MOTnews 53 (23/07/2004)

"SAVE THE BAKER'S OVENS!" now also in French and English on our website

In a previous edition of MOT news, we told you that "Save the baker's ovens!", our guide for the restoration and use of wood-fired baker's ovens, was available on the Museum's website at www.mot.be.

We now also have a French and English version of this web page. So now, on our site, you can find information on baker's ovens and bakehouses, including how to build and maintain them, in three languages. In this manner, we hope that many non-Dutch speakers will become aware of the importance of this part of our heritage and that this will encourage them to send us more info on any baker's ovens they may come across.

GRANDMOTHER'S RECIPES

Skin care with home, garden and kitchen products

During the summer months, there is an abundance of fruits and vegetables and this is an excellent moment to use them for something else besides lunch and dinner. We found the recipes below in a publication dating from 1888 and hope that they can still be of use more than 100 years later.

You can make good skin lotions yourself with the following ingredients:

1) Milk mixed in with juice from ripe strawberries Crush some fresh and very ripe strawberries, filter the juice and dilute it with a little milk.

2) Milk mixed with grated horseradish Let the grated horseradish soak in the milk and filter the liquid.

3) Milk mixed with leek juice Mix leek juice with the same quantity of milk or cream.

Make sure that you do not keep these lotions too long. The idea is to make fresh lotion every day or at least very often!

Potion number three is also good for spots and flaky red patches.

SAY WHAT? In this MOT-news item we try to explain proverbs and sayings that have their roots in our technical history. Similar proverbs are found in different languages, but each language has it's own typical sayings. Therefore we do not translate this item in English.

KIDS news: something to tell your children tonight The Children's loft is officially open! Spread the word!

The MOT has a really special affection for wood, which was such an important material in the past. Many of today's everyday objects in plastic were made of wood in the past.

For this reason, the Museum has an exhibition about woodworking which shows you how wood was used and how it is still being used today. You are given a step-by-step overview of all the processes which are needed to work with wood: from cutting down a tree to sawing the planks and gluing the smallest wooden components.

Since the MOT believes that wood is so important, it wants to make the exhibition particularly interesting for younger visitors.

This is why we have created the Children's loft.

Here, through play, children between 3 and 12 years old can learn all about wood: "How hard is wood?", "What does a tree look like from the inside?" and "What kind of things can you make using wood?"

The Children's loft has been specially designed for families with young children and with this new layout, we hope to be able to offer many visitors fun family activities during the whole summer.