We have been owned a bit by the corporate world for the last week. The company we work for is going though an audit and as such we have been working some serious hours but today I managed to get out a little early and go and pickup the cheese from cheese coop.

We only joined this coop a few days ago after we found out about it at neighbourhood gardening get together. A. ordered the haloumi and a caprino romano. The thing about this cheese is that it comes from fresh unpasteurised goat’s cheese from a very small flock. And boy does it taste like it.

We also picked up our ceres fruit and vegetable box so between that and the garden we had a really nice salad with fresh baby cos, shredded red cabbage, tomatoes and capsicum.

I fried up some homemade chips from locally grown dutch cream potatoes as our duaghter asked for them.

Then the crème de le crème the haloumi fried up with some sliced pear.

Due to some pre planning we have been eating ok this week. I cooked up a few things and froze them in preparation, we have improvised with salad and bacon so we have avoided the temptation of take away food that would be so easy with both of us tied up with work but we have not cooked a real meal.

But this was food. Food that tastes like real food and the cheese. Well awesome there should be more of it such small scale artisan type food like this. It is the future as it was the past and it is nice to see someone able to make their own living in such a way without having to be owned by the system.

Now onto another day of the corporate world owning my ….

Yesterday we spent all day at a permablitz 2 hours from home. I will post some info on the day once our friends who run it have had chance to post on the official forums

Another busy day here for us. Sun shining gorgeous weather so I will simply leave you with a great little quote to think about from new leader of ‘The Australian Greens’ political party.

‘We don’t live in an economy, we live in a society’

Have great day all.

We had dinner tonight with A.’s mothers group. These are a great group of people and have helped A. through the times of doubt we all have when kids first come along. They are a varied group of people but all very nice and have strong views about raising their children. I find such groups interesting in some ways they are an artificially derived form of what would have been available and normal 80 years ago with everyone helping everyone and women of different ages supporting each other and offering advice, much of it from past experience. Now sadly due to societies siloing of the nuclear families this has had to be recreated like so much else in community that has been lost. Growing up in the country 30 – 40 years ago I got a different view. Even at that time the view the city had of community was very different to the close sense of community we had. This was not perfect but better than it is now.

We have a lot to relearn.

…But on with my post.

One of the woman made an interesting comment ‘how are you guys coping with two kids now? There is not much time anymore is there to do other things’ and latter in the night ‘I imagine that you guys are not still making up puree’s for the kids like you used to. I am sponsoring the baby food makers these days…’  It did raise an eye brow for me particularly as I had a comment made recently form another source ‘How do I find time for all the stuff I do..’

Both comment concern me to a degree. I am not blowing my own trumpet but I don’t think we drive our selves that hard to get things done. Some of it easier for me because I really do believe in the things I do. These are things that mean the dollar I earn at work can help me get out of the system rather than putting one foot in front of the other on that ‘good ol treadmill’.

I have gone over the issue behind making my own baby food in a post before in my post on baby food and I still agree with this. Better for my son, better for the environment better for my wallet, which is way better of me. Sometimes you just need to do stuff that is important to you or simply better for you, even if it means less time in front of the idiot box or a few minutes less of sleep.

And that includes this blog which I will be a bit more diligent on from now on.

I hope you can all find time to do what you need or want to, even if that latest reality TV show has to go.

I will leave you with a couple of good quotes that relate to todays post.

• ‘The problem with permaculture is it is the realm of the middle class. And the problem with the middle class is that if it gets to hard they just buy their way out.’ – Anonymous PDC Graduate
• ‘If you get one more thing done each day you will get 365 more things done each year’ – Bill Gates

Sorry everyone for the delay between posts. It has been a busy week or so since I posted last.

Autumn is here and harvest time is in full swing even for we urban I am not hippies. I had planned to do the post below on Monday but we got a message from a good friend on Sunday night offering for us to come up and get as many organic chestnuts as we wanted. A. and I both love them and this was simply to good an offer to pass up. We ended up with over 30kg of nuts in 3 hours so a good haul there will be more on this in another post shortly. And since then I have been flat out making more bacon, processing apples and pears we got from my parents place for baby food. Using up a big box of prickly pear a friend gave me, other food to preserve and make up, cider to press, rhubarb champagne to brew and lots to do in the back yard but all these are all for other posts.

The other day a good friend who runs a blog called libby-cooks posted a nice little recipe called ‘Apocalypse now Rabbit and juniper pie’ http://www.libby-cooks.com/2012/04/apocalypse-now-rabbit-and-juniper-pie/ and it got me thinking what could I make that was pretty much just from my backyard or a local food swap? All in one pot that would nourish taste buds as well as just plain nourish.

A while back my father gave me 4 young chickens with the comment ‘there might be one rooster in their son …’ well there where 3 roosters in their dad, and after complaints from the neighbours and friends living 3 blocks away about the noise of the roosters at 2 in the morning. I ended up with 1 layer and three roosters in the freezer.

I still had one of these birds left so the obvious recipe was chicken soup.

As you can see from the photo these are not one of your regular nice and round chickens they are a bit long and lean but they slow cook like a dream till the meat falls off the bone.

I did cheat and use a couple of items that didn’t come from my back yard but it could have as easily been made without these few ingredients (perhaps not the salt)

So below are the ingredients. If they have a star and a description they are not from my backyard

• One home sourced chicken (or a good organic free-range chicken like a Bannockburn)  
• 5 carrots sliced
• 5 celery sticks and leaves sliced
• 2 large Onions diced roughly ** from my father
• Salt to taste **
• Fresh ground black pepper **
• Bunch of kale sliced ** swapped at peppertree place on Saturday for eggs
• 3 Large potatoes diced
• Handful of pearl barley **
• Sprig of parsley
• Sprig of thyme
• Sprig of oregano
• French Tarragon
• 5 fresh bay leaves

So basically put your chicken in a pot with lots of water, some salt, pepper, the herbs all tied together in a bundle, carrots, onions, celery and kale cook and cook some more till the chicken is falling of the bones. Take out chicken and strip meat from bones (I do this as A. has an aversion to chicken skin and fiddly bones…) and put back in. Add potatoes and pearl barley simmer some more till barley potatoes are cooked and server with some of A. sourdough bread. The almost sweetness of chicken soup works really well with the taste of real sourdough.

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** If you are using commercial chicken you may need to cool the soup in the fridge overnight and then skim off the fat. This chicken had almost no fat on it so I didn’t do this on this occasion.

Yes there are ingredients that didn’t come from my backyard but. Kale and Onions have been planted. I have grown barley and wheat here for chicken food in small amounts before but wouldn’t waste the space now the garden is coming on line. Salt and pepper will be an issue but I suppose I could have used a bit of celery salt and some home grown dried chillies.

At the end of the day this was an intellectual and tasty exercise to see what could do from my backyard. I am happy to be just able to have the fresh ingredients and it shows what you can do with a small 1/8 of an acre block.

Speaking of autumn and harvest got go and finish another batch of apples being sauced for baby food. More posts shortly or check out libby’s blog http://www.libby-cooks.com she is great cook and I am sure you will find some recipes to try in there.

OK so today is Good Friday.

I am not really a practicing Christian I was raised as fairly strict Lutheran and was confirmed as an adult in the church but have not really practiced for some time. My wife is catholic and the children are raised in the catholic faith and I believe that being raised in a faith, any faith is a good thing. But that is again a post for another day.

While not really practicing I still follow some of the rituals of my youth and one of these is no meat on Good Friday. Being of German descent the day always started with herrings in tomato sauce on toast. And this morning my day started with coffee and of course herrings in tomato sauce on toast.

The big ritual for me on Fridays has always been my Oma’s (German grandmother) lunch. This is a time for the family to get together and enjoy each other company and enjoy the food we have always had on this day.

The meal has always consisted of my grandmother vegetable soup with her semolina dumplings, my mother’s tuna and mustard sauce casserole, new potatoes and vegetables from my father garden and of course the good old German tasty but heart stoping salted herrings.

My Oma is 89 this year and shows no sign of slowing down. She cooked more food than 8 adults and couple of kids could possibly eat. Her herrings are soaked in milk, all spice, peppercorns, bay leaves, sliced onion, apple, pickled gherkins and just to make it that bit less health if that is possible some cream.

This is great over potato and soaked up with some nice healthy white bread.

So we eat, we have a good time we overdose on salt and marzipan and enjoy each other’s company. This is the rituals for us of Good Friday.

Many of my friends make it a mission to eat meat on this day and that is fair enough. As one put it I don’t fast in Ramadan so would I only eat fish when I am not a Christian? That is a fair point but sometimes rituals ground us and are as equally important as religion. When I lived in London I made it a mission to get fish for lunch on Good Friday.

We had huge wild Scottish salmon baked with lemons and whole peppercorns, baby potato and a huge green salad. Not bad and no one reached for a burger that day.

To me the food rituals are critical they remind on these days of family they are important and need to be valued and savoured. Even if i am going to have to go salt free for few days to get over it.

So I had a cleanup of the fridge and the fruit bowl today. In general we try to avoid letting food go to waste there is simply too many people who do not get enough food in the world for us to feel comfortable with doing that. Add to that the sheer volume of embodied water and energy in any one item of food and it is simply wasteful.

Unfortunately like most people in the west it does happen. We are lucky we have the chickens and the compost bins and this means that nothing is really wasted but we still end up with a container of food that will go out to them after the clean up.

I come from fairly poor folk but we were lucky we always had food as the 10 acres we had was enough to raise sheep, ducks, chickens and a dairy cow and more vegetables and fruit than you could ever want for. So this was a good upbringing but as my parents had little, little was wasted and I must admit this has come through to me.

So after the clean out I went through and worked out the meals for next week from what we have and I will be making some vegetable soup which is always a good way to use up those extra vegetable.

I also noticed that we had large number of lemons and limes that where getting a bit sketchy so I simply juiced them by hand and froze them in ice cube trays.

I use these often in cooking and they thaw in a few seconds in the microwave. It also allows me to keep them in preparation for when the price of both goes through the roof.

Even simple choices like this can improve your budget and your life. You could buy the juice in a little plastic bottle but it is so easy to just juice it then you know what is in it. It is cheaper for you if you have an excess of citrus and much better for the environment.

So while try to waste as little as you can and save as much as you can.

So I tend to have a look around the green grocer section of supermarkets when I am forced to go to them. On the last trip I noticed a couple of odd fruit which where new.

Now I tend to try anything and this in my years of travel has lead me to some interesting if not always good outcomes (Google Icelandic Hákarl at some point). I live by the philosophy if you haven’t tried it don’t rubbish it.

So purchased a couple of each item. Both where quite good. Not sure if I would buy them again but interesting and nice for desert with lunch.

So why do i buy the odd and interesting in regards to fruit and vegetables and food in general? Several reasons really.

One. Curiosity. I like new stuff. I travelled for both new places and new food. I started growing stuff because I read about a particular food item I just couldn’t source. So I grew it. I like to cook new stuff. I even admit I like to show off with new stuff.

Two to teach my kids there is more to food than 3 type of apple, the more they try the more they will try and then they can make their own choices but I as parent have to lead.

Three you find really nice items that make really nice food and can become a regular part of your diet and enable quick easy meals in our busy lives.

Four is health. The greater the diversity of your food the better for you. More fruit and veg in your diet the better for you. The greater the diversity the more likely you are to eat it over simple carbohydrates and processed food. And the more types of food the more micro and macro nutrients you get into your system and healthier you will be. And hopefully the longer you will stay healthy.

Five is my own personal driver. It is estimated that there are over 100,000 variates of food grown in the world today. And yet 90% plus of the food grown in the world as measured in quantity comes from around 20 species. I believe personally and there is some evidence that this makes us less healthy by reducing the variety of micro nutrients and even macro nutrients we get. Our pre farming ancestors ate hundreds if not thousands of foods in a year. Even 100 years ago there were thousands more varieties of plant seeds available in catalogues than today. Being dependant on such a small group of species makes us very vulnerable in food security sense. The more the variety the less one failure has on us. If you want to see what happens to monoculture farming communities when they go bad you only have to look at the great potato famine in Ireland.

So go out and check out any new foods you see. Grab something you have never eaten before in this weeks shop and try it. You might even find something you lik