I’m not sure anyone ever really taught me how to do research, which is probably why my skills don’t go much beyond Googling something. Nevertheless, determined that the same fate should not befall my adult literacy students at my neighborhood library, I decided to have them research some facts about countries. On the day we were looking at websites, one guy, who was writing a paper about Australia, decided he wanted to know more about Australian food. “Perfect,” I thought, “I have a food blog. I should be able to manage this one.”

However, nothing about Australian food really came to my mind besides the vague words “bush tucker” and the haunting question of whether Anthony Bourdain was in the Australian outback during that one episode of No Reservations when he ate warthog anus. Anyway, we typed “australia” and “food” into Google. And this, on some dude’s blog in 2005, was quite honestly one of the first things to turn up:

I tried to point out that this might not be the best fit for inclusion in his paper, but by then a crowd was beginning to form. “I know they have this thing in Australia called Vegemite,” I tried lamely and was quickly drowned out by disgusted ewwws and echhhs as we scrolled further down the page and found this: Continue reading →