Australian Recipes

Bush Furniture

Early Settlers in Australian began carving bush wood furniture and unique kitchen utensils, a tradition which is now very specialised.

The original bush carpenter possessed few tools and worked with a variety of timbers depending entirely on availability and transport.

Today wonderful creations for outdoor and indoor use are readily available. These include table settings, benches in the shapes of native animals, musical instruments, children's playground and fitness equipment, every piece unique and often fashioned from re-cycled timber.

Welcome to this cook book

The purpose of my Passionate Vegan CookBook is to give Aussie options to international food buffs and to promote meatless and dairy-free cuisine. Our unique fare does not have its roots in Aboriginal culture, nor did it begin in 1788 when Captain Arthur Philip's soldiers forced the first fleet of unhappy convicts to plant celery, parsley, spinach, and wheat near Sydney Cove. Australian cuisine germinated through multi cultural-ism when hope of a better life beckoned adventurers of mixed nationalities to travel perilous tracks in horse drawn carts to gold and gem fields in the Australian outback.

Men mined while women tilled unforgiving soil around makeshift shanties, and exchanged ethnic culinary traditions in communal kitchens while making wine and beer to cheat death-by-thirst when summer sucked the creeks and rivers dry. The women encouraged their kin to eat many veggies fruit, and grain because plants needed less water than livestock for whom they would also have had to find fodder. In times when rainwater may be six months away, these innovative pioneers endured brutal hardships because they had the foresight to preserve and dry their opulent seasonal yield. The 2nd verse from the poem "My Country" by Dorothea Mackellar (1885-1967) describes this island continent and our sentiments...

"I love a sunburnt country,

A land of sweeping plains,

Of rugged mountain ranges,

Of droughts and flooding rains.

I love her far horizons,

I love her jewel-sea,

Her beauty and her terror-

The wide, brown land for me!"

Now country folk are more usually second, third or fourth generation Australian. They are comfortably settled and don't have to sun-dry or pack veggies between straw to survive but, owing to the vastness of our land, they still drive hundreds of kilometres on dusty roads to stock their pantries with delectables and basics. They take enormous pride in their secret recipes for pickles, preserves and jams, but no more than their city cousins who have grafted their mixed nationality's gastronomy to the original country stem. Men's talents shine at the barbecue which often boast magnificent, Vegan salads and meat alternatives and many households make their own wine and beer.

This site offers a wealth of Vegan recipes genuinely from the land of Oz, some old, some new. Scattered among the pages are sprigs of traditional Australian songs of nostalgic value, instructions on how to make a scarecrow, a list of table manners, and menu suggestions that we, who live under The Southern Cross, invite you to enjoy.