An excess of feasting

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Well Christmas is over for another year. For us it has been a good but busy … holiday period. We spent a lot of time with family, travelled a lot and hopefully had slightly greener Christmas for the sake of the kids.

We feasted as royalty could not have 200 years ago. Pork product after pork product after pork product. One of the things about being of German decent on one side and redneck on the other is I have always been exposed to a urbane European background on one side and a very old school country up bringing on the other side.

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For me Christmas has always been about the feasts. On Christmas eve we would gather at my Oma’s house and eat a tradition German meal, soup, good frankfurts, herring salad and of course my oma’s potato salad which still has no equal in my eyes. At that time things like the specialty chocolates would be sent from Germany and there would be counting of them. We would gather eat, open our presents and enjoy each other’s company.

Christmas day was for the other side of the family. Mum slaving over wood fired stove in 40 degree Celsius weather and the far simpler evening meal at my Australian grandparents farm but surrounded by dozens of my cousins creating chaos as only kids can.

In all of this the act of getting together has been the main aim. In times past the act of a feast and a gathering to celebrate was a major thing. To roast a whole leg of something or a large bird. What an luxurious thing. It helped people to bond and was something people could look forward to.

Now with obesity at record levels and the fact we can get anything (including those specialty chocolates) at any time of the year the feast could easily be looked at as just another party.  But the chance to spend time with family is as important as it ever was. Perhaps more so now that I have children and want them to grow up with those same strong bonds I have had with family.

Over time our family has moved away from conspicuous consumption. When I was a kid items like bikes where the gifts we received we then went through the same phase everyone did of lots and lots and lots of presents and now the children get lots of gifts but we keep it toned down for the rest of the family. Books, food items, even plants and seeds are given away. This year a number of us gave Oxfam cards including a well I purchased for my whole family. While we valued and appreciated the gifts given to us by the family as my wife said the best gift we received was a couple of goats that would go to someone who really needs them somewhere.

For us in our conspicuous society it has perhaps come time to realise that less is more, and the act of giving and spending time with family is more import to us that the gifts.

One of the good things about my family is most of them are great cooks, my grandmothers potato salad, my mothers pavlova with berries from her garden, homemade fish pate with fresh dill, salads, trifles, baked meats and more. For me the this year apart from providing the sliced ham from our artisan smoker for Christmas eve I was to bake a leg of ham of ham for the Christmas day lunch.

Now where practical and possible we have purchased heritage pig smoked by artisan for ham however as I had to bake this for a large gathering and at $30 per KG of smoked goodness I couldn’t bring myself to use it for the baked ham. I went for a good leg of Australian ham (which cost me about the same for 4kg as for 1 kg of my artisan ham) and after skinning it and putting together an orange marmalade, Australian Banksia honey, spices and bourbon glaze and baking it in the oven for over an hour I must admit that the taste of the artisan ham would have been wasted on this dish.

It is difficult thing I find. I know that the cost for the better ham would have been small in comparison to my wage and I should get the ethical ham but I suppose I can salve my conscience a bit by looking at the cost difference being most of the well I bought.

Again at the lunch gifts where small and well thought out. Light on the world as much as is possible and in a season of hope I must admit to being quietly optimistic seeing pre war, baby boomers, gen x, y and w all not worried about the material side of the holiday season and just enjoying each others company. It bodes better for my kids future. There will still be a lot to look at raise for them but at least perhaps this message is starting to come across.

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Value the time, family and life you have. Drink blackberry whisky with your father, let the kids play with their grandparents and family as in the end it is all that really matters.

Baked Ham.

Take a good leg of ham  3- 4 kg and skin making sure you leave as much fat as you can. Slice into the fat in a diamond pattern of about a cm or so.

Stud the upper side with a good number of whole cloves (I do one about ever ½ a cm). While doing the cloves in saucepan mix the other ingredients and let them reduce just a bit.

Coat the top of the ham with about 2/3 of the mix and put in a pre warmed oven at 170 degree Celsius  and baste with the remaining glaze every 20 minutes or so. Bake for an hour to an hour and a half.

Leave to stand for about 10 minutes (or longer) then slice and serve.

Ingredients

  • Ham 3-4kg leg.
  • Whole cloves to stud the leg

Glaze

  • ¾ of a cup of orange juice
  • Jar of marmalade (around 1 cup)
  • 1 cup of honey (I used banksia honey for a bit of an Australian twist.
  • 4 table spoons of Dijon mustard
  • ½ teaspoon of nutmeg
  • 2 teaspoons (or more) of fresh chilli.

Merry Christmas to All

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Well it is Christmas and I have been just a tad busy with the month to post anything.

Enjoying the season at my parents place with family drinking elderflower champagne and just chilling.

I will be back on board soon and posting again. I have few things to update on including a new plot in a community garden. As you can see from the photo below it is a clean slate and I am looking forward to permi it and get production up and running.

Hope you all have a great Christmas. Enjoy family and enjoy life.

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Of Cherries and Tarragon – why we do this again

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We often drift into things.

I have always been interested in living as sustainably as possible but up until 5 years ago it had been 20 years since I had, had a garden to work with. Travel throughout the world and an interest in martial arts and climbing had kept me more than busy over that period of time.

Food had always interested me and I had always tried to eat as local as I could. Be it caribou in Greenland or salmon in Scotland to dhal baat in Nepal the food and cooking it always doubly interested me and it was actually the idea of cooking that pushed me more and more towards my garden when I finally had a place to set up one.

One of the first things I had tried to locate was Tuscan kale. This was long before it became popular on master chef as I had recipes and simply couldn’t find it. So the answer was simply find some seed and grow it. Which I did and still do.

One of the recipes that also caught my eye was recipe for pickled cherries with French tarragon. After decent old search I found the French tarragon and have been growing it for four years now adding it to the French dishes that I seem to lean towards as a style of cooking, but never quiet getting around to making the dish that pushed me to find it in the first place and explore this style of cooking.

 

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Well it is cherry season and I have tarragon in the garden so I have decided to make this recipe tonight. I made up two batches as I ran out of white vinegar and used some red wine vinegar we had in the cupboard.

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Let’s see in six or so weeks if it turns out. It might be completely inedible or not to my taste but nothing is lost. I will still use the tarragon, I will continue to enhance my garden, and I will still head off into new area’s and plans.

 In the end all I loose is a few cherries and time which I enjoyed anyway.

Days of Sunshine

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This has been a good weekend spent with the family and doing small but import (well to me) things.

I have had a great time with A. and the kids we went to a community market, ate great food had friends over for dinner, some awsome urban salvaging and even had a short notice visit by my parents and grandmother.

With the weather being so good on the weekend and some serious manic drive we have got through a number of projects which I will cover off on posts this week.

The thing that struck me was these where days of sunshine for me. The kinds of days that I would love to see more of in my life. Time spent with kids and doing things in the back yard with A. and family. Simple food from the garden or locally produced and siesta’s.

Tomorrow I have to return to my job. And while I have previously posted that the job is not too bad and most people on this planet would swap their life for mine in a heartbeat (and I still believe this). I still do feel that the corporate life is not doing me any or most other people in it any good.

It perhaps reinforces in my mind those changes I need to make so the days of sunshine are the greater part of my days.

Have great week all and enjoy.

A more sustainable me.

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So in many of the blogs that I read and follow and also this one we look at the issue of a sustainable life, city, world, society and our species.

The issue is that too much is used by too few for too little gain (from our point of view). Most people reading this know this and adhere to the philosophy or at least pay it lip service.

But if you look at the core of the statement above the missing item is a more sustainable me. I don’t mean running away to the hills to live on mung beans and in a house of wattle and daub, although for many that is the answer and damn good one.

I mean being sustainable to yourself by ensuring that you have the time and the space to do what you need to do,  to last in the long term.  I thought about this on the way in after hearing about  ‘Go home on time day’ by beyond blue and composed a blog post in my head. I am apt to do this often but instead of it being eaten up by  the constant meeting requests and work on my arrival I decided to type it up as I should be doing each day when I get these idea’s.

Don’t get me wrong the reason for there not being many posts has been the fact that I have been living a more sustainable me by getting the extra sleep and time to do the things I need to do.

I have a philosophy that I look at each dollar that I spend as spending a little part of me. It is time I have put in and as time is a one way stream for me it is a part I will never get back.

So is that over time for the $2000 TV more or less important than the week or more I could have spent with my children or sleeping, reading a book, exercising or just sitting there and staring at my garden with a beer in my hand. It is a question I ask pretty often. It is why I drive such an old car and make the time to learn new skills, constantly look at what I can things without waste or spending vast sums of myself in cash.

Today I sorted out some martial arts equipment for a friend to pickup from my place. This is from a trip to Japan I did earlier in the year. The gear is second hand but good quality and you could probably get the equivalent for less than $1000 new. Again that is time people need to put in to buy this parts of themselves excluding the negating effect of the drain on the world that reusing this will make this should allow people to have time and to train or do other things sit with their friends and have chat and meal walk along the beach and so many more enjoyable things.

I personally think if we live with a bit of this philosophy then we can reduce some of the need to consume to feel as though we are alive and the amount of strain we put on ourselves and in turn the planet can be reduced.

It will take time but the benefits are there to be had and many people are doing this already but there is and will be a price to the other things we have come to expect. The age has a nice article on the siesta great idea but perhaps we have t come to the realisation that we are going to have to work less hours make less money and enjoy life more if the choice is 25% unemployment or everyone earning 25% less pay and working the 75% then it becomes a pretty logical choice for us as a society. Every has enough but less people have too much.

It will mean we need to pay a real price for things. No more decking out the home in cheap furniture that is meant to last 5 years and go out of fashion in 2. It means waiting and saving and buying something that your kids can use in 50 years time.

So we have to come to the logic that a level of infinite growth or work in a finite planet or a finite you is not achievable. This will take time and a lot of people will never get there but life is to be lived and each moment that is wasted is a moment you don’t get back. On their death beds some many people say they wish they had not worked so much and lived their life. So from the urban hippie go home on time and enjoy that life that life of yours.

Buzz….

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A.’s bees arrived today.

Honey you have honey for the familly.

Of Mallow and Strawberries

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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 you bought nothing new in October … Big Deal?

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So we finished buy nothing new in October a few days ago and it was an interesting experience.

In some ways enlightening in a lot of ways quite scary.

Yes we ended up using our exemptions. Andrea got all her bee equipment and I ended up getting a roll of bird netting other than that there were a few items we purchased that fell out of the exemption but not many but they are listed below.

  • Plastic cups for the kids
  • New sandals for the kids for the hot weather we had
  • Potting mix for seedlings

I found it easy once I got into the rhythm of it and found that I actually enjoyed the way it made me sit back and think about things. I can be a bit (LOT) driven to get things done and sometimes rather than finding something I already have I will like most people rush forward to bunnings or another store to get the items to get the job done to rush around some more. I very quickly realized all that the time spent charging around to get the items was greater than the time saved and I got more done by not running off to buy things ‘to save time’.

One of the main examples of this was pots. October is a major seedling time in our part of the world leading into summer September/October is the busiest time for us. As I couldn’t buy any trays or pots this year I had to go looking and find the ones I had and find new ways to grow things.

When I went looking a just kept finding plastic pots, in the back yard, in my shed, under my house. I am not only setup for this year but next and onward. I also trialed using old toilet rolls and other small cardboard items as seedling posts which has worked out brilliantly and will be repeated every year. I may or may not have done these without the buy nothing new month but it brought it into clarity and made me try things.

Equally we have tended to buy a lot of plastic box’s to store stuff and use the cardboard box’s as either weed suppressant in the back yard or it goes into recycling. Using them to store things while cleaning up the spare room (read old storage room/son’s new room) has been good we have looked at the boxes now as a resource for reuse. And as we have bought nothing new these are from work or family or friends. We now look at boxes and go ‘ooh that is a good one for this or that’. I also stored things in boxes freeing up the plastic boxes for better uses.  It is quite ridiculous what we waste in this society and what can be reused.

While I enjoyed it and so did A. She found it a little harder particularly with the children but she admitted it was good to not go looking in shops for stuff. In time I think she would have got into the rhythm of second hand stores but at the end of the day the buy nothing new month is a short time we have enough that we don’t really need to buy things for a month in this rich society.

I have built both my garden shed and the chicken run out second hand materials found as hard waste. It took time as you are not working with standard materials and this will seem odd to many when you can just duck down to the store and buy a tin shed and put it up pretty quickly. In a lot of countries what I have built from is better than what many people have to build their homes.

I saw a show on a refugee camp and one of the things that really struck me was the bucket repairer.  A plastic bucket here in Australia cost me about 40 seconds of earning time. If they break most people here would just throw them out. But this guy reworked them and repaired them and kept parts to repair another. Given the embodied energy in the item yet again the third world through necessity is doing what the rest of us should be doing by default.

This is not for everyone and it will be a long time before most Australians are forced to do it by cost (and I hope we never really get there as by that stage the already dire situation for the guy repairing buckets is going to be terminal) but it is something we should be doing as we have the greatest impact on the planet through our profligate and stupidly wasteful ways.

Perhaps a better way for us in the first world is to use our wealth to purchase items that last longer and are more ethical and really show the value of that embodied energy and resources. We purchased handmade Italian leather boots some time ago. Yes they were expensive but they have lasted through our daughter and now our son and looking like they will last should the plan of a third come to fruition and then go to friends or family. Put your value into that embodied energy and allow those not so wealthy in the world to do what they need to do to get by.

At the end I was a bit surprised that we didn’t rush out and buy stuff. We didn’t seem to need to. Yes A. bought some clothes but that more to do with a giant growing baby and a wedding we had to attend than just shopping withdrawal symptoms.

So where to from here?

I enjoyed it and would like to do this for a quarter next time and see how it goes but it will require careful negotiation at the end of the day I am in a family and a relationship and forcing your own views on people is just being a zealot and that does not help change anything.

What I can do is to work on myself and fixing that up first. I am not sure if I will ever get to the point of my neighbor who would not spend by his own accounting more than 10% of his wage on new stuff and I will most certainly never ever get to the guy who repairs buckets but as I play peekaboo and chasey with my son in between writing this post I am reminded that is what I personally have many reasons to try.

Lacto Brewed Ginger Beer

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I have been away for a while due to work commitments to study. It is one of those odd things that happens. I have a 5 year plan and I don’t think I will use this diploma I just got at the end of that 5 year plan but the next 5 years it will be required to lead to the end of the 5 year plan (I think that makes sense)

Sadly you have to balance out the ‘what you want’ versus what it takes to get there. For me it is a balance but one I am aware of and try to manage. I do not want to get to the point where lied to myself so much thinking I can sell my present to do what I want in the future but neither do I want to car wreck the future by doing only what I want rather than what I have to do.  

And also at the end of the day education is always a good thing. People should never stop learning formally or informally. To stop is to in a way to start the trip to death.

But enough of my musings. I have a lot to catch up on for everyone but I also want to spend the day in the garden so my balance for today is the short post below on brewing lacto ginger beer. Last year I did this and this year I am trying again and it is looking very promising with the starter brew smelling SO GOOD after a week of me helping mother nature make it.

To make the starter you need a clean sterilised large mouth jar. A cup and half to two cups of rain water (tap water is ok but boil it and leave 24 hours to get rid of any chlorination before using) . Add a tablespoon or so of grated peeled raw ginger. The amount depends on what you end up grating from the amount you peeled. No matter how much it is add an equal amount of sugar to it needs to be added. Cover opening of the jar with a piece of muslin cloth and rubber band.

Each day you add around the same amount of ginger and sugar and stir vigorously (I tend to swirl it once day as well) after a couple of days you should see bubbles forming and the lovely ginger beer smell will come of it.

It may take a bit longer as it depends what wild yeast is around and the conditions. This year has been great for wild yeast (as I discovered making elderflower cordial which is another story)

As with all my brewing but particularly when using a wild yeast process make sure you sanitise everything when I grate the ginger I pour boiling water over the grater and plate and leave for a minute or so and even pour it over the knife used to peel the ginger. I obviously make sure all of the spoon used to measure and add the ginger and sugar and the stir is clean and had had boiled water poured over it to clear.

I have a couple of more days of making the starter then I can make it up into beer and will post on that then.