The Thrifty Kitchen

Perhaps it is my fear of being self employed and facing a strict budget in the early days of the transition from employee to full time cake decorator that made the title of this book catch my eye but yesterday I purchased one of the loveliest, homeliest cookbooks I think I have bought to date. This is the sort of cook book I would aspire to write if I was ever to write one.

Now I have so many cookbooks and cake books that recently I had to buy a seperate bookshelf to be dedicated for the storage of books of this persuasion (and it became full shortly after being erected!). But this book, I think, is destined to be one of my favourites.

This book is written by the daughter and granddaughter of the Grand Dame of Australian cooking Margaret Fulton. In the introduction her daughter Suzanne recalls her youth "We didn't have alot, but you would never have guessed it from the food that we had at our table"........and later, when talking about her family today; "We eat simply, the way I always have , and every meal is special. We cook together, set the table, share a bottle of wine and relax as we talk over the days activities, not unlike generations of our family have always done"

The book is a gorgeous insight into the way this family live complete with a pizza recipe contribution by Kates most adorable fiancee. (He does give credit to the woman who taught him this one, Kate's grandmother; Margaret Fulton, Lucky him to learn from the best!!)

I think particularly when we become parents we start to question what we do, the way we live and what our children will take out from their childhood. One of the things I have always wanted for Poppy was to have a childhood filled with an appreciation of the most delicious fresh produce, wonderful baking aromas and an understanding of how important food is not just as a sustenance, but as a healthy, wonderful pleasure that has the ability to bring people together.

Whilst I was on maternity leave with Poppy and living in Jurien Bay, three hours north of Perth, I loved having the chance to pickle crayfish, make tomato chutney from the abundance of tomatoes in season that our neighbours would give us and to make masses of fig jam from the absolute glut of fresh figs that the 90 year old man from down the road would bring me in his white fishing bucket from his tree. I would borrow books by Maggie Beer from the local library and furiously make preserved lemons and every sort of jam with the local produce available.

Most of this produce was excess, donated by a neighbour not wanting it to go to waste and I found that food cooked this way with shared produce connected people. It may have been destined to rot on the ground as it fell from a tree, but this donated fruit would be returned as a jam as a thank you, and in this process created the relationships that form communities.

In the past few years, I have lost my community. I have lost the grounding that home cooked, shared food gives me. We have become too busy, life too complex and too many take away meals have been eaten. I can feel my soul craving the simplicity of a meal created with shared produce. The simple pleasure of collecting eggs from my chickens or the satisfaction of giving scraps to the chooks, knowing that nothing in the house is left to waste.

Books like The Thrifty Kitchen remind us of the power that food has. The power in its simplicity and freshness, of ingredients combined and shared, the unprocessed kind, that brings people together, the power that can bind communities and most importantly creates the memories that are the foundation of families everywhere.