…or Marmite, or whatever yeasty variant happens to be your favorite. In keeping with the entertainment that some members of my family had with making and eating food that, at least on the surface appears pretty nasty, I’ve decided that I’m going to learn to like Vegemite this year.  Call it a New Year’s resolution, if you will.

Keep in mind that before I started this, I had only ever eaten Vegemite once, in a little packet not unlike a jam packet you might find at Denny’s.  Not knowing what I was doing, I took the entire thing and smeared it over a small piece of bread – as if it were peanut butter.  Then I took my first ever bite of the stuff.

That was nearly ten years ago.  I’m still traumatized.

However, I’ve learned to appreciate all sorts of other food over the years: odd types of sushi, various caviars, wild (tref-ic!) beasts of land and sea, various odd body parts of the beasts of land and sea, various ethnic foods, and… well, I could go on and on.  But I couldn’t handle Vegemite.  Fermented fish, stored in the frozen tundra over the winter?  That’s OK.  Seal meat dipped in seal oil?  Not my favorite, but I’m OK with it.  Vegemite?  Blechhh!

So, to learning new things. Most of us in North America look at the dark, pasty stuff that is Vegemite and think of axle grease.  If it’s to be eaten, surely in a thick layer?  No, some solid advice: start slowly.  Here’s a good way to start your appreciation for the stuff:

Step 1

Assemble the ingredients.  We’ll want: bread, butter, and Vegemite. Keep it simple: a nice bread for toasting (this was a thick-sliced enriched white bread from a local bakery). Now, toast the bread.

Step 2

Apply liberal amounts of butter to the bread.  This in its own right would be delicious:

Step 3

Apply the Vegemite.  Notice how I mentioned that those of us in the U.S.A. (and probably Canada, although I suspect they’re smarter ’bout it) layer it on thick?  Don’t do that. This stuff is precious – it’s delicious, edible gold.  Give it only the thinnest of coatings – see if you can get it down to a nanometer or less.  That makes it more delicious!

Note that the larger globs of goo that you see below are probably too thick for you on your first try.

Seriously, for your first taste this should be a seasoning, not the whole flavor.  go light.

Step 4

Eat and enjoy!  The next shot: my first taste of Vegemite in ten years.  Facial reactions? Eh, not gonna go there yet.  Some other day, perhaps.

Final notes and answers to important questions:

• Yes, that was way too much on a piece of bread for the first taste.
• No, it wasn’t as awful as I remembered.
• Yes, I’ve had several more since then.
• No, I haven’t finished the jar.  Yet.
• Yes, I will finish the jar. Probably within a month.
• No, I haven’t graduated to thicker amounts.
• Yes, I will push it.
• No, I can’t imagine this with cheezy-anything.  What is wrong with the bone-heads at Kraft?