Christmas in New Zealand is less about snow and sleigh bells and more about sun, sand and barbecues in the backyard. During December we delve into the Kiwi Christmas experience –
from Abel Tasman’s first New Zealand Christmas in 1642 to the declining
reign of the Queen’s message in our living rooms.
Back /images/stories/radiant/playsound.gif Hear Herbert Sutcliffe talk about the Eliminating Diet: This clip requires Flash Player 7 or higher. Download Flash Player 7. Click on arrow to play or download as mp3 (634kb) This sound file is taken from an interview with Herbert Sutcliffe shortly before his death in 1971.
Hear extract from 'Fast Lunches' a Radio Digest magazine programme broadcast on the YA network in October 1956. Fast food in the 1950s was not quite what we understand by the term today, but the trend in food marketing was clearly recognisable even at this early stage.
The pavlova - that frothy, baked confection of egg whites and sugar - has long been seen as an icon of New Zealand cuisine; its place of origin has been debated with Australians for just as long in one of the many instances of trans-Tasman rivalry.
In the late 1950s and through the 1960s coffee bars sprang up all over Wellington city, with names like La Scala, the Picasso, Sans Souci Coffee Shoppe, Tete a Tete, and the International Coffee Lounge run by Wellington celebrity Carmen.
Although Wellington's first restaurants opened in the nineteenth century, the mid 1930s saw the emergence of a different type of establishment, the milk bar, which in many ways was the forerunner to the modern cafe.
A menu from the French Maid Coffee House The interior of the French Maid Coffee House, 1940s By Nancy Swarbrick The rise of coffee houses in the 1940s, 50s and 60s was not a phenomenon confined to Wellington, or indeed to New Zealand.
Typical New Zealand meals (particularly in the country) until at least the 1970s featured hearty morning and afternoon teas of homemade scones, biscuits and cakes; rich dinners of fatty roast meat, gravy and vegetables were followed by pudding.
To obtain physical fitness, it is of vital importance that the right mental attitude should accompany the food diet to enable the emotions, nerves and glands to co-operate with the healing processes of the body.
New Zealand in the 1940s and 1950s has been described as a drab and uniform place. From the late 1950s, however, a café culture was established throughout the country
Colour, beauty, exquisite artistry find joyous expression in the Art of Salad Making. The homemaker who serves salads so deliciously and artistically tempting that the family cannot resist is thereby blessing all with the glorious gift of health.
Pizza became a popular form of fast food in the 1970s when chains such as Pizza Hut opened. Hotels and restaurants picked up on the demand for pizza and served it as part of the regular fare.
For many years the scramble for refreshments at railway stations was one of the central rituals of New Zealand life. In 1946 the Refreshment Branch served more than nine million travellers.
Adding fuel to the coal range in the living quarters at the Cape Reinga Lighthouse, 1967. One of New Zealand's most popular types of stove was the Shacklock range, first manufactured by Henry Shacklock in 1873.
Shelling fresh peas may have homely connotations, but there can be scant return for the labour involved. It is not surprising that the convenience of frozen peas has made them a popular vegetable in New Zealand.
Before the middle of the twentieth century, most apples sold in New Zealand were soft and floury, useful as pie fillings or for baking. New, crisper varieties for eating, such as Pacific Rose and Braeburn, were developed from the 1950s.
Canned foods, first produced in the nineteenth century, have been an important convenience for New Zealand cooks, despite an emphasis on home gardens and orchards for much of the twentieth century.
Because there was so little of it, food played a very important part in a POW's life. The International Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva provided food parcels to POWs from those countries which were signatories to the 1929 Geneva Convention.
POWs divide up the swede peelings from the German mess at Stalag 357, Fallingbostel. Each man represents a barrack of eighty prisoners and stands in front of the cardboard boxes into which their share is put.
