Not to freeze

To freeze or not to freeze is a discussion we seem to have at least every year at my place. Do we need a chest freezer? No. Would a chest freezer be very useful? Yes. Can we afford one right now. No. So I guess we'll shelve that one until next year.

I bought mushroom compost to build up the garden underneath the study window. Brighid considers it her new playground. If I can get up before her tomorrow, then I will plant the chicory there and sow some rocket and coriander and peas (and hope she forgets about the area). Chicory looks very pretty so far. As far whether I will like the taste, I'll report on that later in the year.

I found the right parts for the food processor liquidiser attachment. I made a blueberry, kefir and maple syrup smoothie. I liked it. The children did not. Ah well, at least my intestinal flora is getting the good treatment.

I have started Brighid's knitted dress again. This time I cast on by knitting into the front of the previous stitch, just as my mother taught me years ago. It made a neater and tighter edge and was much easier to prevent twisting given that I'm doing the circular needles lark again. Last attempt I cast on by making loops with my finger and sliding them on. Won't be doing that for circular knitting again. So I have 40 grams of this gorgeous wool from the Granity craft shop and then I'll have to switch to something else when that runs out. I do have some leftover bobbly black alpaca wool of the same thickness from when I knitted my posh cardi last year. When I get to the bodice part, I think I'll switch to 8 ply. I have some plain black 8 ply left from knitting Fionn's sleeveless hoodie. It's quite fun making it all up. The skirt part is surely not difficult and I'll use the size 2 version of the sleeveless hoodie pattern to guide me for the bodice. When I read Heather Nicholson's book on the history of knitting in New Zealand, she observed that in parts of Europe they rarely bother with a pattern. So I'm feeling rather European and I will feel rather more European if I pull it off and the dress is pretty and easy to wear.

My chillis are coming along nicely. I have a renewed interest in chillies as Paul Pitchford says that they are strengthening to the lungs. There was a doctor in California who found surprisingly low rates of respiratory problems amongst Hispanic smokers in Los Angeles and attributes it to chilli intake (presumably more than guesswork - the book I read doesn't elaborate much). So given Favourite Handyman is still scaring me with his lung burning habits and given that he likes chillies and hot foods, I might make up some harissa (or surely I could buy some decent harissa though maybe not locally) for him to add to whatever he likes.

food project rationalisation

I made some beetkvass. I'd done a bit of online research and learnt that sometimes it does better than others. Mine was just salty pink water. I threw it out after drinking just a few mouthfuls. I'll try again when I have my own beetroot ready in the garden. Apparently the fresher the beetroot, the better the kvass.

I made ginger beer. It is nice. Very fizzy. But the children aren't overly fussed and I notice we are drinking it when we would otherwise drink water. So I'm leaving that for now. I might try again next summer.

The kefir is still bolting along. I've moved it out of the hot water cupboard which has slowed things down a bit. I'm still drinking it and I've made more banana muffins with it this morning. School goes back for Fionn next week so I've been baking baking and freezing lots of muffins for school lunches. Oh what a nice mummy I am.

Tomatoes. We got given a lovely bag of tomatoes earlier this week. Lots of different varieties, all home grown. We've eaten and cooked a few and I've sliced the remainder and put in the dehydrator this morning. I'll turn them into a jar of olive oil and herbs when they are nearly dry.

I'm reading Paul Pitchford's Healing with Whole Foods at the moment. It is very interesting. I suspect it is going to trigger another round of new foods/new recipes experimenting. I've got plenty to learn about Chinese nutritional theory, yin and yang and the five elements, not to mention all sorts of things about every kind of food.

Images from January

These were taken a couple of weeks ago. Above is our front of house potato patch. Favourite Handyman built the raised bed for this patch just before Christmas.

Here is kale (red russian and cavolo nero) and borage, with tomatoes, lettuces, Maori potatoe, thyme and peas in the background or around the edges. This is part of the old chook run.

A photo from our day out mussel collecting on the beach further up the coast from us.

This is the raised bed which I built in January 2008. It produced some reasonable food over the last few months but I felt it wasn't high enough and noticed the spinach had yellowing on its leaves in this patch. So we piled it high with compost and pea straw and sheep and chook poo. Since this photo, I've planted cabbage, kale, cauliflower and broccoli in this patch.

The flowers in the vase are feverfew. It grew so prolifically that I've had to cut it back hard in order to let light in on the nearby parsley. I like to have a lot of parsley in the winter garden. It's magical stuff nutritionally. The wee pots on the table have basil in them. The orange and yellow flowers behind the table are calendulas. They grow there all year round since I cleared and composted that area. Calendulas are my personal emblem of hope and strength for my friends who are trying to conceive or who are pregnant. Right now Tania, they are glowing brightly and producing more and more flowers (despite Brighid's enthusiasm for picking them and making floating bowls in the rain-filled wheelbarrow). I'm still praying for you and your lovely baby throughout each day.

The corrugated iron you can see behind the table will be made into a very high raised bed in the too wet garlic patch later this year. The wooden pallet will go underneath the wood when it gets stacked (soon I hope) and the old car tyre will go in the corner on top of another tyre in order to make a cactus home. We have one cactus in a tyre and one of my latest ideas is to make a corner feature of cacti in tyres at different heights (i.e different numbers of tyres as the bases for the plants). Then I will dig bokashi along that strip against the fence, slowly across this coming winter. Eventually, the entire fence line will glow with flowers. The plant beside the calendulas is a canna lily. It has shot up and started to flower since I took this photograph.

camping

Two nights away camping. It was fabulous. I think we should live in a tent all the time (apart from the heating in winter issue). We just don't need so much of the stuff in our house. I've come home ready to do a deeper cull.

We stayed at Nelson Creek, an old gold mining village up the Grey Valley (West Coast still). We walked past many relics and reflected on the lure of gold over the centuries. We swam and lazed around and watched the children and made friends with another family. There is a church (not generally used I think) and a pub (generally used) and a few houses clustered near the camping ground. The pub had a corner devoted to the photos of the past, including the century of the Nelson Creek School.` Wow. I recognised many of the family names and realised that they go back over 100 years in this part of the West Coast. My family have never stayed in one place for more than one generation.

Yesterday we drove further up the road and went to Lake Haupiri which was very serene and totally beautiful.

I found out more about a local homekill abbatoir. Although we have a good local(ish) butcher, he still sources his meat from Canterbury and I want to shift our meat consumption entirely to locally grown meat, not just locally processed. I am in the process of sorting out a co-op for half an organic (beef) beast for this winter. I'm making sure I get the bones as well as I've been reading more about the benefits of bone broths. Perhaps we do need a chest freezer after all. I have made a space for one with the last revamp of our home.

I have finished Fionn's sleeveless hoodie. It would look better with the edges on the sleeves (I certainly won't be undoing it to put them on!) and the pattern is very odd with respect to the way the hood attaches to the rest of the vest, but you can't tell when it is on. It looks good on. Fionn now wants me to make knitted trousers to go with it to complete the bumblebee outfit look. A vain desire.

Brighid is now two. She now has even more clothes than before and it is truly ridiculous. She also has the cradle which my great grandparents gave me when I was one and which Mum has repainted and made a mattress and linen for. Mum and Dad put (another!) doll in for her as well but Mum doesn't like the clothes the doll arrived from the shop in. Maybe I will use some of the rather significant stash of wool I found when I cleaned the study and knit a doll's dress. Maybe. I'm going to do the sewing night class at the local high school again this term. Last time it was winter and I missed a few sessions due to bad health and weather. So all I did from a supposedly eight week course was turn one dress into a skirt, sew some nappy wipes and cut out a pair opf pyjama pants. I'm hoping to at least manage to finish the pyjama pants and do something else as well. I do enjoy the chat though, which slows me down just like it did when I was in the classroom years ago!

The garden is looking well. I found the magic stick thing for saving files and photos onto when I cleaned up but I forget which safe place I put it into. Or the proper name for the magic stick. It is peak white butterfly season and I spend some time every day peeling off caterpillars and killing them. Tomatoes still seem to be slow even although the weather is wonderful. When they do ripen, Brighid and the blackbirds eat them. Brighid gets stuck in before they ripen sometimes. I have started to harvest the first potato patch.

I'm off now to make a bigger pile of things to give to the charity shop. We need fewer things in this house.

cauliflower mousse

Dad gave us a beautiful cauliflower from his garden earlier this week. We also had stale bread (due to my low carb project) and a small glut of eggs. So I pulled out my Amrita recipe book (Wellingtonions may remember the restaurant which produced the book) and found cauliflower mousse.

They did: eggs, cauliflower, onion, bread crumbs, cheese, milk, optional sunflower seeds

I did: eggs, cauliflower, onion, bread crumbs, cheese, kefir, brazil nuts, garlic, rosemary, thyme, marjoram and oragano.

We are drowning in kefir. I have it all out of whack because I am not a smoothy maker and I think I've lost the rubber seal for the smoothie attachment on my food processor so the children have not had any more kefir than a few teaspoons on their porridge. We have had kefir cheese and Favourite Handyman likes it and I drink kefir twice most days but it is hot here and the stuff is growing so fast that the milk is getting expensive. I was pleased to oblige when one friend rang today and explained that her husband had put the kefir in the fridge (I gave her a big jar of grains two days ago) and killed it and could she have some more.

So kefir instead of milk in the mousse and all the herbs and garlic because the original sounded rather plain. Brazil nuts because I am trying to up my selenium levels and it can't harm the rest of the family to get a bit more selenium.

It tasted very nice. For anyone fancying making the recipe, you saute the onions, garlic and then drop in the herbs for the second half of the sauteeing time. You cut up the cauli into small pieces and then put in a pot, bring to the boil and then strain water off. Grate the cheese (any old cheddar though I expect if you had fancy stronger hard cheeses they would be nice as well). Whizz up the bread into crumbs. I used grainy bread. Chop up the brazil nuts quite finely. Mix everything except the milk/kefir and the eggs together. Then beat the milk/kefir and the egg yolks together and mix in to the rest. Finally beat the egg whites until fluffy and then fold in. Put in a greased casserole and bake for about an hour at 180 degrees celsius.

I've been reading about brassicas being especially good for us human beings. I've also decided that I need to get to like cauliflower more and eat it more as it does grow in winter.

I served the mousse with sliced carrots and red peppers and a dollop of hummous. If I had been a less frazzled person at ten-to-six, I would have added something dark green as well. But frazzled I was and frazzled at ten-to-six is not the slightest bit uncommon.

summer, recycling

Summer is so beautiful, especially as January passes, that I almost fear to write, to acknowledge that the days are passing. Fionn is at his grandparents' at the moment and thus early mornings here are very quiet. Last night we went out to dinner and then walked along the beach. Brighid and Favourite Handyman both collected pieces of wood for the raised bed gardens and carried them back on their shoulders. Brighid wore a very beautiful smocked dress a friend had made for her and gifted when she was born. With a full skirt and a bow at the back, it is similar to the dresses my mother made for my sister and I when we were small. This one had spaghetti and berry sauce down the front and was wet from the sea around the hem by the end of the evening. It was made with love and she had fun while wearing it.

I bought some chicory seedlings the other day and now have to prepare a spot to plant them in. I sowed chicory seed last year but none of it germinated.

Now the market for recycled glass, plastic and metals has collapsed world wide, stories of recycling centres struggling to stay afloat are making the papers frequently. For me, living in a place which is a long way from anywhere, I think it is an opportunity to ask some different questions about recycling. Everywhere I have lived in the last ten or so years, we've been talking about recycling. Good services, bad services, improving services. The range of recycling services seems a badge of how enlightened a council is. For a city dweller, putting the recycling out, applauding the council or berating them according to their level of collection, is a pleasant way of feeling green.

But why the hell should we feel better about shipping plastics to China (how much fuel is that, not to mention how much fuel to get it all to whichever port it leaves New Zealand from) instead of putting them in our own local landfill? Is China not doing enough of our dirty work by producing clothes and toys and electronic goods cheaply and sweatedly, to feed our consumer desires?

I would like to see a lot more focus from the council here in smallwettown on composting. Food waste is one very significant portion of household waste that need never leave town. For many people, given that we live in a low density housing area where hardly anyone is in a flat without a bit of garden, most of the food waste need never leave our gates.

There is nothing saintly about my supermarket consumption. Nothing at all. We don't buy readymade foods like packaged pizzas and fish fingers, but we do seem to acquire a significant amount of packaging waste each week. There is no waste packaging from my home made kefir, but come term time, I do humour my son who has no tv and generally wierd parents and who especially asks for bought yoghurt not the home made kind for school. I say no to him about 8005 times per week, so the odd yes to yoghurt does not constitute ridiculousness to my mind. We usually buy bottled beer, but when I know we are having guests or will drink a rigger in a day, then I go to the fill your own liquor shop. They have Harrington's Wobbly Boot on tap for $9 a 2 litre bottle and it is a very nice drop.

There is more I can do to reduce packaging coming into my home and with a little more steel resolve, those reductions will become permanent. But I've stopped thinking that the council needs to collect all my crap and send it to China. Frankly, I hope everyone will rethink the way that we treat China as our lower class relation, servant and dumping ground.

magnesium

Just for the record, so I can compare with next month's craze (hopefully something more exciting like vodka cocktails), I am thinking about magnesium a lot. I've been stepping up my project to learn more about the immune system and how to improve it. Seeing as I can't shove myself in anyone's womb and dictate that I'll have breastmilk and organic wholegrain grits thrice soaked in whey from Mohammed via the Caucasus. It's all too late on the setup front. Antibiotics, anasthetics and too many carbohydrates.

Last week it was all calcium. Then I found some more information and it turns out calcium is nothing without magnesium. And if I've concentrated properly, which is possible given that the small people who always want to be fed are away today, too much calcium can present similarly to too little calcium and really the issue is magnesium. Apparently they are antagonistic to each other, which is not quite what I was looking for. Harmony of my bodily elements is a much more appealing concept. I think.

Less sugar, less carbohydrates. Or is that fewer? Once I had a job where you risked being fired if you used fewer and less the wrong ways around.

Anyways, there are white butterflies hanging around my brassicas. Perhaps I should go evict them and scrape eggs off the leaves.

Magnesium and white butterflies. Yes, I am still on my lunch break from cleaning.