Sanderson Media

Losing teeth is something that slowly creeps up on you. As your standard of living improves, your teeth go backwards, not keeping pace with the enjoyment of life. Poetic justice says that the trendiest people you envied, eat the best food, and sweetest desserts, but in the end have worse teeth and you. Travellers have to be careful because some have blurted their dentures into the sea, over the side of a tourist boat and you can’t do that if you are poor. Dentures also have a connection to romance. You may think no one will love you with dentures, but when your partner or best friend gets a partial denture, the world is back to normal. With a toothy smile you can both go back to nuts and sweet Arabic desserts. New dentures give grey nomads chewing confidence, a passport to the rest of their adventurous lives that include slightly more classy food, holidays, whale watching and cruises. When your partner or best friend gets a partial denture, the world is back to normal From a chewi...

  A true understanding of kiwis and aussies,   OR why are the cuzzie bros lecking a convuct icksunt? As the New Zealand yacht, skippered by an Aussie, finally prised the America’s cup from USA’s proud fingers, NZ must have known they would share the glory with their cousins across the ditch. It is therefore a good time to ask if New Zullanders object to Australians sharing their glory and pinching their stars? I put this to Ellyshah and her Dad Tim, fresh from the long white cloud, both fairly open-minded about the local  good-natured habit of stealing heroes. It appears that Aussies attract Kiwi visitors because they don’t take themselves too seriously. But we have things to learn from our weird-speaking cousins: Ellyshah said she grew up with the perception that Australians are larrikins and don’t work as hard as NZ people. Apparently it’s part of everyday conversation. “Don’t you Kiwis also love public holidays and barbecu...

Ronny Patel comes from a country where 800 million wives traditionally kick their husbands out of the kitchen. He is pleased that cooking shows have reversed this trend in the west. Aussie wife, Natalee Jayne welcomes him into her Daisy Hill kitchen and he has just started his own restaurant. Ronny migrated from Gujarat province, in 2002, and memorised its rich spices and street food but soon noticed that Indian flavours down under, appear to be “watered down” for local palettes. One day Ronny, while immersed in his courier job, had a lightbulb moment, deciding to start a restaurant that can “fully immerse diners in authentic culture and music. Named Ginger Spice, it opened at 85 Coronation Street, Boronia Heights, Brisbane. It has Fiji Indian influence, Gujarat spices, a Bollywood feel, Gurba dancing on his monitors to educate patrons, while providing “dress-up” clothes for photo opportunities. 

Why can we be certain that migrants are  good for your health? Lets wind the clock back to the early years of Australia’s proud Anglo Saxon heritage when many began looking suspiciously and obliquely at migrants. Governments of all colors promoted this critical and superior attitude by devising the “white Australia policy” which was strongly backed by Australia’s mainstream churches. These groups conveniently forgot that their Lord might have had a neatly trimmed beard and olive skin.

Mentoring eccentrics When my children were quite young, my second daughter took great interest in serenading our chickens which could not escape because they were firmly tucked under each arm as she walked around the house, talking and singing. Her next sign of good communication and eccentricity was to regularly climb our huge mango tree and sing and play her school recorder to the birds that parked thereon. I kept up her supply of musically challenged chickens.

Pictured below, the author discovered a great sense of community at Vanuatu fruit and vegetable markets. It was open for business 24 hours a day. You could buy freshly cooked food at 2 a.m. in the morning and talk until you dropped from exhaustion. Understanding migrants with diverse cultures might provide insight into youth suicide and how to prevent it. Is this an outlandish claim or is there serious evidence to back it up?

Some races, like the Pacific Islanders, have never lost their sense of community. Family food and conversation My local commonwealth bank did something very scary today. As I walked in the front door, a cheery employee asked me if I needed anything and then I met Cassie, the bank teller, who engaged me in a very interesting conversation, while banking my cheque. I wasn’t ready for this and it really took me by surprise.

  Today TV chefs are treated like rock stars. In Australia, the final of the country’s Master Chef program, a couple of years back, was watched by 4.1 million people. It was many more than watch the finals of any football code, almost double the ratings that some finals get. The following year’s cooking final pulled in even more viewers. It has been a worldwide trend but there are good reasons why this has been happening?

Why the addiction to chilli? Why do some people crave spicy foods, chillies, curries, noodles and so forth while others go through life never wanting to challenge their taste buds? Australian Chinese chef, from Sri Lanka, Jimmy Shu, has put forward a plausible theory. After years of tempting foodies, he concludes that a palate corrupted by eating chillies and curries seems to turn a person into a discerning eater. He has noticed that the more his customers like chilli and curry, the more they need variety and spice. It’s all in the “corruption of the palate”, he says. It is well known that chilli speeds up your metabolism, plus the hot little critters are a rich source of vitamin C and it might even work against the formation of cancer cells. Nutritionists also claim that chilli helps fight pain and eases nasal congestion. Just imagine it. When we put chilli in our cooking, we may be promoting good health, as well as good conversation. Ever since the Portuguese brought chilli to India,...

Jimmy Shu was born in Sri Lanka about 60 years ago when it was  a virtual melting pot of several continents’ flavours. Imagine the combination of Hindu vegetarian food, exquisite curries, chillies, flavours from South-East Asia and noodles from China. It was an exciting time of discovery for young Jimmy. Jim’s Dad, Andrew Shu, started his restaurant in Sri Lanka in 1946, just in time for Jimmy’s birth in 1949. With Chinese parents, he was raised in this restaurant on tantalising curry and noodle dishes.  Jimmy watched his dad accumulate a large “food family,” members of which regularly went on a tantalizing food journey.  Menus were changed regularly to prevent boredom and customers appreciated it. Years later, Jimmy found it easy to gather his own food family and impress them with variety and flavor from all parts of the continent, Asia and the Pacific. Andrew Shu taught Jimmy how to be passionate about ingredients and condiments, tempting palates of patrons by romancing...

There is so much diversity in culture on this earth that someone must have wished for a  cooking competition to settle disputes between nations, reports John Sanderson.’ Notice how sport gives disadvantaged countries the chance to unite and feel good about themselves and make up for injustices. Just imagine the Iraqi soccer team practicing their little hearts out, hoping their efforts bring peace. Could it work for those that love fruit, vegetables and cooking. Visiting northern Cyprus With this in mind I visited Cyprus, my wife’s country of origin with its rolling mountains of limestone that can make your heart race if you are an expatriate. I was looking forward to seeing vineyards and paddocks of okra. We were staying in the home of my brother in law in a suburb of Limasol (Lemesos), and my brother in law’s brother in law had agreed to accompany us to my father in law’s lost village, one of many taken by a Turkish invasion in 1974. We drove north to Famagusta and soon had to pa...