IN 2018 I made a fabulous raw version of the famous snickers bar. At the time I called it snigger as I thought to snigger meant to laugh a bit offhandedly and thought it was a cute play on words.
However I did not know that it was also a term that is used as a racial slur. These days, while snigger still remains a term in the dictionary for laughing a little slyly, most people choose to use the more American term to snicker.
I had no idea until I came off the class teaching this amazing treat to a whole load of comments calling me racist. I was mortified there was no part of me calling this bar sniggers to offend anyone at all. If anyone knows me well I do my utmost to make people feel incredibly included and hate to see people treated badly. I really do apologise. I had no ill intentions at all.
I removed all my posts and let all the people who had signed up for the free class know that I had changed the name to Veet’s Snickers Bar.
To be honest I felt sick to the stomach. A couple of years ago I had learned of the term dog whistle.
In discussions about racism, a dog whistle is a word, phrase, symbol, or message that appears ordinary or harmless to most people but is understood by a particular audience as conveying a racial, ethnic, or political message.
Some examples are the one I unintentionally used
Snigger
Another example is
Inner city while literally it refers to urban areas it is also a coded way of referring to black communities
Globalist is a term for anti Semitism
And 88 is also antisemitic because the 8th letter of the alphabetic is H. HH is short for Heil Hitler.
Since attending a lecture on dog whistling a few years ago I have been on the look out for dog whistle terms, so you can possibly understand why I was mortified that I had actually used one.
Some people would just shrug it off. Oh well, I didn’t know, I'm sorry, I won’t use that again. But because of my hypersensitivity, which possibly comes from me being ADHD, and my upbringing, I was thoroughly mortified.
Anyway, lets move on because surely I need to tie this up into cooking somehow.
Number one. I want to make sure that I don’t mess up again and I will really evaluate anything I rename, so this recipe I share with you today is a take on Vegemite but it has tahini in it so I have called it Tegemite.
A few words in the kitchen that I am cautious to use – one I never use and the other 2 I am trying so hard to change. I am doing well but occasionally I use the old name.
Master chef – while there is nothing wrong with this term – I always cringed when people called me a master chef. I hate the gender use around master and also the racist and sexist connotations around master, so I have always used head chef or chef extraordinaire.
The next is Makrut -this is the term that Thai cooks and educators, writers, restaurants, some supermarkets and media organisations are asking us to use. Makrut instead of kaffir limes and leaves, as Kaffir is a racial slur used in South Africa. Asian kitchens and many western countries took on the name kaffir lime with no intention of ill hurt but many are calling for it to be given back its original name which is Makrut.
And the third is the ooray plum/gudjin plum/Wiray plum in Australia instead of calling it Davidson Plum. Davidson named the plum after himself long after the first nations people of Australia had a name for it. He not only did that, but also took part in the massacres of Indigenous people in Australia.
Same with, up until recently, I referred to the local tamarind that grows here as native tamarind but the indigenous people where it grows locally want it to be called Gubinge which is also the name used for Kakadu plum.
The Moreton Bay Chestnut is commonly referred to as the black bean. Moreton was a 14th century Earl. Goodness knows why he has an original Australian chestnut named after him.
Boogum /Yiw-oo-rra/Irtalie
Macadamia is a English term for that creamy nut, but the first nations names that are used are Kindal/jindilli and Bauple
Another term that I still have been using and recently did, is to blind bake- pre bake – while this term may have come about by the use of the French term cuire à blanc which means to bake without browning it may have been turned into white bake then from there blind bake – regardless if some people with disabilities find this offensive then that is enough for me to never use the term again. Pre bake is good enough for me.
And now because all this feels super serious, I wanted to share some witchy terms with you. Well actually even that is quite serious as we know medicine women who were called witches and burnt at the stake had a whole array of language for common kitchen ingredients which were used against them.
Common interpretations include:
“Witch” Ingredient Believed Herb/Meaning
Eye of newt Mustard seed
Toe of frog Buttercup
Wool of bat Holly leaves or moss
Tongue of dog Houndstongue herb
Adder’s fork Adder’s tongue Fern
Blind-worm’s sting A type of fern or snake-related herb
Lion’s tooth Dandelion
Dragon’s blood Red plant resin
Wormwood Mugwort which is used in dumplings teas and soups
Devil’s tongue Konjac root
Here is a recipe that I just can’t get enough of. I am eating it everyday and love it.
Tegemite recipe
INGREDIENTS
½ cup black tahini
½ cup nutritional yeast
tbsp miso
1 tbsp tamari
METHOD
Mix it all together in a bowl with a fork or, for a smoother Tegemite, put it in the food processor and blitz.
FCT (Fun Cooking Tip)
Cook with others, it make cooking so much fun, and that is why joining the Living Well with Veet Cooking and Nutrition Collective is a fabulous idea. Check it out. We meet online each month twice to cook, and if you can’t make it live, the recordings are kept in the collective portal. There are so many extra recipes and cooking tips and tricks kept in the portal, making it a fabulous resource.
