Johannesburg - The Star newspaper’s cookery column Angela Day is 50 today, the first food column in The Star having appeared on June 19, 1964.
We have a microfiche of that first black and white page in our archives, and I was interested to see the first recipes were so apt for this time of the year – soups.
Readers were encouraged to call the Angela Day help-line with their household queries. Those too far away from Joburg were urged to write a letter at the weekend. How times have changed.
There was also advice on how to get teenagers to tidy their rooms. How times have not changed!
Angela Day has never been an actual person but a pseudonym for The Star’s food editor. There have been about 10 Angela Days since the department’s inception, each one leaving their distinct mark on the column.
I joined the Angela Day team as a food assistant more than 30 years ago and never imagined that I would be privileged to hold the title.
My memories from those early years are of a nurturing team who taught me so much about food and how to run a household.
Lyndall Popper, the Angela Day at the time, was a wonderful mentor, encouraging her team to “go out there and experience as much with food as possible”.
We all took turns answering the helpline, where you could field up to 50 calls a day.
If you weren’t answering the helpline, you were in the Angela Day test kitchen, experimenting and testing all the recipes that were published in the column.
We would hold weekly demonstrations for about 200 women in the auditorium of The Star building in Sauer Street in central Joburg. (Today the kitchen is in the Lifestyle Garden Centre in Randpark Ridge.)
Team member Sheila Wilson started the first men- only hands-on cooking classes, at which I often assisted.
I will always remember that my first assignment was to make a birthday cake for an elephant. Tons of grated vegetables and fruit were packed into a huge trough which was delivered to the zoo for the celebration.
Fortunately these days I get to make more interesting food for human beings!
During my time at Angela Day I have been fortunate to have had dinner with renowned French chef Anton Mosimann, cook with Rachel Allen and meet a host of famous chefs such as Ainsley Harriott, Brian Turner, Rick Stein and Jamie Oliver.
I attended the famous Bocuse d’Or competition in Lyon, where my daughter Diane was the only female and first South African female to take part.
Shortly after becoming Angela Day I was invited to visit olive orchards in Spain and spent a week travelling in Andalucia and eating the most magnificent food.
I visited famous Bordeaux wine estates and was flown first class to Singapore and Beijing to experience the food there.
I have dined at Heston Blumenthal’s Fat Duck restaurant and attended a cooking course in Florence and at the Blue Elephant cookery school in Thailand.
I am privileged to have worked under two Angela Days and have watched the column grow from small black and white pages to beautifully laid-out full-colour spreads.
Whatever the era, Angela Day has managed to be at the forefront of what happens in the food industry, keeping readers updated with current trends and recipes.
The Star