business, Informatics and Education at Central Queensland University for supporting this research. Thank you to Jill Adams for her assistance with this article and for sharing her “Manhattan Mocha” file with me, and also to the peer reviewers for their generous and helpful feedback. All errors are, of course, my own.References “A Gourmet Makes a Perfect Meal.” The West Australian 4 Jul. 1952: 8.Adams, Jill. “Australia’s American Coffee Culture.” Australasian Journal of Popular Culture (2012): forthcoming. “Australian Wines Served at New York Dinner.” Australian Wines and Food 1.5 (1958): 16. Bancroft, P. A. “Let’s Make Some Coffee.” Australian Wines & Food Quarterly 4.1 (1960): 10. Black, Jane. “The Trail of Tiramisu.” Washington Post 11 Jul. 2007. 15 Feb. 2012 ‹http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/10/AR2007071000327.html›. Bligh, Marjorie. At Home with Marjorie Bligh: A Household Manual. Devonport: M. Bligh, c.1965-71. 2nd ed. Brien, Donna Lee. “Australian Celebrity Chefs 1950-1980: A Preliminary Study.” Australian Folklore 21 (2006): 201-18. Cashmore, Nancy. “In Dordogne and Burgundy the Gourmet Will Find … A Gastronomic Paradise.” The Advertiser 23 Jan. (1954): 6. “Coffee Beginnings.” Australian Wines & Food Quarterly 1.4 (1957/1958): 37-39. Collins, Jock, Katherine Gibson, Caroline Alcorso, Stephen Castles, and David Tait. A Shop Full of Dreams: Ethnic Small Business in Australia. Sydney: Pluto Press, 1995. David, Elizabeth. Italian Food. New York: Penguin Books, 1999. 1st pub. UK: Macdonald, 1954, and New York: Knoft, 1954. Donovan, Maria Kozslik. Continental Cookery in Australia. Melbourne: William Heinemann, 1955. Reprint ed. 1956. -----.“Epicure’s Corner: Continental Recipes with Maria Kozslik.” The Age 4 Jun. (1954): 7. Fulton, Margaret. The Margaret Fulton Cookbook. Dee Why West: Paul Hamlyn, 1968. -----. Entertaining with Margaret Fulton. Dee Why West: Paul Hamlyn, 1971. Irwin, William Wallace. The Garrulous Gourmet. Sydney: The Shepherd P, 1951. Khamis, Susie. “It Only Takes a Jiffy to Make: Nestlé, Australia and the Convenience of Instant Coffee.” Food, Culture & Society 12.2 (2009): 217-33. Kerr, Graham. The Graham Kerr Cookbook. Wellington, Auckland, and Sydney: AH & AW Reed, 1966. -----. The Graham Kerr Cookbook by The Galloping Gourmet. New York: Doubleday, 1969. Mason, Anne. A Treasury of Australian Cookery. London: Andre Deutsch, 1962. Mason, Peter. “Anne Mason.” The Guardian 20 Octo.2006. 15 Feb. 2012 Masterfoods. “Masterfoods” [advertising insert]. Australian Wines and Food 2.10 (1959): btwn. 8 & 9.“Masters of Food.” Australian Wines & Food Quarterly 2.11 (1959/1960): 23. O’Donnell, Mietta. “Tiramisu.” Mietta’s Italian Family Recipe, 14 Aug. 2004. 15 Feb. 2012 ‹http://www.miettas.com/food_wine_recipes/recipes/italianrecipes/dessert/tiramisu.html›. Perry, Neil. “Simple Coffee and Cream Sponge Cake.” The Age 12 Mar. 2012. 15 Feb. 2012 ‹http://www.theage.com.au/lifestyle/cuisine/baking/recipe/simple-coffee-and-cream-sponge-cake-20120312-1utlm.html›. Symons, Michael. One Continuous Picnic: A History of Eating in Australia. Adelaide: Duck Press, 2007. 1st. Pub. Melbourne: Melbourne UP, 1982. ‘Vesta Junior’. “The Beautiful Fuss of Old Time Baking Days.” The Argus 20 Mar. 1945: 9. Volpi, Anna Maria. “All About Tiramisu.” Anna Maria’s Open Kitchen 20 Aug. 2004. 15 Feb. 2012 ‹http://www.annamariavolpi.com/tiramisu.html›. Wade’s Cornflour. “Dione Lucas’ Manhattan Mochas: The New Coffee Cookie All America Loves, and Now It’s Here.” The Australian Women’s Weekly 1 Aug. (1956): 56. Wood, Danielle. Housewife Superstar: The Very Best of Marjorie Bligh. Melbourne: Text Publishing, 2011.

You look great.You look amazing.I didn’t recognise you.You are looking 10 years younger.Just how much weight have you lost? It really shows.Isn’t Gayle looking great?Have you done it just through diet and exercise, [or surgery]?Have you lost some more since I last saw you?You don’t want to look scrawny.You are not planning to lose any more are you?Have you seen Gayle doesn’t she look drawn?Of course you are still much heavier than the NHS recommendation. Thinking and Writing about Fat… Since the beginning of my academic career I have written auto/biographically. Like others I believe that in including my own experience in my writing I make clear not only the influence my autobiography has on the work that I do but how, in turn, the work that I do influences my autobiography (Stanley; Morgan; Letherby Feminist Research, Interconnected Lives). I began this paper with a list of statements that have been said to me, or about me (and reported to me) by others in the last 18 months since a significant weight loss. As you see the messages ARE mixed and even the ‘compliments’ feel tainted; did I really look so bad before? Jeannine Gailey (16) reminds us that the fat body, especially the female fat body, is marginalised, stigmatised and summarising her study with 74 fat women argues that the women whose voices are represented in this book indicated that they are often hyperinvisible when it comes to their health or actual dealings with health-care practitioners, in addition to frequently feeling invisible with sexual partners, family, friends, colleagues, and strangers. Some of my own (auto/biographical) research has focussed on the experience of ‘infertility’ and ‘involuntary childlessness’ and the above statement also applies to many of my respondents, and similar others, who feel marginalised and stigmatised because of their status as nonmother (e.g. Letherby nonmotherhood). Although not my primary research area I have recently been involved in a number of research projects – either as supervisor or researcher – concerned with weight and/or weight management. One of these focused on the relationship between ‘obesity’ and ‘infertility’ (written, like other phrases in this piece, in quotation marks to highlight the problematic nature of simplistic definitions). Some medical literature suggests that a woman’s body mass index (BMI) is an important determinant of medical outcomes in the treatment of ‘infertility’. However, recent work contests the link between BMI, ‘obesity’ and ‘infertility’. Research from the social sciences shows that medical professionals, media and lay discourse position some individuals as ‘deserving’ and others as ‘undeserving’ of medical treatment (including in/fertility treatment) (Letherby Infertility; Stenhouse and Letherby). Women unable to achieve pregnancy and/or carry a baby to term due to weight related issues (either ‘real’ or assumed) will likely experience multiple stigma in relation to their gender, BMI and fertility status. In addition restricting ‘infertility’ treatment on the grounds of weight can itself cause stigmatization and may lead to depression and low self-esteem. ****I began writing fiction (as an adult) about five years ago and this type of writing has become increasingly important to me both academically and personally and is, I think, another way to tell auto/biographical stories. In my teaching I encourage students to think sociologically about fiction they enjoy and in recent academic writing on reproduction and on bereavement and loss I have included some fictional pieces (e.g. Davidson and Letherby; Letherby Interconnected Lives, Mortality). Taking a traditional view of the relationship between fact and fiction, some might suggest that fiction is the opposite of explicit auto/biographical writing. I disagree. Drawing specifically on respondents’ narratives, or more generally on our research and our own life experiences ‘fiction’ can provide a powerful, accessible narrative (e.g. Frank). What follows is a piece of fiction that is auto/biographical in that it connects to some experiences in my own life (see Letherby Interconnected Lives) and has connections to some of the experience of respondents from various of my research studies. My aim (or rather one of them) in writing this piece was to highlight the stigma and marginalisation that women in these situations sometimes feel. The Mixed Messages, not least with reference to fat, are evident I hope. Mr Sprat and I: A Story He drank three times as much as I did during our first date. I replied ‘yes please,’ when twice he asked if I wanted crisps or nuts with my wine. He suggested a film, followed by more drinks the next time we met. I enjoyed the popcorn in the cinema, the snacks in the pub. He bought us a fish and chip supper on the way home. The cod was fresh and lightly battered, the chips, made from good potatoes, were just the right combination of fat and starch. We ate our meal straight from the paper. He wiped his hands on a tissue but surprised and delighted me by sucking the grease from my fingers one by one. I was lost. I was his. A generous boyfriend he often paid for us to eat out. He never had a pudding but would choose a liqueur, or a shot of whisky, instead. Curious, rather than shocked, I wondered how he could down a pint in just a few seconds. ‘How do you do that, how can you drink it so quickly?’ I asked. ‘I open my throat and it just slips down; only when I'm really thirsty though.' He smacked his lips and wiped his mouth with his hand. He drank the whisky more slowly, ‘to enjoy the hot, fiery kick.’ I always had a taste of his starter and ended my meal with something sweet. Chocolatey creations were my preference but I enjoyed all desserts. He indulged me and reassured me. ‘I love your curves,’ he'd say proving it with his hands and his lips. Many a morning after I’d cook us a big fry-up. ‘Soaks up the booze,’ he said. Amsterdam was his choice for a stag weekend. He travelled with a large group of friends. There weren't any sexual exploits, I'm sure of that, but plenty of drink was taken and some wacky backy smoked. A good time was had by all and it took him a few days to recover from the trip.I choose a country hotel weekend break for my pre-wedding treat. We all had a beauty treatment or two and swam, read and gossiped the two days away. The food was plentiful and beautifully presented. I had to eat leanly between the hen party and the main event to get into my dress.After making such a beautiful speech he deserved to relax a little. But I wish he'd stopped at the champagne. After our first dance he propped up the bar with his mates and my brother and drank more than all of them; mostly beer, a few spirits. I’d been so looking forward to our first night of pleasure as husband and wife but the consummation of our marriage lacked vitality; a waste of the four-poster bed. His breath stank. As soon as it was over he fell asleep, although I was still wide awake. As part of our wedding package there were some goodies waiting for us in the bridal suite including a good sized box of melt-in-the-mouth chocolates. I ate the lot. He made it up to me on the honeymoon. More attentive than ever he hired a boat and took me to secluded beaches. As we sunbathed he lazily stroked my back and my thighs, when we swam we explored each other's bodies undercover of water. ‘I love you, I want you,’ he whispered. ‘I love you so much I want to bite you, to gobble you up.’ My body responded to his touch and to his words. I had never felt so desired, so cherished. The evenings and the nights were the best. We ordered local specialties at dinner and with his bare hands he fed me succulent fish, juicy meats and fruit dripping in syrup. In bed as he licked the excesses off my lips and from my mouth I could taste the wine in his. I drank him in. We were never so in tune again, our senses alive, our individual indulgences merged. We were as one, our bodies replete.Back home he worked hard and played hard keeping up his nights out with the boys and finding new restaurants for us to go to. He became skilled at choosing the correct wine to accompany the dishes I favoured. He drank the pudding wine whilst I ate the pudding. At home he kept beer in the fridge along with a jug of water so he could add a splash to his whisky. For his birthday I treated him to a peaty single malt. Our weekly food bill was a 50/50 split between alcohol and food. I loved to cook. I roasted and baked and chipped and fried. I folded and mixed and whisked. I was adventurous with spices. For my birthday he bought me a cookery book; a best seller from the latest celebrity chef. I experimented some more. My pastry was light and my sauces smooth. He was always appreciative but more often than not he wouldn't finish his food, sometimes leaving as much as he ate. As he carried our glasses (usually his third or fourth alcoholic drink since returning from work, almost always my first) through to the lounge I would take the plates into the kitchen (spooning the remains from his plate into my mouth rather than scraping it into the bin). A hard worker he was promoted, several times. More money led to more expensive tastes and we enjoyed good holidays and ate out even more, sometimes with his colleagues and bosses. A little shy in such company, aware of his status as a working class boy done good, he was always happier after a couple of drinks and would have a quick one before we left the house. In response to my anxious, ‘darling, do you think you should?,’ he would kiss me and say, ‘just a small one to oil the conversation.’I lived for our holidays and the nights we spent alone. We always found something to talk and laugh about and our indulgence of each other's eating and drinking habits was mirrored by a concern for each other's sexual wellbeing. He liked sex with the lights on. I adored it when he quietly sang to me during lovemaking. I hated the corporate entertainment. The women seemed to get thinner each time we met, shrinking as I grew. The way they managed to look as if they were eating the wonderfully cooked and carefully presented food whilst not actually consuming anything was an art form. I couldn't resist the delicious offerings but their snide observation of me turned the food to cardboard in my mouth. His work put him under increasing pressure. Some mornings I could taste alcohol mingled with mint when he kissed me goodbye. I found a bottle of vodka at the back of the cupboard, a cheap brand, that hadn't been in the trolley at our weekly shop. ‘Where did this come from, did you buy it?,’ I asked. ‘I guess I must have, I don't remember,’ he shrugged. The bottle disappeared but he kissed me less and began going straight upstairs when he got home. I'd hear him moving around, opening cupboards, finding hiding places for his not so secret stash.I still shopped and cooked trying new recipes in an attempt to win him back from his liquid mistress. I made meals that in my view were fit for the Gods, rich in flavour and high in calories. But he was less and less interested. He’d push his plate away and re-fill his glass. Eventually I gave up and moved on to cheap two-for-the-price-of-one microwave meals finding their gloopiness strangely comforting. They weren't enough for me though and I’d fill up with extra creamy potatoes or with toast, dripping with butter and topped thickly with cheese or chocolate spread. I ate off and on all day when I was alone and when he was asleep.When I said that I wanted us to have a baby he agreed, clinging, like me, to the hope that a child might make things better. Half-heartedly we tried for a while. The lights were off and there was no singing. Nothing happened. We lied to the GP when asked about our sexual activity, embarrassed and distressed at the lack of passion in our life together. He lied about his drinking too. ‘How much do I drink? Well, a little more than I should I guess, I know I should cut down, but you know how it is?’ He glanced at me, smiled at the male doctor and shrugged. I hated him then. I hated him as he failed to admit that he had a problematic relationship with alcohol, as he duped the GP and won his sympathy rather than rightly causing concern. I could guess what the doctor was thinking. Who wouldn't need a drink when married to a woman like me, a woman who had let food get the better of her spirit and her body? I couldn't lie about my problem. It lay heavy on my bones. I left the surgery with a diet sheet and a red face. When he shook the doctor's hand I turned away in misery and disgust.We drove home with the radio on to cover our silence. Once he tried to take my hand but I pulled away. I went to the kitchen. He went upstairs. I cut some bread and turned on the toaster. He reached into the back of his shirt drawer and pulled out a bottle. One night soon after he took me in his arms, as much of me as he could, holding on tight even as I tried to push him away. ‘Let's do something, anything. I still love you,’ he said. ‘What about a holiday? Please darling. You still love me too don’t you?’ Nodding, I relaxed into him, my bulk against his sharp hips. I packed my optimism along with his tiny shorts and my super-size trousers and dresses but my tentative happiness didn't last long. I couldn't do up the seatbelt in standard class and our upgrade was because of my size rather than our celebrity. For once I wasn't hungry. We tried hard to recreate the more heady days of our relationship but the break was not what either of us wished for. He drank heavily on the return journey, swigging back spirits in the way he once had pints. I closed my eyes to block out the pitying stares.He drank more. He ate even less. He lost his job. I heard him retching in the toilet every morning. He threw his vices up, I kept mine deep inside. As he flushed the toilet I thought of the baby we'd been unable to make I whispered to myself ‘that should be me, the morning sickness should be mine.' Then I went to the kitchen to cook and eat the fried breakfast he couldn’t face anymore. He went out most days, to the pub or the off-license.I went out only to the supermarket. He started to smell. He slept fitfully and snored loudly when he did sleep. He never touched me, unable to make love to me even if either of us had wanted it. When he wasn't sleeping he was drinking. I outgrew my clothes again so I lived in t-shirts and joggers and ordered groceries online. I stuffed the food in as soon as it arrived but it didn't comfort me anymore. He collapsed.I let him go to the hospital alone. He came home. He didn't pour himself a drink. He packed a bag instead. ‘I think I should go, don't you?’ he said.‘Yes’, I said, the tears running down my face. He turned just as he was leaving. ‘Do you think there's a way back for us, we were so good together once?’ ‘I don't know,’ I said. After he left I filled the bin; with dairy and carbohydrates, with fat and sugar… Some Concluding Thoughts… I consider writing as a method of inquiry, a way of finding out about yourself and your topic. Although we usually think about writing as a mode of “telling” about the social world, writing is not just a mopping-up activity at the end of a research project. Writing is also a way of “knowing” – a method of discovery and analysis. By writing in different ways, we discover new aspects of our topic and our relationship to it. Form and content are inseparable (Richardson 515). I agree. Writing – both in the traditional academic style and utilising prose and fiction – enables us, has enabled me, to reflect in detail about issues and topics and that important to me and to others, issues and topics that are often misunderstood and misrepresented. Fat, alongside in/fertility, childlessness and nonmotherhood, is one such issue. References Frank, Katherine. “‘The Management of Hunger’: Using Fiction in Writing Anthropology.” Qualitative Inquiry 6.4 (2000): 474-488. Gailey, Jeannine A. The Hyper(in)visible Fat Woman: Weight and Gender Discourse in Contemporary Society. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. Letherby, Gayle. Feminist Research in Theory and Practice. Buckingham: Open University, 2003. ———. “Battle of the Gametes: Cultural Representation of Medically Assisted Conception.” Gender, Identity and Reproduction: Social Perspectives, eds. Sarah Earle and Gayle Letherby. London: Palgrave, 2003. 50-65. ———. “‘Infertility’ and ‘Involuntary Childlessness’: Losses, Ambivalences and Resolutions.” Understanding Reproductive Loss: International Perspectives on Life, Death and Fertility, eds. Sarah Earle, Carol Komaromy, and Linda Layne. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2012. 9-22. ———. He, Himself and I: Reflections on Inter/connected Lives. Oxford: Clio Press, 2014. ———. “Bathwater, Babies and Other Losses: A Personal and Academic Story.” Mortality: Promoting the Interdisciplinary Study of Death and Dying 20.2 (2015). ‹http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13576275.2014.989494#.VTfN4iFVikp›.Morgan, David. “Sociological Imaginations and Imagining Sociologies: Bodies, Auto/biographies and Other Mysteries.” Sociology 32.4 (1998): 647-63. Richardson, Laurel. “Writing: A Method of Inquiry.” A Handbook of Qualitative Research, eds. Norman Denzin and Yvonne Lincoln. 1st ed. Thousand Oaks: Sage, 1994. 923-948. Stanley, Liz. “On Auto/biography in Sociology.” Sociology 27.1 (1993): 41-52. Stenhouse, Elizabeth, and Gayle Letherby. “Fat and Infertile: Challenging Double Stigma.” Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community Involvement (MIRCI) Annual Conference, Toronto, Oct. 2012.

In Ireland today, we eat more pigmeat per capita, approximately 32.4 kilograms, than any other meat, yet you very seldom if ever see a pig (C.S.O.). Fat and flavour are two words that are synonymous with pig meat, yet scientists have spent the last thirty years cross breeding to produce leaner, low-fat pigs. Today’s pig professionals prefer to use the term “pig finishing” as opposed to the more traditional “pig fattening” (Tuite). The pig evokes many themes in relation to cuisine. Charles Lamb (1775-1834), in his essay Dissertation upon Roast Pig, cites Confucius in attributing the accidental discovery of the art of roasting to the humble pig. The pig has been singled out by many cultures as a food to be avoided or even abhorred, and Harris (1997) illustrates the environmental effect this avoidance can have by contrasting the landscape of Christian Albania with that of Muslim Albania.This paper will focus on the pig in Irish cuisine and culture from ancient times to the present day. The inspiration for this paper comes from a folklore tale about how Saint Martin created the pig from a piece of fat. The story is one of a number recorded by Seán Ó Conaill, the famous Kerry storyteller and goes as follows:From St Martin’s fat they were made. He was travelling around, and one night he came to a house and yard. At that time there were only cattle; there were no pigs or piglets. He asked the man of the house if there was anything to eat the chaff and the grain. The man replied there were only the cattle. St Martin said it was a great pity to have that much chaff going to waste. At night when they were going to bed, he handed a piece of fat to the servant-girl and told her to put it under a tub, and not to look at it at all until he would give her the word next day. The girl did so, but she kept a bit of the fat and put it under a keeler to find out what it would be.When St Martin rose next day he asked her to go and lift up the tub. She lifted it up, and there under it were a sow and twelve piglets. It was a great wonder to them, as they had never before seen pig or piglet.The girl then went to the keeler and lifted it, and it was full of mice and rats! As soon as the keeler was lifted, they went running about the house searching for any hole that they could go into. When St Martin saw them, he pulled off one of his mittens and threw it at them and made a cat with that throw. And that is why the cat ever since goes after mice and rats (Ó Conaill).The place of the pig has long been established in Irish literature, and longer still in Irish topography. The word torc, a boar, like the word muc, a pig, is a common element of placenames, from Kanturk (boar’s head) in West Cork to Ros Muc (headland of pigs) in West Galway. The Irish pig had its place in literature well established long before George Orwell’s English pig, Major, headed the dictatorship in Animal Farm. It was a wild boar that killed the hero Diarmaid in the Fenian tale The Pursuit of Diarmaid and Gráinne, on top of Ben Bulben in County Sligo (Mac Con Iomaire). In Ancient and Medieval Ireland, wild boars were hunted with great fervour, and the prime cuts were reserved for the warrior classes, and certain other individuals. At a feast, a leg of pork was traditionally reserved for a king, a haunch for a queen, and a boar’s head for a charioteer. The champion warrior was given the best portion of meat (Curath Mhir or Champions’ Share), and fights often took place to decide who should receive it. Gantz (1981) describes how in the ninth century tale The story of Mac Dathó’s Pig, Cet mac Matach, got supremacy over the men of Ireland: “Moreover he flaunted his valour on high above the valour of the host, and took a knife in his hand and sat down beside the pig. “Let someone be found now among the men of Ireland”, said he, “to endure battle with me, or leave the pig for me to divide!”It did not take long before the wild pigs were domesticated. Whereas cattle might be kept for milk and sheep for wool, the only reason for pig rearing was as a source of food. Until the late medieval period, the “domesticated” pigs were fattened on woodland mast, the fruit of the beech, oak, chestnut and whitethorn, giving their flesh a delicious flavour. So important was this resource that it is acknowledged by an entry in the Annals of Clonmacnoise for the year 1038: “There was such an abundance of ackornes this yeare that it fattened the pigges [runts] of pigges” (Sexton 45). In another mythological tale, two pig keepers, one called ‘friuch’ after the boars bristle (pig keeper to the king of Munster) and the other called ‘rucht’ after its grunt (pig keeper to the king of Connacht), were such good friends that the one from the north would bring his pigs south when there was a mast of oak and beech nuts in Munster. If the mast fell in Connacht, the pig-keeper from the south would travel northward. Competitive jealousy sparked by troublemakers led to the pig keepers casting spells on each other’s herds to the effect that no matter what mast they ate they would not grow fat. Both pig keepers were practised in the pagan arts and could form themselves into any shape, and having been dismissed by their kings for the leanness of their pig herds due to the spells, they eventually formed themselves into the two famous bulls that feature in the Irish Epic The Táin (Kinsella).In the witty and satirical twelfth century text, The Vision of Mac Conglinne (Aisling Mhic Conglinne), many references are made to the various types of pig meat. Bacon, hams, sausages and puddings are often mentioned, and the gate to the fortress in the visionary land of plenty is described thus: “there was a gate of tallow to it, whereon was a bolt of sausage” (Jackson).Although pigs were always popular in Ireland, the emergence of the potato resulted in an increase in both human and pig populations. The Irish were the first Europeans to seriously consider the potato as a staple food. By 1663 it was widely accepted in Ireland as an important food plant and by 1770 it was known as the Irish Potato (Mac Con Iomaire and Gallagher). The potato transformed Ireland from an under populated island of one million in the 1590s to 8.2 million in 1840, making it the most densely populated country in Europe. Two centuries of genetic evolution resulted in potato yields growing from two tons per acre in 1670 to ten tons per acre in 1800. A constant supply of potato, which was not seen as a commercial crop, ensured that even the smallest holding could keep a few pigs on a potato-rich diet. Pat Tuite, an expert on pigs with Teagasc, the Irish Agricultural and Food Development Authority, reminded me that the potatoes were cooked for the pigs and that they also enjoyed whey, the by product of both butter and cheese making (Tuite). The agronomist, Arthur Young, while travelling through Ireland, commented in 1770 that in the town of Mitchelstown in County Cork “there seemed to be more pigs than human beings”. So plentiful were pigs at this time that on the eve of the Great Famine in 1841 the pig population was calculated to be 1,412,813 (Sexton 46). Some of the pigs were kept for home consumption but the rest were a valuable source of income and were shown great respect as the gentleman who paid the rent. Until the early twentieth century most Irish rural households kept some pigs.Pork was popular and was the main meat eaten at all feasts in the main houses; indeed a feast was considered incomplete without a whole roasted pig. In the poorer holdings, fresh pork was highly prized, as it was only available when a pig of their own was killed. Most of the pig was salted, placed in the brine barrel for a period or placed up the chimney for smoking.Certain superstitions were observed concerning the time of killing. Pigs were traditionally killed only in months that contained the letter “r”, since the heat of the summer months caused the meat to turn foul. In some counties it was believed that pigs should be killed under the full moon (Mahon 58). The main breed of pig from the medieval period was the Razor Back or Greyhound Pig, which was very efficient in converting organic waste into meat (Fitzgerald). The killing of the pig was an important ritual and a social occasion in rural Ireland, for it meant full and plenty for all. Neighbours, who came to help, brought a handful of salt for the curing, and when the work was done each would get a share of the puddings and the fresh pork. There were a number of days where it was traditional to kill a pig, the Michaelmas feast (29 September), Saint Martins Day (11 November) and St Patrick’s Day (17 March). Olive Sharkey gives a vivid description of the killing of the barrow pig in rural Ireland during the 1930s. A barrow pig is a male pig castrated before puberty:The local slaughterer (búistéir) a man experienced in the rustic art of pig killing, was approached to do the job, though some farmers killed their own pigs. When the búistéirarrived the whole family gathered round to watch the killing. His first job was to plunge the knife in the pig’s heart via the throat, using a special knife. The screeching during this performance was something awful, but the animal died instantly once the heart had been reached, usually to a round of applause from the onlookers. The animal was then draped across a pig-gib, a sort of bench, and had the fine hairs on its body scraped off. To make this a simple job the animal was immersed in hot water a number of times until the bristles were softened and easy to remove. If a few bristles were accidentally missed the bacon was known as ‘hairy bacon’!During the killing of the pig it was imperative to draw a good flow of blood to ensure good quality meat. This blood was collected in a bucket for the making of puddings. The carcass would then be hung from a hook in the shed with a basin under its head to catch the drip, and a potato was often placed in the pig’s mouth to aid the dripping process. After a few days the carcass would be dissected. Sharkey recalls that her father maintained that each pound weight in the pig’s head corresponded to a stone weight in the body. The body was washed and then each piece that was to be preserved was carefully salted and placed neatly in a barrel and hermetically sealed. It was customary in parts of the midlands to add brown sugar to the barrel at this stage, while in other areas juniper berries were placed in the fire when hanging the hams and flitches (sides of bacon), wrapped in brown paper, in the chimney for smoking (Sharkey 166). While the killing was predominantly men’s work, it was the women who took most responsibility for the curing and smoking. Puddings have always been popular in Irish cuisine. The pig’s intestines were washed well and soaked in a stream, and a mixture of onions, lard, spices, oatmeal and flour were mixed with the blood and the mixture was stuffed into the casing and boiled for about an hour, cooled and the puddings were divided amongst the neighbours.The pig was so palatable that the famous gastronomic writer Grimod de la Reyniere once claimed that the only piece you couldn’t eat was the “oink”. Sharkey remembers her father remarking that had they been able to catch the squeak they would have made tin whistles out of it! No part went to waste; the blood and offal were used, the trotters were known as crubeens (from crúb, hoof), and were boiled and eaten with cabbage. In Galway the knee joint was popular and known as the glúiníns (from glún, knee). The head was roasted whole or often boiled and pressed and prepared as Brawn. The chitterlings (small intestines) were meticulously prepared by continuous washing in cool water and the picking out of undigested food and faeces. Chitterlings were once a popular bar food in Dublin. Pig hair was used for paintbrushes and the bladder was occasionally inflated, using a goose quill, to be used as a football by the children. Meindertsma (2007) provides a pictorial review of the vast array of products derived from a single pig. These range from ammunition and porcelain to chewing gum.From around the mid-eighteenth century, commercial salting of pork and bacon grew rapidly in Ireland. 1820 saw Henry Denny begin operation in Waterford where he both developed and patented several production techniques for bacon. Bacon curing became a very important industry in Munster culminating in the setting up of four large factories. Irish bacon was the brand leader and the Irish companies exported their expertise. Denny set up a plant in Denmark in 1894 and introduced the Irish techniques to the Danish industry, while O’Mara’s set up bacon curing facilities in Russia in 1891 (Cowan and Sexton). Ireland developed an extensive export trade in bacon to England, and hams were delivered to markets in Paris, India, North and South America. The “sandwich method” of curing, or “dry cure”, was used up until 1862 when the method of injecting strong brine into the meat by means of a pickling pump was adopted by Irish bacon-curers. 1887 saw the formation of the Bacon Curers’ Pig Improvement Association and they managed to introduce a new breed, the Large White Ulster into most regions by the turn of the century. This breed was suitable for the production of “Wiltshire” bacon. Cork, Waterford Dublin and Belfast were important centres for bacon but it was Limerick that dominated the industry and a Department of Agriculture document from 1902 suggests that the famous “Limerick cure” may have originated by chance:1880 […] Limerick producers were short of money […] they produced what was considered meat in a half-cured condition. The unintentional cure proved extremely popular and others followed suit. By the turn of the century the mild cure procedure was brought to such perfection that meat could [… be] sent to tropical climates for consumption within a reasonable time (Cowan and Sexton).Failure to modernise led to the decline of bacon production in Limerick in the 1960s and all four factories closed down. The Irish pig market was protected prior to joining the European Union. There were no imports, and exports were subsidised by the Pigs and Bacon Commission. The Department of Agriculture started pig testing in the early 1960s and imported breeds from the United Kingdom and Scandinavia. The two main breeds were Large White and Landrace. Most farms kept pigs before joining the EU but after 1972, farmers were encouraged to rationalise and specialise. Grants were made available for facilities that would keep 3,000 pigs and these grants kick started the development of large units.Pig keeping and production were not only rural occupations; Irish towns and cities also had their fair share. Pigs could easily be kept on swill from hotels, restaurants, not to mention the by-product and leftovers of the brewing and baking industries. Ed Hick, a fourth generation pork butcher from south County Dublin, recalls buying pigs from a local coal man and bus driver and other locals for whom it was a tradition to keep pigs on the side. They would keep some six or eight pigs at a time and feed them on swill collected locally. Legislation concerning the feeding of swill introduced in 1985 (S.I.153) and an amendment in 1987 (S.I.133) required all swill to be heat-treated and resulted in most small operators going out of business. Other EU directives led to the shutting down of thousands of slaughterhouses across Europe. Small producers like Hick who slaughtered at most 25 pigs a week in their family slaughterhouse, states that it was not any one rule but a series of them that forced them to close. It was not uncommon for three inspectors, a veterinarian, a meat inspector and a hygiene inspector, to supervise himself and his brother at work. Ed Hick describes the situation thus; “if we had taken them on in a game of football, we would have lost! We were seen as a huge waste of veterinary time and manpower”.Sausages and rashers have long been popular in Dublin and are the main ingredients in the city’s most famous dish “Dublin Coddle.” Coddle is similar to an Irish stew except that it uses pork rashers and sausage instead of lamb. It was, traditionally, a Saturday night dish when the men came home from the public houses. Terry Fagan has a book on Dublin Folklore called Monto: Murder, Madams and Black Coddle. The black coddle resulted from soot falling down the chimney into the cauldron. James Joyce describes Denny’s sausages with relish in Ulysses, and like many other Irish emigrants, he would welcome visitors from home only if they brought Irish sausages and Irish whiskey with them. Even today, every family has its favourite brand of sausages: Byrne’s, Olhausens, Granby’s, Hafner’s, Denny’s Gold Medal, Kearns and Superquinn are among the most popular. Ironically the same James Joyce, who put Dublin pork kidneys on the world table in Ulysses, was later to call his native Ireland “the old sow that eats her own farrow” (184-5).The last thirty years have seen a concerted effort to breed pigs that have less fat content and leaner meat. There are no pure breeds of Landrace or Large White in production today for they have been crossbred for litter size, fat content and leanness (Tuite). Many experts feel that they have become too lean, to the detriment of flavour and that the meat can tend to split when cooked. Pig production is now a complicated science and tighter margins have led to only large-scale operations being financially viable (Whittemore). The average size of herd has grown from 29 animals in 1973, to 846 animals in 1997, and the highest numbers are found in counties Cork and Cavan (Lafferty et al.). The main players in today’s pig production/processing are the large Irish Agribusiness Multinationals Glanbia, Kerry Foods and Dairygold. Tuite (2002) expressed worries among the industry that there may be no pig production in Ireland in twenty years time, with production moving to Eastern Europe where feed and labour are cheaper. When it comes to traceability, in the light of the Foot and Mouth, BSE and Dioxin scares, many feel that things were much better in the old days, when butchers like Ed Hick slaughtered animals that were reared locally and then sold them back to local consumers. Hick has recently killed pigs for friends who have begun keeping them for home consumption. This slaughtering remains legal as long as the meat is not offered for sale.Although bacon and cabbage, and the full Irish breakfast with rashers, sausages and puddings, are considered to be some of Ireland’s most well known traditional dishes, there has been a growth in modern interpretations of traditional pork and bacon dishes in the repertoires of the seemingly ever growing number of talented Irish chefs. Michael Clifford popularised Clonakilty Black Pudding as a starter in his Cork restaurant Clifford’s in the late 1980s, and its use has become widespread since, as a starter or main course often partnered with either caramelised apples or red onion marmalade. Crubeens (pigs trotters) have been modernised “a la Pierre Kaufman” by a number of Irish chefs, who bone them out and stuff them with sweetbreads. Kevin Thornton, the first Irish chef to be awarded two Michelin stars, has roasted suckling pig as one of his signature dishes. Richard Corrigan is keeping the Irish flag flying in London in his Michelin starred Soho restaurant, Lindsay House, where traditional pork and bacon dishes from his childhood are creatively re-interpreted with simplicity and taste.Pork, ham and bacon are, without doubt, the most traditional of all Irish foods, featuring in the diet since prehistoric times. Although these meats remain the most consumed per capita in post “Celtic Tiger” Ireland, there are a number of threats facing the country’s pig industry. Large-scale indoor production necessitates the use of antibiotics. European legislation and economic factors have contributed in the demise of the traditional art of pork butchery. Scientific advancements have resulted in leaner low-fat pigs, many argue, to the detriment of flavour. Alas, all is not lost. There is a growth in consumer demand for quality local food, and some producers like J. Hick & Sons, and Prue & David Rudd and Family are leading the way. The Rudds process and distribute branded antibiotic-free pig related products with the mission of “re-inventing the tastes of bygone days with the quality of modern day standards”. Few could argue with the late Irish writer John B. Keane (72): “When this kind of bacon is boiling with its old colleague, white cabbage, there is a gurgle from the pot that would tear the heart out of any hungry man”.ReferencesCowan, Cathal and Regina Sexton. Ireland's Traditional Foods: An Exploration of Irish Local & Typical Foods & Drinks. Dublin: Teagasc, 1997.C.S.O. Central Statistics Office. Figures on per capita meat consumption for 2009, 2010. Ireland. http://www.cso.ie.Fitzgerald, Oisin. "The Irish 'Greyhound' Pig: an extinct indigenous breed of Pig." History Ireland13.4 (2005): 20-23.Gantz, Jeffrey Early Irish Myths and Sagas. New York: Penguin, 1981.Harris, Marvin. "The Abominable Pig." Food and Culture: A Reader. Eds. Carole Counihan and Penny Van Esterik. New York: Routledge, 1997. 67-79.Hick, Edward. Personal Communication with master butcher Ed Hick. 15 Apr. 2002.Hick, Edward. Personal Communication concerning pig killing. 5 Sep. 2010.Jackson, K. H. Ed. Aislinge Meic Con Glinne, Dublin: Institute of Advanced Studies, 1990.Joyce, James. The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, London: Granada, 1977.Keane, John B. Strong Tea. Cork: Mercier Press, 1963.Kinsella, Thomas. The Táin. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970.Lafferty, S., Commins, P. and Walsh, J. A. Irish Agriculture in Transition: A Census Atlas of Agriculture in the Republic of Ireland. Dublin: Teagasc, 1999.Mac Con Iomaire, Liam. Ireland of the Proverb. Dublin: Town House, 1988.Mac Con Iomaire, Máirtín and Pádraic Óg Gallagher. "The Potato in Irish Cuisine and Culture."Journal of Culinary Science and Technology 7.2-3 (2009): 1-16.Mahon, Bríd. Land of Milk and Honey: The Story of Traditional Irish Food and Drink. Cork:Mercier, 1998.Meindertsma, Christien. PIG 05049 2007. 10 Aug. 2010 http://www.christienmeindertsma.com.Ó Conaill, Seán. Seán Ó Conaill's Book. Bailie Átha Cliath: Bhéaloideas Éireann, 1981.Sexton, Regina. A Little History of Irish Food. Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1998.Sharkey, Olive. Old Days Old Ways: An Illustrated Folk History of Ireland. Dublin: The O'Brien Press, 1985.S.I. 153, 1985 (Irish Legislation) http://www.irishstatutebook.ie/1985/en/si/0153.htmlS.I. 133, 1987 (Irish Legislation) http://www.irishstatuebook.ie/1987/en/si/0133.htmlTuite, Pat. Personal Communication with Pat Tuite, Chief Pig Advisor, Teagasc. 3 May 2002.Whittemore, Colin T. and Ilias Kyriazakis. Whitmore's Science and Practice of Pig Production 3rdEdition. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2006.

If thinking about home necessitates thinking about “place, space, scale, identity and power,” as Alison Blunt and Robyn Dowling (2) suggest, then thinking about home themes in popular music makes no less a conceptual demand. Song lyrics and titles most often invoke dominant readings such as intimacy, privacy, nurture, refuge, connectedness and shared belonging, all issues found within Blunt and Dowling’s analysis. The spatial imaginary to which these authors refer takes vivid shape through repertoires of songs dealing with houses and other specific sites, vast and distant homelands, communities or, less tangibly, geographical or cultural settings where particular relationships can be found, supporting Blunt and Dowling’s major claim that home is complex, multi-scalar and multi-layered. Shelley Mallett’s claim that the term home “functions as a repository for complex, inter-related and at times contradictory socio-cultural ideas about people’s relationships with one another…and with places, spaces and things” (84) is borne out heavily by popular music where, for almost every sentiment that the term home evokes, it seems an opposite sentiment is evoked elsewhere: familiarity versus alienation, acceptance versus rejection, love versus loneliness. Making use of conceptual groundwork by Blunt and Dowling and by Mallett and others, the following discussion canvasses a range of meanings that home has had for a variety of songwriters, singers and audiences over the years. Intended as merely partial and exploratory rather than exhaustive, it provides some insights into contrasts, ironies and relationships between home and gender, diaspora and loss. While it cannot cover all the themes, it gives prominence to the major recurring themes and a variety of important contexts that give rise to these home themes. Most prominent among those songs dealing with home has been a nostalgia and yearning, while issues of how women may have viewed the home within which they have often been restricted to a narrowly defined private sphere are almost entirely absent. This serves as a reminder that, while some themes can be conducive to the medium of popular music, others may be significantly less so. Songs may speak directly of experience but not necessarily of all experiences and certainly not of all experiences equally. B. Lee Cooper claims “most popular culture ventures rely upon formula-oriented settings and phrasings to attract interest, to spur mental or emotional involvement” (93). Notions of home have generally proved both formulaic and emotionally-charged. Commonly understood patterns of meaning and other hegemonic references generally operate more successfully than alternative reference points. Those notions with the strongest cultural currency can be conveyed succinctly and denote widely agreed upon meanings. Lyrics can seldom afford to be deeply analytical but generally must be concise and immediately evocative. Despite that, this discussion will point to diverse meanings carried by songs about home. Blunt and Dowling point out that “a house is not necessarily nor automatically a home” (3). The differences are strongly apparent in music, with only a few songs relating to houses compared with homes. When Malvina Reynolds wrote in 1962 of “little boxes, on the hillside, little boxes made of ticky-tacky,” she was certainly referring to houses, not homes, thus making it easier to bypass the relationships which might have vested the inhabitants with more warmth and individuality than their houses, in this song about conformity and homogeneity. The more complex though elusive concept of home, however, is more likely to feature in love songs and to emanate from diasporal songs. Certainly these two genres are not mutually exclusive. Irish songs are particularly noteworthy for adding to the array of music written by, or representational of, those who have been forced away from home by war, poverty, strife or other circumstances. They manifest identities of displacement rather than of placement, as studied by Bronwen Walter, looking back at rather than from within their spatial imaginary. Phil Eva claims that during the 19th Century Irish émigrés sang songs of exile in Manchester’s streets. Since many in England’s industrial towns had been uprooted from their homes, the songs found rapport with street audiences and entered popular culture. For example, the song Killarney, of hazy origins but thought to date back to as early as 1850, tells of Killarney’s lakes and fells, Emerald isles and winding bays; Mountain paths and woodland dells… ...her [nature’s] home is surely there. As well as anthropomorphising nature and giving it a home, the song suggests a specifically geographic sense of home. Galway Bay, written by A. Fahy, does likewise, as do many other Irish songs of exile which link geography with family, kin and sometimes culture to evoke a sense of home. The final verse of Cliffs of Doneen gives a sense of both people and place making up home: Fare thee well to Doneen, fare thee well for a while And to all the kind people I’m leaving behind To the streams and the meadows where late I have been And the high rocky slopes round the cliffs of Doneen. Earlier Irish songs intertwine home with political issues. For example, Tho’ the Last Glimpse of Erin vows to Erin that “In exile thy bosum shall still be my home.” Such exile resulted from a preference of fleeing Ireland rather than bowing to English oppression, which then included a prohibition on Irish having moustaches or certain hairstyles. Thomas Moore is said to have set the words of the song to the air Coulin which itself referred to an Irish woman’s preference for her “Coulin” (a long-haired Irish youth) to the English (Nelson-Burns). Diasporal songs have continued, as has their political edge, as evidenced by global recognition of songs such as Bayan Ko (My Country), written by José Corazon de Jesus in 1929, out of love and concern for the Philippines and sung among Filipinos worldwide. Robin Cohen outlines a set of criteria for diaspora that includes a shared belief in the possibility of return to home, evident in songs such as the 1943 Welsh song A Welcome in the Hillside, in which a Welsh word translating roughly as a yearning to return home, hiraeth, is used: We’ll kiss away each hour of hiraeth When you come home again to Wales. However, the immensely popular I’ll Take You Home Again, Kathleen, not of Irish origin but written by Thomas Westendorf of Illinois in 1875, suggests that such emotions can have a resonance beyond the diaspora. Anti-colonial sentiments about home can also be expressed by long-time inhabitants, as Harry Belafonte demonstrated in Island in the Sun: This is my island in the sun Where my people have toiled since time begun. Though I may sail on many a sea, Her shores will always be home to me. War brought a deluge of sentimental songs lamenting separation from home and loved ones, just as likely to be parents and siblings as sweethearts. Radios allowed wider audiences and greater popularity for these songs. If separation had brought a longing previously, the added horrors of war presented a stronger contrast between that which the young soldiers were missing and that which they were experiencing. Both the First and Second World Wars gave rise to songs long since sung which originated in such separations, but these also had a strong sense of home as defined by the nationalism that has for over a century given the contours of expectations of soldiers. Focusing on home, these songs seldom speak of the details of war. Rather they are specific about what the singers have left behind and what they hope to return to. Songs of home did not have to be written specifically for the war effort nor for overseas troops. Irving Berlin’s 1942 White Christmas, written for a film, became extremely popular with US troops during WWII, instilling a sense of home that related to familiarities and festivities. Expressing a sense of home could be specific and relate to regions or towns, as did I’m Goin’ Back Again to Yarrawonga, or it could refer to any home, anywhere where there were sons away fighting. Indeed the American Civil War song When Johnny Comes Marching Home, written by Patrick Sarsfield Gilmour, was sung by both Northerners and Southerners, so adaptable was it, with home remarkably unspecified and undescribed. The 1914 British song Keep the Home Fires Burning by Ivor Novello and Lena Ford was among those that evoked a connection between home and the military effort and helped establish a responsibility on those at home to remain optimistic: Keep the Homes fires burning While your hearts are yearning, Though your lads are far away They dream of home, There’s a silver lining Through the dark clouds shining, Turn the dark clouds inside out, Till the boys come Home. No space exists in this song for critique of the reasons for war, nor of a role for women other than that of homemaker and moral guardian. It was women’s duty to ensure men enlisted and home was rendered a private site for emotional enlistment for a presumed public good, though ironically also a point of personal hope where the light of love burned for the enlistees’ safe return. Later songs about home and war challenged these traditional notions. Two serve as examples. One is Pink Floyd’s brief musical piece of the 1970s, Bring the Boys Back Home, whose words of protest against the American war on Viet Nam present home, again, as a site of safety but within a less conservative context. Home becomes implicated in a challenge to the prevailing foreign policy and the interests that influence it, undermining the normal public sphere/private sphere distinction. The other more complex song is Judy Small’s Mothers, Daughters, Wives, from 1982, set against a backdrop of home. Small eloquently describes the dynamics of the domestic space and how women understood their roles in relation to the First and Second World Wars and the Viet Nam War. Reinforcing that “The materialities and imaginaries of home are closely connected” (Blunt and Dowling 188), Small sings of how the gold frames held the photographs that mothers kissed each night And the doorframe held the shocked and silent strangers from the fight. Small provides a rare musical insight into the disjuncture between the men who left the domestic space and those who return to it, and we sense that women may have borne much of the brunt of those awful changes. The idea of domestic bliss is also challenged, though from the returned soldier’s point of view, in Redgum’s 1983 song I Was Only Nineteen, written by group member John Schuman. It touches on the tragedy of young men thrust into war situations and the horrific after-affects for them, which cannot be shrugged off on return to home. The nurturing of home has limits but the privacy associated with the domestic sphere has often concealed the violence and mental anguish that happens away from public view. But by this time most of the songs referring to home were dominated once more by sentimental love, often borne of travel as mobility rose. Journeys help “establish the thresholds and boundaries of home” and can give rise to “an idealized, ideological and ethnocentric view of home” (Mallett 78). Where previously songsters had sung of leaving home in exile or for escape from poverty, lyrics from the 1960s onwards often suggested that work had removed people from loved ones. It could be work on a day-by-day basis, as in A Hard Day’s Night from the 1964 film of the same name, where the Beatles illuminate differences between the public sphere of work and the private sphere to which they return: When I’m home, everything seems to be alright, When I’m home feeling you holding me tight, tight, yeah and reiterated by Paul McCartney in Every Night: And every night that day is through But tonight I just want to stay in And be with you. Lyrics such as these and McCartney’s call to be taken “...home to the Mull of Kintyre,” singled him out for his home-and-hearth messages (Dempsey). But work might involve longer absences and thus more deepfelt loneliness. Simon and Garfunkel’s exemplary Homeward Bound starkly portrays a site of “away-ness”: I’m sittin’ in the railway station, got a ticket for my destination… Mundaneness, monotony and predictability contrast with the home to which the singer’s thoughts are constantly escaping. The routine is familiar but the faces are those of strangers. Home here is, again, not simply a domicile but the warmth of those we know and love. Written at a railway station, Homeward Bound echoes sentiments almost identical to those of (Leaving on a) Jet Plane, written by John Denver at an airport in 1967. Denver also co-wrote (Take Me Home) Country Roads, where, in another example of anthropomorphism as a tool of establishing a strong link, he asks to be taken home to the place I belong West Virginia, mountain momma, Take me home, Country Roads. The theme has recurred in numerous songs since, spawning examples such as Darin and Alquist’s When I Get Home, Chris Daughtry’s Home, Michael Bublé’s Home and Will Smith’s Ain’t No Place Like Home, where, in an opening reminiscent of Homeward Bound, the singer is Sitting in a hotel room A thousand miles away from nowhere Sloped over a chair as I stare… Furniture from home, on the other hand, can be used to evoke contentment and bliss, as demonstrated by George Weiss and Bob Thiele’s song The Home Fire, in which both kin and the objects of home become charged with meaning: All of the folks that I love are there I got a date with my favourite chair Of course, in regard to earlier songs especially, while the traveller associates home with love, security and tenderness, back at home the waiting one may have had feelings more of frustration and oppression. One is desperate to get back home, but for all we know the other may be desperate to get out of home or to develop a life more meaningful than that which was then offered to women. If the lot of homemakers was invisible to national economies (Waring), it seemed equally invisible to mainstream songwriters. This reflects the tradition that “Despite home being generally considered a feminine, nurturing space created by women themselves, they often lack both authority and a space of their own within this realm” (Mallett 75). Few songs have offered the perspective of the one at home awaiting the return of the traveller. One exception is the Seekers’ 1965 A World of Our Own but, written by Tom Springfield, the words trilled by Judith Durham may have been more of a projection of the traveller’s hopes and expectations than a true reflection of the full experiences of housebound women of the day. Certainly, the song reinforces connections between home and intimacy and privacy: Close the door, light the lights. We’re stayin’ home tonight, Far away from the bustle and the bright city lights. Let them all fade away, just leave us alone And we’ll live in a world of our own. This also strongly supports Gaston Bachelard’s claim that one’s house in the sense of a home is one’s “first universe, a real cosmos” (qtd. in Blunt and Dowling 12). But privacy can also be a loneliness when home is not inhabited by loved ones, as in the lyrics of Don Gibson’s 1958 Oh, Lonesome Me, where Everybody’s going out and having fun I’m a fool for staying home and having none. Similar sentiments emerge in Debbie Boone’s You Light up My Life: So many nights I’d sit by my window Waiting for someone to sing me his song. Home in these situations can be just as alienating as the “away” depicted as so unfriendly by Homeward Bound’s strangers’ faces and the “million people” who still leave Michael Bublé feeling alone. Yet there are other songs that depict “away” as a prison made of freedom, insinuating that the lack of a home and consequently of the stable love and commitment presumably found there is a sad situation indeed. This is suggested by the lilting tune, if not by the lyrics themselves, in songs such as Wandrin’ Star from the musical Paint Your Wagon and Ron Miller’s I’ve Never Been to Me, which has both a male and female version with different words, reinforcing gendered experiences. The somewhat conservative lyrics in the female version made it a perfect send-up song in the 1994 film Priscilla: Queen of the Desert. In some songs the absentee is not a traveller but has been in jail. In Tie a Yellow Ribbon round the Ole Oak Tree, an ex-inmate states “I’m comin’ home. I’ve done my time.” Home here is contingent upon the availability and forgivingness of his old girl friend. Another song juxtaposing home with prison is Tom Jones’ The Green, Green Grass of Home in which the singer dreams he is returning to his home, to his parents, girlfriend and, once again, an old oak tree. However, he awakes to find he was dreaming and is about to be executed. His body will be taken home and placed under the oak tree, suggesting some resigned sense of satisfaction that he will, after all, be going home, albeit in different circumstances. Death and home are thus sometimes linked, with home a euphemism for the former, as suggested in many spirituals, with heaven or an afterlife being considered “going home”. The reverse is the case in the haunting Bring Him Home of the musical Les Misérables. With Marius going off to the barricades and the danger involved, Jean Valjean prays for the young man’s safe return and that he might live. Home is connected here with life, safety and ongoing love. In a number of songs about home and absence there is a sense of home being a place where morality is gently enforced, presumably by women who keep men on the straight and narrow, in line with one of the women’s roles of colonial Australia, researched by Anne Summers. These songs imply that when men wander from home, their morals also go astray. Wild Rover bemoans Oh, I’ve been a wild rover for many a year, and I’ve spent all my money on whiskey and beer… There is the resolve in the chorus, however, that home will have a reforming influence. Gene Pitney’s Twenty-Four Hours from Tulsa poses the dangers of distance from a wife’s influence, while displaying opposition to the sentimental yearning of so many other songs: Dearest darlin’, I have to write to say that I won’t be home anymore ‘cause something happened to me while I was drivin’ home And I’m not the same anymore Class as well as gender can be a debated issue in meanings attached to home, as evident in several songs that take a more jaundiced view of home, seeing it as a place from which to escape. The Animals’ powerful We Gotta Get Outta This Place clearly suggests a life of drudgery in a home town or region. Protectively, the lyrics insist “Girl, there’s a better life for me and you” but it has to be elsewhere. This runs against the grain of other British songs addressing poverty or a working class existence as something that comes with its own blessings, all to do with an area identified as home. These traits may be loyalty, familiarity or a refusal to judge and involve identities of placement rather than of displacement in, for instance, Gerry and the Pacemakers’ Ferry Cross the Mersey: People around every corner, they seem to smile and say “We don’t care what your name is, boy. We’ll never send you away.” This bears out Blunt and Dowling’s claim that “people’s senses of themselves are related to and produced through lived and metaphorical experiences of home” (252). It also resonates with some of the region-based identity and solidarity issues explored a short time later by Paul Willis in his study of working class youth in Britain, which help to inform how a sense of home can operate to constrict consciousness, ideas and aspirations. Identity features strongly in other songs about home. Several years after Neil Young recorded his 1970 song Southern Man about racism in the south of the USA, the group Lynyrd Skynyrd, responded with Sweet Home Alabama. While the meaning of its lyrics are still debated, there is no debate about the way in which the song has been embraced, as I recently discovered first-hand in Tennessee. A banjo-and-fiddle band performing the song during a gig virtually brought down the house as the predominantly southern audience clapped, whopped and stamped its feet. The real meanings of home were found not in the lyrics but in the audience’s response. Wally Johnson and Bob Brown’s 1975 Home Among the Gum Trees is a more straightforward ode to home, with lyrics that prescribe a set of non-commodified values. It is about simplicity and the right to embrace a lifestyle that includes companionship, leisure and an enjoyment of and appreciation of nature, all threatened seriously in the three decades since the song’s writing. The second verse in which large shopping complexes – and implicitly the consumerism they encourage – are eschewed (“I’d trade it all tomorrow for a little bush retreat where the kookaburras call”), is a challenge to notions of progress and reflects social movements of the day, The Green Bans Movement, for instance, took a broader and more socially conscientious attitude towards home and community, putting forward alternative sets of values and insisting people should have a say in the social and aesthetic construction of their neighbourhoods as well as the impacts of their labour (Mundey). Ironically, the song has gone on to become the theme song for a TV show about home gardens. With a strong yet more vague notion of home, Peter Allen’s I Still Call Australia Home, was more prone to commodification and has been adopted as a promotional song for Qantas. Nominating only the desire to travel and the love of freedom as Australian values, both politically and socially innocuous within the song’s context, this catchy and uplifting song, when not being used as an advertisement, paradoxically works for a “diaspora” of Australians who are not in exile but have mostly travelled for reasons of pleasure or professional or financial gain. Another paradox arises from the song Home on the Range, dating back to the 19th century at a time when the frontier was still a strong concept in the USA and people were simultaneously leaving homes and reminiscing about home (Mechem). Although it was written in Kansas, the lyrics – again vague and adaptable – were changed by other travellers so that versions such as Colorado Home and My Arizona Home soon abounded. In 1947 Kansas made Home on the Range its state song, despite there being very few buffalo left there, thus highlighting a disjuncture between the modern Kansas and “a home where the buffalo roam” as described in the song. These themes, paradoxes and oppositional understandings of home only scratch the surface of the wide range of claims that are made on home throughout popular music. It has been shown that home is a flexible concept, referring to homelands, regions, communities and private houses. While predominantly used to evoke positive feelings, mostly with traditional views of the relationships that lie within homes, songs also raise challenges to notions of domesticity, the rights of those inhabiting the private sphere and the demarcation between the private and public spheres. Songs about home reflect contexts and challenges of their respective eras and remind us that vigorous discussion takes place about and within homes. The challenges are changing. Where many women once felt restrictively tied to the home – and no doubt many continue to do so – many women and men are now struggling to rediscover spatial boundaries, with production and consumption increasingly impinging upon relationships that have so frequently given the term home its meaning. With evidence that we are working longer hours and that home life, in whatever form, is frequently suffering (Beder, Hochschild), the discussion should continue. In the words of Sam Cooke, Bring it on home to me! References Bacheland, Gaston. The Poetics of Space. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1994. Beder, Sharon. Selling the Work Ethic: From Puritan Pulpit to Corporate PR. London: Zed Books, 2000. Blunt, Alison, and Robyn Dowling. Home. London: Routledge, 2006. Cohen, Robin. Global Diasporas: An Introduction. London: UCL Press, 1997. Cooper, B. Lee. “Good Timin’: Searching for Meaning in Clock Songs.” Popular Music and Society 30.1 (Feb. 2007): 93-106. Dempsey, J.M. “McCartney at 60: A Body of Work Celebrating Home and Hearth.” Popular Music and Society 27.1 (Feb. 2004): 27-40. Eva, Phil. “Home Sweet Home? The Culture of ‘Exile’ in Mid-Victorian Popular Song.” Popular Music 16.2 (May 1997): 131-150. Hochschild, Arlie. The Time Bind: When Work Becomes Home and Home Becomes Work. New York: Metropolitan/Holt, 1997. Mallett, Sonia. “Understanding Home: A Critical Review of the Literature.” The Sociological Review 52.1 (2004): 62-89. Mechem, Kirke, “The Story of ‘Home on the Range’.” Reprint from the Kansas Historical Quarterly (Nov. 1949). Topeka, Kansas: Kansas State Historical Society. 28 May 2007 http://www.emporia.edu/cgps/tales/nov2003.html>. Mundey, Jack. Green Bans and Beyond. Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1981. Nelson-Burns, Lesley. Folk Music of England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and America. 29 May 2007 http://www.contemplator.com/ireland/thoerin.html>. Summers, Anne. Damned Whores and God’s Police: The Colonization of Women in Australia. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1975. Walter, Bronwen. Outsiders Inside: Whiteness, Place and Irish Women. London: Routledge, 2001. Waring, Marilyn. Counting for Nothing: What Men Value and What Women Are Worth. Wellington, NZ: Allen & Unwin, 1988. Willis, Paul. Learning to Labor: How Working Class Kids Get Working Class Jobs. New York: Columbia UP, 1977. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Varney, Wendy. "Homeward Bound or Housebound?: Themes of Home in Popular Music." M/C Journal 10.4 (2007). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0708/16-varney.php>. APA Style Varney, W. (Aug. 2007) "Homeward Bound or Housebound?: Themes of Home in Popular Music," M/C Journal, 10(4). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0708/16-varney.php>.

Abstract Very highly purified water such as De-ionized (DI) water tends to become very corrosive once exposed to the atmosphere. This “Hungry Water” as known in the water purification world is known to be a major source of corrosion [1]. The DI water was responsible for corrosion of tin during autoclave (pressure cooker) testing of Integrated Circuit (IC) devices assembled in plastic Quad Flat Package (QFP) with fine pitch leads. The copper leads of these packages are plated with solder. The copper leads of the packages are plated with solder composed of Lead and Tin. Due to the effect of corrosive water, Tin from solder corroded during the autoclave testing and formed thin whiskers of solder. These whiskers created a leakage path between the leads causing the devices to fail for pin to pin leakage.