Languages

Cookery Book in Three Languages

Our Daily Bread And Fifty

RECIPES, a cookery book in three languages, Gilbertese, Ellice and English, and the first book to be published in the Ellice language, has just been issued from the Government Press, Suva, Fiji. The author is Mrs. Thomas Lascelles Ire monger, wife of a cadet-officer in the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony.

When Mrs. Iremonger first arrived in the Ellice Islands, where her husband was Acting Administrative Officer-in- Charge, she found that there were no trained cooks available. She could not speak a word of the language, and the boy she obtained could not speak a word of English. She knew practically noth ing of cookery, and he, of course, knew nothing of European methods; so she was compelled to learn to cook, to teach him

simut™nfo 1 u i sTy! and t 0 teach him addition to a section on bread making, and information on how to make yeast from bananas or toddy, the book contains 50 useful recipes, adapted to suit the scanty resources of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony (consisting mainly of pork, fish, eggs, pawpaw, bananas, taro and breadfruit). Only such imported essentials have been called upon as every European resident is cer tain to possess at any time, and natives can easily obtain, e.g., milk (tinned), flour, sugar, etc.

The book was originally merely for the author’s own personal use, but later she was surprised to find how great an interest was taken in it by the natives, In her preface, Mrs. Iremonger ex presses the hope that the book will be of some use to young, unmarried officers, who have neither the time, knowledge nor inclination to teach a cook, and whose meals are often badly prepared

and monotonous. In the G. and E.

Colony, in particular, where one lives mainly on fish, this starts lack of ap petite, leading on to tinned foods, and ends with dyspepsia.

“I know,” the author says, “that there is a shortage of native cooks, both at Ocean Island and in the G. and E.

Group. . . . These recipes should increase the natives’ scope, teach them the A, B, C of kitchen customs, and provide a number of potential cooks. The book was finished three months after I came to the islands knowing nothing of the language, but I am convinced that it is intelligible to the Ellice people, because I have tried all of the recipes on my cook and other natives.”

After completion, MSS of the book was mysteriously lost somewhere be tween the Gilberts and Fiji, and Mrs.

Iremonger re-drafted the whole from such scanty notes as she chanced to have with her on a visit to Suva.

As this is the first edition of the first

book to be published in the Ellice lan guage, copies probably will be eagerly sought by collectors and Polynesian societies, etc. The book is priced at 1/-, and is obtainable from the office of the Western Pacific High Commission, Suva, Fiji.

Dr. Eugene O’Neill, .medical officer on the liner “Aorangi”, who Is well-known throughout the Pacific, will probably leave that vessel before long and take up residence in Auckland. Dr. O’Neill has accepted a post with the NZ mili tary authorities for the duration of the war. In the last war he held the rank of colonel, and was awarded the CMG among other decorations.

Mr. W. Parsons, of Wau, returned to New Guinea in May after having been discharged from the AIF as the result of a foot injury.