my life in food

I'm on roll now haha!!




The first solid food ,if you could call it that ,that I remember is Weetbix with hot milk ,soaked and sprinkled with sugar. I had this most mornings,or toast and honey until I left home at 18. My kids had the same .Today I don't like it at all, but the smell always brings back memories of mum.

Most nights in our house were meat with 2 veg. The meat was either sausages, steak, lamb chops, hot dog frankfurts or smoked cod boiled dry. The veges were always mashed potato, and either peas or beans, occasional broad beans(yuk) sometimes carrots, brocolli or coulliflower.EVERY NIGHT!!! We had to eat everything on the plate and mum was not the best or organised cook, so if she thought she forgot to salt the spuds or veg, she would do it again.


Desert was always tinned fruit and vanilla ice cream.....if we(me and my 2 younger sisters) had eaten all our dinner.

There was always fruit in season. My dad grew up in an Italian fruit shop and so we always had plenty of fruits.

Porridge! My mums dad, my Pop ,came to stay with us, and taught us to make porridge.It was a real production to get it how he liked it, apparantly a fuel stove is best. He served it with brown sugar. I hated it at the time,it looked icky and gruel like ,as in oliver: "please sir can I have some more" .Funnily enough I quite like it in winter now.





Spag bol. My grandparents on Dad's side were Italian, so we ate spaghetti when we visited. I remember being told "Mangare" and taught to twirl it around my fork. And mum learning how to cook it from Nonna, then trying to replicate it at home.(this is the 60's it was foreign food!!!)

I spent 4 days a week with my Nonna and Nonno for 3 years while mum and dad worked, they were under strict instructions not to teach me Italian as I was Australian.Nearly 50 years later Dad regrets not letting us embrace our heritage at the time, but times were different then and dad had grown up with discrimination .




Crostoli, My nonna used to make the pastry biscuit, lay it out on the table and cut it into strips then plait it together, it would be deep fried and then a syrup and fine sugar sprinkled on it. YUM.

always always, she would have an enamel tub full of hard red jelly, that made that suction sound from the spoon when she dished it out....sigh.... and a big scoop of vanilla icecream that never seemed big enough.

Thursday nights would be late night shopping, a big production with us kids tagging along, bored and helping drag the goods into the house. Our reward was fish or potato scollaps with chips, brought home wrapped in newspaper. Dad was funny, still had to have his on a plate,sometimes with salad, but us kids and mum would eat off the newspaper. Less washing up. Those days 2 peices of fish, medium serve of chips and half a dozen scollaps was $3. The same today =$26.



Pizza hut came to our shire in about 1972 offhand. In '74 my friend Lee_Anne had her 12th birthday there.When it first opened it was a "proper" restraunt, tablecloths,candles, table service, menu, wine menu. Very posh, we dressed up in our long dresses.It was the first time I had pizza. My Italian grandparents did not eat or make pizza, said its nothing like that in Italy, its more like what we call foccacia bread which they would have with a meal not as a meal.



KFC came early in the 70's too and it was a treat for us for a birthday or visitors. Here is the ad that introduced Australia to KFC

Late in the 70's mum got creative, and every sunday would make curried prawns and boiled rice. We could eat this in the loungeroom, a huge treat, while watching the Muppets, and Tom and Jerry.Dad loved these shows.

Mum was working night duty in a nursing home and us girls weren't a lot of help being selfish teens and so would wake her up with a cuppa and with a view to her getting dinner ready. We would all talk till about 5 mins before dad got home and then rush to get a salad together so he wouldn't have to wait to long for food. My sisters and I can still recite our salad recipe : Lettuce, tomato, beetroot, cucumber, pineapple ,cheese, ham!!!

1979 ,Maccas came to town~ there was an opening promotion, if you could recite the ingredients like on the add in 20 seconds you got a free big mac : 2allbeefpattiesspecialsaucelettucecheeseoniononasesameseedbun

my favorite back then was fillet of fish, fries and a strawberry thickshake!

chinese food.Australia was thin on the ground for "foreign" food until the early 80's unless you lived in the city.Out in the suburbs it was fish and chip shops. I was 16 before I tasted chinese food. My friends took me out to dinner. I didn't know what to order, and they told me to try the sweet and sour. It was good, so it was all I ordered for about 3 years until I met Les and he talked me into trying other flavours.

I still eat more maccas than I should.

I pretty much eat anything now and still have a soft spot for red jelly and vanilla icecream....sigh