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.

Energy independence, food independence ... book independence?

No, I don't need another blog in my life - but I did so want to do this one.

After many weeks of picking other people's brains, and mulling it all over, I've set up the Quiet World project for booklovers.

I'm hoping to update it every Sunday.

And my next post here really will be about sugar beets!

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.)

And a good Jim Salinger story link ...

This Nature article seems to lay out the situation quite well I think.

Curiouser and curiouser ...

Jim Salinger's sacking

There are many murmurings on the Wellington grapevine about managers on powertrips ... It seems to me right now that this may be the most likely reason for JS's sacking. (Although I remain open to changing my mind.)

Nonetheless, it's a very bad look for NIWA management politically. Given the current political context, they are going to have a hard job quelling talk of similarities between 'our Jim's' predicament and that of the other outspoken Jim in the United States.

The reasons for the sacking aside, perhaps an important question to ask at the moment is - will the net result of Jim Salinger's sacking be to reduce the quality or quantity of information on climate change that the general public receives?

If it does, then in some ways it doesn't matter
whether that's what the people who sacked him intended or not.

Swine flu corrections!

Okay, it seems that even once I thought I had sorted out the semantics of flu I still had it wrong!

H1N1 is a subtype, not a strain, and has been around for a while. This new one they are worried about is a strain of H1N1 - and seems currently to be just being referred to as 'swine flu' - even though there are many other swine flus ...

I think!

(Thanks Mum for the corrections. lol.)

Perturbed

This morning's news worried me.

First of all there's the sacking of climate expert Jim Salinger from crown research institute, NIWA. There's also another article about it here.

At a time when the new National government is doing away with all sorts of projects (and positions) that relate to environmental stewardship, this looks kinda bad.

I hope someone gets to the bottom of this.

Oh, and then there's the swine flu outbreak. What's really bugging me at this stage is the quality of a lot of NZ reporting on the subject. If you just skim-read the articles on Stuff this morning, you could be forgiven for thinking that we actually already have confirmed cases of the H1N1 strain of swine flu here in NZ - which of course we don't. (Although a few days will tell.)

Stuff even ran a headline on their front page screaming 'Swine Flu is Here!' - and the ensuing article was hopelessly disorganised, making little distinction between flu, swine flu, and the specific strain of swine flu that's causing concern at the moment - H1N1.

I noticed when I looked at Stuff an hour later that the headline had at least been changed to something like 'Swine Flu Fears Grow'.

The outbreak of a new and lethal strain of flu is obviously not to be taken lightly, but I hope the reporting gets more accurate and organised soon.

Independence Days Challenge update

Am keeping up with the challenge so far. On days 1 and 2, I preserved things - dehydrating apples from our tree and making chutney with figs from my mother-in-law's tree.

On day 3, I cooked something new - making a caffeine-free coffee substitute from dandelion roots. I had done it before as a teenager, but the result was disgusting. This time I followed Euell Gibbons' instructions - cooking them on a very low temperature (around 100 celsius), for almost 4 hours. It wasn't too bad this time!

(First I tried doing it in the popcorn maker like we roast coffee, but the dandelion roots were so light they kept flying out onto the bench and floor.)

Then on day 4 (today), I recorded another show on foraging for National Radio's This Way Up with Simon Morton. I'm thinking maybe that counts as 'work on community food security'?

As before, I got tongue tied and said silly things, but at least I now have faith that they will edit it so that I magically sound more coherent than I really am! I think it goes to air in a couple of weeks and it will be the first in a monthly series.

Independence Days Challenge

Right, I'm going to start doing this. (Nikki has been doing it already for quite a while.)

It's a challenge set by Sharon Astyk to spur people on to make greater positive progress towards preparedness for economic difficulties and peak oil issues.

So, my goal is each day to do at least one thing that fits into one of these categories:

* Plant Something
* Harvest Something
* Preserve Something
* Store Something
* Manage Reserves
* Cook Something New
* Prep Something
* Reduce Waste
* Learn a New Skill
* Work on Community Food Security
* Regenerate What Is Lost

An explanation of each of the categories is here. (I like 'Prep Something' - it's a good catch all for anything that doesn't fit into any other category!)

Who else is doing this challenge? Would love to hear from other NZers doing it.