Around the turn of the last century, a British Army Officer named Thomas Ashburnham, settled in Fredericton, New Brunswick. His father was the 4th Earl of Ashburnham but as Thomas was the fifth of seven sons, there seemed little likelihood of his inheriting the title.
In Fredericton, he used to drink and gamble and at the end of his evening, he would call the phone company to order a horse and carriage to take him home. The night operator who answered most evenings was a local girl, Maria "Rye" Anderson. Rye had a wonderful voice and a pleasant manner and before he knew what had hit him, he had fallen for her. He asked to meet her in person. That happened and in 1903, they got married.
They joined two downtown houses together with a porte-cochère and became the centre of Fredericton social life, entertaining friends and family lavishly. This is what the house looked like in those days:
Painting of Ashburnham House by Fernando Poyatos Against all odds, all Thomas' older brothers died and Thomas became the 6th Earl of Ashburnham. Rye Anderson, the telephone operator from Fredericton, became Lady Ashburnham.
Lord and Lady Ashburnham moved to England to take over the ancestral home but that didn't work out very well. The family didn't really accept Rye and she was homesick. So they returned to Fredericton and resumed their entertaining ways on Brunswick St.
Unfortunately, in 1924, Lord Ashburnham became ill on a trans-Atlantic journey as he travelled to England to deal with family business. He passed away in May 1924 in London. He is buried in the family vault at Ashburnham Church.
Lady Ashburnham continued to live in their Fredericton home. She died in 1938. The house on Brunswick St. survived for some time. It eventually was divided into apartments — my friend Ann lived there for awhile! — but it was not kept up as it should have been. On Google Street View, it looked like this last year but I've read that it has since been torn down. [As corrected in the comments, the report of the house's demise was greatly exaggerated. It still stands on Brunswick St. I added this correction September 11, 2020.]
Lady Ashburnham's legacy, interestingly enough, is a pickle. She was not domestic herself and didn't do any of the cooking for her delicious dinners but her sister Lucy lived in the household and took care of the kitchen. In Fredericton, the elegant mustard pickles served on Brunswick St. — made by Lucy — became very popular and were known across the city as "Lady Ashburnham's Pickles."
And so they are still known today. I've made these pickles everywhere, including on a Coleman stove on deck when we lived on the boat on the Miramichi, tied up at Loggie's Wharf in Chatham; at the old house in Black River Bridge; in Montreal; of course, in Fredericton. I've even made them on television on a show called Foodessence. They didn't turn out that well. We had to keep restarting them. We had to serve the camera, not the cucumbers. The important thing for television was that they looked good.
I made Lady Ashburnham's Pickles most recently earlier this week.
Those are cucumbers (soaked in salt and water overnight), onions, red and green peppers. They're pretty before you even get started.
There are always variations in a pickle recipe. Most people have adapted it to suit themselves. I stick pretty closely to Lucy's recipe although now that I think about it, Lucy probably didn't use the peppers. I like adding the peppers — they look so nice for one thing.
The one small change I made this year was not planned. I was halfway through the process when I realized I didn't have any yellow mustard seed. I did, however, have brown mustard seed which we bought in the spring for the rhubarb chutney. So brown mustard seed it was and it's fine because the pickling was successful and the pickles are delicious.
I think of Lady Ashburnham — Rye Anderson — whenever I make her pickles. I think of Lucy too and wonder what her life was like, living with her sister who married into British nobility, working in the kitchen, seeing Rye get all the credit for her pickles.
She could never have imagined that more than a hundred years later, her pickles would still be made and enjoyed — and her sister would still be getting all the credit.
Sometimes, life just isn't fair.
Sunday, September 10, 2017
A little history of a famous pickle
Wednesday, September 6, 2017
My short introduction to Iceland
In 2008, Iceland suffered a financial catastrophe. It affected everyone, not just the loss of money although that was serious, but there was a terrible sense of betrayal and humiliation that the bankers had treated their own people so badly, stealing money left and right, from everyone. Icelanders felt a collective depression over this.
In 2010, the great volcano Eyjafjallajökull erupted.
(This photo was taken by a man named Oliver who lives just below the mountain. When the eruption was imminent, he called the newspaper in Reykjavik and told them it was happening and he was evacuating. The reporter he spoke to said, "Grab a photo on your way out and then get out of there!" Oliver got the photo and then he skedaddled. This photo was on the front page of the Reykjavik newspaper and from there, as the only picture of the eruption. it went all over the world. Oliver did quite well by it.)
The cloud of volcanic ash was thick and within days, it had blanketed Europe and shut down all airlines of flights coming and going. They remained closed for a couple of weeks.
After these two events, happening so close together, the people in Iceland wondered if life had irrevocably changed. The airline shutdown affected much of the world and, in its own mind, Iceland began to feel like an international pariah. They wondered if the people would ever come back.
Well, the people did come back. The numbers of tourists climbed from 595,000 in 2000 to 2.1 million in 2010, before rising to 4.4 million in 2014 — and they continue to rise.
Writing about tourism is not easy. I assume I have no credibility as long as I'm one of the tourists. The last time I wrote about it, we had just visited Shakespeare's hometown, Stratford-upon-Avon, where they get 4.9 million visitors a year. I shared this photo:
At some point, I had showed you what my first view of the Mona Lisa in the Louvre looked like:
Can you see her? Way back there at the end of that long room?
(Of course, I often show this one too. I elbowed my way to the front of the room. I'm an "older woman" so I can get away with that.)
Forty years ago, tourism was seen as the clean, environment-friendly alternative to the older polluting industries and a supplement to fishing and farming which were transitioning to large corporate-owned entities that were much less labour intensive. Tourism would provide good jobs and offer a boost to local economies everywhere. Even the smallest towns were seeking ways to entice visitors to their neck of the woods.
And how has that turned out? You don't have to look far to find the evidence that thousands of planes loaded with people being transported around the world and back, is not a sustainable practice. And now, decades after tourism was seen as the solution to economic woes all over, some people are resisting.
First Venice and Barcelona: now anti-tourism marches spread across Europe In Iceland too:
Iceland becoming 'Disneyland' as US tourists outnumber locals It's a confusing and contradictory situation for people to be in. I don't begrudge the workers who were able to leave standing in icy water in a fish plant and get a much easier job in a warm hotel for better money. It may not turn out to be a lifetime job however.
Having said that, we tremendously enjoyed our visit to Iceland. We had a cozy apartment in the centre of Reykjavik. That's the view out our window at the top of this page. It was very convenient for shopping at the nearby small supermarket and William enjoyed being in the vicinity of the very active nightlife. Our apartment was well-equipped with dishes and utensils. It had a stove-top and microwave and even a tiny dishwasher — which we used — and a tiny clothes washer which we didn't.
The bathroom was made of smooth rocks.
That's cricket on the TV — a very exciting game, I believe.
Our visit wasn't very long but we managed to do a lot. I'll come back soon to tell you about the city of Reykjavik.
Meanwhile, I've posted two albums of quite spectacular photos on Facebook. You can look at them even if you don't have a Facebook account. Here they are. Just click:
Stratford
The Louvre
