Tag Archives: Easter

Furry friends, deadly pests or tasty treats?

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The Easter Bunny may be cute and cuddly, but he’s a real pest in Australia (which is why we recommend the Haigh’s Easter Bilby instead – see below). A century ago Australia was home to 10 billion rabbits, thriving in their adopted home. Storyteller Bruce Munday finds the rabbit saga irresistible, and has collected it into his new book, Those Wild Rabbits. The book features this excerpt from the Age in 1925, including a recipe for baked rabbit with apple sauce.

Rabbit, the Cheapest White Meat

Visitors from England often express surprise that rabbits, which are a delicacy in Europe, are often despised here. They are the cheapest of the white meats with us, and if properly prepared, yield to none, in delicacy of flavor. White meats are both more digestible and freer from those deleterious substances which in beef and mutton contribute to the rise of blood pressure and all its attendant evils. During the winter months first-quality rabbits are difficult to obtain, but the young spring ones are just coming on to the market now, and lend themselves to varieties of tasty cooking. Part of the unpopularity of rabbit here is probably due to the fact that methods of preparation are stereotyped, but the following recipes will give dishes which are both economical and appetising.

Baked Rabbit with Apple Sauce

Before cooking always soak the rabbit in salt and water for 30 minutes.

Take a moderate sized rabbit and spread over it slices of carrot, onions, lemon and bacon. Sprinkle with salt, pepper, mixed spices and a few cloves, enclose in greased paper and cook in a hot oven. Make the sauce from six apples, the juice and grated rind of an orange, sugar and a little water. Pour the sauce over the rabbit and serve hot as possible. N.B. – If preferred, the rabbit can be stuffed before baking with any ordinary forcemeat.

(Age, 20 October 1925, p. 6)

‘Western Beach’ (SA), 1900 [State Library of South Australia]

Find out more about Those Wild Rabbits here.

The Easter Bilby: Enjoyed since 1993

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Hopefully the Easter Bilby will be bringing you plenty of Haigh’s chocolates this weekend. Here is the story of the Haigh’s bilby, which has indeed been Enjoyed for Generations – if only they were still life-size!

Wrapping moulded chocolate and eggs ready for Easter. Circa 1965.

The idea came from Erwin Shulten, a ranger at Bundaleer Forest Reserve at Jamestown, who asked Haigh’s and a couple of other manufacturers to create a chocolate bilby to replace the traditional Easter rabbit in support of the goals of the Foundation for Rabbit- Free Australia (RFA). Not only would an Easter bilby draw attention to the endangered status of this shy, long-eared Australian native marsupial but it would also promote a more realistic image of rabbits as destroyers of the environment rather than cute and cuddly pets. Alister had no hesitation in supporting the project, and Haigh’s supplied chocolate bilbies for the Bundaleer Forest Easter Egg Hunt for several years.

The first bilbies in 1993, almost life-size, were an instant success; stores ran out of stocks, and people even followed Haigh’s delivery van in their desperate bilby quest. Two years later Haigh’s produced a series of smaller bilbies, using a simpler, stylised design that made the chocolates easier to unmould. With demand for the miniature bilbies even greater, the chocolate bunny was abandoned in 1995 and Haigh’s made the chocolate bilby a permanent feature of its Easter range. Since 1993 Haigh’s has donated part of the proceeds of bilby sales to promote awareness of the threat to the environment posed by rabbits and to help fund research into the development of biological controls, and continues to support RFA. Twenty years after the beginning of the partnership, in 2013, Haigh’s had produced more than half a million Easter Bilbies.

Some years ago, two weeks before Easter, I was putting the sale of seven bilbies through for a lady. She told me it was her second purchase of seven bilbies in the same week. They were for her grandchildren but she had eaten the first lot. Jokingly I said I hoped she would not be back for another seven. Lo and behold, a few days before Easter she was back again. ‘The final seven,’ she told me, both of us laughing. Beverley Tripodi, Haigh’s employee

Designed by Katharine Lahn, the bilby wears a Haigh’s apron and carries a basket of brightly coloured eggs.

Find out more about Enjoyed for Generations here.

Our authors are the best authors

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Am I repeating myself? Because they’re ace. We’ve always known it, but it’s nice when they get the recognition they deserve, as is happening at the moment —
Hard on the heels of Margaret Merrilees’s shortlisting for the Glenda Adams Prize for New Writing, we now have not one but two longlistings from the Nita B. Kibble Awards as well!

The first is Rachel Hennessy, whose novel The Heaven I Swallowed was runner-up for the Australian/Vogel award before it was even published. Now it has been longlisted for the Kibble Literary Award for an established Australian female author. This is a HUGE deal, but then again The Heaven I Swallowed deserves every word of praise it gets.

Heaven I Swallowed cover First Week cover

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The second is Margaret again! The First Week has now been longlisted for the Dobbie Literary Award, awarded each year for a first published work from an Australian woman writer.

These are two powerful books, written by two of the most talented authors working in Australia today. Today, us Wakefieldians are feeling pretty bloody proud.

(Also a bit sick. Celebratory Easter chocolate is getting out of hand over here. Is it wine time yet? HAPPY EASTER, KIDS!!)