Prickly pear hedge guarding the Vaucluse House kitchen garden. Photo © James Horan for Sydney Living Museums
Long before chicken wire, the early colonists had some fearsome options when it came to protecting their salad greens! Continue reading
Skipping Girl Vinegar Sign (detail). Photo © Lisa Gervasoni
It’s not often you find a poet in the kitchen, but recording recipes as poems was not an uncommon practice in the nineteenth century. ‘Mother Eve’s pudding‘ is included in Edward Abbott’s English and Australian Cookery Book (for the many and the upper ten thousand), Thackeray wrote an ‘Ode to curry’, but I digress… More pertinent to our summer salads theme, I recalled Sydney Smith’s salad recipe ‘in verse’ (also in Abbott) penned in 1839. Continue reading
All the makings of an heirloom salad in the kitchen garden at Vaucluse House. Photo © Stuart Miller for Sydney Living Museums
As the new year kicks in and the temperature rises, January is salad time for most Australians, as a meal in itself or along side anything that can be barbequed! Continue reading
Decanters and claret jugs as part of a setting recreating a birthday held for Alexander Macleay at Lake Innes. Photo © Leo Rocker
Mainly used nowadays for allowing good wines to breathe, in the days before commercial bottling the decanter was de rigeur. As another festive season fades into your memory, settle back with a claret jug of restorative toast water – but don’t forget to clean it afterwards! Continue reading
No. 4 (detail) from [Five stages of inebriation, ca.1863-1868] by Charles Pickering. State Library of NSW PXB 503
Happy New Year! In the event that you’re nursing a hangover, read on! It won’t cure your headache, but it will give you an amusing word of the day for later. Continue reading