More than a year ago my grandmother Nellie (pictured below) who had been living with my husband, daughter, and I, passed away at home. To say that I was devastated would be an understatement. At the time of my grandmother’s passing, I had almost completed a teenage fiction novel called King of Mermen. I was numb, and uninterested in writing. I found myself going over so many moments we had shared together. For a few weeks all I could think about was all the pleasures in life that she would never enjoy again.
Australian Flavour began as an exercise to capture the meals my grandmother loved. I relished her cooking, summer or winter — casseroles, soups, baked dinners, and bread and butter puddings. The meals my grandmother made at home were very much based on what was cooked at ‘Home’ — the British Isles — despite it being one hundred and eighty years for my grandmother since her forebears landed on Australian soil, and well over two hundred years for us today.
For over a year, I did nothing but think and breathe what would become Australian Flavour – Traditional Australian Cuisine. It gave me a great deal of solace to think that I could capture something that my grandmother had loved. I built a website called Australian Flavour and began collecting recipes from some of the authors who had the biggest influence on our eating habits. From Isabella Beaton to Vic Cherikoff. What I thought would be a simple exercise turned into a project to capture the essence of traditional Australian food tody.
The book is dedicated to both my grandmothers, Ruby and Nellie, and will be released on the 9th August 2008. Our website has already sold close to eighty copies, and I have a dozen orders from libraries around Australia. I now feel a great deal of satisfaction with the knowledge, at the very least, that some of the meals my grandmothers loved will live on. They are a part of traditional Australian cuisine.
I have been busy since the book launch, and have been meaning to place some pics here. The day was pretty much uneventful but it did allow me to catch up with some family and friends I had not been in contact with for a while. If anyone knows Nelson Bay, a brilliant sunny day means no shoppers regardless of how much food you are giving away. Besides, I can only wish I was J K Rowling. Only one book was sold, but by the Friday, the day before, our first print run had been oversold. There was a heap of food left over, and it has convinced me Australians are too well fed. Many people who passed by could not fathom that we were having a party and they were welcome to taste the food. Gee, you really can’t give anything away these days.
