On Blogging Australia

Gillian Polack writes Food History.

I met Gillian a few years back - she was giving a talk on Arthurian legends that I attended.

She describes herself as:

… joyously addicted to food, history and writing. Her favourite recreational activity is to marvel over obscure spices and seek out strange recipes from long forgotten cookbooks. She spends the rest of her life writing, reading, teaching and pretending to think.

She truly is an historian, with a PhD in things mostly Medieval and occasional academic publications which she hides where no-one will see them.

Her other writing is less well hidden. She has been known to write book reviews (of fantasy novels, mainly), to pen critical pieces (about speculative fiction) and to write fiction. That fiction appears in print from time to time.

You can also find Gillian talking (about writing and teaching and life, rather than culinary history) at her other blog Even in a Little Thing, and on her website. Oh yes, and she teaches. There’s a vast amount of food and history and food history in her courses. In fact, when you look closely, you will find she is sadly obsessed and you really shouldn’t encourage her.

I hope that this post does serve as encouragement

She talks about her election night party,  the significance of shopping, and why you should “when in doubt, eat chocolate“. She delivers her recipes with an anecdote or a quirk of history.

Please visit Gillian’s blog and her NaBloPoMo homepage.