They’re such a pretty flower. Nothing in my garden has just one purpose – this little suburban garden is too small to fit nectar sources for pest predators, pollen sources for pollinators, flowers for cutting for the vase on the kitchen table, compost materials, food and medicinals for the chooks and quails, food and medicinals for us – everything has to do at least two or three of those. More…
Rosa bianca eggplant, beets, carrots, sweet peppers, button squash roasted with lots of oregano, and steamed green beans, topped with a garlic yoghurt dressing, all of it bar the powdered milk used to make the yoghurt with about 10 steps of food miles. There is something very decadent about dinner shopping like this.
Breakfast this morning – homemade Greek yoghurt with the first of the season’s mangoes, the first of the season’s peaches, and the thing I am excited about at the moment, Gudgin, or Ooray, or Davidson’s plum powder sprinkles.
First batch of Ooray jam for the season. I’ve written about Ooray before, but I’ve called it Davidson’s plum. Ooray is the name in some aboriginal languages of Davidsonia pruriens, but the name in Bundjalung language of northern NSW for Davidsonia johnsonii is Gudjin. But so much indigenous knowledge has been lost that if I call it Gudjin jam, almost nobody will know what I mean.
Isn’t it stunning? This is the current position of all the cargo vessels in the world. Just cargo vessels – I’ve set the filter to remove the passenger ships, the tankers, the fishing vessels, all the other types of sea traffic. How do we prepare for when those ships stop, or, if we are smarter than I think we collectively are, when they start using fuel that is clean and…
Look at my silver beet! It won’t be like that for much longer. Pretty soon it will think about going to seed. But what made me think about this post was not just the silver beet begging for a photo but a conversation with a friend this week about how we decide what to cook.
Last year, this was my water chestnut pond. And it worked so well. In this little suburban garden I have so little space that everything has to be miniature, but the discipline of making every centimetre count has been an epiphany. Water chestnuts in one side, kang kong in the other, and as much of each as we could eat in its season. I still have a couple of tubs…