Friday, March 16, 2012

Global Wanderings in My Kitchen Learning Lab

The brother-in-law, @llocklee, refers to me as the Librarian - and I guess I do like to collect / organise information for fast finding & later re-use. That includes my foodie interests. The books are all catalogued in LibraryThing and the cuttings piled, then filed in bulging folders.

It's something I inherited from my mother - she tells me that she was forced to give up Asian food when pregnant with me - but ever afterward she has enjoyed experimenting. I remember her favourites seemed to be the 1960's Flemings supermarket magazines & the 1950's Aerophos cookbook (both of these early Australian foodie ref's were surprisingly international in coverage compared with the Commonsense Cookery Book & can still be picked up on Ebay from time to time). She also did traditional Aussie style including a mean Devilled Sausages, that I'd almost forgotten until I came across the remarkably similar 'Mrs Adams's Savoury Sausages' in Kylie Kwong's "Recipes & Stories" (p 40). Coincidentally amazing is that Mum is a Mrs Adams too.

I can't say that Mum specifically taught me how to cook, rather, I absorbed from her the enjoyment of  experimenting with new ideas. Now in her 70's, she's still experimenting with newly discovered surprises, brought over for our regular Sunday night family dinners. I do the mains & Mum does the desserts plus "sweet treats" for the week, for my teen, Kat.

And of course Mum also has numerous cookbooks, folders & cuttings stashed around her home. I sometimes say that Mum was born before her time - with the now exploding global foodie scene. Last weekend we took her to the Mecca Bah in Canberra after the twilight viewing of the Masterpieces from Paris Exhibition at the NGA. Tonight it's Nam's Vietnamese in Wollongong (one of the many Vietnamese), after the Wharf Theatre Revue's "Pennies from Kevin".


A few of my favourite foodie websites :


And some of my favourite foodie blogs (in no particular order ...  )  


These lists are eclectic - like my cook book collection at LibraryThing & even more so, my folders.

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