I SANG FOR MY SUPPER

Memories of a Food Writer

by MARGARET FULTON

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Used hardcover book with dustjacket in very good condition, published 1999, 288 pages, with black and white photos throughout.

For more than forty years Margaret Fulton has been writing about food and cookery. Generations of Woman, Woman's Day, and New Idea readers have used her recipes and benefited from her advice on cooking and entertaining. Her cookbooks have sold millions of copies. Now, in I Sang for My Supper, the doyenne of Australian food writers tells the story of her life.

The youngest of six children of Scottish migrants, Margaret Fulton was three years old when her family arrived in Australia in 1927. She grew up in Glen Innes, New South Wales, and came to Sydney during World War II to seek a career as a fashion designer. Wartime restrictions, however, led her to a job at Australian Gas Light Company giving cookery classes and demonstrations. And so her career in food began, a career that has made her name a household word and resulted in her being awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia and declared an Australian National Living Treasure.

But life for Margaret Fulton has not always been plain sailing. A failed first marriage left her as a young single mother with no money. Her experience as part owner of Berida Manor, a health resort that played host to the Commonwealth Heads of Government immediately after the Hilton bombing in 1978, prompted a journalist to dub her 'the hostess with the mostest - the most prime ministers and the most problems'. And for ten of her later years she lived under the threat of financial ruin and the loss of her beloved home in Balmain.

The heartaches and the highlights make engrossing reading.

Part memoir, part social history, part food commentary, I Sang for My Supper not only tells the personal story of an influential Australian woman but presents a picture of the changing social and cultural scene in Australia from the 1920s to the present and illustrates how Australia's cuisine has changed in those years.
Photographs from family albums, press clippings and illustrations, as well as many of Margaret Fulton's favourite recipes from each period of her life, add a nostalgic flavour to a book that conveys all the warmth, humour and drama of a remarkable life.

About the author

Margaret Isobel Fulton (born 1924 in Nairn, Scotland) is an Australian food and cooking 'guru', writer, journalist, author, commentator and National Living Treasure. Margaret Fulton was the first and greatest of the Australian celebrity cookery writers. As the world opened up again after World War Two and a wider range of foodstuffs began to arrive in the shops, it was Margaret Fulton, through her magazine columns and later her cookbooks, who showed the nation how to cook in new and exciting ways. It was largely through her inspiration and example that younger Australians realised the pleasurable and creative possibilities of fine dining. Our national cuisine was transformed.

Fulton's book, The Margaret Fulton Cookbook, was published by Paul Hamlyn in 1968 and was an instant success. Over 1.5 million copies have sold and it remains in print. Her early recipes encouraged Australian housewives to vary the Australian staples of "meat and three vegetables" and to be creative with food. She 'discovered' food from exotic places such as Spain, Italy, India and China and as Cookery Editor, 'brought these into Australian homes through her articles in the Women's Day magazine'.

Fulton realised that chefs who did television shows tended to lose their audience. Accordingly, she remained a writer who regularly appeared as a 'guest' on various TV shows. For Margaret Fulton, the great pleasure of cookery writing was to bring good food into ordinary homes. She was never interested in writing for an elite. Instead she concentrated on 'bringing magic' into everyday living through better everyday eating.

A passionate traveller, she is credited with being one of the first people to bring international cuisine to the Australian table. She has been honoured with the OAM (Medal of the Order of Australia) and is one of the National Trust's 100 National Living Treasures. In 2006 she was nominated one of The Bulletin's 100 Most Influential Australians. One of her recent cookbooks is Christmas, which she co-wrote with her daughter, Suzanne Gibbs.

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I Sang for My Supper: Memories of a Food Writer - Margaret Fulton