Since no-one raised their hand with Australian recipes they craved (well, apart from fairy bread) and it is still *days* before National Sorry Day, I raided my historical cookbook collection. I need to beef up the Australiana side of it (admire my dreadful pun - I am obviously not through bad joke week yet), but I have several cool books. Today's recipe comes from a 1950s book called "New Australian Cookery". The illustrations are black and white and remind me why I have this book. It reflects the cookery of "On the Beach" and of my earliest childhood. In fact, it reflects Australian cooking from the late 1940s through to the late 1960s.

I opened a page at random and found pictures of ribbon and lily sandwiches. The next page has a list of 'interesting' sandwich fillings: cheese and olive; ham, horseradish and sweet pickle; salmon and cucumber; bacon, lettuce and vegemite. There is a whole section devoted to cooking using a Vacola outfit, which I intend to explore tomorrow, since my mother's kit has recently arrived in Canberra for summer bottling. Food does the "wow, haven't we changed" thing better than almost anything else.

Because SE- Australia currently has a nice little heatwave, I thought I would give you a drink recipe. There are a ton more cool drinks where that came from, so just say and unlimited amounts of dated drink recipes will be yours. This first one is a variant of the punch my family made for parties. We left out the sugar, added lemon to taste, and put a bit of crushed pineapple at the bottom of the punch bowl:

Pineapple mint julep

2 cups unsweetened pineapple juice
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup lemon juice
3 cups ginger ale
6 sprigs fresh mint
ice

Wash and bruise mint leaves. Cover the leaves with sugar and add the lemon juice. Let it sit for fifteen minutes. Add the pineapple juice. Pour it over ice in tall glasses or a pitcher, add the the chilled ginger ale and garnish with more mint.