Recently it was the 47th anniversary of my parents wedding in a lovely church in Sydney. I love how classic & timeless most of my parents wedding photos are compared to a lot of other wedding photos I have seen from the late 60’s. This photo is my favourite and I think they both look so happy and so beautiful.
I look a lot like my Dad but unfortunately not like the very handsome man he grew into but my Dad as a 12 year old. If you drew long hair on photos of my Dad as an awkward, funny looking 12 year old – it’s me!!
The reason for this blog post is because my parents are responsible for so many great food memories from my childhood and they instilled a love of cooking in not just me but my older sister Petah (Petie) and my younger brother Anthony (Anth).
My parents were ahead of their times (cooking wise) for a small country town in Australia in the 70’s. While we did still have the obligatory ‘meat and 3 veg’, my parents would also cook French, Italian, Chinese and Japanese.
As soon as we could chew, Mum and Dad had us eating olives which they pickled themselves and hot chillies from Dad’s big vegie garden. Even today it is unusual to see young children eating olives and chillies but then it was so unheard of that it was kind of like a party trick – they could have taken us on the road to entertain the masses with our chilli and olive eating antics!
They really wanted us to be adventurous in our eating and encouraged us to try everything from different cuisines to the trickier things like escargot and offal – promise I won’t go into more detail on that in my vegan blog!
My parents loved having dinner parties and we loved it too. To my young mind, I thought it was so glamourous. I loved watching Mum prepare the food especially the hors d’oeuvres. Petie and Anth and I were allowed to greet the guests and once they all arrived we came out to say goodnight and then we had to disappear down the other end of house where we had special snacks and games and usually a friend staying over.
Being gluten free and vegan, I don’t eat very much of the same meals I did growing up but I don’t know that I would have the love of good food and cooking that I have always had without my parents influence. My memories of my parents are so precious since Dad passed away in 2002 at the age of 60 and Mum in 2011 at 68. I still think about them just about every time I am in the kitchen and I’m very grateful to them.
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