It’s Easy to Feel Reinvigorated in the New Year, but How Do You Keep It Going? What would you like to cook? Fridge Stories: What Does Your Fridge Say About You? The Spruce Eats Better Australian lamb pie Through Food Do you love food, too?

We’re here to help you reach greater levels of deliciousness in the kitchen. Our People It takes a whole team of skilled chefs, food editors, product testers, dietitians, and flavor geniuses to bring you these delicious recipes and trustworthy recommendations. Get easy-to-follow, delicious recipes delivered right to your inbox. A look at what cooking Australian cuisine means and how it’s changed over the years. IN ADELAIDE IN THE 1950s, my grandmother was our family cook, turning out such standards as shepherd’s pie, lamb chops, and apple pie and custard. She cooked tripe in white sauce as a treat. An after-school favourite was a South Australian speciality, jubilee cake.

This was a teacake with dried fruit, which was iced and sprinkled with coconut. Sliced and buttered it was the best cake in the world. Her cooking now seems plain, but unlike many people in the world at that time, she had access to quality ingredients, many of which were gathered from our Adelaide backyard. Back then the choice in milk was simply the number of pints ladled by the milkman into our billy early each morning.

Bread was delivered by cart, too, and the greengrocer would fill an order from a large green van. Men used special tongs to carry huge, dripping blocks of ice down our gravel drive to the ice chest in the laundry. My grandfather’s crucial contribution, other than ensuring that I sat with a straight back, was telling stories around the kitchen table. Australian food today Today, Australian meals are more diverse than ever, influenced by aisles of inexpensive ingredients, a platter of cultures and a menu of resurgent interest in food. Australia’s food history has instead been dynamic, urban, industrial, science-based and capitalist-driven.

In my youth, we each ate about 50kg of beef a year. Health experts tell us only one in 10 Australian adults consumes sufficient vegetables. True, we eat an average of 62kg of potatoes a year, but mainly as chips. During 2011, children aged between 14 and 17 together ate 44. 1 million serves of hot chips. That was on top of 30.