If you could reinvent Arnott’s classic snack, the Wagon Wheel, what would you change and why?
- Yahoo!7 Australia Answers Team

Do you remember this TV advertisement?

Wagon Wheels were one of the most iconic snack foods for Australians growing up in the 80′s and 90′s. The TV ad above, along with several others were recited over and over by kids across the country – I’m fairly sure there was one with iguanas, snails or sardines as well, does anyone else remember them too?

Recently, my fiancé and I were travelling in country NSW and came across Wagon Wheels in one of the service stations we stopped at. Extremely excited, they were quickly purchased and consumed. They tasted just as we remembered them, it literally was a jolt back to our childhoods.

Check out the history of the Wagon Wheel below:

Arnott’s product innovation team have been hard at work figuring out ways to reinvent the classic snack. Perhaps you can lend them a hand?

Kate
Community Manager

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Following my previous blog posts The Taste of Autumn and Food and Drink Month on Answers, our experts in the Food & Drink category have embraced their inner foodie and shared their favourite recipes on our open questions.

Before I reveal our menu and the winners, I want to thank you all for your participation and great answers posted during the last week and-a-half. You’ve been really respectful of the community guidelines but, at the same time, creative with original recipes. It was a real pleasure to discover your ideas.

Without further ado, I’d like to introduce our Autumn menu and our winners!

Entrée (starter)

• Bruschetta with a red wine vinegar, garlic and olive oil dressing submitted by music_is_life14 -Best Answer-
• Malt vinegar marinated Bluff Oysters with white pepper submitted by Hman (Response #2 selected by me)
• Soupe au Pistou (Pistou Soup) submitted by AJ in Exile (Response #3 selected by me)
• Crispy noodle salad submitted by Bri (Response #5 selected by me)
• Field Mushrooms with lemon & olive oil, served with a small salad submitted by Cherie M (Response #6 selected by me)

Main Course

• Ale, Barley and Sausage Stew submitted by almarj70 -Best Answer-
• Potato Salad with onion, celery, dill pickles and mayo with brown mustard and pickle juice submitted by barbara via Joanne’s question on potato salad -Best Answer-
• Chicken Cacciatore with Spaghetti submitted by BullyH (Response #6)
• Steamed Salmon on a bed of spinach with scallops and asparagus submitted by *Jellz* (Response #9)
• Slow cooked pork belly in a smoky bbq mango sauce served on a sweet potato mash with blanched sugar snap peas submitted by Stiffler (Response #16)

Dessert

• Call Me Guilty Pumpkin Cheesecake submitted by AJ in Exile -Best Answer-
• Tiramisu submitted by zcapan (Response #6)
• Apple Crumble submitted by almarj70 (Response #7)
• Microwaved Bananas with Hokey Pokey Ice Cream submitted by BullyH (Response #9)
• Lemon Meringue Kisses submitted by Sonia (Response #11)

Once again, congratulations to our head chefs Joanne, barbara, music_is_life14, almarj70 and AJ in Exile. And also congratulations as well to everyone else who won

The best answers received 200 points for their appetising dishes, whereas the other participants I selected above received 100 points each for their answers.

Please keep in mind that the Food & Drink category is full of great recipes from the community. We’re pretty sure you’ll able to find what you’re looking for in the existing questions or discover new culinary experiences as we did during this operation.

What is your favourite entrée, main or dessert? Do you know how to cook it? Please share your thoughts in this blog post or ask a question about it

Again, many thanks for all your contributions!

Kate
Community Manager

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It’s time for your inner foodie to shine!

Throughout March, we are celebrating the Food & Drink category on Yahoo!7 Answers by creating a menu of Autumn food with help from you!

Thank you to everyone who has contributed thus far, our mouths have been watering endlessly

We’ve decided to extend the questions until Tuesday, so you have the weekend to find your favourite recipes and share them with us. To enter, simply answer one of these

• Entrée (starter): What is your perfect recipe for an entrée or starter?
• Main course: What is your recipe for the perfect main course?
• Dessert: How would you prepare your perfect dessert?

On Tuesday, we will select the best answer for each of these questions. As a reward, the user chosen as the best answer will receive 200 points. But that’s not all! We will be choosing 4 other responses from each question as well, they will get 100 points reward for their involvement. So get answering

Kate
Community Manager

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A few days ago, we announced the celebration of Food and Drink during March.

To do this, we are creating a menu of food from community contributions, suitable for consumption during the cooler months of Autumn. Unlike most of the world where it’s now warming up for Spring, we are the complete opposite, with Autumn being the current season down here in Australia and over in New Zealand.

The menu will contain the best recipes for cooking an entrée (starter), main course and a dessert. These recipes will come from yourself and the other foodies in the Food & Drink category on Yahoo!7 Answers, it’s your time to shine!

Our first request for recipes comes from Joanne:

• What are the ingredients, other than potatoes, in your favourite potato salad recipe?

If you have an amazing recipe for potato salad, be sure to share it on her question above!

And now for the other questions…

• Entrée (starter): What is your perfect recipe for an entrée or starter?
• Main course: What is your recipe for the perfect main course?
• Dessert: How would you prepare your perfect dessert?

If you have a favourite dish or recipe to share for any of the above, answer away!

Next Friday, we will select the best answer for each of these questions. As a reward, the user chosen as the best answer will receive 200 points. But that’s not all! We will be choosing 4 other responses from each question as well, they will get 100 points reward for their involvement. So get answering

Kate
Community Manager

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For details, please visit our post on The Taste of Autumn!

Good luck!

Kate
Community Manager

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Photo by James Bowe

Throughout the month of March and into April, we will be celebrating the Food & Drink category on Yahoo!7 Answers with a menu of Autumn food created by you!

Unlike the rest of Yahoo! Answers globally who are currently preparing to embrace Spring the days here in Australia are getting steadily shorter and the weather is growing colder, so we will be focussing on foods suitable for eating during the season of Autumn. With your help, the menu will feature dishes for an entree (starter), main and dessert.

What do I need to do?

We’re glad you asked! By 12 noon AEST (Australian Eastern Standard Time) on Tuesday, the 16th of March (that’s next week, 4 days away), we’d like you to submit open questions to us about a recipe you’d like to know for an entree, main dish or a dessert. They should be for dishes suitable for Autumn fare.

You can submit them by leaving a comment here with your link or by sending an email to us at y_answrs_team_au@yahoo.com.au.

Make sure your questions are open for the duration of a week. If you want to extend the duration of your question, simply click on the “Expiration Date” available in the action bar below your question via the “Edit” dropdown.

What next?

Stay tuned to our blog!

If your question is selected, it could appear for a full week in the Best of Answers module on our Answers front page and receive 50 bonus points to your Answers account. If at the end of the opening period of your question, you carefully select a better quality response, we will offer 20 extra points.

Be sure to keep an eye on this blog for further details as they emerge.

We look forward to your questions!

Kate
Community Manager

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“How can you eat delicious, fresh food at home on a tight budget?”– Jamie Oliver

Having a little less in your pocket should not mean you scrimp on healthy food, or so says chef extraordinaire, Jamie Oliver. In posing his question to the Yahoo!7 Answers community, Jamie reaches out with a dilemma that so many of us face: can we shop, prepare, cook and eat in smarter ways?

Jamie Oliver is known as the man who successfully taught British school children about healthy eating. He believes that cheap doesn’t have to mean fatty, salty or processed. Fresh, tasty and healthy doesn’t have to mean expensive. But if you have tips on what this means in practical terms, why not answer Jamie’s question and share your knowledge with the community?

Answers itself is a hive of amazing cooking know-how, based around the Food and Drink category.

Is it healthy to eat broccoli raw? Nikita thinks so. According to her medical sources, “not only is this cruciferous vegetable high in vitamin C and fiber, it’s also a rich source of compounds known as glucosinolates which are broken down in the body to form sulforaphane. Sulforaphane has been demonstrated in numerous studies to have potent anti-cancer properties.”

On a slightly less serious note, Aurora asks for some tips on how to bake bread. T?R is on hand to offer some of his 25 years of experience with dough: “Kneading, letting it prove well and getting the mix just right. Use fresh yeast, not dried, and a good quality bread flour. Strong flour means it has lots of gluten.”

Est wants to know how to make quiche. David J offers a great way to combine bacon and mushroom with a little bit of Swiss cheese!

Yum, don’t know about you but I’m getting hungry!

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Yum, one of the things I love most about travelling is all the different food that you try. I always wonder what goes into these exotic dishes and want to try to recreate the experience by making my own versions at home. Granted, eating Clam Chowder in your own kitchen isn’t quite like slurping it out of its bread bowl on Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco. And I agree that the Cornish Pasty isn’t quite as warm and inviting when there isn’t wind biting your fingers and cheeks like it does in South West England. These recipes provided by the Answers community do look delicious though, and I can’t wait to cook them up!

Cornish Pasty
Chuck steak or skirt
Two Large potatoes
Half a large swede (turnip as second best)
One large onion
Salt and pepper to taste
Water

The Pastry: Place flour and salt in a bowl, rub in the fat, until the mixture is so fine that it falls through the fingers. Tip mixture onto a lightly floured table top. With your index finger make a well in the centre of the mixture. Add water a little at a time until it forms a pliable but stiff dough… More

Dim Sims
1/4 c. gluten rice flour
2/3 c. wheat flour
3/4 c. hot water
1/4 c. lard
1 c. cold water
Filling:
1/2 lb. ground pork
1/4 lb. dried shrimp, chopped
1/2 c. water chestnuts, chopped
2-3 green onions, sliced thin
1 tbsp. white pepper
1 tbsp. soy sauce … More

San Francisco Clam Chowder
1/2 pound (225 grams) diced bacon
2 small onion, chopped
12 cups water
3 carrots, chopped
28 oz (3 1/2 cups) fresh clams
2 1/4 cups clam juice
4 potatoes, peeled and cubed
1 teaspoon kosher salt
2 (400g) cans stewed tomatoes … More

Spanish Paella
170g/6oz chorizo, cut into thin slices
110g/4oz pancetta, cut into small dice
2 cloves garlic finely chopped
1 large Spanish onion, finely diced
1 red pepper, diced
1 tsp soft thyme leaves
¼ tsp dried red chilli flakes
570ml/1pint calasparra (Spanish short-grain) rice … More

Caitlin
Community Manager

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Love it or hate it, the pie floater. Image by Abstract Gourmet

I noticed this question this morning from a student in Germany who had been asked to put together a report on what Australian people eat during their daily lives. Although most Australian diets are amazingly multicultural, I have to confess that if I was answering the question I’d admit to having the essential Aussie breakfast of Weetbix this morning and that I’m planning to prepare a few lamb chops as an evening meal – us Aussies certainly love our lamb – and not every country in the world has it in such abundance. So while I do snack on sushi and enjoy my regular Thai takeaway, had I decided to go for a vegemite sambo today I’d have pretty much had the full Aussie menu!

Ah vegemite – not only is it good for you, but versatile beyond the imagination. It never ceases to amaze me that foreigners screw up their noses and spit the stuff out – but I guess it’s an acquired taste, i.e. acquired only if you begin eating the stuff from birth!

If you go right back to the early settlement days of Australia resources were scarce, and the most filling meals all included damper – a very basic bread made pretty much only from flour and water. You can add to the taste with some similarly traditional Golden Syrup (not to be confused with Maple Syrup – very much in the domain of the Canadians!) but it’s still one of the stickier and most simple Australian foods, hardly a delicacy.

Another great Aussie icon that we all miss when we’re away is Freddo Frog – who along with his colleague Caramello Koala is a simple but satisfying symbol of home along. I fondly reminisce about Twisties and Milo when I’m on my travels too – delicacies that the rest of the world just doesn’t get to enjoy (check out these ideas of different ways to indulge in Milo).

So while the rest of the world thinks throwing a shrimp on the barbie is what being Australian is all about there’s certainly more to it than that… but one thing I wouldn’t proudly admit to being an Australian tradition is the pie floater – a pie with mashed potato, mushy peas and gravy just isn’t my cup of tea!

Clea

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It was high school exams that did it.

I had previously stayed away from using caffeine to fuel my energy and alertness, but over my first cup of Nescafe all of a sudden staying awake to review the principles of osmosis became that little bit easier. And so began my relationship with that fantastic cup of Joe, one that endures to this day.

The idea of roasting coffee beans and filtering the results to create a satisfying drink and instant pick me up originated years ago and is now a daily habit for people all over the world. From its original black and bitter form there are now many variations of the beverage, and we are lucky here in Australia to have so many people who know how to make it right.

Ahh! That first sip! Many people exalt the health benefits of just a small amount of coffee a day, some even claim it can be reduce symptoms for asthmatics. However there is always too much of a good thing, and for many the “drug” elements of caffeine mean they have to find a way to reduce their daily intake because the negative effects have begun to take their toll. The other thing to be aware of is that you shouldn’t drink coffee if you’re not near a loo… the diuretic nature of coffee is not debated!

It would be impossible to mention coffee and not include the word Starbucks – the phenomenon that is the equivalent of McDonalds to coffee lovers and is responsible for us all learning phrases like “double shot venti no whip mocha frappucino”

Have a good weekend!

Clea

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