Category Archives: Gardening

Book Review – Animal, Vegetable, Miracle

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I have just finished reading the book “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle” by Barbara Kingsolver.  I had seen it mentioned at times on the Simple Savings forum but there was no real detail of what it is about so I had forgotten about it until recently when I finally remembered to download it to my Kindle.

This book was first published in 2007 and documents the attempts of one family to eat mostly local food for a full year.  It is a substantial book and full to the brim with detail and information so is definitely not a light read.  I think I will need to read it a few times to extract the maximum benefit from it.

I found some of the detail quite confronting at times, especially the descriptions of CAFO’s (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation) and the harvesting of the chickens and turkeys which they raised for meat.  This is not necessarily a bad thing as it forces us to examine our feelings about how our food is produced.  Out of sight should not mean out of mind.

Although it is written from a North American perspective there are many universal truths for everyone, no matter where you live.  By the time I had finished the book I was inspired with renewed enthusiasm to seek out as much local produce as possible.

During the course of the year, they travelled to Italy and also on a road trip north from Virginia, through Vermont and into Canada.  The local food that they ate and people encountered makes fascinating reading.

I also intend to apply the same principles to the food we eat during our upcoming trip to the USA.  Since we will be in the north-east states during late summer we will have an excellent choice of fresh food.  One of the things we had planned to look for is Farmers’ Markets in the cities and farm gate sales in the more rural areas.  My goal is to eat as much locally-sourced, organic and unpackaged food as possible while we are away but more about that another time.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle contains numerous recipes based on seasonal produce which are also available on their website.

The book contains an engaging mix of passion, theory, humour and science related to a topic which is the essence of every one of us – our food.

I would strongly recommend that you read ‘Animal, Vegetable, Miracle’ and take the time to really think about what you are eating and how it came to be on your plate.

Shopping In The Garden

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This afternoon I went down to the garden and picked a bucketful of oranges, some mandarins, limes, perennial onions, grapefruit, chili and avocadoes as well as collecting 16 eggs.

Here is some of the haul.

2012-06-21 01Mandarins

2012-06-21 02Eggs

2012-06-21 03Ornages , limes, grapefruit, onions and chili in this bucket.

2012-06-21 04I set the oranges out ready to juice them.

2012-06-21 05These yielded 3.5 litres of juice and enough pulp to make 2 dozen orange and poppyseed muffins.

The juice is frozen in single serve (250ml) portions.

2012-06-21 06Here is the orange juice packaged and ready to freeze.  Once it is frozen I will remove it from the containers and place in double plastic bags for ease of storage.

I took a pack of grated zucchini (from the garden last summer) from the freezer and made a zucchini quiche for dinner.  While this was in the oven I made the muffins and a Lemon Delicious for dessert as well as roasting some sliced pumpkin ready to use on home-made pizzas tomorrow night.

The 2 grapefruit are prepared for The Duke for his breakfasts and the mandarins will be used in packed lunches.

The avocadoes are in the fruit bowl as they will take about a week to ripen.

I chopped the chili and onions and added to some cold rice.  Lime juice, oil and pepper made a dressing to toss through the rice and we had this and some carrot sticks and sliced mushroom with the quiche for dinner.

I used 9 eggs in my cooking and am left with 34 in the refrigerator.  Must be time to give some more away.

We are lucky to have a productive garden so it is important to make sure that we use what is available and store any excess so that it does not get wasted.

Sharing the Bounty

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We try to grow enough food so that we can share some with our extended family.  Some of our efforts are more successful than others.

Here are some mandarins and avocados that I took to Belle.

2012-06-16 01We usually have plenty of eggs, although this depends a bit on the season.  At the moment we have an abundance so I can give them away to various family members.  There are always many more lemons and limes than we can use so I have taken to putting them in the wheelbarrow outside the gate with a sign on a piece of cardboard indicating that they are free.

One of my planned projects is to make a more permanent arrangement using a sandwich board style of sign with the option of changing what is ‘advertised’.  I hope to be able to show it to you once I get around to making it.  Don’t hold your breath waiting, though!

It is great to be able to share.

Outdoor Organising – Woodshed

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The cold, wet weather of the past couple of weeks forced me to do some outdoor organising.  Our only form of heating is the wood-burning heater and this is fueled entirely by wood collected from our own land.

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We have an area next to the chicken coop which we use as a woodshed, however, this was mostly small branches suitable for kindling.

There are several piles of large pieces of wood that are out in the weather to season before being split into pieces that are suitable for the fireplace.  They have been there for at least a couple of years so are well and truly ready for use.

One of the problems with our wood storage system – if you can call it a system – is that it is stored directly on the ground and over a period of time this will degrade into soil.

After much thought over the years I was finally galvanised into action.

Most of the medium-sized pieces had been used last week to keep us warm and to dry the clothes so there was space cleared on the right-hand side of the shed.  I raked up the remnants of kindling and then used a couple of offcuts of corrugated iron to make a ‘floor’ and stacked some pieces from the outdoor pile against the side wall of the woodshed.  Now that the wood is undercover they will be able to dry out and be split ready for use.

We have a spare half-size wheelie rubbish bin which I filled  with small pieces of kindling.  That is now in the workshop and there are also 4 black tubs in the shed stacked with small to medium wood.

This definitely a work in progress but I am determined that the pile of large, wet  and well-seasoned logs in the backyard will be a a stack of dry,split firewood that is ready to use and easily accessible from the house.

The first step of the process has been taken towards this goal.  That is often the most difficult.

Do you have an overwhelming jobs that you do not  know where or how to start?

Success

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We have had chickens for about 6 years now but in the last 12 months the most recent ones have been broadening their horizons.  They wander beyond our boundaries and have been making a nuisance of themselves by scratching on the neighbour’s property.  So for the last few weeks we have had to keep them shut up mostly except when we are around to closely supervise their whereabouts.

In the long term we plan to rebuild the chicken house in a different location and have a substantial fenced area where they will be able to roam.  However, this is not going to happen immediately as it is to be done in conjunction with fencing the vegetable garden area and some other landscaping.

2012-05-31 01 So, today I have put some nylon bird-netting over the fence and gate where I think they get out and seem to have successfully kept the chickens in our yard.

We also have some temporary fencing around the vegetable gardens as they are diligent when it comes to looking for tasty morsels, and there are plenty of earthworms in the garden.

2012-05-31 02And here are a couple of photos of the girls happily scratching in an area that is perfect for them.

2012-05-31 04Having a lovely time in the leaf litter…………

2012-05-31 03

Digging in the Dirt

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Today we have been out in the garden.  Vegetable gardens dug over and mushroom compost added.  Then it was time to plant out our winter crops.  Broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, snow peas, strawberries as well as red and brown onions.

Most of them were bought as seedlings but I did have a go at raising some from seed.  The cabbages were from seed as are one lot of broccoli and one of cauliflower.  They are somewhat less advanced than the seedlings so hopefully it will spread the harvesting out over a longer period of time.

Continuing on yesterday’s theme of using up everything, I made some pumpkin and sultana scones with some mashed pumpkin that had been thawed from the freezer and not completely used.  I did not get to make the lemon butter so that will have to wait for another day.

2012-05-20 01

Autumn at Home

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When we travel to the USA later in the year, I am hoping to see some of the famous fall scenery in New Hampshire and Vermont.  We will probably be a little early for the best of it but I am sure we will see some, especially in the mountains and northernmost areas.

In the meantime, here is a glimpse of autumn in our own backyard – literally.

It is only one tree, a liquidamber, but it in a climate that does not have many deciduous trees that produce a colourful autumn display it makes a lovely contrast to the surrounding evergreens.

DIY vs Outsourcing

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Today we went to the Wood Expo and unfortunately I did not find anyone who was doing the type of restoration work that my cabinet will need.  That is OK as I have plenty of time and no particular deadline.  I took more photos and printed them before I went so I have a complete pictorial record of the unit as well as all of the dimensions.  My next job will be to see if I can find someone who can give me an estimate of what my idea is likely to cost.  I did see a slab of silky oak for sale today – $150 and it was more than what I imagine will be required for the job.  I will let you know of any further developments.  In the meantime, it functions perfectly well as a stand for the television and storage of other items.

I decided to outsource the restoration of the cabinet  as the skills required are beyond that which we have.  However, there are lots of things we can do and make for ourselves.  We have managed to fill the rest of the day with doing things for ourselves.

2012-05-05 01The Duke makes our bread in the breadmaker and today was fruit loaf with sultanas, chopped raisins and chopped dried apricots.

2012-05-05 02He also bottled his latest home brew and then started a new one today.

2012-05-05 03I made some fresh pasta.  Here is some of it cut into lasagne sheets and ready to go in the freezer.  I used some to make chicken and mushroom canneloni for dinner.  We had a serve each and here are the 2 leftover serves ready to be frozen for lunches later in the week.

2012-05-05 04I picked a pumpkin and also some cucumbers from the garden.  We had mashed pumpkin and peas with the canneloni.

2012-05-05 05We made soda water using the Soda Stream and I had a glass of bubbles with fresh slices of lime.

Now I am off to do some more knitting on my dishcloth.  I have done 4 so far and the 5th is underway.

Local Lunch

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In my post, ‘Competing Priorities’ from a couple of days ago, I discussed buying organic vs local vs no packaging.

Since then I decided that even though I do buy some imported ingredients, I try to offset that by producing some of our own food and buying local food where possible.  Stephanie’s comment re the priority of the ‘100 Mile Diet’ reminded to look at the origin of what we eat.

Today’s lunch measured up pretty well on all counts I think.  I had lasagne (leftovers from the freezer) and a few bits of salad.  Here is the analysis:

Cherry tomatoes, lettuce, cucumber and green bell chilli – all from our garden. – No packaging

Lasagne – made using fresh lasagne sheets, bechamel sauce, cheese and meat sauce.  To extract this further:

Lasagne sheets – eggs produced by our chickens and flour (Australian) – bought from bulk bins from local independent supplier.
Cheese – bought from the Kenilworth cheese factory (about 40km from home).
Minced beef – grass-fed from about 400km away and bought at local independent butcher.
TVP (textured vegetable protein) – bought from bulk bins from local independent supplier (unsure of country of origin)
Pasta sauce – made and bottled at home using local tomatoes and capsicums plus home-grown onions.

The meal also used powdered milk, tomato paste (bought at local Aldi supermarket), red wine (Australian – purchased at the winery when travelling), pepper, spices (bought from bulk bins from local independent supplier).  I use butter blend that I make myself using pure butter (comes in a paper wrapper which is re-used to line cake tins and then composted) and olive oil (local from about 30km away) bought in bulk from the local co-op.

I take my own re-used paper bags for everything I buy from the bulk bins.  I take containers for the meat that I buy from the butcher and mesh bags for any fruit and vegetables that I buy.  The 2.5kg block of cheese was encased in plastic and the packet that the packet from the powdered milk are the only non-recyclable waste generated from the ingredients used to prepare this meal.

Not every meal I prepare measures up quite as well in terms of local content but I plan to try to incorporate something we have produced ourselves in every lunch and dinner.

Do you ever consider waste and local content in terms of a whole meal?

Kitchen Kapers

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I have spent the best part of today in the kitchen.  The first thing was to juice the 60 limes I picked from the tree.  Some is in ice-cube trays in the freezer and the remainder in a jug in the refrigerator.  I will freeze this in trays as well once the others are completely frozen and can be removed from the trays and placed in a bag.

Next were 5 pumpkins from the garden.  Unfortunately, I cannot leave them on the vine until the stalks dry out completely because some of the wildlife starts to eat them once they are mature.  Because I have to pick them before the stalk has withered, this means that they will not store.  So my plan was to cut and peel them (a mammoth job), roast in the oven and then mash the pumpkin.  I have frozen it in batches so that it can be made into soup as required.  By just freezing the mashed pumpkin I save space in the freezer as compared to making and freezing the soup.

I also sorted through the freezer and pulled out this bag of chopped onion tops.

2012-04-22 01These are from the onions I grew last winter but our winter is not long enough for the tops to die down before I have to harvest the onions.  Otherwise our wet weather starts and they would just rot in the ground.  I diced all of the onions and froze them in 150g packs and I could not bear to waste the fresh green tops so chopped them and pt the bag of them in the freezer while I considered what to do with them.

2012-04-22-02I decided to thaw them out and then put them on the trays in the food dehydrator.  My plan is to dry them completely and then grind them in the spice grinder to make my own onion powder for seasoning. I will post about the success or otherwise of this venture in a day or so.

The other thing I retrieved from the freezer was a bag of cherry tomatoes.  These were picked from the neighbour’s garden a couple of months ago when they were away and I didn’t have time to do anything with them apart from wash, hull and freeze them.

I found a tomato sauce recipe on the internet and made a couple of adjustments to suit the ingredients I had.  I cooked up the sauce and 1.9 kg of cherry tomatoes made up into 1.75 litres of sauce.

Here it is – bottled and ready to add to the stock cupboard.

2012-04-22 03I made 3 batches of muffins – lime and coconut, fig and almond as well as banana ones.  This is some of them packed and ready to freeze.

2012-04-22 04While the oven was on I made another zucchini quiche.  We have an abundance of eggs and since this uses 5 eggs it is a good way to use some up.

I had planned to make so more fresh pasta – using eggs again – but the day was almost over.  I will save that job for Wednesday which is a public holiday here (Anzac Day).

Most of my cooking and preparation was a direct result of produce from our garden, either fresh or frozen.  Since we are blessed to be able to grow this food I feel it is important to make sure that we use it to the best of our ability.