Are you looking for the not-so-latest household hints and delicious recipes? Perhaps delivered by a puppet? Leoni Stewart, O.B.E., to the rescue!
“My housekeeper, Mrs. Heaps, often suffers from festive dyspepsia,” she tells us in Episode 1 of the new web series, Happy Family, Happy Home. “At the first sign of any complaint, I insist that she take a bowl of this health soup from the C.W.A. Cookery Book, 10th edition.”
What follows is an honest-to-God recipe for the nastiest butter/onion/bread soup concoction, all of it directly from a vintage cookbook and delivered to you by little puppet hands.
Stewart is the brainchild of award-winning local filmmaker Tyrone Russell and his New Zealand-based creative partner, Ed Goode. The two met when Russell lived in New Zealand, and they’ve nursed this idea for ages.
“Listen,” Russell says. “I’ve had that puppet in my closet for three years.”
Eventually, the character was born.
“We highlight throwback recipes from the Twenties, Thirties and Forties,” Russell explains. “It’s a look back to a time when we were using ingredients that we now know are dangerous. So, there’s that sort of juxtaposition of a puppet who is very put together, very buttoned up, giving the kind of information that you would get from Ann Landers or Helpful Hints from Heloise. Only now we know, this is dangerous. Or the recipes are just sort of gross.”
According to Russell, the recipes and hints themselves come from Goode’s impressive stash of vintage cookbooks and helpful hints collections.
“He really has this affinity for that kind of stuff, these old recipes and old hints,” Russell says. “He literally has volumes and volumes of books and recipe books and an encyclopedia of household hints from the Twenties. One of the things that’s so funny about so many of these recipes is that there’s always one ingredient that seems like it would be really dangerous. Like ammonia powder – sure, you can use it in your cookies, but you have to off-gas them before you can eat them.”
The two research some of the funniest and most absurd hints or tips – something that can fit in a 60-second episode. Then Goode writes and voices the character back in New Zealand, and here at Vision Mill Studio in Columbus, Russell is puppeteer.
“The production values are just so great,” Russell says. “I think that’s one of the things that makes it so funny. The set is so beautiful and it’s like, these recipes are disgusting and it’s a puppet, but it’s all so beautiful.”
And it’s funny on both sides of the world.
“I had a conversation with Ed, because part of what makes it super funny for New Zealanders is that she’s Leoni Stuart, O.B.E.,” he says. “And I told him, nobody in America knows what that is. I had been thinking it was like being a knight or dame, but it’s much lower and more local than that. It’s the order of the British Empire. You can get that honor by doing something sort of good for your community. You have to put in some work, but it’s not like you’re saving lives, you know? Maybe you ran some really good book drives for a couple of years. And so, this is the kind of woman who would get a low-level honorary title and then hold it over people. So, what’s funny in New Zealand is the fact that, oh yeah, of course she makes sure to say that title every time she says her name.”
What’s next for Ms. Stewart and her beleaguered housekeeper, Mrs. Heaps?
Says Russell, “In season two, we’re going to start moving into etiquette and probably some farming.”
A new episode of Happy Family, Happy Home is released every Monday on their YouTube channel, and you can find supplemental information – additional recipes, advertisements and advice – on their website.