OK, so here's the story..... something that I, like many other Aussies have grown up with is the simple idea of taking buttered bread and sprinkling it with either multi-coloured Hundreds & Thousands, or multi-coloured Sprinkles.
So we move to the UK, are in temporary accommodation and Miss 5-almost-6 is about to have a birthday. Hmmm, we need something simple and easy for her classmates to share with her on this auspicious occasion that requires no cooking due to lack of cooking equipment, and won't cost a fortune, especially with the conversion rate.
AH-HA! She cries, 'fairy bread will cover the situation nicely!"
But being a new school and culture will they allow treats to be brought in. So the teacher is approached with the simple request of bringing in fairy bread. "Fairy bread???", "Never heard of it!"
I, thinking as with so many other things, imagine that the brits must just have another name for it, just like how OMO is called Persil, Kleenex toilet paper is Andrex and set-top boxes are called digi-boxes, and begin to explain.......
"I know what 100's & 1000's are......but as to the rest...? But it sounds yummy, so go right ahead!"
So I prepare for the miraculous miracle of making fairy bread, thinking to myself the teacher will either be disappointed in the results having imagined something much more creative, or will simply turn around with "Oh THAT - We call that xxxx here!"
Finally 3 grocery shops later I find 100's & 1000's and "sugar strands" (sprinkles for us Aussies) and the rest takes it's natural course with a nice, freshly cleansed kitchen becoming a field of minute, sugary land mines, but then voila, the finished result, all laid out on a nice foil dish (something I would surely have forgotten if I hadn't accidentally seen one).
So off we trot to school, fairybread in hand, and to my amazement the teacher is impressed and has never seen anything like it. "But it's such a simple idea....!" I stammer, thinking she's having me on, or as my husband thinks, pitying to poor, demented Australian girl, but no, she genuinely hasn't ever come across it before. "It must be a cultural dish" she says.
"Well, it might be..." I reply, "..but no-one's ever pointed that out to me before...."
So the humble fairy bread, a 'cultural' Australian delicacy? Who would have thought it!
Does this mean that if any multicultural days are held at school where you bring in your national dish, I can get away with a loaf of pre-sliced bread and some prettiliy coloured balls of sugar???
Fairy Bread - A Cultural Delicacy?
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