How to stay well fed at a rally

The Streets Ice Cream boycott has Helen Razer thinking how to stay well fed on a picket line. She finds even vegans will eat roadkill roo stew to feed their protest spirit.

According to estimates, your reporter ate 500 Calippo Lemon Minis last summer. Yes, this was an act of dental destruction, but consider the context. I had a book to write very quickly and no spare hour to cook, cultivate or remember the existence of vegetables.

I made deadline on an engine of lemon-y sugar, so the esteem in which I held Calippo doubled. “I love you,” I whispered to the last tangy box I purchased.

Then, this happened. Members of the Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union who face pay cuts called for a boycott of Streets’ icy treats.

Some African National Congress ladies ... brought along homemade bread and chakalaka. That day, freedom tasted good.

The decision to boycott, of course, is up to you. It is an opportunity to try your hand at homemade Paddle Pops, SBS-style. For me, it was an opportunity to think about food, and what place it takes in protest action.

These days I write books about protest. Back when I was young, though, I actually protested. And, let me tell you, the revolution wasn’t catered well. I asked Trotskyists of my age, “Are you eating any better today?” They told me, no. It’s still just sandwiches when they’re smashing the system.

I do recall an exception in the 1980s, though. I was at school and every Thursday, one very decent teacher gave me course credit to protest Apartheid. Some African National Congress ladies who were visiting to talk to us at the picket line brought along homemade bread and chakalaka. That day, freedom tasted good.

I told this story to my dreadful friend, Shakira, who is always at some anti-racist rally or another. She said, “What do you expect? White people are dreadful cooks,” as she enjoys confusing me by making very general statements. She also enjoys making very good chai masala. She says that this invigorating bevvy is often carried in flasks by Desi people to demonstrations.

Protest is ongoing at the Aboriginal Tent Embassy. I asked one of its founders, Professor Gary Foley, what the ambassadors ate. “Back when we started, no fires were permitted,” he said. Cooking at this site was difficult, says Foley, and funds were scant. “In the early days, we survived on soups, brought to us most often by women. We couldn’t afford take-away meals, so we relied on local generosity.”

We bought cheap McDonald’s meals and ice creams, some of which we also threw.

I then asked a Vote Yes pal, Nadine, about solidarity snacks during phone campaigning, and she said, “Dips, when I’m catering.”. I then asked Nikki, whom I’ve met at LGBTIQ events, what she ate back when she was in Ipswich in 1996. “Because we were too hungry to oppose capitalism, as well as Pauline Hanson, we bought cheap McDonald’s meals and ice creams, some of which we also threw.”

I asked so many folks about protest food, I eventually found a true expert. This Tasmanian peace-protest veteran who goes by the short name of Eli has some big cooking stories.

“It all starts with gruel, Helen,” he says, and gives me the recipe for the mass-action breakfast he still cooks in two seventy-litre pots. Stewed fresh fruit, local and organic where possible, is combined with oats, which Eli cooks by absorption. “I learned that trick in hippie households.”

A slow-burn, high-nutrient, low-cost breakfast keeps protestors going for hours.

A slow-burn, high-nutrient, low-cost breakfast keeps protestors going for hours, says Eli, who will, if occupying for days at a time, offer a vego dish like dahl for dinner. But once at the Roxby Downs uranium mine, this anti-nuke cook served meat.

“Went into the tent and I saw this furry thing. My first reaction was ‘who put a dog in my kitchen’. My second was to make stew.”

Locals had dropped off a roo that had met with its end on the highway, so Eli made a sign that said “Roadkill Café”.

“Even the vegans ate it,” he said. 

 

Helen Razer is your frugal food enthusiast, guiding you to the good eats, minus the pretension and price tag in her weekly Friday column, Cheap Tart. Don't miss her next instalment, follow her on Twitter @HelenRazer. 

 

Image by Flickr (A Syn).