A TRIFLE DEAD Week 2 Discussion

It's time to kick off our second discussion for our June readalong book, A Trifle Dead. We're discussing this culinary mystery through food! Today we'll cover chapters 9-14. To see the full schedule, check out our June newsletter. You can find the previous week's discussion post here.

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"Mellifont Street West Hobart" by Graeme Bartlett
via Wikimedia Commons

This segment of A Trifle Dead was light on the foodstuffs, since Tabitha spent most of the time going to parties with Stewart, the slightly sketchy Scots reporter, and Ceege, her cross-dressing flatmate (OF COURSE Tabitha's roomie is a cross dresser. See: quirky). I was super jeals of her Oscar party, though – I've always wanted to throw an Oscar viewing party like that! Have you ever thrown an Oscar party and was it up to Tabitha and Ceege's standards?

Photo by slgckgc via Flickr

One food item mentioned in this section are Tim Tams. I'd heard of Tim Tams, but never bothered to find out exactly what they are. UNTIL NOW. It turns a Tim Tam consists of two biscuits with a cream layer in the middle, covered by chocolate. And as of 2017 you can actually find them in the US!

Another junk food Tabitha has a weakness for are jaffas. They're candy-coated chocolates, kind of like M&Ms, except the coating is orange-flavored. The name jaffa comes from the jaffa orange. They're hugely popular in both Australia and New Zealand.

A post shared by Dedric Lam (@dedlam) on May 24, 2015 at 4:01am PDT

"Echidnas on the march"
Photo by Cazz via Flickr

Finally, when Tabitha and Stewart go to the Hobart Coffee Festival in Salamanca Market–a non-existent festival, by the way–Tabitha mentions in passing seeing "chocolate-coffee-bean echidnas." What is an echidna? It's not a food, it's an adorable animal native to Australia and New Guinea that's distantly related to the platypus. They look a bit like a hedgehog and are sometimes called spiny anteaters.

That's all I have for this section, except that I loved this description of one of Hobart's suburbs:

West Hobart is a steep, multi-hill suburb between our little city and the first bushy slopes of the mountain. Most days, it’s green, leafy and cheerful, despite the freezing wind that cuts straight from Antarctica.

What did you think of the food in this section? Have you had a chance to try jaffas, Tim Tams, or anything else? Let us know in the comments or paste your link into the Mr. Linky!