An award to dine out on

Cook and restaurateur Maggie Beer is congratulated on her award as Senior Australian of the Year 2010 by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and National Australia Day Council Chair Adam Gilchrist.

According to Maggie Beer’s website, her favourite summer refresher is “Verjuice on the rocks”, but she may have found something a little more effervescent to celebrate receiving the award of Senior Australian of the Year 2010.
If the choice of a “culinary icon” to receive the award signals that Australians are developing a new appreciation of what we eat and how we prepare it, it will make Maggie Beer a happy woman. She says her hope is that “by sharing her love of food she will inspire Australians to reconnect with food and appreciate what we eat”.
Outside her home state of South Australia, Maggie Beer is best known through the ABC TV program The Cook and the Chef, which she co-hosted with Simon Bryant, and through her delicious range of preservative-free gourmet foods (including Verjuice), which we find in upmarket delis and some supermarkets. She is a passionate advocate of the best Australian seasonal ingredients and is also author of several cookbooks; the latest, Maggie’s Kitchen, was published in 2009.
Maggie Beer joined Australian of the Year, Professor Patrick McGorry (Victoria); Young Australian of the Year, Trooper Mark Donaldson VC (WA) and Australia’s Local Hero, Ronnie Kahn (NSW), at the awards presentation ceremony on the lawns of Parliament House in Canberra on the eve of Australia Day 2010.