Stephanie Alexander visits New Zealand for writers’ festival

Stephanie Alexander visits New Zealand for writers’ festivals

Australian author and food education activist, Stephanie Alexander AO, will be visiting New Zealand in May 2015 for the Dunedin Readers and Writer’s Festival and Auckland Writer’s Festival.

She will appear at two events in each of the New Zealand cities, and her sessions will canvas many of her achievements, as author of 14 influential books, as well as hergroundbreaking work in creating the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Foundation. She will also speak about her memoirs, A Cook’s Life, published in 2013.

Stephanie’s fifth book, The Cook’s Companion, first published in 1996, is regarded as an Australian classic, and often referred to as the ‘kitchen bible’ – in part due to its encyclopedic approach to food and cooking. In 2013 Stephanie began for the second time to revise the work. Two major new chapters were included. Every line was examined for any necessary update on statistics, to reflect changes in laws and regulations, to incorporate ingredients that are now mainstream such as truffles, scampi or kale into already existing chapters, to correct inconsistencies, to reflect new practices. In short it was a year’s work, which produced both the updated edition of the book published by Penguin/Lantern (2014) and the digital Cook’s Companion App for iOS and Android. This pocket-friendly reference guide encompasses the entire content of the Cook’s Companion in a format that is searchable, has many photographs, how-to videos, and is a delight to use.

The revised edition of The Cook’s Companion has been endorsed by foodwriters Nigella Lawson, Jamie Oliver, Nigel Slater and Yotam Ottolenghi. Nigella Lawson says ‘Anyone who cooks – or eats – needs this book in their home.’

The Cook’s Companion App especially appeals to a new generation of cooks, accustomed to finding their information online, giving access to the entire contents of the cookbook, including 2,000 recipes. Users can search by recipe name or main ingredient, sort dishes by type, compile a list of favourite recipes, add their own notes or email a list of ingredients for easy shopping.

In 2014 Stephanie became an Officer of the Order of Australia in recognition of her work with the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Foundation. Her strong belief is that the earlier children learn about food through example and pleasurable hands-on experience, the better their food choices will be throughout life. In 2001 Stephanie began developing a primary school kitchen garden program that could be integrated with the general primary curriculum. In 2004 she established the not-for-profit Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Foundation, of which she is now a director and Board member. The SAKGF is supported by federal and state Governments, corporate and philanthropic partners.

In March 2015, the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Foundation announced that having reached its important milestone of 10% of all Australian schools with a primary curriculum (approximately 800 schools). Having completed the project it undertook with the Australian government, the Foundation is now moving away from recruiting school-by-school and is now offering a membership to the Kitchen Garden Classroom to any school in Australia, including early learning centres as well as secondary schools. The SAKGF will continue to support our existing 800 Kitchen Garden Program Schools and will offer support and training to the schools and centres that decide to introduce pleasurable food education into their community.

Stephanie last visited New Zealand in October 2010.

ENDS

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