Apple blossom and raspberry leaf alcopop!

I'm pretty sure it's Sandor Ellix Katz who is responsible for popularising (among us westerners!) home-made t'ej - Ethiopian style honey wine. It's the first, and simplest recipe in his book 'Wild Fermentation'.

Basically - 1 part raw honey to 4 parts water. Stir to dissolve honey. Cover. Leave in a warm room for several days. Stir at least twice a day, and wait for the wild wine-making yeasts to take up residence. Once the liquid is bubbly and smells and tastes like wine - well, it is.

You can use the basic principle to experiment with any sweeteners and additional ingredients you like.

Recently I tried using sugar instead of honey, and using water infused with blackberry leaves (tannins for some dryness) plus the last blossoms on our apple tree. The idea was that the sugar would be less strong-tasting than the honey, and allow the subtle apple blossom taste to come through more.

I'm not sure if sugar water is as good a breeding ground for wild yeasts as raw honey though! The result (above) was a nice tasting drink that tasted somewhat fermented, but was only very slightly alcoholic. More a home-made alcopop really!

Oh well. Further apple blossom experiments will have to wait till next year (and this time, I'll get started before they've almost all fallen off!) Meanwhile I'll find some other things to try and make wild wine from ...

Solar cooking backyard get-together

So New Zealand now has a right-wing government, and Roger Douglas is back. I should be feeling angry and miserable, but actually I feel great.

Today, we had some lovely people from Wellington South Transition Towns round for a solar cooking get-together - and it was the perfect antidote to Terrible-Election-Results Blues. Who cares what the government does, when Transition Towns communities are starting to get together and try sorting things out for themselves?

It was just an informal event. We set up our solar cookers - one bought - two home-made, and invited TT people to drop round any time during the day. We had curry, peppermint tea, and pavlova on the go. (Thanks to Heather for the pavlova inspiration.)

Just a few people came in the morning, and then more in the afternoon.

It got extra fun when Jean-Fabien and Rose brought some tin-foil coated cardboard and started cutting out more panel cookers ... and more ... and MORE!



Lots of different ideas for constructing and using solar cookers were flying round - as well as thoughts for another solar cooking event.

Meanwhile, our curry and pavlova were steaming away. My daughter was absolutely desperate for the pavlova to be ready. Luckily Wayne and Ping had brought some chocolate biscuits for the interim. Whew.

A lot of people had to go before we got the food out, but hopefully they enjoyed the afternoon anyway.

The curry turned out great.


The pavlova was good too - um - in it's own way. But I'm going to contact Heather for some tips.


All in all, it was a fantastic day, and we even got two nice little bunches of flowers out of it.

Anne brought this from her garden - a fully edible bouquet. Very cool.


And Rose picked these on the way.

And there's our cat, the publicity hound, again. It even managed to get into Rachelle and Rimu's photos at the Transition Towns website.

The joys of solar cooking at 41 south

I haven't posted a solar cooking update for a while, but we've been puddling away at it and having a few nice meals.

What's becoming obvious is that a solar cook's biggest challenge here in Wellington is the unpredictability of the weather. I don't mean from day to day, but from minute to minute.

Wellington weather is like - 53 minutes of sunshine, then 46.5 minutes of high cloud, then more sunshine, then a breeze blows up, then a huge, low rain cloud rumbles over and releases 23 drops of rain, then it's sunny for 5 minutes, then a howling gale rages for an hour, then the sun comes out again ...

As far as wind goes, I've got a bit better at dealing with that.

With the CooKit panel cooker, I anchor it down at the sides with bricks, and set up the pot in such a way that there's no risk of it sliding around inside its bag or tipping and spilling.

With the box cooker, I thought I was going to need to prop up the lid's relector panel at both sides, instead of just one, but so far I haven't needed to. I just made a better, stronger prop for the one side. (That may yet turn out to be unsatisfactory though.)

As for dealing with rain, I think what would be ideal would be to make a little shelter that we could put over the cookers at short notice whenever Welllington decides to turn on one of its brief, impromptu little showers. Must get onto that.

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.

Exceptionally fluffy pancakes

This morning I put Ruth's lively sourdough starter to good use, making Emma's sourdough buttermilk pancake recipe. (Except I didn't have any buttermilk, so used Caspian Sea Yoghurt instead.)

I think they were the fluffiest pancakes I've ever made. And they tasted good too.

A post on the run ...

So many things I have been planning to post about, but work is full on right now, and everything made more tricky by having a broken ankle.

(I can't even carry my own cups of tea from the kitchen to my desk. I've taken to drinking iced coffee with lots of ice-cream in it, because it's the only thing that doesn't slop out of the cup when I hop. Yes - the sacrifices I am making! ;o)

Anyway, just quickly, I wanted to say I heard from Heather, who has made a solar cooked pavlova. Such a cool idea, and I feel very inspired to follow her lead and try one as well.

She is also an industrial chemist, and has an interesting blog about the things we use in daily life that rely on oil for their manufacture.

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.

My jar runneth over

Oops. Ruth's Westport sourdough starter is clearly rearing to go!

Thanks heaps Ruth. It made the trip well.

Foraging on National Radio tomorrow

Something fun I did this week was go foraging around the nearby park with Simon Morton from This Way Up. (Thank you Hannah, for making that happen.)

I think it will end up as a 10-minute piece, going to air on his show sometime between noon and 1pm tomorrow.

I will probably sit all scrunched up and grimacing with a cushion over my face, hoping I don't sound as much of a dick as I think I did.

At least he's promised to edit out my mad rantings about eating bugs.

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.