Sorry all. It is 11pm and I have just finished bottling 6 liters of elderflower cordial after foraging a few items of hard waste I noticed on my walk home for a new wicking bed.
So the photo below will have to do for now. More interesting stuff tomorrow.
And the taste. One of my best batches according to A. 🙂
So now the equinox is gone and daylight savings will not start till the end of the week I am finding I am up at 5am and it is light enough to see and move around the garden in.
For those who do not know the best times to pick elderflowers is early morning and dusk. The perfume of the flowers is at its best and the flavour as well. Although I have picked them at other times and the flavour seems fine I try to go by this tradition.
This morning I found myself awake and wandered out on the front porch and noticed the elderflowers had ripened and there would be enough to make a batch of elderflower cordial.
I started the kettle up and went out and picked about 30 flower heads and quickly put a batch together to start the infusing process. The cordial is great mixed simply with iced cold water or soda water it is a light refreshing drink in the heat of summer or a favourite is to add a shot Gin to the mix and then you have a great little mixer to sit back and enjoy looking at your garden in the evening.
So the mix was done in a few minutes and then it was the daily chores of cats and chickens and then off to work.
There is something satisfying to me that I can do this before heading off to my corporate day time job. It somehow makes me feel more alive, even though most of my day will tied to this work culture just a little bit of me is still out there enjoying the path less trodden.
Elderflower Cordial
This amount makes 6 litres of syrup. You only need about 1 – 2 cm per glass.
Put all the ingredients in a clean bucket, cover it with a tea towel and stir it every day with a sterilised spoon so that the sugar dissolves with time. I cut the lemons in half, squeeze them out and throw the peels in as well. After one week, sieve it through a cloth and fill it up into bottles.
That`s all. Have fun.
The original recipe I got from my family is to use cold water but as the elderflowers have natural yeast (handy for making champagne) that ferments I try to kill this off with hot water. It saves the bottles exploding or getting a hard liquor version of syrup.
A trick to fix the cloth in place over the bucket is to take enough twine to almost go around the bucket then tie both ends to rubber bands. That way I can easily remove the string no nots nothing to worry about and makes sure the towel or cloth stays in place.
We often look at harvesting as autumn pass time. Laying down goods for winter.
To me this is a lot less important in the temperate location I live as there is regular growth in all but the worst of mid winter and even then greens are available, but there are times during the whole year when a particular food comes around.
Some like asparagus are enjoyed as part of the cycle some like mushrooms are both enjoyed and stored for the rest of the year.
Elderflowers are one of these. They are only around for a short period of time but to me they are well worth putting down a store of for as long as they last.
I have a number of sources but there is one in our court that I get to and hit pretty hard in the flower season knowing that this will impact on the berries I get. I do this as my experience is that this one tree is flogged by the birds and few elderberries are left for me to pick. My source of elderberries is up country and well worth the trip to collect them when I need to get them.
Elder has some great properties. The flowers and berries when properly prepared have antiviral properties and this year I had elderberry syrup each day over winter and avoided the usual bout of illness.
So the first batch of the season went straight into the dryer. Elderflower fresh or dried with a little honey makes a great tea and if you are feeling a bit like something is coming on it is seems to help to avoid it turning into something serious. This will keep me going till the berries are out and I can make up a new batch of elderberry syrup.
The second batch I will pick tomorrow morning and make 4 -5 litres of elderflower cordial. Then onto the good stuff the champagne J
All through the season this year I will really be focusing in on these little harvests getting the larder ready and keeping things stocked. Each year I try to get a bit further off the stupid go round and this is great example of that.
Elder flowers are also easy to find in most places so start to have a look around and learn to identify them from a good resource. Start to work out where your own larder and medicine cabinet are to be found before you actually need them.
Good luck foraging.
It is not that I have not had any idea’s or even had tales and items to write about but I just cont seem to get them down in words. A couple of times a day I have a good blog in my head and then when it comes to writing it get caught up in whatever else I let myself get distracted with.
I am now just going to sit down and start writing so if it comes out as junk some days so be it you guys can always unsubscribe if it gets that bad 🙂
The last three weeks have been busy and I will write about them as I can. I went on juice diet for 15 days. The diet is a detox diet based around the fat sick and nearly dead documentary. It was a success with me feeling great at the end of the diet. Lost a good bit of weight and my liver appears to be much happier. I have done this last year and had a similarly good experience in regards to weight loss and keeping it off but also in some other health aspects. I plan to also do a vegan diet in spring to get my body working again.
The thing about this sort of radical diet is that it is not that radical. It is in the modern world but in times not so distant fasting and hunger where a part of our lives we are designed for it. And the type of fasting on vegetables is particularly good for us as is gives us a nutrient burst that for times such as spring allow us to get our bodies functioning and on track.
I still cooked for my family and it is interesting once you are on this diet how you look at food and how our society deals with food differently.
I eat a lot of good food (one of the reasons I need to fast, one of the reasons most people need to fast once in a while) and most of it is seasonal and cooked from scratch where possible.
The thing that strikes you is the sheer volume of food available and the amount of advertising that goes with the food. It is everywhere and very pervasive and not eating and being aware of it you almost get to step outside the subliminal side of things and see why people are packing on so much weight.
I still did my gardening, did exercise and walked to and from public for work and I didn’t feel weak at all.
Not sure if I will do this diet later in the year. Think once a year about 12 days would be optimal but I am going to do a 21 day vegan diet in spring. This is both an idea that Chinese medicine and also the paleoarchaeology types who study us from a historical point of view recomentd. For both a good amount of bitter greens and a high nutrient low calorific diet in spring helps the liver get back in shape after a winter of stored food (typically comfort foods for us now)
I did get to add in a bit of urban hippieness into the diet. Green smoothee’s of Kale, dandelion leaf, nightshade leaf, mallow leaf, cleavers, nasturtium and even a few of my precious nettles (although they are being saved for soup, gnocchi and pasta) from my back yard made the diet cheaper and easier this time and allowed me a side line of interest to help keep me going.
I am adding more weeds all the time into our diet and this is working well, the kids love them and in our societies nutrient poor energy rich foods, the weeds being the opposite makes for something we should all be eating more off.
FYI the weed walk with Adam Grubb is on for those in Melbourne in a couple of weeks time. Check out the link and attend if you can it is a great walk well worth the money and time. You will never look at a grassy field the same ever again.
Why make it yourself?
This is often the question that I get asked?
It has been a busy, busy week. You know when the proverbial fertiliser has hit the wind displacement device when you have to do two weeks of work to be able to take a week off to go on holidays. To say my current work load is unsustainable is to state the bleeding obvious. This is a story for another day though.
Added to that I have had some issues with the second car and we are trialling having only one car and me using public and the bike as my mode of transport to and from work. this is working out well but means I have to be a bit more disciplined and means it requires more organisation.
So that has been the reason for no posts over the last weeks. We have however been trying to keep living the life and to a greater extent we have been.
I have cooked meals for friends and family and we have offered friends to stay in our house rather than paying for accommodation and keep the money go round going. We have carted our kids, and still grown our food and all this with a couple of people working far too long hour’s is it any wonder we need a holiday 🙂
I try to cook our meals as much as is possible from scratch that is not to say that I don’t use some items such as yellow curry, garam massala mixes and items like mustard (although I will be making my own mustard soon enough)
Last weekend I made up a porchetta with fresh herbs from my garden for dinner, pancakes with no mix. We ate veg and salads from our garden including a tomatoes and basil salad with 5 different types of tomato and3 types of basil. During the week we ate meals that we had cooked for lunches and I started the week with $45 in my pocket and ended the week with $43 in it and no sense of hunger or having missed out.
So why go to the trouble of making our own from scratch especially when we appear to be time poor? Well the cost is a major issue. We don’t work to work, we work to allow us to get ahead and in time. If we work long hours and just waste the money then we are going backwards.
I also like the challenge of doing things from scratch. I talk a lot on this blog about the developing of skills. Making it yourself makes you less of a slave to the system and ensures that if the time comes when you cannot easily buy the service you can always do it yourself.
It also means I know what the inputs into something are, especially useful with cooking and knowing what our bodies and the bodies of our children get put into them.
It gives a real sense of the cost of things to the world. Sometimes it is not cheaper such as the bacon I make. I can buy cheap bacon for much less than I can make. But that would factory farmed pork, in unsustainable practices to a large multinational taking the money of shore. And it does make you wonder what the final cost to the world of such an item really is when you realise it costs me twice as much to make it and I don’t even consider the labour involved.
So it makes you look at the world differently.
It makes you realise what real things should taste, feel and be like. Not the bland hand to mouth no thought I will buy more stuff to make me feel better lifestyle.
And the final reason is that it is interesting and fun. Which helps to keep me sane on the stupid go round that is the culture we often deal with.
As I have said a part of the week as been in seeing if we can cope with out the second car. Our kids love the simple joy of being carted by us in the bike trailer from crèche rather than by car and despite the organisation and discipline the time spent carting the kids has reacquainted me in an odd way with the world around me as I cart the kids or walk to and from the station I check out the herbs. See mallow and mallow cheese in abundance, edible nightshade, dandelion and other ‘weeds’. I also see some interesting things people. Guerrilla gardening, by putting plots in unused spaces, wild harvesting and gathering. Keep an eye out for items I can use later on and the huge waste of space that we have in the cities that could be used to solve a great many of the problems we have from homelessness to growing our own fuel and food to connecting as a community.
It is also feels a damn side more useful than a lot of people I see rushing home so they can change to go out to do some exercise…
So while busy the week has been good with more time in many ways than most to look at the world and enjoy the time with family and friends.
This week I am in Apollo bay for the week with family for a beach side holiday. Tomorrow we will catch up with Libby from libby cooks for a meal including quite a few foraged dishes and we will then explore the area, hopefully do a bit of foraging and just enjoy the time with family.
If I don’t post I will definitely have to come up with a new excuse other than work 🙂 wont I ?
Homemade Porchetta.
Butterfly a roast and lay flat on a chopping board. I left the roast in the fridge uncovered for 5 hours to allow the skin to dry out to get the best crackling prior to this step.
Dry toast 2 teaspoons of cumin seeds.
In mortar and pestle or the food processor in a pre apocalypse kitchen put together a selection of fresh herbs from the garden, lots of basil (or basil mint as I used in this case) and parsley are a must, as is garlic and some rosemary (not too much) other than that just use what you have. I used oregano, thyme and sage as well and could have added some French tarragon I had if I wanted to. A little bit of salt and pepper and some chilli to taste. Blend with as little olive oil as you can to make a smooth but not sloppy paste.
Spread over one side of the butterflied roast, grate a little lemon zest on the top and then roll and secure the roast with twine or wet skewers.
Liberally coat the skin olive oil and salt and fresh black pepper.
Pre heat an oven to 250 degree Celsius
Put roast in for 30 minutes and you should see the crackling start to blister. Drop the heat back t 150 degrees for 2 hours or so then ramp the temperature back up to 250 degrees for the last 20 minutes until the crackling is perfect.
Serve it? We had simple boiled Dutch cream potatoes and other vegetables to go with it.
Any leftover should be sliced thickly and eaten on sourdough for lunches 🙂
Photos of the making of porchetta below.
So Today was our famers market day. We go to the farmers market at Bundoora stock up on good meat, small goods, cheeses and a week or two of any fresh vegies that we don’t grow or swap that are on offer.
Today before I headed off I did a fridge and freezer clean out and stock take to check what I needed and to ensure that I did not waste anything, or buy things I already have.
We have some changes coming to our house as we retro fit it for conserving energy and the power will be off for a few days to a week so one of the plans is to clean out the freezer. It will also not hurt to process what I have in there, either by cooking it or it processing it for alternate storage such as bottling/canning drying etc. I like most people can rely a bit too much on the freezer and while a very useful tool for improving self-sufficiency we should remember that at the end of the day it costs us to run whereas bottled fruit or a pack of dried mushrooms can sit there for a couple of years and not cost me a penny.
It is also going to help our budget as well. The retro fit is not going to be cheap but by my calculations we are pretty much setup for the bulk of meals for the next couple of months.
So it might be a good chance for everyone to see what they have in their larder, fridge or freezer and ensure that all nothing is going to go to waste.
Once done I have cleaned out my freezer I will be putting in a good chunk of a whole pig I am buying in the freezer in May to see how I go with it as my primary source of animal protein for the winter. But I will also be processing some into smoked bacon, salami and prosciutto as I have said I want to reduce that reliance on the freezer and keep it as simple as I can which will help my budget and hopefully the world at large.
To this end tomorrow I will start to plant my bed in the community garden with winter veg. After all if you can grow and harvest it as you go then you are even better off than storing it in the end.
My what a busy year you have had.
Well it has been a very, very, very busy year.
As I am sitting here having eaten a nice meal home cooked with my family and knocking back a nice cold elderberry champagne I must admit I am pretty content.
Not complacent just content. I wandered around my back yard this evening thinking I need to do this. I need to do that but I reminded myself of the many things I have done.
In some ways the approach I am taking to lighten my step on the earth is working but it is still way too heavy. I am not the worst or the best and if the whole world lived like me we would be in trouble. Conversely if the whole of Australia lived like me we would perhaps be starting down a better road (just my opinion here).
So where to from here? Well for me I intend to keep going. I have a number of things I would like to do this year as listed below but one of things I will do is take more time to spend with my family.
While I was always interested in the world and the long term living of within means, my children bring home why I have to continue to change. For anyone reading this it is a long term thing. Each day you look at the world a little differently and hopefully a little better.
Achievements this year.
It is short list but there is a good number of things to be happy for I think.
For next year
This list is shorter as more things will creep in and the last two items will be a strong focus. Time spent smelling the roses and enjoying friends and family more.
I still had to work tonight and again tomorrow, a reminder of the bad old days for me in the corporate world but I am starting see that there is some light at the end of the tunnel. Happy to be working at the end of the day and working towards the rest of my goals
May you all have a great new years and safe break (if you are having one) see you all next year (yes that is tomorrow)
New Years Eve Dinner (yes it can be a food blog at times)
Chicken
Put the chicken breasts in foil and pour over the rest of the ingredients you have mixed in a jug. Wrap up and seal the tin foil and cook in an oven at 170 degree Celsius for around 30 to 45 minutes (breast fillets 30 minutes, thighs longer)
Meat will fall off the bone and both children where getting right into it.
Salad
Mix vegetables together and season with macadamia/olive oil, vinegar salt and pepper leave for a while then toss in the almonds prior to serving.
Works very well mixed together on a plate with chicken meat, and steamed rice.
On Sunday I went and did the excellent Adam Grubb of Very Edible Gardens edible weed walk.
I am interested in foraging and already do some foraging eating nettles and wild fennel, converting sticky weed into bio fertilizer, getting into wild foraged elder and other trees. I have known about dock and dandelion and have eaten them before but wanted to improve my knowledge of the food options that we underestimate and are so widely available. Being self-sufficient is a part of what I am looking at and this is just one small part of the puzzle.
I won’t go into details as to individual plants in this post as this is an area that you are best to go and do a course with or/and get mentored and learn this important skill safely. I have done a courses with Ballarart Permaculture Guild and now with Adam and feel a level of comfort with what I know and don’t know (and have posted on things like nettles) but even then I use a field guide to check things out I am 100% sure of it.
Adam said at the start that you will look at the average plot of grass and weeds a bit differently after the course and yes this is certainly the case and last night I spotted about 5 different edible weeds in my back yard that there was good mallow plant up near the strawberries. So while the 3 year old got stuck into picking the strawberries I picked a handful of mallow buds or mallow cheese as they are known.
They have a nice crunchy texture and taste not unlike edame. So Sabrina and I brought in the strawberries to share and after seeing me eat the mallow she asked to to try it and low and behold she loved them eating them over the strawberries (she can be a strange child at times 🙂 )but she did then clean up the strawberries when the mallow was all done 🙂
Our rule is that you don’t have to eat a meal but you do have to try it and I am glad that this is now coming out in my daughter being willing to try anything.
So go out and learnt some new skills and learn to forage (and do it safely) and if like me you have a family then you might just manage to influence that next generation to something just a bit more sustainable.
So I still have to put up the bottling and pasteurization process of the first batch of the elderflower champagne. Work and life have been a bit busy so I am a bit behind on the posts. Sorry about that but I did warn you previously that I would live the life first and blog it second 🙂
So I thought I would at least drop a line having just missed my train on how things are going.
I am already into my second batch and the ale yeast is going great guns. Should be ready to bottle on Friday if not before. The morning and evening ritual of storing and smelling it, like my ritual of checking my seeds each evening helps to keep it all in perspective.
I also had to post this sign from my daughters crèche. Growing up with a milking cow at the house this is no biggie to me but for her this is great adventure. And I would have to say a positive thing for the kids to see. The dislocation of people from where their food comes from is a cause for many of the ills we see in our world so getting kids involved at such a young age is a great thing.
Have a great day all and smell the roses (or brew) when you can
So been a busy day and just sitting back and relaxing with nice cup of elderflower and honey tea and reading a few blogs.
Planning can take a back step for a few minutes and I am fairly content for a change. That will change tomorrow when I need to get through a list of things again but for now I will just enjoy it.
Enjoy the day tomorrow all.
Elderflower Teas.
Take one large elderflower head cover in a cup of boiled water. Stir in two teaspoons of honey. Leave for around 3 minutes then strain off the elderflowers and enjoy.
Supposed to be good for you. I just like it because it tastes good and I enjoy it for the short elderflower season while I have access to it.
I am NOT an urban hippie 