March 2024In 2008 I gave a paper to the 16th Symposium of Australian Gastronomy in the Hunter Valley. The theme of the paper was Australian songs about food and rivers. …
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Of eggs and buns: Easter eating
7 March 2024
March 2024As we approach Easter I thought it would be of interest to gather from friends what they/their family have traditionally eaten over the Easter period - Holy Thursday through …
Diggings 4 March 2024
4 March 2024
Solving the supermarket: why Coles just hired US defence contractor PalantirWhat Palantir sells is fundamentally a way of seeing. Its dashboards promise a God’s eye view that can stretch across an entire organisation …
The culinary road to the first banana bread
2 March 2024
January 2024I made my first banana bread the other day, that traditional way to use up overripe bananas. I used a recipe from the 1950s and it turned out pretty …
February 2024For the last twenty years I have been a food historian/ food writer focusing on Australian cuisine. In the course of doing research for my book True to the …
Fair suck of the sav. Glimpses of the saveloy in Australia
5 February 2024
January 2024Before the frankfurter roll (1931), before the hotdog roll (1922), there was the saveloy roll (1911) a hot red sausage snuggling between the sides of a cloven bread roll …
Diggings
5 February 2024
Tucker-shoppingI read an article about tuckshops in Britain in an online food magazine recently and it set me remembering my tuckshop days at St. Joseph’s Primary School at Singleton in …
Chutney, yes, but also … A survey of one hundred years of mangoes at the Anglo Australian culinary table
28 January 2024
January 2024After primary school in Sri Lanka I would go with my bothers and classmates to the achcharu woman sitting just outside the school grounds. We would pool what was …
January 2024I read an article about tuckshops in Britain in an online food magazine recently and it set me remembering my tuckshop days at St. Joseph’s Primary School at Singleton …
A vermicelli dinner party
4 January 2024
December 2023As I’ve been researching various items of food in Australia one item keeps cropping up like an insistent child tugging at my leg wanting me to give it attention. …
The Rabbit: Only fit for pies or curries?
2 January 2024
December 2023Rabbits are a dry meat, only fit for pies or curries; and excellent served as the latter …Abbott, Edward, The English and Australian Cookery Book: Cookery for the Many, …
Diggings 29 December 2023
29 December 2023
Do you know where your seafood has come from? Here’s why it mattersAustralians are in the dark about whether their Christmas lunch has been ethically sourced because of a lack …
More than salad dressing and frying fish: The culinary uses of olives and olive oil in Australia 1865 – 1949
19 December 2023
October 2023'Contrary to popular belief olive oil was fairly common in many colonial kitchens ... While olive oil was sold, used and marketed for medicinal purposes by chemists it was predominantly …