Cabbage trees!

Call me slow, but I didn't realise just how amazing Ti kouka and their rellies were until recently!

Today on This Way Up at 1.30, I'm chatting with Simon Morton about them, and I've just put up some info about them on Wild Picnic.

Next time I have a garden, the first thing I'm going to start planting is cabbage trees!

Independence Days Challenge update 3 (or is it 4?)

I haven't done much towards food independence over the past couple of weeks ...

No planting or harvesting at all. (Although I've done a lot of looking at my garden and pondering which things are coming up and which are not, and why ...)

Preserved: Got together with a friend, Nadine, and while our children played she made a bowl of kimchi and I made a bowl of sauerkraut, then we swapped a jar each.

I think I overdid the salt in the sauerkraut. Sorry Nadine - if you are reading this! Nadine's kimchi is, however, delicious and I have to use all my willpower to not eat it before it is fermented properly.

Eat the food: Does picking at the kimchi count? Maybe not ... Apart from that, I've been working my way through the quince syrup I made. (It was meant to be quince jelly, but I didn't boil it for long enough.) It's delicious on porridge.

I've also been making tea from the oat straw I dried, and it's lovely. Definitely going to plant a lot more oats.

Sugar beet and old women's magazines

My Mum sent me this lovely and fascinating email the other day, and I asked her if I could repost it here.

By way of background, my mother has a popular (among spinners) NZ spinning wheel site, and a book in the pipeline.

Here's her email:


I spent much of yesterday going through World War 2 issues of the New Zealand Countrywoman, the newsletter of the Women’s Division of the NZ Farmers’ Union (now Women’s Divn Federated Farmers). Didn’t find much on spinning wheels, but it was interesting and would make a great research topic for someone (not me).

There was a Mrs Cocks-Johnston, for example, who seems to have spent most of the war travelling from place to place giving demonstrations to branches on home gardening and preserving.

There were lots and lots of little branches, as villages were very isolated. The organisation couldn’t afford to provide her with a car, and there wouldn’t have been enough petrol anyway, so they bought her a bicycle and she mostly cycled from the nearest train station or from one little village to another, over what must often have been bad roads, with a big pack of samples for her demo.

I’d love to find out more about her if I didn’t have other interests. One could go through the reports from the various branches and note where they said they’d had her and track her across the map!

There were lots of articles about coping with shortages. Here is one, from April 1944, by M.E. Annan, Dunstan Orchard, Clyde:

SUGAR BEET
I wonder how many of our members know what a helpful substitute Sugar Beet is for sugar in cooking fruit for immediate use. Unfortunately it cannot be used for preserving fruit as fermentation sets up within a very short time.

It is very easily grown, requiring little attention, and every household garden would do well to have a small plot to help out the sugar ration. Planted in the early spring, the beet should be ready for use from January on, and in the autumn can be stored in pits like mangles for winter use.

The method of using is to peel and cut the beet up into small pieces, put on in cold water, and boil for 30 minutes, strain off the liquid and put back in pot. When boiling, add the fruit to be cooked and simmer until tender... I find it more convenient to make enough syrup to last three days, but in very warm weather it is not wise to keep it longer...

(presumably it’s the liquid you put back in the pot)
..............................

I also had occasion a few days ago to skim through a few issues of the wartime NZ Women’s Weekly. There are lots of things in there that could stand re-publishing now.

Made me realise just how unthinkingly dependent we now are on gadgets and having things pre-processed.

Independence Days update

The sugar beets aside, this is what I've managed to do over the last couple of weeks ...

Plant something: More peas and snow peas. Lettuces. Leeks. Red bunching onions. Plantago. The peas and lettuces are looking good so far. Nothing else has popped its head up at all yet.

Harvest something: Chamomile flowers (the more you harvest, the more they produce). Self-heal (starting to take over the herb garden). Wild red clover flowers. The last green tomatoes. More dandelions for cooked greens and coffee.

Preserve something: Dried the chamomile flowers, self-heal and red clover flowers. (The clover I'm going to send out in little packages to some people by way of a token apology. A few weeks back I was meant to give a foraging presentation - but for various reasons, at the last minute I couldn't. I still feel crap about it.)

Eat the food: Made a new recipe for lambs brain curry with my son. We are ever trying to build up our repertoire with cheap cuts and offal ... The lambs brain curry is a good one because you add the lambs brain at the last minute. That means you can take out some of the curry before adding the brains and reserve it to serve to those who don't eat offal or any meat at all.

101 ways with sugar beets (well, okay, six)

I only planted a tiny patch of sugar beets this year, as an experiment. (Most of my gardening has been experimenting really - it's all pretty new to me - although I'm lucky enough to have a Dad who is something of an expert, although he's too much of a perfectionist to see himself that way ... He was the one who suggested I try growing sugar beets one time when I was off on a wishful thinking tangent about growing maple trees ...!)

I was thrilled to bits by how well the sugar beets grew. That's our harvest above - not alot - but enough to try a few different things with:

1. Leafy greens
The sugarbeet greens were enough to meet all our green vege needs for a week. They are a bit thicker and more leathery than other beet greens I've tried - so I treated them more like kale.

2. Raw beets
I thought they might be nice grated raw in salad, like beetroot is. One taste of a few gratings was enough to put paid to that idea. Raw, the sugar beet was very bitter and, worse, burned my throat as it went down.

3. Roasted beets
Again, treating them like beetroot, I tried roasting some chunks in oil along with some other root veges. Success! The texture was like roast beetroot. The taste - very similar but even sweeter than beetroot. Because of the strong sweetness, I wouldn't eat them roasted on their own. But mixed in with other veges - yum.

4. Fermented beets
I have some grated sugarbeet lacto-fermenting in brine on a shelf. I put a bit of carrot in there for colour, too. It's fermenting very slowly - because of the cold weather I suppose - and I'm not sure how nice it's going to be.

I tried a taste yesterday and it reminded me of old dishcloth smell. (I haven't had much luck, taste-wise, with fermenting beetroot either.) Still, I think it could be improved with a bit of onion and spice. I might try adding some.

5. Beet syrup for lemon cordial and water kefir
After I'd tried all those other things, I peeled and finely sliced all the rest of the sugar beets and boiled them to make an enormous batch of sugary syrup.

I started out using the method here. At first I didn't boil the mixture down as much as the recipe says. I left it fairly watery (it was still very sweet)and tried using that for a couple of things:

I fermented some water kefir grains in 50/50 water and sugar beet syrup. The kefir grains seemed to like it! And the result was nice. A slightly more interesting taste than kefir made from just cane sugar and water.

I also used it in some lemon cordial instead of sugar - and both children gave it their stamp of approval.

6. Beet sugar crystals
I really hoped to be able to boil the syrup down and crystalise it, as the recipes said. But for whatever reasons, I didn't seem to be able to get the crystalisation to happen. Maybe I just didn't boil it down enough.

What I ended up with was just a thick syrup - super sweet - and quite bitter. I noticed though, that it loses obvious bitterness when diluted, so this doesn't seem to be a problem.

I froze this very reduced syrup in ice cube trays to chuck into the blender for smoothies instead of honey - and use for whatever else.

I'm really happy with the sugar beets, and hoping to grow more of them this year, and try a lot more things with them.

Maybe I can even power our car with them. Or maybe not.

Independence Days Challenge round-up

I have to remind myself that the point of Independence Days is to celebrate what you have achieved, rather than feel bad about what you haven't.

With that in mind - I wont even bother to count up whether I actually have done one thing a day ... and I won't think about the boggy soil that has stopped me planting seeds I'm dying to plant ... and I won't think about that bag of figs that is sitting accusingly waiting for me to do something with it, and attracting fruit flies ...

Nope. I won't.

What I have done is -

Plant something: Peas and snow peas. (I think two shoots have come up, and so far they seem to have survived this morning's hail storm.)

Harvest something: Chamomile flowers, lettuce, overgrown mesclun salad, and our pride and joy - sugarbeets! (I can't find the camera, otherwise I'd post a pic.)

Preserve something: Dried chamomile flowers, started lacto-fermenting some sugarbeet and carrot, made quince jelly (although it turned out very runny - I was so sure I took it off the stove at the right time, but obviously not.)

Reduce waste: Changed our wheelibin collection to a tag system, so they only come pick it up when we ask them to, instead of regularly. Keen to see how long I can go before filling the bin, even while on another decluttering binge ...

Preparation and storage: Bought some more bulk rice for our supplies, and a few other bits and pieces.

Build Community Food Systems: Nothing really, but I did pop something into the food bank ...

Eat the food: Well, I suppose I have been trying to make sure all leftovers get eaten ... and there is this new fig ice cream recipe from the DomPost I have been meaning to try with those darn figs in the bag ...

Sharon Astyk has written more about the different Independence Days Challenge categories here. (They turn out to be a bit different from last year's, which I listed earlier.)

Backyard grains

Buckwheat and oats - yay - two experiments that worked, albeit on a miniature scale ... Now to see if I can grow them in slightly greater quantity this year!

Buckwheat was something I'd hankered to grow for ages. I love buckwheat pancakes and buckwheat noodles, and so do certain other members of the family. I can't get them to eat stuff made with wholemeal wheat flour very often, but buckwheat combined with white flour goes down a treat, and must be way more nutritious than the white flour on its own.

I scattered some buckwheat seeds amongst our zucchinis in spring, and they grew fantastically. (Better than the zucchinis, which suffered from various ailments this year.)

After the buckwheat had flowered, I picked the groats, and pummelled them up in our big mortar and pestle. The white starchy insides turned to powder, while the hulls stayed mostly in big pieces.

I shook it all through the sieve to remove the biggest bits of hull - and you can see the end result above. It looks just like the buckwheat in the shops! :)

Granted it's only a few spoonfuls, but it's MY few spoonfuls, and I bet those pancakes will taste really good.

I've kept the hulls too. Can you make buckwheat pillows out of those, does anyone know? I'm unsure whether buckwheat pillows are made from the whole groats, or from the empty, broken hulls. Any info gratefully received.

Now onto the oats. I just grew a few in our potato patch after most of the potatoes were dug. It was only a very small amount, but I wasn't really growing them as a grain, but as a herb.

The end result was this bag of dried oatstraw (for tea) ...

... and this tiny milky oats tincture. (There was more, but I've used some of it. It's supposed to be good when you are feeling stressed and depleted ... I feel like it's working, but I'm not ruling out a placebo effect.)

Kapiti cook-up

Last Thursday my children and I went to a solar cooking get-together with a group of home-schooling friends in Kapiti, hosted by Nikki.

It was lots of fun and somehow we had managed to choose the only day of the week that turned out to be sunny!

I love to see an army of solar cookers all working away together.


Lynda made these ingenious frankfurter cookers (I think they are from recycled Pringles containers?)


We were so hungry by the time the food came out, that we all forgot to take photos. About three quarters of the way through the meal I stopped and managed to get a bit of the wreckage ...



It was a lovely day. I even scored a nice new red cardi, as Free brought along a huge bag of un-needed clothes to share.

It was great to finally get to see Nikki's impressive garden, after reading and hearing so much about it. Maybe Free will have to hold the next solar cook-up so I can have a nosey at hers too. :) (Lynda's gardens I'm familiar with already - and they have been beautiful for as long as I've known her. I still have fond memories of that fresh-off-the-vine grape juice ...)

Worm farm taken

Have found a good home for worm farm 2 now - that was quick!

Anyone want a worm farm?

Until a few days ago, I had never been offered a free worm farm. But over the past week I have been offered - out of the blue - not one, but two, on completely separate occasions by completely unrelated friends.

I guess it's the season for it?

I had already accepted the first one, when the second offer came in. So if anyone would like it - and could pick it up from a very nice person in Island Bay - drop me a line at johanna dot knox at gmail.com - and I will put you in touch!

Food illustrated

Sarah, from my writing group, is a renaissance woman. Seriously. Not only is she a writer, but an illustrator, a designer, a musician, a crafter, a gardener and a cook. (And I'm bound to have missed something.)

Anyhow, she has a new blog - Garden Kitchen - where she cooks delicious (and eco-friendly) dishes and then draws them. It's beautiful!

More good things in the mail

On a NZ email list I'm on, some of us decided to do a seed swap. Here are some of the goodies I've received in the mail - from Esther, Jackie, Karen, and Madz, who are all keen seed savers. (Unlike me. I really need to learn more about seed saving.)

In return, I sent out some Caspian Sea yoghurt and little sundew seedlings.

Actually that book on using natural plant dyes is from Lishelle, and wasn't officially part of the swap. It just arrived in our mailbox out of the blue. Lishelle had been cleaning out her garage and thought I might like it. (She's like that! :o)

I'm especially interested in dying with wild plants. So far I have only tried blackberries (nice pinks and purples). Next I have designs on a large local fennel plant for some yellows and greens.

There go my Labour Weekend gardening plans!

At the fracture clinic there was a very distraught little girl in the waiting room. Her Mum was trying hard to cheer her up. 'Look!' she said, pointing at me and my cast, 'Look at that lady! That's what you're going to have, too. Isn't that cool?!'

Her mum looked at me somewhat pleadingly, so I felt compelled to smile and nod. 'Yes, it's really cool. Really. I love it. It's great.'

I don't know how I feel about this thing of telling little lies just to get someone else through something difficult.

Parents do it a lot. So do politicians, I think.

Self-reliance salad

Well, sadly, it wasn't really. The greens were foraged from a nearby park, but the snails were bought in a can from a store, and the potatoes were from our CSA.

But what I'm thinking is that this could be an almost wholly home-grown and foraged meal, once our small potato patch is ready, and once I get a bit more organised, protein-wise.

I'd been thinking about how Sandra said that she feels more secure now she is producing her own eggs and has a homegrown source of protein.

I totally understand that, and wish we had enough room to legally and ethically keep chickens. We don't though, and we're not planning on moving anytime soon. So what are my options for protein security? Growing mushrooms, and gathering wild snails seem like good possibilities, and I'm looking into both of these.

Sharon Astyk's latest post, a recipe challenge, galvanised me to think about all this further, and so yesterday I made this warm salad. (I love warm salads.) I'm about to go post it on her comments section.

At least one other NZer has posted some lovely food suggestions there. If you are keen too, I think there is about one more day to go.

A secret garden

About 10 days ago, I pleaded for a friendly botanist to help me distinguish between different wild, edible Brassicaceae species. And lo and behold - one answered!

So late last week, my daughter and I headed across town to Julia Stace Brooke-White's house with a big bagful of plant specimens to show her. The minute we stepped onto the long, shaded path up to her house we were enchanted.

The path was lined with miners' lettuce, raspberry bushes and other tasty flora, and finally opened out onto her gorgeous front yard, which my daughter said was 'like a secret garden'. My photo above doesn't do full justice to its magical atmosphere.

We took our specimens inside, and Julia examined them. Her job was made harder by the fact that I had picked them too soon, and they had wilted ALOT. However, she made some tentative identifications on the spot, and suggested we leave them with her to research further.

On the way out, she showed us lots of her interesting garden edibles - and even pulled some out for me to take home (insisting, when I thanked her, that she was just doing a spot of weeding. :o)

I was also very inspired by her style of gardening, allowing plants plenty of freedom to self seed and thus adapt to suit their environment.

We headed back down the path and onto the street with a bucketful of blue borage, miners lettuce, mustard lettuce, feverfew, and 'parcel' - a cross between parsley and celery.

It was a lovely experience, and I thank Julia very much. And yes, soon after, she did email with more definite IDs for our different Brassicaceae, but that will have to be my next post!