I do not think you can be a true-blue ridgy-didge Aussie until you have eaten, and enjoy vegemite. Perhaps even until you can enjoy it for breakfast, lunch and tea, as the jingle goes!
One of the first foods I was fed was vegemite. It was stuck to a teething rusk. Many a baby photo of mine, my siblings and even my children come with chubby cheeks smudged with the sticky black paste we call Vegemite. Mum would sit us in our highchair on the old Queenslander’s veranda and shove a vegemite smeared teething biscuit in our pudgy hand. I assume the veranda was strategic for both the natural breeze and the reduction in sticky finger marks to walls and other pieces of furniture.
A typical and staple childhood sandwich- or sanga as we called it, was white bread smeared with real butter and the black spread, roughly cut into squares and wrapped in waxed paper. It was one of my favourite sangas or maybe it was my only option, as I was passed it most mornings to put into my school bag. It sometimes came home too and was fed to the dogs, because sometime during the day it was squashed and became warm in my school bag.
Next to Weetbix and reconstituted powdered milk, toast and vegemite was a staple brekky food in my childhood. In my early years toast was not that easy to make though, as it required a parent to stoke up the slow combustion stove and spear a piece of bread on a long fork and toast it over the coals. Even when we had electricity, the electric toaster was tricky and even dangerous to use. It was not until my teens year that we had a popup toaster and we could toast our bread without supervision.
Vegemite goes well on crackers. It is a yummy base to cheese and or tomato. My cracker of choice may have changed from the Sao to a rice cracker these days, but there are still days I crave the salty base of the black paste with a slice of ripe red tomato and a slab of tasty cheese. I have even used it in a cooking class, layering vegemite with grated cheese on puff pastry to bake vegemite scrolls.
I reckon every family in Australia in my childhood kept a jar of Vegemite in their pantry. It has a long shelf life and is versatile. It does not spoil either when flecks of toast crumbs and streaks of butter are left in the jar or the lid is left off for some time.
If you want a quick cup of soup, why not try a teaspoon of vegemite dissolved in a steaming cup of hot water. I can even manage a teaspoonful by itself; although even this Aussie girl thinks that is going a bit too far.
The company behind vegemite has tried a few new things in recent years but as far as I can see they did not succeed. Why mix it with plastic cheese when you can slather your own black paste on a hand sliced piece of tasty Coon? What were they thinking when they mixed it with Cadbury chocolate?! I, have however, appreciated the new packaging. Many a time I have travelled overseas or sent a care package to a fellow Aussie and have praised the plastic tube that you can now buy.
Every now and then I give Marmite and Promite a trial. I just cannot get past the fact that they are foreign counterfeits. Maybe it is nostalgia. Maybe they all are an acquired taste. Vegemite is my acquired taste. I still keep a jar in my pantry for when I crave it. Actually, at last count I had two jars of the stuff.
Yes, I know Vegemite is now owned by an American company. But to me, it will always remain an iconic food of Australians. And I will always be a vegemite kid; ‘a happy little vegemite’!
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