ANZAC Day - 2013

Today's popular ANZAC biscuit has evolved from the army biscuit distributed to Australian and New Zealand soldiers in the battlefield during the Great War.

The original biscuits were so hard that soldiers preferred to soak them in water and to eat them like a porridge.

Today's ANZAC biscuits are sweet and crunchy, full of golden syrup and butter, rolled oats and coconut.

On the 25th April every year, Australians and New Zealanders remember their countries' fallen soldiers.

It is the anniversary of the first landing by Australian and New Zealand troops at Gallipoli.

In the City of The Blue Mountains, dawn services, parades and sunset services are held up and down the highway.

Both my parents migrated to Australia post World War II, to make their new home here.

My mother was two weeks off her sixth birthday when war broke out on 1st September 1939.

The Second World War had a long lasting impact on her.

I know, because her stories about her experiences during the war were retold on an almost nightly bases during my childhood.

Her island home was strategically positioned and suffered considerable 

 aerial raids as a result.

She and her family spent many hours in air raid shelters during these years.

It would seem perfectly normal then, that she should take her young daughters to the dawn service, held in Sydney's Martin Place, each ANZAC Day.

Afterwards, we would stay for the parade.

To this day, I am sure I have no idea of the effect the war had on my parents; especially my mother.

ANZAC Day must have been to her some sort of link to her recent experiences - provided some connection to others who had suffered during those years.

I'm sure that I don't appreciate just how recent those events still were to her as she gave birth to her first child eight years after the end of the war.

What impact did those years have on how she would relate to that child; on how she perceived her new homeland, her new friends, the new government, her husband?

I might have an inkling but I will never truly understand no matter how hard I try.

I feel privileged to have been born into a country that helped birth the ANZAC tradition.

ANZAC:  Australian New Zealand Armed Corps.

The original ANZACS were the soldiers who landed at Gallipoli on Turkish Aegean coast, on 25 April 1915.

Recipe for 

ANZAC Biscuits

1 cup rolled oats

3/4 cup dessicated coconut

1 cup plain flour*

1 1/2 teaspoons bicarbonate of soda

2 tablespoons boiling water

1 cup sugar

1/2 cup butter

1 tbsp golden syrup

Mix oats, coconut, flour and sugar together in a large bowl.

Melt syrup and butter together.

Mix soda with boiling water and add to melted syrup and butter.

Add to dry ingredients.

Roll tablespoon of mixture and place on greased tray.

Bake in a slow oven for 20 minutes. (Less for fan forced oven).

*(I used gluten free all purpose flour.)

This recipe is from 1968 edition of "The Commonsense Cookery Book".  (That's another story!)