Yes, it has been some months now since I stopped by. A busy, difficult, distracting few months during which much has been on my mind and in my diary, and blogging — well, it has not been much of a priority.
In the past few days I’ve had cause to reflect on blogging, and why I do it (occasionally), and what it’s for because, this afternoon, I’m moderating a panel at the Sydney International Food Festival about food online with Aun Koh (Chubby Hubby), Andrea Nguyen (Viet World Kitchen) and Singaporean food writer and photographer Christopher Tan.
Much will be said this afternoon about the way of the future of food media, and it will be all heightened in poignancy given this week’s demise of the venerable American Gourmet magazine. (An institution in the world of what’s coming to be called “legacy media”, an expression which makes me both wistful and worried, given that I draw my salary from an Australian “legacy media” company.)
But in the brief time I have now before slapping on some lipstick and rushing out the door, these are my thoughts:
- We cannot even begin to imagine how the media world, and the food media world, is going to change in the next decade or so. Blogging and bloggers will be just one element of a vastly altered media landscape.
- Cream will mostly rise to the top: those who upend convention, and present information in exciting, surprising, sassy and provocative new ways will be the winners; those who create poor digital replications of what has been endlessly recycled in the legacy media will go nowhere.
- Those who also incorporate the most fundamental elements of high-quality journalism — accuracy, objectivity and ethicism — in their online endeavours will also win out.
- For my part, I hope that, when I have time to be filling this space, I can fill it with new thoughts, ideas. It’s not about restaurant reviews, it’s not about recipes, for lord knows there are quite enough of those out there already. (Although from time to time they will appear.) I can’t quite tell you what it is. Let’s just say it’s a glimpse inside the often-muddled head of just one person who loves to eat — someone who eats too much, doesn’t cook enough, despairs at how time is passing, rushes from one thing to the next, has a million projects on the go at any one time, loves her family to distraction, and likes to share beautiful things of all description. (How’s that for waffle!?)
And so to share a beautiful thing. The following was written by my oldest friend, Kim, a striking, brilliant, wise woman with whom I climbed trees and finger-painted in a Toowoomba kindergarten. I still tell her she should have been a writer rather than a lawyer and I think her writing here carries some rather delicious and subtle messages that we could all benefit from heeding:
"My jam drop baking Nana passed away unexpectedly two weeks ago and, in her honour, I had the sudden urge to cook jam drops.
I took the first online recipe I could find (not having actually managed to ever write her recipe down — despite cooking it every weekend from the age of 11), and ended up with jam splats. The second one, which I know is not kosher, contained custard powder and coconut and was much yummier than I remember the original ever having been. Nana was a terrific old-style baker — jam drops, pusher biscuits, walnut slices with lemon icing, anzacs, peanut crisps, and ginger fluff sponge. Any visit would include proper china and an assortment of cake tins covered with roses being produced from the green kitchen dresser — the sound of them being opened so much more appealing than Tupperware.
I thought you might like to see the eulogy I gave for Nana":
Elaine Box – reflections on my Nana
88 years is a long time, and on these occasions it is possible to reflect on all that has changed in the world in that time. Today, I want to think about what has
not changed. Because what was special about Elaine Box were qualities that are timeless, and a way of life that has endured.
Nana loved her home, and her family. She was a kind and gentle woman, whose greatest worries in life were always for the health and happiness of her husband and offspring. “You look pale/tired/skinny,” she would reprimand – and over more serious problems she had many sleepless nights. Her family may have sometimes made her cross, but she tended to acceptance rather than judgment, and though she offered an opinion, was restrained in her criticism. Even on Saturday, when Rodney appeared at the hospital with hair that was thought a trifle long, she observed wryly “needs a bow in it”, and left it at that.
Throughout her life, she worked hard, thrived on being busy, and took pleasure in doing things for other people. Simple pastimes were valued – a cup of tea in the shade house in the back garden, a walk to the shops to post a letter she had written that morning, a trip on Mt Kynoch coaches to a local museum. Nana had the capacity to find joy and fun in everyday things – something that was captured playfully in the poetry she wrote – one poem described the washing dancing on the line, while another wondered at the mystery of the missing ice brick.
The house at 13 Jenkins Street was, as Andrew has mentioned, always a happy place to be and visit. She would note your arrival out of the little kitchen window, and be waiting with open arms and a soft cheek, with Granddad, on the top step of the back veranda. Within minutes the kettle would be on, a floral cloth flung over the table, and the china tea cups taken down, with careful thought for which one you had said was the prettiest last time you’d been. Oh, and the biscuits – walnut slice with lemon icing, yo yos, pusher biscuits, and jam drops. All the while, Nana would be chatting — ever interested in the details of your life, up to date with the latest magazine gossip, tennis results, and full of news of her own. From the kitchen dresser she would produce a clipping from the
Downs Star of a Spinners’ exhibition, a postcard from one of David and Flo’s trips, a photograph of someone’s new baby. For Elaine was a proud mother and grandmother, and kept track of the details of everything from first steps, sporting selection, report cards, eisteddfod results, job interviews. You would leave feeling loved and special – if a little overfed — with a bouquet of camellias in a twist of alfoil, some green beans from the garden, wrapped in newspaper and, if you were looking particularly needy, $5 tucked into your bag while you were not looking.
Nana was a most thoughtful person. She was guaranteed to remember your birthday (often, with towels!), took note of your favourite things (“now Derek, it’s caramel tart for dessert”) and, with her quiet insight, had a knack of knowing when something was needed, or even somehow “deserved”. She had neither the means nor inclination to extravagant gestures, but was generous with the egg money she would save for rainy days in that little ceramic pineapple up on the kitchen shelf.
Nana never learnt to drive – something that women of my generation would think quite a disadvantage. But she happily walked where she needed to go, even if it was halfway across Toowoomba to help out with sick grandchildren. Despite living a few kilometres from North State School, if it ever looked like rain in the afternoon, she would appear at the school gate with raincoats for the boys, and to see that Jan, with her bad chest, was safely on the bus.
Ron and Elaine did not have a phone at home until the 1980s. But she took care to maintain close relationships through faithful and lively correspondence with her sisters, sons and daughters-in-law, grandchildren, friends. Her letters were usually cheery and conversational – never leaving out the details of what had been on the menu when she went out – and her busy life gave her no shortage of subject matter. Indeed, after Ron retired, he and Elaine maintained a hectic social life, out at bowls, their various clubs, and visiting friends most days and several nights a week.
Elaine was married to Ron for an extraordinary 69 and a half years – I think she was rather miffed really to have missed the landmark of 70 years! They were fond and loving companions, suited in their intelligent interest in the people and places they encountered and gracious consideration of one another. They also shared many skills and hobbies, which made them in many ways the ultimate “two for one” deal in any group.
I don’t believe that Nana ever thought of herself as wanting for anything, as she simply “made do” with what she had. Of her many accomplishments, quite a few were formed through the necessity of resourcefulness – however as her life progressed, she quietly persevered and mastered an impressive range of new skills – as diverse as sewing, tatting, spinning, crocheting, weaving, needlework, playing indoor bowls, and writing poetry. She was a versatile and talented craftswoman, and generous both in sharing her skills with others, and in the gifts of beautiful rugs, jumpers, slippers, doilies, coat hangers. It would bring her much pleasure, I think, to know that some of these items will still be used for many years to come.
If you were to visit Freestone, the small farming hamlet where Nana lived as a girl, you would find it largely the same today as it was in the 1920s. And on a sunny, cloudless August day like today, you could almost see a young Elaine, with her curls and her skinny arms and legs, (for her Dad nicknamed her “skinny”) racing home from school with her sister Audrey, through the long dry grass in the Owens’ paddock, careless of the snakes that might have been there, arriving home to gather the eggs, slide in the haystack, chat to her dear Grannie Shelly, or to cheerfully put on a sugar bag apron and help her big sisters, Beattie and Haidie with the cooking and sewing. That young girl’s sweet and gentle nature, her kindness and energetic interest in life, remained the essence of Elaine always, and it is what we will all remember when we think of her. —Kim Broadfoot
