1797 Workhouse Diet Days 3 & 4: Pease Porridge Hot

Day 3 Stodge-ometer rating: 7/10

Day 4 Stodge-ometer rating: 3/10

Day three fell on a Monday. My breakfast was this again:

I was delivering training to volunteers at the Ancient House Museum in Thetford, and I had to drive there, so I decided to save my beer until later.

My ten-year old son was concerned at this change to the diet. 
"Will you get told off?" he whispered. 
Well, of course, I won't, but the inmates would definitely have been reprimanded for any such behaviour.

Lunch was Pease Pottage. My second attempt was more edible than my first. There's a video on The Workhouse Diet YouTube channel here of me eating it. It looks (and tasted) like something paleolithic from the ocean floor.

Supper was, inevitably, more of this:

Day Three also brought some more publicity. Here's a link to EDP24 online coverage of the project, and as a taster, here's what appeared in the EDP paper itself:

Whoops, I got it confused with this...

I had more headaches on Day Three. I wondered if they were caused by the effort of digesting such a lot of stodge; my belly is, after all, more used to softer, modern foods, and fruit and vegetables.

I haven't felt hungry at all. But I have no doubt that if I were doing the same amount of physical labour as 'Betty Workhouse', I would have felt fairly peckish as the next mealtime approached .

Day Four's diet will be the same as Day Two's, except for supper, which is 'broth and bread' (i.e. the water the meat was cooked in on Sunday). The broth was reasonably tasty, and it was a nice change to have something lighter.

And then there was the inevitable rye bread. Variety is not, it seems, the spice of workhouse life!

Lights, Cameras, Action! The First Ever Workhouse Diet Video is available!

If you were to be so bold as to click on this link to YouTube  you would find me in my kitchen rabbitting on about Pease Pottage.This link shows a second video in which, having tasted the Pease Pottage, I nearly vomit.

I have finally successfully filmed and published the first of many videos for this project. My ten year old son George is my cameraman, and I predict that the viewer may well feel George's presence quite definitely during the videos.

But never, no never (well, hardly ever*) in my wildest dreams did I imagine that going back 200 years to try living as a workhouse inmate would involve learning about many futuristic new technologies. 

I already knew how to 'blog' (my other life as a 'Royal' freelance speaker and singer is well-documented in my blog, What Queenie Did Next), but now, I also know how to sync my iPad, auto-update my Google Plus, create and manage a You Tube account, Twitter with two different personalities, Tweet, Retweet, and Follow others. In return, I now have over 100 people Following me. 

I am truly grateful for their interest and I feel as though I should at least offer them all a cup of tea- but I'm not allowed any on this 1797 diet.

Do check out and 'like' my Workhouse Diet Facebook page by clicking here, and consider becoming my disciple- er, follower-  on Twitter (@workhousediet).

Checkout Gressenhall's website to see what's happening there and in other Norfolk Museums- and look out for a big feature on this project in the EDP in the next couple of weeks! The Workhouse Diet itself begins on 29th April...

*Gilbert & Sullivan. Sorry. Quoting from old songs is like a nervous tic for me.