Eating local

Ever since our garden started producing - we've been eating zucchini, tomatoes, rhubarb, herbs (including a shitload of basil - and if anyone has any ideas what to do with borage, let me know, m'kay?) and corn out of the garden - we've been amazed at the taste. You plant a few seeds, do a few loads of washing (our garden is watered by subsurface irrigation, from our washing machine), you wait a bit, and suddenly, you're eating fresh food that tastes nothing like the same vegetables from the supermarket. I've just ordered heirloom variety broccoli, brussel sprouts and leek seeds from Diggers, which are going to be our main winter crops (along with lots of parsley, and greens like rocket and argula, but I already have seeds for those).

Our garden is based, roughly, on permaculture principles, which means that around the edges we have perennial plants (so far we have planted logan berries, passionfruit, two fruitsalad trees (one with a variety of stone fruits and one with a variety of citrus), lemongrass and rhubarb). The idea is to minimise annual planting (and therefore the amount of work I need to do in the garden) while at the same time giving us a good supply of very local food. There are plenty of herbs spread around the garden too, many of which will spread and/or self-seed, including parsley (both flat-leaf and curly), basil, oregano, borage, thyme, french tarragon, sage and the afore-mentioned lemon grass. We also have nasturtiums growing, which self-seed and which in my experience get better and tougher each year if you just leave them to it - they adapt to the local conditions because the less suitable ones die off. You can eat the leaves and flowers in salads and the seeds can be pickled like capers.

Anyway, the amazing taste of the fresh stuff has led to a revelation (on Mr H's behalf, I already knew this - but he's the one who does the shopping and the cooking) that eating locally and seasonally is the way to go.

Of course this is also better for the planet, as any fule kno.

We already do well with our eggs, from a guy who keeps chooks locally (H meets him at the pub, and he also takes our empty egg cartons to reuse). The beef and lamb from our local butcher are both local and grass fed, but we are often guilty of going to the supermarket at the last minute instead of planning. Bad us.

We have signed up for Food Connect (I talked about this in a previous post, which because I am feeling lazy I can't be bothered linking to) which means you get a box of fresh, local produce each week. So the plan is, we base our meals on this, plus whatever we get from the garden, we add local meat and eggs, if we really want bread, we bake it (I have discovered a local source of spelt flour, and I'll do sourdough no knead bread, which I made a fair bit last year). I'm also going to learn how to make cheez.

The other thing I've increasingly thinking about is packaging. When you make foods at home, it often minimises packaging. If I make sourdough bread, then the only things that have been packaged are the flour and the salt. If I buy a loaf of bread, it's wrapped in single-use plastic, plus all the ingredients were also packaged (albeit they probably buy their flour in bigger bags than I can get (or store, if I could get) and I don't know how far away their flour has come from, but I can be pretty sure it's outside Victoria, and I don't know where their salt has come from. They probably use packaged yeasts, too. If I buy chicken stock, either it comes in a tetra pack, or if we buy stock cubes (yuck) then they're full of chemical I don't want in my diet. If I make chicken stock at home, then it uses chicken bones I would otherwise put in the bin, along with veggie scraps that otherwise go to the worms, and I often add a splash of vinegar (the acid helps to leech the calcium out of the bones into your stock, and it's a particularly well-absorbed form of calcium) - thinking about it, I could use the juice of a lemon instead, which would be less packaging and less transport, as there's a tree down the laneway that grows over the fence...

The same applies to pretty much any packaged food you can think of.

I also try to minimise packaging when I do buy things I can't make at home. The tea and coffee place at Vic Market, for example, gives you 20 cents off when you re-use a bag - although they are paper bags, and don't last forever, so I should really get around to making a fabric version (out of a light fabric, perhaps cheesecloth, so it doesn't add too much to the weight of my coffee!)

The dairy stall, Curds and Whey, sells bulk Warnambool butter. They slice off the amount you want, and wrap it in a plastic sheet, then in paper. Delis often do this with bacon, sliced meats, etc. I was thinking about the options for this, and had a brainwave - oilcloth. Reusable, wipes clean, and sure, it's not exactly biodegradable, but it should last pretty much for ever, and is surely a better option than throwing out the plastic every time? I've ordered a metre of it, and because it doesn't fray, all I'll need to do when it arrives is cut it into appropriate size pieces. There should be enough to share, so if anyone wants a couple of bits, let me know.

And after all, this is the year of reducing disposables (according to the international committee of me). I'd really, really like to get to the point where I could do all my shopping without buying a single plastic package. It sounds hard to do, but really, we all need to think a bit more about where our food's coming from, and what it's packaged in. In fact, since it's lunchtime, I'm going to go and make a couple of reusable fruit and veg bags now.

Memo to facebook

Dudes, your "targeted" advertising is FAIL.

Currently along the side of my facebook page, you're trying to sell me one-a-day coupons for Sydney, where I don't live, free crap for oldies, for which I am not eligible (although no doubt, the time is rapidly approaching, creeps on this petty pace from day to day, etc), and the opportunity to meet hot single men through a dating website, which Hugo would possibly object to. Although if I meet a hot vet, he's so dumped (just kidding darling. I'll keep seeing you on the side).

I'm also not interested in "winning an iphone" (as if), or joining some network of freaks that thinks nuclear power is the answer to environmental problems (what's the bet Tony Abbot's a member?) I also don't have sciatica, I don't need generic HIV meds, and don't want to lose weight, get a new American Express card, an engagement ring (pass the sick bag) or hire a car (at least not through facebook).

Please to reprogram ad selecshun algorithm kthxbai.

If you turn on the TV to watch the women's doubles final

you will hear me screaming for Liezel and Cara. I will be the really loud person. I guarantee I will be screaming louder than anyone else on court.

Food, glorious food!

Ever since I read about CSAs on various American blogs, about three years ago, I've been wishing we had the same thing in Oz. So this morning when I read the New Internationalist email in my inbox and discovered Food Connect, currently operating in Sydney and coming soon to Melbourne, Adelaide and the Bellingen Shire, I was mega excited.


We've been eating mega giant zucchinis, tomatoes, basil and corn from our tiny courtyard, and talking about moving somewhere where we can grow more food (only a dream at the moment, as I ain't goin nowhere, nohow, until I've finished studying, which won't be for some time yet). The difference in taste is so amazing - the corn and tomatoes especially, you wouldn't think they were the same vegetable as the rubbish you get from the supermarket. And we agreed the other night while eating our corn that we are going to make more of an effort to eat seasonally, because it tastes better (even apart from the environmental impact). There's no point eating tomatoes in the middle of winter when they don't actually taste like tomatoes.


The tomato in this picture is actually a full size, normal tomato. The biggest zucchini is over 40cm long and 25cm diameter, because I forgot to check the plants for a couple of days...

Shown here with a pug, for scale.

So the Food Connect thing can't happen fast enough for my liking! We can't grow all our fruit and veg in the space we have, so local, seasonal produce direct from farmers is the next best thing.

Speaking of, also on my agenda for the year is learning to make cheese - an essential post-apocalyptic survival skill in my opinion, because a life without cheese is like a faint shadow of a life. I also realised the other day while eating peanut butter on crumpets that my post-apocalyptic anti-zombie compound is going to have to include a few peanut vines, because I don't fancy going the rest of my life with no peanut butter crumpets (luckily, I already know how to make crumpets). And I read this fantastic article in Permaculture magazine about how to make cider, and I am totally going to go raid the organic greengrocer's bins for all the slightly imperfect apples they throw away and make bin cider. I've just got to find a reasonably priced glass demijohn, because I don't want to use plastic... and I can't tell you how much I want one of these.

A quotation on male writers

I just found this on a blog in my random trawling of the internet. I'm not going to link to it:

"Male writers are full of misogynistic bullshit. Their writing is usually just unbearably full of rape and violence, and even if it isn’t, their female characters are weakly drawn and pathetically shallow and never the kind of heroines we need."

As Gilbert & Sullivan said (omg, wait, they're MEN), WHAT NEVER?

I find I largely prefer female writers. My favourites are, in no particular order, Diana Wynne Jones, Robin Hobb, Margaret Atwood, E.Nesbit, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Monica Dickens, and Isobel Carmody.

I have a (now not so) secret love for Jilly Cooper.

But to claim no man ever, in the entire history of literature, has written a strongly drawn, three dimensional female heroine "of the kind we need"? That's just stupid.

I draw your attention to Nanny Ogg.