Who did it

The three friends chatting around a table in the staff room who thought of the idea were

Mag Freeman, Janny Jonkers and Judy Haswell. It was 1994 or 1995.

We were all librarians.

Janny left to return to the Netherlands with her husband to live and work. Mag and Judy retired. It was Janny and Judy who selected the poems with the kind permission of Stephen Innes, the manager of the New Zealand and Pacific section of the University of Auckland General Library. Stephen became the manager of Special Collections for the library and continued his help and support. We owe a big thank-you to all the librarians there.

Justin Mervyn Biddle of <estudio.co.nz> is the graphic designer who rescued the manuscript from Microsoft Word (admirable though that program be) and patiently worked through all the formatting issues for InDesign.

In the darkness of the Devonport foreshore, light streams out from Mecca, a cafe in the Esplanade Hotel. The seats outside are empty.

November 2010. Sunday evening at Mecca in the Esplanade Hotel in Devonport, Auckland. Time to go home.

Four eggs wth smiley and sad faces. Only the largest egg is smiling.

Page 65, Poems from the Pantry; photo courtesy of

Justin Biddle.

The Edmonds

If ‘the hand that does the cooking has a finger in the pie’, tribute must be given to the Edmonds’ couple that published their first cookery book in 1908 and whose perseverance and optimism provided the necessary motivation for Judy during the slow years of preparing this anthology for publication. They proved to be good-natured and steadfast companions.

Thomas (1859–1932) and Jane (1860–1938) came to New Zealand in 1879. They opened a grocery shop along Ferry Road in Christchurch and for some years Jane ran the shop while Thomas perfected his mixture of baking powder. Along with free samples, in 1907 Thomas distributed a free giveaway cookery book of some 20 pages as a marketing ploy. In 1908 he published a 50-page recipe book with the title 'Sure to Rise' Cookery Book. The second edition, published in 1910, had a print run of 150,000.

The famous and radiant ‘Sure to Rise’ sun-ray motif reflected the Edmonds' interest in the therapeutic qualities of the sun.

A hand with an extended finger hovers above what might be a roll of baking dough and the text 'The hand that does the cooking has a finger in the pie. Ladies. Edmonds Baking Powder will aid you to keep your supremacy for light dainty cooking.

Edmonds advert circa 1907 <natlib.govt.nz/records/23154327>

Well-worn tins of Edmonds Baking and Custard Powder stacked on a shelf.

A lady in a row boat gazing into the sun rising above the sea and the word 'Sure to rise'.

Cover of the 1909 reprint of the first edition of the ‘Sure to rise’ Cookery Book (1908). Courtesy of

Duncan Galletly.

Well-used tins from Edmonds' range on the cottage shelves in the Taranaki Pioneer Village in Stratford.