From Outback Gardens - A Bushtucker Pie
The Advertiser, May 26, 2006; By Nigel Austin, Rural Editor
The newest offering on Australia's
rapidly expanding bush food menu is that most traditional of dishes
- a pie.
The first batch of 20,000 bushfoods and beef pies was made
yesterday at Vili's and are expected to be in shops from next
week.
Vili's healthy new pie, which features produce grown in
Aboriginal-owned bushfood gardens, is the brainchild of South-East
woman Gayle Quarmby after despairing at the diet of Aboriginal
workers at the community-run gardens. The new pie provides a
healthy food for Aboriginal communities and a way of making
money.
"This specific project came about because when we were working
in the AP Lands, the young men only ate these horrible fatty
Victorian pies and cans of coke," Mrs Quarmby said. "We've been
supplying Vili's with bulk bush foods for several years and for a
long time, I've been asking him for help. When we told him the
facts about the poor nutrition, poor health and lack of jobs in
Aboriginal communities, he agreed to help."
The low fat, low salt, high fibre pies are made partly from
desert raisings, wattle seed and fresh saltbush grown at the
gardens.
Mrs Quarmby is devoted to helping Aboriginal people. She and
husband Mike started Outback Pride, based at Reedy Creek in the
South-East, to help Aboriginal communities develop a bushfood
industry. The bushfoods pie benefits from vitamin C and other
minerals in the desert raisins, the wattle seed is used for
thickening and fibre, while saltbush leaves add natural salt,
anti-oxidants and iron.
"We tried to prepare a complete balanced meal in a pie and they
turned out to be very yummy at the same time," Mrs Quarmby
said.