Taste: Praise for our fathers

DADS deserve presents with thought. Here are some suggestions for those who like to cook and eat.

David and Michelle Rauenbusch of Phoenix Creations. For Elaine Reeves Taste column

FARM clearance sales are a favourite for David and Michelle Rauenbusch, a happy hunting ground for tables, old mantelpieces and laundry troughs, with Huon pine draining boards that might sand back to glorious aged timber.

David has big oregon beams, sold when The Old Woolstore stopped being an old woolstore, and kauri from old houses built in the days people would go down to the docks to buy kauri cheaply after it had finished serving as ballast in ships coming from New Zealand.

Their business is Phoenix Creations — new pieces made by David from recycled materials.

The offcuts come from bespoke kitchens, cupboards and tables to make treasure boxes, chopping boards, utensil boxes, recipebook holders, knives, spreaders and spoons.

It started when Michelle said she needed a new spoon and an hour after “a bit of a barney”, David came to her with a peace offering — a wooden spoon.

Michelle’s delight was soon diverted by the thought: “We could sell these.”

Now they have ladles and big stirring spoons with different grips, and smaller ones favoured by bushwalkers.

“I don’t like cutting little bits of wood from big bits of wood,” David says.

“If I find an old table top, I won’t chop it up and make it into spoons, I will use it for a cabinet top, but I don’t like to waste anything.”

David also makes potato and onion cabinets — a hinged lid on a box for potatoes on top, and a drawer underneath to keep the onions in.

The couple moved from Sydney to Tasmania in 2003, bringing with them quite a few “bits of wood” that David had rescued from the scrapheap when he worked inspecting building and renovation sites.

Now, if he comes across a perfectly good wooden mantel or pew, he keeps it as it is, staying with the wood hidden beneath paint, scorch marks or in pieces, for his creations.

Phoenix Creations, at 31 Golden Valley Rd, Cygnet, is open on Sundays from noon to 5pm. Some products are also available at the Cygnet Garden Larder and Cygneture Chocolate, both in Mary St, Cygnet, and at Teros, in Elizabeth St, Hobart.

Stick to this

I AM very pleased I discovered the Neoflam non-stick frypan, and any cooking dad will thank you for one of the same.

The non-stick surface is called Ecolon and it is made with silicon dioxide found in stone and sand. It does not contain PTFE, the chemical that can be dangerous when some non-stick cookware is used at high temperatures.

I’ve had my pan a while and it looks exactly the same as it did when I brought it home.

Nothing sticks to it and food at the side cooks as well as that in the middle. It can go in the oven and the dishwasher and even the base is easy to keep clean.

Elite Appliances in Bathurst St is the Hobart stockist.

Gut feeling

In Supermarket Monsters (Redback, $19.99), Malcolm Knox makes a compelling case for why we should be taking more notice of the dominance of Coles and Woolworths.

For starters, although they operate only here and in New Zealand, each is among the 20 biggest retailers in the world and every person in Australia spends $100 a week at one of the many outlets owned by their parent companies.

Knox examines the effect of this size on suppliers, consumers, quality, diversity and the community.

Extraordinarily, a book called Gut (Scribe, $29.99), by scientist Giulia Enders, has been a runaway bestseller.

It is the story of our body’s “most underrated organ”, one that comprises two-thirds of our immune system and has a role in obesity, diabetes and even our mental health.

It’s an organ we should have “a more conscious relationship with”, Enders says.