A Salty Tale

Several days ago, a conversation developed with 2 of my favourite bloggers … Heather from Master of Something I’m Yet to Discover and M-R at Rinnovata.  If you aren’t familiar with them, they both hail from Australia and we were discussing odd regional foods – in particular, the Canadian use of maple syrup in unlikely foods like bacon.

Of course, it was inevitable that vegemite would enter the conversation.

Image from worldmarket.com

Many years ago I had visited Australia and refused to try it at the time.  It seemed totally wrong to eat something that was black in colour – not to mention Husband’s unfavourable review.

Gilles usually has an iron stomach and will eat virtually anything – unless it has coconut in it, but that’s a different story.  If he thought vegemite was disgusting, that was good enough for me.

Heather however, pointed out that one of my favourite foods – licorice – is black … so my prejudice against vegemite based primarily on its unappetizing colour seemed unfair. Since my theme for this year is *discovery*, it seemed only fair that I add vegemite to my list of *52 new things* to try.

Since our conversation, I’ve been unsuccessful in finding vegemite in Toronto (ok – I admit I didn’t try particularly hard), however my wise hiking partner Helen pointed out that Marmite is a UK version of the salty Australian paste.

Score – my local grocery store had Marmite.

M-R gave me very specific instructions on how to eat it … bread, butter, and a VERY THIN spread of vegemite.  I followed her instructions to the letter.

Verdict? … not bad.  Nutella it is not, but palatable.

A single tasting hardly seemed ‘scientific’, so I needed to repeat the experiment a second morning and that’s when things got interesting.  I encouraged Gilles to try it too, however he chose to ignore M-R’s careful instructions and grabbed a spoon.

I regret that I didn’t have my camera to capture what happened next.

First there was a gagging noise, followed by a dash to the kitchen sink.  When spitting into the sink didn’t provide the relief he was hoping for, Gilles stuck his face under the faucet and attempted to wash out his mouth under the running water.

Conclusion? Deep belly laughs first thing in the morning is a perfect way to start a day.