peasant food, tobacco and beer

Rice pudding was successful. I ate lots of it. 1/2 C short grain rice, 3 C milk, 2-3 T sugar, 1 t vanilla, pinches of nutmeg and cinnamon. Put on low for 3-4 hours in the (greased) slow cooker.

I've been looking through my Spanish recipe book. I have the great pleasure of owning Culinaria Spain, a story of Spanish food, customs and recipes region by region.

As I often do, I've been reading up on traditional food growing and preparation practices and recalling what I saw and learnt during our time travelling in Spain. I've been thinking this time particularly about meat and bean use in peasant cooking. The gorgeous Fabada which I remember so fondly from the Asturias is now made with big chunks of meat and while it was once so for the wealthy, one piece of preserved pig goes a long way to flavour a bean stew in more modest homes.

Now I'm thinking about a kind of modest self sufficiency where the animal protein might come from one slaughtered pig per annum, together with the eggs of three chooks, the meat of 2-3 roosters and the occasional haul of fish. How much meat would that be per week on average? I don't have the data to help me work it out but I'd hazard 1-2 times per week. I've read some graphic accounts of traditional pig slaughter and they all observe that no part of the pig is wasted.

I've still got leftovers from yesterday's/tonight's vegetarian soup. Even though everyone ate up well on it again this evening. I've played around successfully with bacon bones, pork bones and chorizo providing flavours for predominantly bean and veg meals since we've been back in New Zealand. Next trip to Blackball Salami, I'm going to buy some black and white puddings and see what I can create with them. Meat as flavour, not as filler, is my project. Or one of a trillion projects.

We've been discussing the tobacco, Favourite Handyman and I. Looks like we have sufficient harvest to last nearly all year. Massive sigh of financial relief. I am thrilled. Now we're both talking about having a go at home brewed beer.

So on the list for new seed for Spring:

hops

cannelini beans

chickpeas

early and late potatoes

pumpkins for eating. The amount of pumpkin seeds sitting lost and unloved in our cupboards tells me clearly not to bother with growing for edible seed again.

rice pudding

Is there no end to the number of items resident and ignored in my cupboards? I don't think I even had brown short grain rice in my original list.

So this afternoon I put the ingredients for rice pudding in the slow cooker. I remember my Mum making rice pudding for us when she cooked mince. Both in the oven slowly for several hours. My Mum doesn't have much time for environmental issues but she knew and knows a good bit about budgeting and that includes economical use of the oven. My best memory of rice pudding was when she used to put it + the mince on before she went to work and the oven on 'automatic' and my job after school was to stir them. The milk used to form a skin which I lifted off and got first dibs on eating. It was nicer than the pudding itself I think.

So hopefully we all like rice pudding here tonight and the brown rather than white rice part works okay. At least I haven't been foolish enough to fill the cupboards with tapioca or sago. Mum did them occasionally and I, not generally a fussy eater, used to wonder what misdemeanour we had commited to deserve such horrid food.

Before rice pudding we will be having leftover soup from last night. No special frills, just reheated. I've run out of home made bread and it's bought stuff to go with the soup as

...

I suspect I have chickenpox also. So I have energy for not much. Except feeling sorry for myself. And blowing my nose.

Outside I have put washing on the line. Did you know that that is such a dead practice in some parts of the world that some enviro group had a special day for encouraging people to use the clothesline? I don't know where the link for this is so you can either
a) google
b) trust me and we'll sigh collectively
c) wonder where I'm from 'cos you don't hang washing on the line at your place either
d) not trust me and not care. Or just not care. Iraq burns and Sandra is wittering about clotheslines for goodness sake.

Also outside I have been thinking about where to put next year's tobacco crop. Our tobacco experiment has been very successful. Favourite Handyman has dried the leaves from the rafters of our small shed and then he bought a pipe as the drag on a rollie paper wasn't sufficient. He reports that it tastes better than bought tobacco. So pretty flowers, easy to process and has saved us about $40 already. Of course,`a lack of any need to grow it next year would be nice, cancer risk etc., but if smoking is his demon for a while longer, then home grown is better than bought.

mice

Now it is cooling down outside, the mice have sought warmer shelter - in our house. I forget how many houses we have dealt with this in. Our terraced home in London was by far the worst as they lived inside all the time and appeared to move from home to home along the terrace. The ate anything and weren't the slightest bit scared of humans. Here there are fewer mice, they are scared of me, less intrepid and altogether more manageable. My Dad and Grandad have both advised us to put down rat and mouse poison bait. They find our comments about toxicity in the soil and our horror of a child finding it and eating it less than compelling but that's okay because Favourite Handyman and I are big kids now and get to decide ourselves. We're not cat lovers and we are near-cat-sneezers so that rules cats out. Plus it's hard to get them to catch and eat mice but not birds. Or to catch the blackbirds but not the native birds.

So at our place our main strategy is traps plus keeping food in mouse-proof containers. The modern kind of traps are very easy to deal with. The mice don't splatter (FH tells me horror stories of being sent up to deal with rat traps and rat splatter in the ceiling as a teenager), I'd say death is fairly prompt and you don't have to touch the mouse when emptying the trap. We've caught three this week.

What else today? Planted six swiss chard seedlings on the edges of the invasive garden and six kale seedlings across two established beds. All from our friendly local garden nursery. My own weren't the size I wanted for planting straight away. I still have some seedlings of my own for planting out in another ten days or so. I am now growing three kinds of swiss chard: Ironman silverbeet, Argentata beet and Rainbow Chard.

Favourite Handyman has started to harvest the tobacco. Two plants' worth are hanging from the ceiling of one of the garden sheds now. He also repotted some flax and cabbage tree plants a friend gave him. I don't actually want cabbage trees in this garden but at least while they are in pots we have some flexibility.

feeding the food

Today I finally had a little more space to garden. At first everything looked fine and then I realised actually there was so much needing done that I didn't know where to start. Here's what I did do in the end:

1. Transplanted more purple sprouting brocolli, pak choi and swiss chard. Chilled out over the loss of more seedlings to the bold apprentice. Opted not to use the watering can after she half filled it with dirt.

2. Emptied the seaweed fertiliser over my newest (made in January) raised bed. I buried the kelp chunks in the wood chip. I read in the latest Organic NZ magazine that you should only plant legumes in wood chip mulch as it will use the ground's nitrogen stores to decompose. I figure the seaweed should help and indeed it looks like I'll be starting off with legumes in that garden rather than garlic. I was thinking strawberries and something else with them after that.

3. Decided the reason the kale is yellowing on the lower leaves in the wood chip mulched potager (such a lovely and also swanky word for veg/flower/herb garden) but is not in the punga raised bed which doesn't have wood chip on it. Woodchip eating the nitrogen. So although I'm not sure that comfrey is nitrogen rich, I know that it is generally very nutrient rich and I have large leaves out the front. So I cut them, leave them to wilt a little round the kale and then remember the wind factor this evening and buried them slightly under wood chip, still around the yellowing kale. Next lot of chicken coop clearings (mixed bark and chicken poo but I would have thought still nitrogen heavy) will go into this garden to balance the carbon-nitrogen ration out better. Should be 80:20 carbon: nitrogen from memory.

4. Filled an old potting mix bag with seed heads of a weed I have yet to identify plus some dock seed heads also - this mostly from the lawn which has needed mowing for about a month. They won't be going into my compost.

5. Cut laterals off the tomatoes, some of them huge. I had stopped this task a few weeks ago because I'd thought I'd done it for long enough. Why? They kept on growing, many at funny angels and from the base of the plant yet again. Chopped any flowers off as with the cooling weather, any growth needs to go into the last tomatoes with a viable chance of ripening.

6. I've been thinking about crop rotation. It will be much looser than I'd planned in Spring of last year. Currently I have swiss chard and brassicas together because that is where the space is - nothing fancier than that. I will put garlic in where the tomatoes currently are and something else with it. That patch had legumes last winter. The newest bed will get lupins most likely. The tobacco bed, which needs more weeding then I can face even contemplating, will give way to broad beans for winter. Not that I like them especially, but it makes sense for some of the winter legumes to be edible and perhaps this time I will make fava dip. The bed nearest the kitchen which was brassicas and swiss chard when I first planted after we moved in in October 06, then garlic and now mostly pansies and lettuces, will give way increasingly to perennial herbs. I have chives, feverfew and parsley there so far. The other herb spot is too small to suffice.

7. I learnt that caterpillars like tamarillo leaves. A lot. Killed several this evening. The feijoa tree has settled in nicely, much better than the lemon tree, which is going to need replacing by the looks of it.

8. Discussed tobacco drying with Favourite Handyman. Needs to be done very very soon. He has a plan which involves pegging the leaves to old washing line which used to be hanging in the garage at our previous home. Then hanging that in the big garden shed, and the spillover in the garage if need be. So I guess I'll go buy hundreds of pegs tomorrow. They'll get reused no problem.

Planting day

Patience will never make me famous, get me to heaven nor did it help me with various other youthful pursuits. It isn't my greatest virtue in the garden either which is why I succumbed to the potted plants section at Mitre 10 this afternoon. As well as more bamboo stakes for the tomatoes, I also came home with six celery seedlings, lemon thyme, rosemary and sage. I managed to kill my first celery seedlings and only sowed batch number two yesterday. Hopefully it is goodbye to the days of paying heaps for a bunch of dubious quality celery only to use one stalk in a soup/stew/stock and leave the rest to moulder in the fridge for an unmentionable length of time. I've loved cooking with lemon thyme in the past but never found it in seed catalogues hence grabbing it in plant form today. Maybe it means it is some kind of terrible hybrid but I can live with that - some days I'm some kind of terrible hybrid also. Got a tiny seedling of rosemary and planted it in the hole in the driftwood which borders one of the vege gardens - should give us a free draining site in full sun which is about as close as we can get to recreating mediteranean conditions here in smalltown. The sage cos it seemed a good idea and I never bought a whole packet of sage seed as I couldn't imagine needing more than one plant. Although it is very scarcely known, sage is a powerful breastmilk supressant. Good to take if you want to dry up your milk supply; bad for many breastfeeding mothers. Just thought I'd put that out there. Stay clear of nasal decongestants also.

My favourite handyman planted some tobacco today. I think the baccy will be the most interesting experiment of this season. He also was very nice to me when I was so grumpy and fed up of mothering and houseworking and not seeing him earlier today. Everyone needs a handyman like my Favourite Handyman. He invited friends around later on and cooked a barbecue as well.

The invite included our discerning seven year old friend Tom. Which meant I had to clean the toilet specially. Tom didn't complain this time which I took to mean that either he never went to the toilet or that I'd done well this time. Maybe his parents prepped him on not commenting prior to the visit. Reminds me of when, nearly 30 years ago, we went to visit my uncle and aunt (brother and sister) who were each living in non-marital relationships at the time. Outside in the car my siblings and I were advised that another person called X would be there and Mum and Dad were not sure why and NOT to ask questions. Yeeeeeees that would be a sheltered upbringing. Absolutely.