Coffee and the crisis

The two reasons I've just started home-roasting coffee are:

1. It's way easier on my wallet - even taking into account electricity use.

2. Green beans keep a lot longer than roasted beans. (I've read that if stored well, green beans can keep for 2-4 years with little loss of quality.) I'm keen to start storing coffee in case imported supplies become unreliable. Given how long they keep, it makes a lot more sense to store the beans at the green stage.

Of course I could solve all the issues in one fell swoop by giving up coffee, but I'm not quite ready for that!

I used this website's instructions to get started.

I buy green beans - Ethiopian Yirgacheffe - from People's Coffee.




I roast them in our little old electric popcorn maker.

The first time I did it, it took eight minutes.

Now I've got it up to nine.


Dan, one of the lovely People's Coffee barristas, says the ideal amount of time (for a dark roast I think) is about 16 minutes. If you roast too fast it doesn't taste as good.


Apparently electric popcorn makers can sometimes roast coffee much, MUCH too fast, but Dan seemed to think that 8 or 9 minutes was pretty respectable for one of these appliances.

A few notes:
I was relieved to find that the smoke produced during the process wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be.

As the beans heat and puff up, they crackle and pop a bit. I put a bowl under the popcorn maker just like I do for popcorn, and during the roasting, when any beans come flying out and land in the bowl, I quickly drop them back into the popcorn maker.

The husks that fly off have to be cleaned up afterwards, but it's really not that bad.

I'd like to try roasting beans in our cast iron frying pan. That way I could do it over the woodburner in winter and avoid electricity use. I think I'd get a more uneven result, but I might be able to control the overall speed of the roast better.
Ultimately I'd love a proper stove-top popcorn maker to use.

I've just found out that Sharon and her family roast their own beans too - have been doing it for ages. Hopefully I can pick up some tips and ideas from her.

Flax seeds again

In my travels round our suburb, I've so far found only one flax bush out of many that has really delicious seeds. Mostly they are quite thin and black-coated and bitter. But this particular bush has pods that are shorter and fatter than the others ...



And most of those pods seem to contain very sweet, white, meaty seeds ...



I don't know what this means though. I don't very well understand the taxonomy of flax. From what I've read there are two native species growing in New Zealand - and within those species there are many subspecies and varieties, and an enormous amount of genetic variation.

I keep hoping to find another flax bush around my locale with delicious seeds, but so far no luck. My sister has suggested I break off a fan of leaves from this particular plant, and try to grow it in our backyard.

I would have to ask the owner's permission ... The only reason I could get these particular seeds was that a big stalk of seeds had broken off and was lying across the pavement.

Changing the subject a bit - one thing we tried doing with these seeds was dry-roasting them. Flax seeds must be a bit tricky to dry roast I think, because they are so mucilaginous. We did two batches. The first turned out quite okay. The second, not so good.

Would be interested to hear from anyone else who's tried this.

The economics of urban foraging

I'm doing a show-and-tell about foraging for the next Wellington WAPF meeting. Then a few weeks later I'm going to lead weed walks during a Farm Day at our CSA.

Both organisations are keen to focus on the 'free food' aspect of foraging. And yet - I'm not sure if many of us in urban areas could manage to save more than a few dollars a week out of our food budget by foraging. (Although of course in tough times, even a few dollars are vital.)

Maybe even more to the point, I'm thinking that if lots of people in urban areas started foraging for any economically significant quantity of food, then supplies would rapidly deplete.

Still - I do think there are important economic benefits to foraging. The main one is that it keeps you out of other more expensive and consumerist mischief.

Although foraging is a bit of free food, it's better than that. It's a free hobby. It's as solitary or as social as you want to make it. It's educational. It gets you out of the house. It's family friendly. It can be challenging, or meditatively relaxing, or both.

Such endlessly absorbing free activities are in short supply in the city, and frankly I think it helps me save more out of my entertainment budget than anything else.

And now for some fluff

My children say they have outgrown fluffies. Meanwhile I seem to have grown into them. Lately, in an effort to reduce my caffeine intake, I've been drinking frothed-up milk flavoured with rose or lavender.

To make the lavender fluffies, I heat up milk in a lidded pot, along with with a sprig of lavender from my daughter's flower garden. When it reaches scalding temperature I add a bit of honey and stir it in. Then I take out the lavender, pour the milk into the coffee plunge-pot, and plunge the plunger up and down till the milk has frothed up.

I LOVE lavender as a drink. (A spoonful of lavender vinegar in chilled water is strangely nice too.) Lavender is supposed to help with focus and metal alertness, so I've convinced myself it makes a good substitute for coffee.

I like fluffy milk with a dash of rose-petal tincture as well. My parents have some beautiful dog rose bushes, and a few weeks ago I collected a bagful and tinctured them in vodka.

I collected a second batch of petals a couple of weeks later, strained out the old petals, and put the new ones in for a couple more weeks, to make a double tincture - so it's strongly fragrant.

And speaking of white fluffy things flavoured with rose - I was really pleased with the rose and chocolate chip meringues I made a wee while ago. I just added a couple of spoonfuls of rose petal tincture instead of vanilla to the meringue mix and folded the chocolate chips in.

I think it would also work well to put the rose flavour into the whipped cream instead of the meringues.

I guess to come full circle I need to make lavender meringues now ...

New foraging finds 2: fresh flax seeds

Jane, a friend we stayed with in Feilding, introduced me to flax seeds fresh from the pod.

Pick a flax pod, break it open, and take out the little flat seeds carefully. It's fascinating the way each seed tastes different - some very sweet, others more bitter. It partly depends on the ripeness of the pod and the variety of flax, but even within each pod there is some variety.


Since coming back from our short holiday I have been sampling flax seeds from plants (with pods in varying stages of ripeness) all round Newtown and Berhampore.

I'd like to collect enough to sprinkle on a green salad.

Apparently people have also roasted them to make a coffee substitute.

New foraging finds 1: Beach spinach berries

We went away for the weekend to stay with two different families - each of whom introduced me to a new foraged food.


First, at Tangimoana, Lynda and her lovely daughter took me to their favourite beach spinach spot - where a particularly lush crop of the stuff grows. Lynda noticed that it was in berry.

We are both fans of the leaves, but neither of us had read that you could eat the berries. We wondered whether we should try them.

Lynda is more intrepid than me, so she offered to go first. She took a tentative nibble, and said they were quite nice. I was still a wuss, so I just picked a few and brought them home to photograph on a bed of their leaves. (Above!)

Today, a good three days later, Lynda is still alive and well ;) - so I finally tried one of the berries. It was mild, salty, sweet and juicy all at the same time, with a texture a bit like watermelon.

I wonder if anyone else has heard of eating these berries? (Those of either beach spinach or its very close relative NZ spinach?) If so, I'd love to hear about it. In all the books and websites I've checked, the only use I can find for the berries is as a colouring.

Beach spinach is in the same family as iceplant, and certainly iceplant berries are known to be edible ...

I'll write about our other find tomorrow.

Wild mustard (and happy new year!)

Mustard can be made from the seeds of various members of the Brassicaceae family. A few months back I tried drying seeds from what I thought was wild turnip. (It wasn't though. It was a close relative, although I'm still not sure which one!)

It was all a bit of a disaster. I got over-paranoid about whether the seeds were toxic, and the seedpods were too small and few to make more than a pinch of mustard from anyway. Then to top it off, someone knocked the drying seedpods off the windowsill and the tiny seeds spilled and vanished.

Anyway, now that I know what wild turnip REALLY is, I'm trying again.

I was inspired to make wild mustard after reading Euell Gibbons' 1962 foragers' classic - Stalking the Wild Asparagus.

Gibbons lived in the United States and wrote about making mustard from the seeds of Brassica nigra:

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[The seedpods] ripen unevenly, and as soon as they are ripe, split open and the seeds drop out.

The best way I have found to collect these seeds is to gather the whole seedstalk ... just when the lower pods are beginning to shatter, and spread them on one of the large plastic sheets, which I have found such a handy help in foraging.

After drying out in the sun for a few days, they will be ready to thresh out by beating them with a flail. From one 9 by 12 sheet piled full of ripening seed stalks, I have winnowed out 1/2 gallon of clean mustard seed, and that is as many as I can possibly use in a year.

The clean dry seeds can be ground ... this will give you the same kind of dry mustard you can see on the spice shelves at your grocers, and it can be used in any recipe that calls for dry mustard.

To make the yellow pasty condiment that is called Prepared Mustard, put some flour in a pan and toast it in the oven, stirring occasionally until it is evenly browned ...

Mix this browned flour, half and half with ground mustard and moisten with a mixture of half vinegar and half water until it is the right consistency, and your condiment is ready to use.
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In a New Zealand context, wild turnip might be one of the best plants to make mustard from.

The wild turnip round our house is covered in seed pods at the moment ...

My son and I picked some bunches:

And they've been drying for a few days now. They've almost all dried and split and released their seeds. (I've tried a nibble of the seeds, and they're nice.)

Hopefully we'll be making mustard in a day or two - although not in such bulk quantities as Euell Gibbons!

NZ books for children and teens

For the summer '08 issue of Booknotes (the NZ Book Council's journal) I filled in for their regular children's book reviewer, who was on leave.

A few of the books I reviewed had themes relating to self reliance and the environment, so I thought I'd 'reprint' those ones here.

PICTURE BOOKS

The Stuck There Forever Boat
Gillian Torckler; illustrated by Bruce Potter
(Picture Puffin, $17.95)

The book’s September release date could not be more appropriate. As I write, a group of small island states are calling on the UN Security Council to address climate change as a threat to international peace and security.

Set on an unnamed island based on those in the Tuvalu group, The Stuck There Forever Boat presents the effects of rising sea levels on small island communities in a clear and personal way.

I was disconcerted at first by the author’s notes at the end of the book pointing out that, for the sake of the story, she had sped up the time-course of events. But then again, I thought, arthouse movies get away with this kind of thing frequently, and what with the narrative’s mythic feel and Bruce Potter’s dream-like photo-realist illustrations fading into black around the text, the book is somewhat filmic.

While its subject is not an easy one for children, The Stuck There Forever Boat manages to end on a hopeful note by focusing firmly on the successful evacuation of the main characters from their island. That will be enough for some readers for now. However, for those who are ready to pursue the issues further, the book serves as a good starting point.


INTERMEDIATE FICTION

Tales from the Swamp
Kingi McKinnon
(Scholastic, $16.99)

McKinnon’s short story collection begins and ends with tales that contain supernatural elements, but sandwiched in between are depictions of everyday life that explore the nuanced and sometimes downright confusing relationships that can exist within families and groups of friends.

The characters banter, bully, scold, and care for each other deeply. Lucid and unflinching, McKinnon dives straight into the murky areas of relationships, avoiding obvious judgment, keeping a sense of humour, and giving the reader plenty of room to decide for him or herself what to think of each situation.

Fascinating in a different way are the depictions of rural life and food gathering – raiding an overgrown watermelon patch, hunting for wild eggs, shooting ducks, and torching for eels.

Reading these stories, it’s hard not to feel sadness at the untimely loss of McKinnon’s voice from New Zealand writing.



NON-FICTION

How to make a Piupiu
Leilani Rickard
(Raupo, $30.00)

With interest in traditional arts and crafts increasing, this book will be a valuable resource for many.

Instructions don’t get much clearer than Rickard’s. They are laid out in just the order you need them; the numerous photographs illuminate exactly what you want them to; and Rickard’s years of experience as a teacher are evident in the way her text anticipates questions and swiftly answers them.

A nice touch is the Gallery at the end of the book showcasing piupiu in both modern and traditional styles. In fact I would have enjoyed a few more pages of this.


How to Eat a Huhu Grub, plus a truckload of other mad, cool & dangerous ideas for Kiwis who like doing stuff
Nick & Conrad Turzynski
(Random House, $35.00)

In his introduction, Nick Turzynski describes this as ‘a book for kids who like doing stuff and for adults who like to do stuff with them.’

He goes on to suggest that if children really are becoming the screen-addicted couch potatoes that we often complain they are, perhaps it’s because we are no longer getting out there and showing them how to do exciting physical and practical things. Without wanting to go too deeply into my own parental failings, I suspect there is at least some truth in this.

Turzynski’s attitude may be epitomised in the chapter entitled, ‘The Dying Skill of Knifemanship’: ‘[My father] bought knives for my brothers and me, showing us how to use them safely …We kept them razor sharp and were always aware how dangerous they could be. In all the years we had knives we suffered a multitude of cuts and abrasions, but not one from a knife.’

The message: don’t shield children from dangers, but don’t leave them to their own devices either; work with them and show them how to negotiate those dangers.

Promoted as a New Zealand version of The Dangerous Book For Boys, it’s much less gendered, but is written in a similar lively style and has the same format – practical activities interspersed with lessons about nature and history.

For most activities all you’ll need by way of instruction is the book. There are a few, however, (such as making medicinal treatments from native plants) where most would want to hunt out some extra info before putting any suggestions into practice. And does the book really tell you how to eat a huhu grub? Absolutely. My son was rummaging hopefully amongst old logs for nearly an hour. Had he found any we would certainly have had a different dinner that night.


SENIOR FICTION

Scorched Bone
Chronicles of Stone
Vincent Ford
(Scholastic, $19.99)

This well researched novel, the first in a trilogy, takes place in the Americas over 10,000 years ago. It follows the journey of twin brother and sister Trei and Souk, along with their friend Crien, to try and help their tribe survive through lean times.

From the very first page, where young hunter Trei stalks a fawn suckling from its mother, Ford pulls the reader into a raw world where humans are keenly aware of their own animal natures and their dependence on the rest of the natural world.

The first few pages set up themes that are developed throughout the book – survival, nourishment, family bonds, and death. Ford doesn’t shy away from gore. Some of it may be upsetting, but it never feels gratuitous.

Ford’s elegant, spare prose rarely falters, and his third person narrative shifts frequently and seamlessly between the perspectives of the two main protagonists and that of a third invisible observer. In this way he skillfully maintains control of the story’s emotional impact.

The book is embellished with descriptions of hunting, gathering, and food storage techniques, adding another layer of interest. While I would place this book in the young adult category, I’m sure it will also appeal to intermediate students.


Juno of Taris
Fleur Beale
(Random House, $18.99)

In this futuristic page-turner, Beale continues the exploration of mind-control that she began with I am not Esther, and poses some big questions. For example, in certain situations, is there a place for mind-control?

The people of Taris live on a Pacific island within a protective bubble that shields them from the environmental and political threats plaguing the rest of Earth.

Every aspect of their lives is controlled by tradition and/or authorities, but central character Juno is not born to conform.

In the first few chapters, Beale leads us to believe this will be a classic ‘chosen one’ story, following Juno as she pursues her destiny. However, as the book progresses, Beale subverts this expectation. Free will elbows out destiny, and Juno’s friends reveal themselves to be more than side-kicks, and take on roles that are just as important as Juno’s in changing the order of things on Taris.

Of all the ideas the story offers, it is this one I personally find most engaging – that saviours and pre-ordained destinies are wishful thinking. Change is brought about by groups of people who take control of their own destinies.

However, the book offers plenty more ideas than that for readers to sink their teeth into.

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 ...)

Small honey update

I just got this comment from Pip in Kerikeri, about separating honey from its wax comb. It's so useful that I'll cut and paste it in here, since I know things in the comment section often get missed:

Hi Johanna, we have just removed the frames from our hive. To start with we score the surface of the honeycomb, to open up the comb, with a normal fork. Then we leave it to drip into a bucket overnight. Most of the honey flows out this way and if there is any left we still want then we squeeze it. Enjoy, its so much fun!

Also, I put a basic honey junket recipe up on Wild Concoctions, and will put up some variations soon.

Lastly - a quick plug for Peanutbutterland peanut butter - available through Nature Foods. This is lovingly and labour-intensively made by a guy in Kapiti. (At least I think it's Kapiti. Hopefully someone will correct me if I'm wrong.) And it truly is the best peanut butter ever. It's not just ordinary home-made peanut butter. It's gone through a whole soaking and drying process, and been mixed with coconut oil, so it's way more nutritious and digestible than 'regular' peanut butter.

The reason I mention it in a post about honey is that my son and I have become addicted to having it with honey!