Strolling through my mother-in-law's bookshelves is a summer ritual. An avid reader, with impeccable taste, she makes the Kindle redundant for a few sunny weeks with a study full of novels and a kitchen library with food gems of yesteryear.
Naturally, they all have a history. 
And so it was we stumbled on the intriguing Oh, for a French Wife (The Shepherd Press, seventh edition   May 1961 and first published in   April 1952) one recent evening.
Alors, down memory lane we tripped. It transpires this quirky book of anecdotes, advice, illustration and recipes came from the Sydney family home of my father-in-law. He grew up with it. He now lives near Bordeaux, with his French wife of many years. And I have it reliably that, from a culinary point of view, this is very much a case of "careful what you wish for".
In 1952, and perhaps for many decades beyond, a French wife might well have seemed the key to domestic gastronomic happiness.
"We all know good cooks, even excellent cooks, who cannot speak a word of French," wrote authors Ted Moloney and Deke Coleman, gents about Sydney in the 1950s and renowned, before this title, for their book The Garrulous Gourmet.
"Yet why do we leave the homes of our friends who are French with the feeling, and the word feeling is carefully chosen, that we have lunched or dined in much finer style than usual?" "The French excel at cooking. Yes, but there is more to it than that. They have given the world's greatest recipes! We'll grant that, too! There comes a third and most important factor - the French wife balances her meal. The meals of France have light and shade, point and the counterpoint of flavour." It would seem that my father-in-law, having grown up in Sydney with the ideas instilled by this book that a French wife would indeed be a chef in the kitchen, married for the second time someone who hadn't read the"book.
Sophie - not her real name, but then again I doubt she reads L'Australian - is, I am again reliably informed, the worst cook in tout la France. Possibly tout le"monde.
"C'mon," I said to Kate, "spill the haricots. It can't be that bad." It's that bad.
The scarring meal was the quiche. It was, apparently, a tart to redefine the genre.
It started with puff pastry that hadn't been blind-baked and ended with a filling of eggs (obviously) augmented by tinned sardines, ham, frozen mixed vegetables, and corn kernels from a tin. Two types of cheese, cow and goat. Oh, and smoked salmon â€¦ Exotic touch, that.
Then there were the fresh tomatoes, halved, scooped out and filled with the "meat" of supermarket home-brand sausages. Australian supermarket, that is, not some fancy French saucisson frais. These were then topped with grated cheddar and grilled.
I gather this episode actually triggered regurgitation among some in the party. There are other stories of a bizarre salmon mornay filled with more corn kernels and tinned consomme augmented with cooked fish.
If only she were the exception to prove the rule. As The New York Times reported some time back, France's culinary tradition has been withering for decades. In 2013, headlines worldwide announced that as many as 70 per cent of the restaurants in France were using ready-made meals produced offsite at large industrial kitchens. France has become the second most profitable market for McDonald's. Frozen and convenience foods are rampant.
And besides, who in 2015 wants to eat French food on a daily basis? So I'd like to propose a new book, in synch with the times: Oh, for an Australian Wife (to be self-published, undoubtedly).
As Heston Blumenthal wrote recently of Melbourne specifically but Australia generally: "Then there are the rules and restrictions of food. Here, there are none! Think for a moment of Italy, and its rules of gastronomic etiquette - you are ridiculed if you order cappuccino after lunch, and you're the devil if you ask for parmesan on a seafood dish.
"Melbourne - and indeed the rest of Australia - doesn't have these sorts of limitations or traditions. Anything goes, and that's an essential factor of the country's culture. It's this relaxed approach to food that has helped ignite what I regard as the world's biggest food explosion." Putting aside gender issues and redundant stereotypes about who actually prepares the meals in an Australian household, where else in the world do they eat with such routine diversity? Where else is your average enthusiastic cook as familiar with galangal as with smoked paprika? Where else do pantries stock rice noodles, soba, spaghettini, tortillas and spaetzle? With kimchi, chermoula and fish sauce, colatura, soy and mirin in the fridge?
I love travelling abroad, but equally I love getting home to cook pizza and pasta, Greek salads and Vietnamese rice paper rolls, Indian and Thai curries, paella and, yes, the occasional coq au vin and soupe a l'oignon. I love it all. And I do it with my very Australian wife.
I'm sure there's much a French wife could teach me. But I doubt it would be a sustainable proposition after the homegrown mod-Oz version.So vive la difference. And pass the barbecued calamari, please, it's summer again.