A bite of history & a taste of home

Anzac Day eve: the most intensive procrastination plan hits me.

I would recreate the diets of Anzac soldiers to give people a taste of what the soldiers experienced during the war.

In contrast, they would also receive an Anzac biscuit, and be told about its origins.

A Bite of History

• Hardtack cracker (lasts for 50 years!) 
• Bully beef (corned beef) 
• Jam 

A taste of what New Zealand soldiers in WW1 ate daily, monotonously.

Their diet has been cited to have been lacking in fruits and vegetables and resulted in malnutrition amongst troupes.

Soldiers hated the crackers, commenting that it was like “biting into a rock”.

A Taste of Home 

• Anzac biscuit 

Anzac biscuits were made by the soldiers’ wives and sent as a replacement for hardtack crackers.

For WW1 veterans, these two tastes conjure up vivid memories of their time in the war.

Food serves as a marker of memory.

So that was the plan.

However shit turned to a massacre when all the little bites that was prepared ended up looking like a bloody battle after all the transportation and their delicate natures.

So improvisation happened and I simple approached people and asked two questions:

1. What is your strongest memory associated with food?
2. What is your favourite food to make? Why?

And this is what I found:

People have strong memories associated with food. Some of the most popular were associating food with family, and more specifically mom. There was also quite a few with celebrations, such as Christmas dinner, cultural festival and birthdays.

It was quite easy to tell who liked to cook based on their answer from their first question. Those who did not like cooking made no excuses for it and their stories are often related to something humourous happening to food rather than consuming it. For example, a candidate who’s favourite meal to make is ‘toast’ told her memory as when her flatmate tried and hilariously failed to make egg fried rice. Another candidate who liked to make ‘stir fry’ as it was ‘easy and quick’ has a memory when her brother microwaved a pie for 20 minutes and it exploding everywhere.

It was really fascinating hearing the memories people. They could be catagorized into:

1. Time—routine, time of life, one off
2. Place—specific source, location, home
3. People—friends, family

These three factors in different ratios formed the vast majority stories. People never told stories where taste was the only thing they talked about. This proves that food and the memory of it is so much more than sustenance and bodily health that people claim. 

Food provides unplanned stories of our lives.