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. 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.
Strawberries should be a luxury food. A couple of months of indulgence a year, sweetened by a whole year of waiting. There’s this thing with seasonal luxury foods, that they start out expensive and the price encourages every kind of scammy hereticism, pushing them to grow until you get something that is cheap and very very nasty.
Back in June, I posted a picture of my new very beautiful Yule gift of this fruit bowl, filled with mid-winter fruit. Now it is strawberries and pawpaws in my part of the world. They make my very favourite breakfast smoothie. (Maybe I lie there. I have many favourites).
Some years I don’t bother with European cabbage. My winters are short. The cabbage moths are active right into autumn, and back by mid-Spring. Cabbages take up a surprising amount of room. You harvest them once (unlike broccoli or silver beet) and then they’re gone. And then I have a cabbage year and remember why I love them and vow I will plant cabbages every year.
The green doesn’t look real does it? But it is, late winter in my garden and skies that look too blue to be real and garden greens that look too green to be real.
Sunlight in my basket. Limes, lemons, mandarins, oranges. So many of them that I am making salted limes for adding to summer soda water and salted lemons for that little salty sour-sweet note that lifts so many dishes out of the ordinary. I’m making lime syrup for cordial, but not being a real sweet tooth, mostly for Asian style dipping sauce for things like rice paper rolls. I’m making Indian…
I heard a mad story last October about a Northern Territory farmer growing out of season pumpkins for Halloween carving. It isn’t easy growing pumpkins out of season. No wonder they cost a fortune.And here, at the moment, the verandah stack grows. The wheelbarrow in the garden is full. Food waste is an odd concept.
There is a Marge Piercy poem that I think perfectly sums up zucchini called Attack of the Squash People. I think of it every year around this time. I learned some time ago to plant just a couple of zucchini seeds at a time, but then I discovered tromboncino.
The grapes are hanging thick and heavy in our pergola. Such a useful plant. In winter the bare vines let the north western afternoon sun stream onto the verandah, warming the floor and creating a nice spot for proving bread or sitting with a book. In spring the fresh, delicate leaves make dolmades, wonderful lunch or picnic or party food. In summer the vines are thick with leaves blocking the…
My glut crops at the moment are tomatoes, button squash, pumpkins, snake beans, leeks, and cucumbers.