We ate all the outside leaves of the young pak choi, mostly in won tons but also in soups and stir fries. Then I left them to flower and the tiny, stingless native bees feasted on the flowers, giving us tiny amounts of absolutely delectable light champagney honey. Then I let them set seed before feeding them, mature seeds and all, to the chooks.
It is tipped to reach 41°C today. That’s 106°F for those of you in USA. Tackling the kind of bad habits and addictions that are disrupting the planet’s climate is hard and scary. Change always is. But how many heat waves, firestorms, floods, tornados, cyclones, tidal surges, droughts, food shortages, and extinctions add up to harder? and more scary?
Summer is a much harder gardening season than winter in Australia. Most years there’s a set of frizzle days sometime over the summer – days when the temperature is up around 40ºC for a few days in a row. It can be really disheartening. Your garden can be looking good one day, then a few days later it’s all fried.
Every year in my community, as part of our winter solstice celebrations, we have a gift giving ritual. We draw names out of a hat six weeks earlier, and hand make a gift. This year, Garry drew me and made me these bellows for my slow combustion stove.
Maybe a week more of mango gluttony, then it’s over for another year. So here’s the mango upside down cake recipe, so I remember it for next year.
My favourite dish to take to a party is always little tarts. They make such easily transportable finger food, so easy, and they look so party-food. Simple shortcrust pastry, lightly blind baked, then half filled with a slightly lemony cheesecake mix, topped with mango jelly. Recipe:
Back in midwinter, I posted a picture of my new, very beautiful fruit bowl – a Yule gift – filled with winter fruit – oranges, mandarins, lemons, limes, grapefruit. Then in Spring I posted a picture of it filled with spring fruit – pawpaws and strawberries in my part of the world. And now it is full of mangoes and grapes.