Tastes of childhood

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For the first time in ages, I had pea and ham soup last week. It was ‘soup of the day’ at the pub we frequented for dinner one evening while we were away on our knitting adventures in Bendigo – and it was certainly the weather for it.  Soup is my comfort food in winter – it’s hot and filling and comfortable and easy. Pea soup in particular brings back happy memories of my childhood, of our family sitting around the kitchen table chatting, squabbling and vying to be the first for seconds. Not that my Mum actually made pea and ham soup, mind you, but she did make split pea soup. Instead of a ham hock, she used some beef shin – which essentially performed the same task. It’s not so much about the meat as about the taste, the beefy (or smoky ham) flavour that permeates the soup and enriches it. Delicious!

Having enjoyed the pub-version immensely, I set about trying to recreate it – and a little slice of childhood – this week. I found a ham hock in the freezer (score!) and a packet of split peas with recipe on the back in the pantry (everyone has a packet of split peas in the pantry, right?). Next I hunted down the biggest pot I own, selected some appropriate veggies (from the over enthusiastic market purchases made on Saturday) and then set about making my first ever attempt at the iconic dish that is pea and ham soup.

Munching my way through cheesy toast and what I think was a fairly reasonable rendition of the dish that evening conjured up thoughts of other meals from my childhood. I found I could only remember happy, tasty things – other than the rare visitation of the dreaded liver-and-onions and the all-to-frequent boiled cabbage. The former was an occasional request from my father (and enjoyed by no-one but him) and the latter I must assume was simply always in season – it certainly felt that way! However, overall, my conclusion is that I either didn’t bother to remember the things I didn’t enjoy or that my Mum was a canny housekeeper and knew her family’s preferences all too well 🙂

Either way, it feels as though my childhood was filled with mealtimes sitting around the kitchen table enjoying plates of oxtail stew, split pea soup, shepherds pie, macaroni cheese, roast chicken (on Sundays), jam roly-poly with custard (a particular favourite), pineapple upside-down cake, flapjacks and eggy-bread. This last was our version of French toast, which was bread lightly smeared with bovril, dipped in egg, then briskly fried in a little butter – and never (ever!) served with syrup, cinnamon or sugar – a taste preference I still cling to, I may add.

Most of these dishes are winter foods, things that fill hungry children and are relatively inexpensive to prepare, which confirms my belief that Mum was a canny housekeeper. I actually have no idea what we ate in summer – the only things that come to mind is watermelon and tomatoes, but I’m pretty sure there was more to it than that!

Whilst I’ve an idea that Mum used to make her version of split pea soup in the pressure cooker (and I may give that a go next time to speed up the process a little), it gave me enormous satisfaction to recreate this much-love childhood staple in my giant stock pot and to share it and my ramblings about childhood food with my family. Best of all, there was some of the soup left over for lunch for today 🙂

tastes of childhood

Garden Bounty

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Cumquat trees are native to south Asia and the Asia-Pacific region, where the plant apparently symbolises good luck and prosperity. Our tree is surrounded by camellia trees in full bloom and bordered by rosemary bushes that have become a little overgrown – a very pleasing corner feature of our rather ragamuffin garden.

A year ago we spent an intense weekend pruning and moving plants so that our garden wall could be repaired. I know it was a year ago, because our cumquat tree was at least as burdened with fruit then as it is now. We’d recruited a few people to help with the garden rampage – and a couple of these industrious ‘garden gnomes’ were kind enough to collect all the fruit for me before pruning the tree back. I duly turned the harvest into bottles of rather delicious cumquat chutney at a later date and rewards were issued.

Since then, the tree has bushed out and fruited even more prolifically than ever. Unfortunately the garden-gnome-recruitment-scheme hasn’t worked quite as well this year, but I have a couple of likely characters coming to stay  for the weekend soon… I’m fairly sure I’ll be able to bribe them with baked goods to deal with the cumquat harvest then.

cumquats at #10

cumquats at #10

This does beg the question of just what I’ll do with hundreds of tiny, bright orange, pip-infested obloid fruits this year. In the past I’ve candied, spiced and brandied them, made jams, marmalades, chutneys and cakes, used them when baking fish and as accompaniments to roast meats. However, the darn tree appears to be getting more and more prolific as the years go by and many of the cumquat recipes I’ve found use only a handful of the fruit.

These muffins, for example, whilst undoubtedly very yummy only use up ten cumquats in total. Ten. In the grand scheme of things, I’d need to make about 20 batches of muffins to use anywhere near the number of cumquats I have on hand – and I really don’t think my waistline would appreciate that very much! Nevertheless, having found the recipe, I’ll give them a try this evening. I’ll also try this delicious-sounding cake over the weekend. It uses 750g of cumquats – and since one cumquat weighs approximately 19g, that makes about 40, which sounds more promising. I’ll reassess the cumquat situation after that

grapfruit harvest @#10

grapfruit harvest @#10

Meantime, we harvested 170 grapefruit today and there are more on the tree. This is our third harvest this season and we’re just about grapefruited out. So, if anyone would like some, please give me a shout and we can arrange for a pick-up or delivery 🙂

Food for thought

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On Sunday we headed off to Gidgegannup to enjoy the annual Small Farm Field Day. It was a day of talks and demonstrations on sustainability, an opportunity to try some local produce and to see our friends Tim and Bronwyn in action presenting a Punch & Judy show. With various kinds of goats and poultry, lots of beautiful alpacas, a camel train, llamas, working dogs, ponies in abundance and a petting zoo, it was definitely my critter-fix for the month. I was quite captivated by a baby pig that snuffled around in a very friendly sort of way and considered – however briefly – the merits of getting a tiny little piglet of my own…

Despite that brief lapse, however, the real win in the animal department was the Dexter cattle. They’re a delightfully small and placid breed (averaging about a metre the shoulder), making them a viable option for a small property. If I was in the market for a cow, I think a black Dexter would be at the top of my list. It’d be rather nice to have a reliable known source of fresh milk and a Dexter kept as a ‘house cow’ apparently produces about 5 litres of milk a day, which is a plausibly manageable amount if you like milk and are into making your own yoghurt, cheeses and so forth. The milking might be an issue, but I imagine it’s a skill that can be learned much like any other… or done auto-magically by a cunning milking machine… or, in my case, by simply waiting for daughter-dearest to get one and then enjoying it all from a comfortable distance!

We also chatted to burly men about machinery, ate tasty food, drank bad coffee and went to a number of talks. The first of these was by Eric McCrum, well known naturalist and wildlife expert. He appears regularly on ABC radio, where he generally expounds on some or other wildlife related topic and then answers flora/fauna questions from the public. His segments tend to be both entertaining and informative, and this one was no exception. We heard all about enjoying flora and fauna on small landholder properties, although Eric did tend to get side-tracked onto one of his favourite rants – feral animals and their impact on native fauna.  It was the first time in ages that I’ve attended a talk where the presenter has chosen to be low-tech and the bizzzt-click of the slide projector slotting slides into place added to the general enjoyment of the session.

Another very interesting talk  was one on slow food by Vincenzo Velletri, who  augmented his presentation with tastings of a wide range of delicious preserved foods he’d prepared. The pickled aubergine was particularly good, but then so was the strawberry jam (sweetened with quince instead of sugar), the bacalhau (dried and salted cod fish), tomato relish, olives and pickled zucchini (recipes provided). So much yum in one tasting session!

Vincezo’s very passionate about good, clean and fair food – the slow food mantra – but also about minimising food waste. It was eye opening to be confronted with statistics on just how much food is wasted worldwide and how little is done to address the problem. France has just introduced new legislation to try to combat some of the food waste there, but nothing comparable appears to be on the horizon here in Australia at present. Instead, we were told, about 25% of farmers’ crops are going straight to landfill, either because of oversupply or  because the product isn’t ‘beautiful’ enough for the consumers, supermarkets & restaurants bin ridiculous quantities perfectly useable foodstuff and individual homes throw out about 20% of the food they purchase.

Like me, you’re probably thinking ‘surely that can’t be right, can it?’ It seems implausible that families would waste that much food. To answer that, simply look around your home and think about your personal food use and that of your family and friends. Do you (they) regularly bin food instead of using it? If so, why is that? Is it perhaps that we’ve grown up in a time of relative plenty? Or because so many of us are jumping on the celebrity chef bandwagon and purchasing recipe-specific ingredients, of which only part gets used and the rest gets wasted? Whatever the reason, in a world where increasing numbers of people are going hungry and the price of food continues to climb, this simply can’t be considered a sustainable practise.

My take-home message from the Small Farm Field Day is that we should all try to take up the challenge to actively minimise food wastage. We can start to do this in our own homes by checking the pantry and fridge before doing the grocery shopping and then buying just what we need. Next might be trying to use leftovers instead of binning them. If you’re not sure how, you could always think of them as a starting point to creating Tapas. Yup – tapas, the tasty little morsels we pay top dollar for at trendy restaurants. Try making one night a week ‘tapas night’ and re-purpose your leftovers as small plates of random tasty tidbits. If that doesn’t work for you, try cooking smaller quantities, invest in a compost bin and/or think about getting a couple of chickens to feed your scraps to. Bottom line is that  you’ll save money and will feel good about reducing waste cutting down on pollution.

A learning exercise

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Gcon Sausage Sizzle_25apr15Last week saw us gearing up for a sausage sizzle fundraiser barbecue outside our local hardware store. The preparation phase included getting up to our elbows in raw onion a few days before the event – and the miasma continues to permeate my house and fridges, car and numerous plastic containers. 40kg of medium sized brown onions is a whole lot of onion. In fact it’s two very large sacks of onions. Being involved in peeling and processing them individually made me realise much more clearly just how much ‘a lot’ really is – and it’s heaps!

We had a good system going, though: five people and an industrial strength slicer/dicer machine. This combination of teamwork and machinery peeled and shredded all 40kg in about four hours. This was followed by a fair amount of cleaning up, because little bits of onions somehow just went everywhere. Then we had to find somewhere to store 16 bags of onion slices for two days, whilst leaving space for about 400 sausages. My fridge and freezer may never recover from this little exercise…

The adventures with onions was just one part (but definitely the smelliest part) of the preparations. Other aspects included ensuring that the group’s public liability insurance was up to date and that the venue was booked – these things needed to be done well in advance. Then there was costing, sourcing and purchasing the onions (!), soft drinks, sausages, sauces, bread rolls, cleaning equipment, oil, serviettes and so forth at the best prices available. We also had to acquire 30kg of ice and a 135 litre esky (giant cooler box) to store the items that had to be kept below 5 degrees on the day of the ‘sizzle,’ specifically the onions(!) and the sausages. The hired esky may also never recover completely, despite the enthusiastic application of bleach after the event…

Next time round we’ll try to get some of these items donated, which would no doubt help our bottom line.

Only one the helpers on the day had had any prior involvement in running one of these events – and her input was invaluable. Nevertheless, there was a very steep learning curve for all of us. Fortunately we had a relatively short day of trading, since it was a holiday. This meant we could only set up to start selling by 11.30am and finished up at about 3.30pm. Generally the stalls run for twice that long, which would have been quite a stretch for our little team.

Next time round we’ll also try for some extra helpers so that we can work in shifts, rather than flat out for the whole day.

Things I learned along the way:
* Shopping wisely (like pre-ordering the bread rolls in bulk and keeping and eye out for special offers on soft drinks) can bump up the bottom line considerably
* You can NEVER have too many helpers
* Aprons are amusing
* Onions are smelly… really, really smelly… and the stench lingers in a house (my house!) for an awfully long time

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Confit d’Oignon, almost ready for bottling

On the up side, it turns out that Confit d’Oignon (French onion marmalade) is a cunning way of using up a LOT of leftover sliced onion – but it’s quite a lot of work and once it’s made it needs a home… I don’t need that much onion jam – so all offers of rehoming a bottle or more of onion jam will be considered.

After all the dust has settled we made about $650, which is an excellent start towards our fundraising goal of $4,000 for the year. We raise the funds in order to cover the venue hire and insurance for our annual convention (GenghisCon). If we didn’t do this, we’d have to bump up our membership prices (like every other local convention has) and we quite simply don’t want to go there.

So sausage sizzle #2 is booked for 21 November – put it in your diary now and come on down to support us 🙂

Edible verge gardens

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Growing edible plants – as well as or instead of purely ornamental ones – is something that many, many Australians have been doing for decades. A recent study by Australian Institute quantified just how many ‘many, many’ actually is. According to their research, 52% of Australian households produce garden crops of some description. Most of these crops (74%) are produced in back (or front) yard veggie patches and include herbs, vegetables and/or fruit trees. A much smaller number of households have developed verge gardens (13%), grow balcony plants (12%), or are involved in community gardens (1%). Whichever way you look at it, there’s a lot of productive gardening going on in Australia.

Until fairly recently I fell squarely into the 74%; my raised garden beds and mini orchard keep us in cherry tomatoes, basil, mint, spinach, citrus, plums, pears and a few other seasonal crops. Maintaining the mulching, fertilising, pruning, crop rotation and watering keeps me and various lucky minions well and truly out of free time. So why on earth have I set the whole attempt-to-develop-a-verge-garden thing in motion?

Party it’s the endless, pointless and unrewarding mowing of the verge. Because we have a corner block, it’s a very wide verge, and because we’re on a hill, it’s a very steep verge. It is also ‘graced’ with a couple of Corymbia ficifolia (red flowering gum trees), which drop a surprising number of large gumnuts. These factors combined make mowing it a slightly daunting prospect (for me) and seem to carry a surcharge (for contractors). Then there’s the ongoing damage to the reticulation when parents doing their school run drive over the well-disguised sprinklers (yes, we live opposite a primary school), or the infrequently used mower does the same.

Having attended a number of permaculture and water-wise workshops over the past few years, I eventually concluded that it might simply be easier to remove the grass. Not only would I not have to think about mowing/finding someone to do it affordably long-term, it would also mean that our helpful neighbours wouldn’t feel that they need to randomly employ a contractor on our behalf from time to time to tidy things up.

mulch pileAs phase one of Operation Verge Garden, I ordered five cubic metres of mulch. The overly enthusiastic contractor delivered 10. That’s a lot of mulch. A lot. By the time we’d spread about half of it around our fruit trees, on the veggie garden and on part of the verge-garden-to-be, our backs were stiff and sore and enthusiasm was starting to ebb. Then one of the gum trees succumbed to long term (untreated) tree rot and had to be removed from the middle of the remaining mulch.

mulch pile2More help was recruited to get the rest of the seemingly never-ending mulch pile moved and spread. In retrospect it would’ve been a good idea to put some cardboard down under the mulch first, as this would have limited the amount of light getting in and probably killed off the grass more effectively. If I’d found this publication by Russ Grayson  a little sooner (or listened to my permaculture/greenie daughter), things may have been a tad easier – but, as with many things garden related, it’s been a learning curve for us all.

A few very hot months have passed since the project started and not a lot of verge garden has emerged in that time. We did plant a loquat tree, however, and that’s thriving quietly. We also planted a variety of seeds, just to see what sorts of things would make it through the summer with very little water or attention. It turns out that sunflowers and pumpkins are the stand out winners.

I did give some thought to the possibility of theft or vandalism to plants and crops when we started on all this, but decided that I’m not really too concerned. I’m reasonably confident that most locals who see veggies growing on the verge will be interested and engaged, rather than destructive and vindictive. Perhaps they’ll even fell inspired to do something similar on their verge. I remain perennially hopeful about the nature of the human animal.

Now that the weather is starting to cool down a little, it’s probably time to start cropping the pumpkins and thinking about what we want to grow through the autumn and winter.

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