Such was life: The Wheat Queen (Mary Farrelly)

Mary Farrelly’s “How to Cook Wheat” cookbook in the Greenough Museum and Gardens provides the launch pad for “The Mary Farrelly Cooking Show!” introduced PT Barnum-style by Perth actor Luke Hewitt. In what is possibly the world’s first museum cooking show, curator Gary Martin and museum volunteers Moira McKinnon and Amanda Rowland try out some of Mary’s recipes in the original family kitchen (now part of the museum). Compiled in 1916, Mary’s cookbook was so popular that it went to three editions and Mary became known as The Wheat Queen. The cookbook was part of her evangelical promotion of whole wheat as the basis of a healthy diet - a passion that bordered on obsession and created some amusing menu suggestions. But whatever we might think of wheat coffee and whole wheat sausages, 100 years ago this remarkable woman was promoting the virtues of non-processed foods, pushing for free public kindergarten and child care, advocating prison reform and sex education for girls and arguing for women’s rights.