Free (Kindle/iTunes) Hardie Grant food & wine guides [Australian Reference & Travel]

[ATDrake]

Hardie Grant Media, a small Australian publishing company that's previously teamed up with Egmont, one of the European majors, for some romance freebies, is thus far offering two lavishly-illustrated extensive food and wine reference guides, meant to promote local Australian produce and travel.

These have been free since they first came out last year. They're also very large, print-mimicking files (one of which was digitized from a long-running print edition) which will look best/be actually readable on a larger screen or your computer.

South Australian Food User's Guide is exactly what it says in the title, and actually a rather good general reference on buying things in season, which parts to use for what sort of dishes, suggested flavours which pair well together, etc.

It's even got a small section on using indigenous Australian food plants. Really quite nice.

NB: This is not a cookbook (it's actually meant for food industry professionals to self-educate), and contains no recipes (unless you're planning to use the how-to-clean-and-fillet-fish pictorial as preparations for a DIY sushi supper).

Currently free @ Amazon (available to Canadians & in the UK) and iTunes (available to Canadians and presumably elsewhere in the world). It can also be read online @ ISSUU

The South Australian Food Users' Guide is for chefs, cooks, purchasing managers and caterers to use in your restaurants, cafés, pubs and all other food establishments.

The guide covers bakery, beverage, cereals & grains, convenience, dairy & eggs, fruit & vegetables, meat, poultry & game and seafood, with detailed technical information on: storage & handling, appearance, packaging, serving ideas and more.

In addition, you'll find unique masterclasses and charts on seasonality and harvest as well as storage. And with a comprehensive A-Z listing of 350+ South Australian food companies, the South Australian Food Users' Guide gives you everything you need to put South Australia's fresh and innovative produce on your menu.

Wine Regions of Victoria: A touring guide for lovers of wine and food is again exactly what it says in the title, and seems to have been sponsored by VisitVictoria.com, which says it is the official tourism-promotion society of Melbourne.

This is more like a mini-Lonely Planet for a wine-oriented tour with occasional suggestions of where to stay and what else to see in between shopping for and sampling wines, and doesn't really have all that much background info on actual wines, but if you're planning a trip of that sort, it might prove useful.

Currently free @ Amazon (available to Canadians & in the UK) and iTunes (available to Canadians and presumably elsewhere in the world).

For more than twenty years, Wine Regions of Victoria has provided lovers of wine and food with the definitive guide to touring through Victoria, Australia's wonderful wine regions. With the 11th print edition, it is now available as a free ebook.

Victoria boasts 2,900 vineyards, 850 wineries and 650 cellar doors across 22 diverse wine regions, and Wine Regions of Victoria contains all of the information you'll need to explore, taste and experience everything they have to offer.

Regional information, individual winery listings and details on where to stay and what to do are complemented by beautiful images, promising to entice and attract epicureans from all parts of Australia and around the world.