Tag Archives: Community event

Seddon cricket tastes good

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THE WINNERS: Malith, Vinny, Ragz, Krishna and Vuos.

Seddon Cricket Club Multicultural Day

One of the big upsides of working for the MMP group that publishes the Maribyrnong Weekly and associated mastheads across Melbpourne’s west is that Consider The Sauce gets inside running on events and stories that may otherwise pass us by.

These have included a Werribee barramundi farm and an open day at a beautiful Keilor olive establishment.

So it was that, while editing some sports briefs, I came across, at the end business of the very final item, mention of the Seddon Cricket Club’s multicultural day, a festival of cricket and the club’s varied community also being used to officially launch revamped clubrooms.

Some quick online sleuthing puts me in touch with club assistant secretary Matthew, who tells me he is well aware of CTS, thinks it “excellent” and that I am most welcome to join the party.

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Andrea, a.k.a wife of senior coach Tim, does good work as official photographer but her kiddie-ride efforts are less well appreciated.

The running sheet he sends me includes the following:

“8pm: ‘Foods of the World’ Dinner supplied by club members includes Chick pea Curry, Lamb Vindaloo, Saag Paneer (Indian), Sri Lankan Curry (Sri Lanka) Minced pork and eggplant (Vietnamese), Bratwurst and Sauerkraut (German), Lasagne (Italian), Moussaka (Greek) and Tacos (Mexican).”

I joke that all I have to do is throw in a few adjectives and my story will be done!

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On the sunny afternoon I turn up halfway through the final of the 15-over final of the Australia Day tournament, in which the Asians beat the Anzacs.

I raise a few laughs when I ask some of the winners (top photograph) which team they played for.

I enjoy talking with club president Jason, treasurer Jamie, secretary Rolf, Jason’s mum Joan and many other club stalwarts, both young and old.

It’s sublimely delightful to discover just how seriously and with just how much heart the club has embraced this multicultural thing, with a wide swathe of the planet represented among the ranks and including westies both old-school and new-school.

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The racket in the clubrooms increases in volume as the beer supplies decrease.

Some sharp-witted and sometimes rowdy speechifying ends with Joan cutting the ribbon to declare the club’s swish new home truly open for business.

Then it’s time for the food, which has been set out on a long trestle table.

There seems to be heaps and heaps of it.

But a robust appetite has been acquired by the on-hand hordes and it all goes quickly and happily.

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I have a plate of red kidney bean curry, minced pork and eggplant, and “New Delhi” chick pea curry.

They are so very good – and confirm what I already know: That food served at such wonderful community events, cooked with love in your ordinary family home kitchens, just can’t be beat.

I leave my car at Yarraville Gardens and walk home.

Thanks for having me!

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Harmony Feast

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Maidstone Community Centre, 21 Yardley St, Maidstone. Phone: 9317 0747

This free event at the Maidstone Community Centre ticks so many excellent boxes for me I am entertaining visions of hordes of hungry, happy locals descending on Yardley St to graze hungrily among many dozens of food stalls.

So I am somewhat bemused to find the feast is considerably more low key than that, though no less enjoyable than expected – far from it.

The food serving is spread throughout several of the centre’s rooms and out the in the beaut back yard.

If the crowd is less populous and frenzied than I’d imagined, it is certainly a happy one, its members ranging as far and wide in size and age as they do in their dizzying array of skin colours.

And I expect many of them are just like me and enjoy a bash in which the term “multicultural” is one to be embraced and celebrated.

How did multicultural come to be such a dirty word with such negative connotations in Australia?

Rhetorical question folks! We all know their names.

Anyway, this lovely party is a poke in the eye for them – and especially those who of late have been making preposterous comparisons between Australia and the vastly different situations in, say, Germany, France and Scandanavia.

Oubt, you damn dog whistlers!


At each serving table there are neat stacks of a complementary cookbooks containing all the days recipes – very cool, eh?

I start with vegetable alicha and ye misir wot – a simple Ethiopian vegetable stew and a very dry lentil dish, both served with dark brown injera. Even before venturing elsewhere I return for a second serve!

Outside, I score a nice long snag on a slice of white bread, topped with South American roast tomato salsa. Ethiopian zilzil and satay sauce round out the topping choices.

In the centre’s kitchen, I obtain a homely and hearty bowl of polenta, white bean stew, basic short pasta in tomato sauce and a single meatball.

Outside again, I enjoy herb paste pizza that emanates from the wood-fired oven –  basic thin flat bread smeared with an oily, herby paste.

Seeing a range of drinks being dispensed in small cardboard cups that make the process look like mass medication, I jokingly ask if they have multicultural LSD before knocking back a couple of homemade lemonades.


Of the savoury dishes on hand, I miss only the rice paper rolls and tandoori chook. There are queues for both.

I pass by the lemonade scones and head for the Filipino buco pandan, a slithery, sexy, extremely green mix of grass jelly, condensed milk, cream, coconut, tapioca pearls and more.

The speechifying is kept to a minimum and every soul in the pace is having a fine old time as Ray Pereira gets a willing group of volunteers together for an African drumming session.

I believe this is the second Harmony Feast to be held at the centre, and I’ll be sure to make a point of attending the third.