Celebrate the wonky, the curly, the pale and the dark

Celebrate the curly

There are many great things about growing your own. I needn't tell you what they are...you already know!

But one of the things I most enjoy is that your produce looks 'real'.  Home grown veggies are like real people, they are unique, not like the 'super models' of the supermarket.

Celebrate the wonky

Do you have pictures of your wonky veg, your curly veg?  The 'imperfect ones' that are never seen in the supermarket? I bet you do. 

Celebrate the pale, the dark and the in-between

In transition

the snow peas are up

 Picked

• yellow-green chillies
• lemons (gathered fallen ones)

Planted

• lettuce seedlings
• cauliflower seedlings

With a  bit of sun to inspire, I inspected the garden to observe goings on. The garden is in a real transition phase. Some of the summer things are still powering on, some of the winter crops have gone in. Unfortunately I am not picking very much at all - bad planning.

The snow peas ARE ok.  They are all up, every single one -  they didn't rot in the soil like I had thought.

broccoli with self seeded sunflower

The broccoli is going well but getting the first of the cabbage moth visits.  I will need to check under the leaves each day and wipe of their eggs from now on and watch out for the first of the green grubs.  I find this surveillance works well enough for me.  I might have ragged edges to my plants but I always have lots of veg.

Some sunflowers have self seeded - strange time of year for them to to that.  I am leaving them in for the moment to see what happens.


The eggplant seem to have a second wind and are flowering furiously. Same with my brown berry tomatoes. They look like they think its October or November. They are green and upright and setting flowers -  will they set fruit I wonder?

a lime crop after all

the eggplant just keeps coming

I AM going to have a lime crop.

praying mantis eating a house fly

The giant praying mantis was spotted eating a house fly - go praying matis!

A glut of chillies (5)

Picked

Harissa

• chillies

I am coming to the end of my fresh chilli supply.  It is a sad time of year, while I could keep the plants going over winter (and might), I am soon to lose all those fabulously bright red fruit.

I have already preserved this year's chilli glut in  many ways -  a sweet tomato chilli jam, a savoury chilli jam I call rocket fuel, red and green curry paste, two types of pickled chillies - one pickled with Chinese rice vinegar and one pickled with Western wine vinegar - and by freezing some.  Today I made harissa a North African spice sauce.

Harissa
This is a recipe I quickly jotted down when I chanced upon  a Christine Manfield mini cookbook in a cafe.  I think it was a series that came free with one of the newspapers. The measurements are true to her recipe, but the method? I just made it up cause I didn't have a chance to write it down.  The original recipe uses 75g dried chillies soaked, I simply replaced the dried ones with fresh ones and upped the amount a little to account for the water that would be absorbed.

100gm fresh chillies
2 teaspoons cumin seeds
1/4 teaspoon caraway seeds
2 large cloves of garlic
1 teaspoon salt
50ml tomato paste
100mls water
60 ml olive oil

Rough chop fresh chillies. Dry roast seeds and smash with a mortar and pestle. Put all ingredients, except the oil  in a food processor and process.When it is a consistency you want, with the motor running, pour in oil a thin stream slowly as you would with making mayonnaise. It changes colour from a deep red to a dusky orange, strangely, exactly the same colour as my blog header...

Put in sterilised jar, cover with oil and store in fridge. I'll use this to marinate meat, add to couscous and put in a favourite carrot salad, although it may need some caution -  this might be very hot.

Water, water everywhere - much too much to drink

More eggplant pictures - you'll be glad when summer's over wont you!

 Picked

• lots of chillies
• 1 cucumber
• enough beans for two for dinner

Lots and lots of rain, more to come (it's forecast till Sunday!). The frog pond is at its limit, our city's water supply dam is going to overflow and my private tank is already overflowing into the storm water. Perhaps we should have got two tanks! 

The veggies continue to drain well however, after a day of constant wetness and even the little new seeds that have sprouted and that are still at dicotyledon stage are not waterlogged. I am a little worried that the snow peas will ahve already rotted in the soil though. But in general I am feeling very pleased with my soil development. 

Last night David excelled! Two curries with brown rice ( I love brown rice) a chicken one and this yummy eggplant one.

Curried eggplant * from the garden

eggplant*
olive oil
onion
garlic
ginger
chillies*
vindaloo curry paste (or any other paste you like)
cherry tomatoes*

Cut eggplant and cook in quite a lot of olive oil to soften. You might want to drain some of the oil off.  Add onion and cook and then add all other ingredients and a little water. Cook till eggplant soft and all flavours melded.
 

Homecoming

Plenty of those lovely spiders that live in curled leaves.

Back at home.  Phew!  Survived the retreat without saying or doing anything embarrassing.

After greeting the man, it was into the garden to survey, prod, determine progress, revive. Here are some things I found.  All is well with the universe!

And the big round spider is in its usual little nook on the eucalypt.

The lambertia is flowering (some might know them as 'mountain devils')

Laurie (or is it Keats?) still dropping in.

The radish and the rocket I planted in seed form on Saturday are already up! - this is the radish.

A cucumber is ready to pick

I'm missing you my garden!

Picked - nothing

Here I am in a hotel room up the coast from Sydney at a work 'retreat'.  But my real retreat is my backyard, my lovely husband and cat.

This is not restful at all, hotel beige, the over cholrinated pool sting to the nasal mucous membranes, the impossibility of letting your guard down after 7 hours cause you are still technically at work.

No post-work revive by walking thru the garden, no Harriet pat, no man cuddle, no therapeutic chopping.

And no picture to add to the blog.
 

Growing, cooking, sewing

Planted

Marrickville fresh spring rolls

• radish seeds -  in the ground
• rocket seeds -  in the ground
• fennel seeds -  in the ground
• snow pea seeds -  in the ground
• lettuce seeds -  in seed trays
• basil seeds -  in seed trays

Pulled out

• tarragon

Busy day in the garden and at the sewing machine. A bit like funkbunny, I grow, cook and sew.  I promise not to bore you too much with my sewing - perhaps just the occassional entry.

But garden first.  It was a beautiful day in Sydney town - the kind of day we  have been hanging out for. Sunny and hot enough to get up a sweat in the garden.  I put in some quick crop seeds - radish, rocket, basil and lettuce and some others that will be staples over the winter - snow peas and fennel. It 's the kind of weather that, if you listen carefully, you can hear the seeds swell and sprout.

I also decided to take the tarragon out.  It is a lovely plant and a tasty herb but I seldom use it and over several years it has spread far and wide.  I decided I could use the space more productively. Then onto maintaining the non-vegetable garden with a massive amount of weeding, transplanting of ferns, pruning the lilli pilli and mowing.

Baby bunting

If that wasn't enough busy-ness, I also made bunting!  A work mate is having a baby girl soon and thought that this would make a nice present.  Here it is! Shhhh! Don't tell her, it's supposed to be a surprise.

Some of the material was left over from making a summer cotton frock (that's the paisley) the rest I bought from one of the many fabric shops in Marrickville (I got a discount cause I am a regular!). 

Dinner is Marrickville fresh spring rolls.

Marrickville fresh spring rolls

I call these Marrickville spring rolls because it wouldn't be right to call them Vietnamese fresh spring rolls cause they are my version.  Sometimes I put prawns in them, often fried tofu - you know made a little crunchy. You can really put anything in these but tonight's version has the following. * from the garden

steamed beans* - steamed whole and cooled
cucumber* cut into batons
Vietnamese mint*
vermicelli rice noodles -  soaked and drained
beansprouts -  rinced
chicken thigh meat cut up into long thin slices and cooked and cooled
rice paper 

Prepare everything ahead, one by one soak the rice paper and lay out. Don't leave the paper in the water too long, I just dip it in and then take it out.  It starts off a little firm but soon softens and by the time you have put the filling in, its soft enough to roll. Place filling on the rice paper and roll tucking in the bottom.  I leave the top loose.

Sauce
I made this Thai-style sauce to go with it.

Rice paper

3 cloves garlic
3 green chillies* split and seeds removed
3 coriander roots
3 shallots
2-3 tablespons palm sugar
juice of 2 limes
2 tablespoons fish sauce

Wiz all ingredients, taste and adjust the sweet, sour, salt balance according to your taste using the palm sugar, lime juice and fish sauce. While this is a good sauce, I am not convinced  that it was a good idea to have it with the rice paper rolls. (Never mix 2 different Asian food  styles perhaps?). Does any one have a good sauce to use?