23 days

Some days I wish Fionn had less interest in maths.

Today I bought a book for my Dad. Which means I have bought presents for the big bad day for both of my parents. They are the ones whom I feel honour bound to observe traditional Christmas practices for. They have a lovely house full of everything I can imagine they could want and I rang Dad earlier today and didn't pick up any hankering for garden plants so a book it had to be. Mountain Men.

So we were in town and I found Mountain Men and decided my quest for something good whatever good means was over. But the other bookshop in town would have it also and back home I had a 30% discount voucher for them. Being an evil petrol guzzling disorganised faded, overgrown chick who is rapidly turning into a broiler, I drove all the way home and collected the discount voucher and bought the book at another shop. I wondered if that was bad too as how could you make any profit with a 30% discount plus shop overheads to pay?

Also, just to show that marketing works, I bought a child's book with another 30% voucher. I found the story of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and bought it for Fionn. For in a number of days that I am not prepared to repeat. I cannot remember anything about the actual story except that the idea of a flying, sailing car grabbed my imagination as a child and I still think of it as we trundle slowly across Arthurs Pass once or twice per year. I still think of it when Fionn speculates how far we would have to drive to get to London.

For us adults, all two of us who have to pay taxes in this household, I have a wee stash of book money in the UK and this week we get to choose a book each and order it from Amazon for our very own Christmas treat. Thank you Tania for your offer of help to make this happen. I read this morning that Margaret Atwood has a new book out on the history of debt. Being a sunny side up kind of girl, this took my fancy.

More on books. The Margaret Mahy book I've been reading is actually a book about her and her writing by Tessa Duder. Margaret Mahy: A Writer's Life. I'm enjoying it and realising how very erudite and clever and wise she is in her communications with adults as well as children.

When I've finished that then I have a recent Rose Tremain book to read from the library. It is set in modern England and I'm looking forward to it. My friend Elizabeth and I went to hear Rose Tremain talk just before we left London. At the end I told her I was moving to the West Coast where she had set her book The Colour. She paled in her enthusiasm rather obviously. Visiting is quaint; leaving London for such hicksville significantly less so. I guess she couldn't handle the rain. What a wuss.

I can handle the rain. Pinot Noir is my favourite method at the moment. My children will not get overflowing bags of tat from their mother for Christmas because she has spent much of the family's money on red wine and fish and chips. Isn't it a shame how social welfare is underfunded and overworked? Mothers who make insufficient sacrifice in order to teach the merits of capitalism and endless consumerism to their offspring really ought to be dealt with more severely.


hahahahahaha. We've got a tory government and they're threatening to shut public services down in order for some idiot to go through each budget line by line. So far they've got to our local hospital board and to our beleagured local forestry and the options look bad. measly shutting things down not-at-all-positive kind of bad.

Back to books. Our book group has reorganised our bookishness and stopped belonging to the Book Discussion scheme and stopped meeting at the pub and now we share each other's books and host meetings at our houses. Once each per year. An enormous amount of discussion has been devoted to the expectation of nibbles and to the protocol of drink. So how bourgeoise (sp?) can I be(come)?

No I didn't get out into the garden today. Yes I am grumpy.

Beautiful Things

A package from Fishpond arrived yesterday (a NZ online bookshop). I scanned through my mind to make sure I hadn't drank too much and had a reckless credit card moment, because if I had, then Favourite Handyman had brought in the post and may have something to say... But no I hadn't done that and yet here inside the package, with no invoice and no note indicating the person who had gifted it to me, was

my very own copy of Linda Woodrow's The Permaculture Home Garden!!!!!!

I can only guess the identity of the person or group of people. I'm thinking she/they might mostly knit. Thank you very very much. I will treasure it and use it almost daily. I really will treasure it forever. Thank you.

The Hollow Men

Tonight's film festival outing was The Hollow Men. Based on the book by Nicky Hagar, it follows the national party election campaign in 2005. It is a meticulously researched piece of history. It didn't really give me any insights beyond the fact (which surely I could have guessed) that the campaign was based on about turns, fakery and deception. Afterwards we got to meet the director, Alister Barry over drinks at a friend's house. A pleasant evening, but without the artistic power and evocativeness of Children of the Rain or Apron Strings which I saw earlier this week.

True to my project to read a lot more, I spent part of this afternoon reading about an American woman's journey to discover the significance and meaning of dyed or naturally grey hair for herself and what it meant for women and men more generally. I'm growing the dye out of my own hair for several reasons. 1. Sheer laziness about either dyeing it myself or (extravagant horrors) getting organised to get it done at a salon. 2. Issues relating to carcinogens in hair dye products. 3. A sense that I want to let the grey come in naturally. And the brown for that matter. It has been a loooong time since I've been naturally blonde, and I want to accept the natural colour. I also appear to be growing it long. Refer mostly to reason (1) above by way of explanation.

I've been learning a lot about myself recently, having to face my own naivety and recognise the need for some changes in how I live my life. I'll still be blogging, but I'm now reducing my online time even more. When I stopped any access during the day, I got so much more done and was finding it a good choice. I still wasn't doing more housework, although I was doing more cooking and I was enjoying and being available for my children more. I've realised that what is missing in my life is not a cleaner and tidier house. What is missing is reading books. Not just gardening, but fiction and other extended texts. I need brain food and soul food and I've made the mistake for some time now of thinking the internet is providing enough. But surfing the net for the latest bug I found in the garden or half remembered idea is not soul and brain food. From now, I plan to stop day use and to only go online each evening to check emails and write my blog/read blogs once I've done some proper book reading.

It is raining again. again again again again again again again again again again

You couldn't hear me scream about the rain because of the sound of the rain. Relentless. There are pools of water everywhere. The ground is just saturated.

Rain of the Children

Another film festival night out. What bliss. This time a fascinating documentary going into Tuhoe country in the middle of the North Island, tracing an old woman back to her time as wife of the son of the prophet Rua Kenana, through the deaths or confiscations of all but one of her 14 children. So much to think about. The idea of a curse which plagues her dates back to the time when European diseases were decimating Maori society and Maori had no explanation for the deaths. When patterns were observed in families, a source for a curse was looked for. Puhi, once one of the chosen to repopulate Tuhoe from Maungapohatu, led a fascinating and tragic life. It felt like a privilege that so many people connected to Puhi and her son Nikki were prepared to be filmed talking about some very difficult times.

During the day we were all home (Favourite Handyman and I are fortunate that we don't have to work much in the school holidays) and decided to have big clearout. Favourite Handyman and the children made a bonfire and burnt the ridiculous number of cardboard boxes and other cardboard paraphernalia around the house and sheds. I cleaned out my potting shed. We've agreed that the handyperson tools can migrate to the big shed and the potting shed can be for gardening things and chook food only. I have to say, the potting shed now looks fantastic. I could even use the bench for potting up plants now. The larger shed has a decent window which the potting shed does not, so until late October/early November, chitting potatoes and pots of pumpkins, zucchinis and tomatoes will still be in residence with the circular saw and the pliers.

Fionn and I got into full on retro-kiwi-cooking mode late this afternoon and made sausage rolls (bought pastry though) and also apricot slice using girl guide biscuits.

I went down to the library and found Linda Woodrow's book back on the shelves. It was like Christmas! I also grabbed a Kate Adie book on foundling children and a book on going gray and authenticity. I've decided to leave behind carcinogenic blonde tresses myself and this looked an interesting read.

Got my blog back

and very relieved I am about it too.

Where on earth to start?

Beans. I got a big order of beans and pulses from Piko Organics this week. Half of which is stored beautifully in glass preserving jars and the other half is still in the cardboard box. I did use some to make Black Bean soup today though. Black Bean soup (the recipe is here somewhere if you check out the recipe label on this blog) is one of my favourite things because it tastes a bit sophisticated (lime and coriander on top and sherry in it - may sound very ordinary to you but it aint sausages) and it is good because no methane emitting animal meat. Though we do spoon sour cream on top. Once I've got over the cost of red peppers in soup making season and got two meals out of the recipe, then it gets quite good budget points.

Today Favourite Handyman worked on the poultry palace. Delivery to smalltown is less than 13 days away now.

The sun shone today and yesterday. This is a first for a long time and a seriously utterly wonderful thing.

I've been re-reading Companion Planting in New Zealand by Brenda Little. I really need to buy my own copy because in the interim since I last had it out of the library, I've put brassicas, garlic and strawberries together. Turns out brassicas and strawberries really hate garlic and suffer in performance in it's presence. When the soil dries out a bit, I'll be transplanting the strawberries into a new bed and complementing it with borage. When I've grown the borage. I've got just two tiny kale plants left there which can go but I narrowly missed planting four broccoli plants with the garlic. The book didn't comment on yams. I'm going to put yams in with both my garlic beds. Only time will tell.

My potatoes are sprouting nicely. Just homeless until I find a pile of cheap buckets. Their original spot has been re-assigned to onions and carrots and chamomile.

I have lots of spring bulb foliage up but no flowers yet. Though the flower stems are up on the freesias and starting to come up on something else unidentified but possibly a crocus (or a bluebell).

Flowers are out on some onion weed. Onion weed is up in chunks of the lawn around the compost and our biggest tree. I used my dried onion weed in the stuffed pumpkin meal I made last weekend. I think drying it first might be the way to go as it yields little flavour for it's size when thrown in raw.

Favourite Handyman made me an excellent cloche today. It is an old vegetable box (strong transparent plastic) for a fridge which came with some toys for the children. They never put toys in their boxes anyway so it's mine thank you. FH drilled holes in the base (which is now the roof of the cloche) for ventilation and now it is protecting one of my spinach seedlings with the idea that it will be warmer and grow faster.

Tomorrow I might sow seeds. Better go and find out if that is lunarly suitable. Which will most likely determine whether I am lunar follower or not. But less likely to stop me sowing seeds if it is Sunday and the sun is shining and no one has an earache or broken bone.

Animal vegetable miracle

I've now finished Barbara Kingsolver's book on eating local for a year. I loved it. Completely adored her beautiful writing. I think I'm getting pretty familiar, theoretically at least, with the principles and benefits of locavore living and yet Kingsolver's prose drew me in. It's not being virtuous to read her; it's a pleasure.

Has it changed my own view on eating local? Not at all, but local eating on the South Island's West Coast is a fairly high level challenge. We ate fish last week, caught and sold by a local family we know through Fionn's school. The fish was divine. Not sure how long we'll have it though. The same week the local paper ran a front page article on the problems facing local fisherpeople. Fuel costs have risen 240% for them in the last year and some boats have stopped going out as they can't afford the overheads.

The only way I can get locally grown vegetables outside of my own garden (where I have greens but no starches) is to buy them from the fellow just outside of Hokitika. But there is no way I'm driving down to make a purchase from him given that it now costs me about $13 in petrol for a trip to Hoki. I used to make this trip for fun about once a month. No longer.

Next month is rooster killing month which will push up our local protein eating significantly.

What I could do is give up bananas.

Next Summer will be the summer of pumpkins I hope. In the dark of next winter, with some good fortune on top of the hard work, we may be eating our own pumpkins each week.

fat and thin arguments: Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon

In a book so interesting, the things which don't convince me do seem so particularly unconvincing that it does detract from the very fascinating parts which could well convince me.

Raw meat eating in our modern industrialised society seems risky in the extreme. Fallon does seem to argue that veges should be cooked more and so then to suggest we eat raw meat is rather counter intuitive to me.

She doesn't like pressure cookers because she thinks they cook food too fast. 'Thinks' being the operative word because she doesn't pull out any research to back that one up. I am in empathy with her on the anti-microwave front though.

She talks a lot about fat. Animal fat from traditionally pastured animals is top of her list, and olive oil is okay also. She is also an enthusiast for coconut oil, which I'll be prepared to consider. I do like coconut cream in a curry but coconut products seem to exacerbate Fionn's eczema. Hence why we don't use those "natural" washing powders, which always seem to use coconut products.

I am happy with using butter. It is an appropriate use of local food. We have lots of dairy farms near us. Shame we can't actually buy locally but have to pay for loads of fossil fuel as it is tanked around the country. I'm not obsessed with size, though many much more slender people than me find cause for concern. My weight is stable and doesn't stop me from doing anything (years ago I started gaining weight quite fast when I gave up biking and had access to a car and the rapid weight gain aspect was scary as I could see it could stop me from doing things). I think my family need feeding up when I look at them, not slimming down. She talks about eating fat and losing fat but I'm not much into that line of thinking. Whoever said "eat food. Mostly plants" is right on the money in my view. Obesity is a weird wealthy world problem and I can't get my head around how we spend so much money trying to lose weight while the rest of the world literally, through no fault of their own, starves.

The main problem with butter in my view is that it is rapidly becoming mega expensive. Whereas petrol is clearly going to rise and rise and rise, I'm less worried in the longer term about dairy products as I predict dairy prices will crash when Chinese dairy farms come on stream.

Olive oil I'm happy with also. Yummy stuff in the right place. 'Tis from a long way away though. Post peak oil life may not have so much olive oil in my family's diet, but I'm prepared to keep on using and enjoying it now. After I read Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma, I swore off margarines and unnamed vegetable oils.

Sally Fallon also talks about grains and digestibility. I am going to have a go at sprouting grains and maybe at making kefir and her fancy titled yoghurt which I forget the name of right now. But I did note her claim that potatoes appear to be the most easily digested carbohydrate. Excellent as I can grow them easily right here in my own backyard.

It's all looking rather like we're back to meat, spuds and veg to me. Or stew, spuds and sauerkraut anyway.

Rooster killing has been delayed until next month. Seven roosters then! We best start eating the freezer, as we'll need the space. I bought a free range bird for the price of a good bottle of wine this week and the stock from it has hardly gelled. Won't be a problem in that respect with Rayleen's local, free range over paddocks roosters. They make truly fantastic stock. I'm thinking I might have a go at cutting the meat of the bones and making stock with raw bones this time. Heads, feet, the lot.

Bought some more shallots to plant this afternoon. I read recently that I should have planted them with their necks sticking out of the ground. I think I planted mine much deeper than that. Time will tell what survives and prospers.

Food diversity: bok choy tonight in with the other ingredients in the lentil shepherd's pie. I have got some in the garden but it isn't ready to eat yet. This bought stuff was huge compared with mine. I made the lentil shepherd's pie out of the leftovers from last night's puy lentil and bacon bone casserole. I am getting better at appropriate serving size. Finally.

One local season, One Fat Lady

I've been reading with interest about the Northern Hemisphere one local summer challenge on Joanna's blog.

Could I do it here in Winter? Not sure, but I'm thinking about it.

Perhaps us Southern Hemisphere gals could have a go at this in our Summer?

I've finished "Spilling the Beans" by Clarissa Dickson Wright of Two Fat Ladies fame. I thoroughly enjoyed it and recommend you order it from your library also. If you are only interested in living simply, then she won't be the read for you at the moment, though you'd be missing out. She has serious gumption and survival skills. I loved reading about her endeavours around good food in England and Scotland and now know she is partly responsible for the revival of Borough Market in London, a place I adored. Books for Cooks in Portobello has also benefited from her skills and I remember trekking over there to check that place out a couple of times also. Food heaven. If someone you love has problems with alcohol, then it is a powerful and relevant book also. Her narrative of the process of alcoholism and rehabilitation will stay with me a long time.

She is also an enthusiast of good food growing, as any food enthusiast must be. Her cardoon growing project has made me consider growing it. Kings Seeds have it in their catalogue.