Seeing this headline on an Australian news site, really brought back memories for me. I’ve visited Australia several times in my life, and always love to go back. Each visit has brought about some great memories. I swore after my first visit in 1986, that I would live there some day. I still think that.
Australia is worried about cholesterol — and so is almost every country in the world. But, what really got me thinking about this article is the picture and caption on the page…
An upper crust lunch? Not likely. Meat pies are packed with artery-clogging saturated fat.
Mmmmm…meat pies. That picture makes my mouth water. Of course, the way she’s looking at the pie, you might wonder if there’s something moving or still alive inside.
If you’ve never had the pleasure of a meat pie, you don’t know what you’re missing. I had my first meat pie at an
Australian Rules Football game in Melbourne in 1986. They sell these things at games like we sell hog dogs at baseball games in the U.S. They are very common — you can even purchase fresh baked meat pies at just about any petrol station you can see. My first meat pie was filled with lamb meat, made by
Four’n Twenty. Deeee—-licious!
But, there are other “flavors” of meat pie. The meats allowed in a meat pie are beef, buffalo, camel, cattle, deer, goat, hare, pig, poultry, rabbit and sheep. Kangaroo meat, a leaner alternative, is also sometimes used.
My favorite? Kangaroo. OK, that may sound disgusting, but it’s not. You may think to yourself, “how could you eat such a cute animal?” Seriously, it’s a really good taste. Of course, there are jokes that the meat in the Kangaroo-filled meat pies are from the carcasses littering the Australian roads, much like we see deer along the roads and highways in the U.S. At least in Australia the locals are far smarter than we are. In the U.S., hitting a deer will total your car. In Australia, you rarely see a car, van, or truck that doesn’t have a Kangaroo grill on the front. These look like something from the Mad Max movies and I swear you could run your car through a concrete wall.
The last time I was in Australia, I had my wife, Megan, with me. Our last night there, we took a cab to the ocean (we were staying at the
Gold Coast) and spent a few hours on the beach. But, before arriving at the beach, we had the cabbie stop by a petrol station that he knew had the best meat pies around. Meg had never eaten a meat pie, so we loaded up a few different “flavors” and headed to the beach. It’s a great memory sitting there with my wife, listening to the surf, feeling the breeze, and gnawing on a Kangaroo pie.
Wikipedia has a bit or information on the Australian meat pie, but not much: