Getting More Purple From the Plot to the Plate

  

Plot to Plate

Getting more purple from the plot to the plate. 

• Red cauliflower and cabbage ready to harvest 
• Braised red cabbage with black sesame seeds and chia. Seasoned with sesame oil and salt
• Sprouting broccoli so green it is almost purple
• Spring onions to give every dish a bit of zing

Growing tips:  This year I planted the cauliflower closer together.  The heads are smaller and tighter.  Sprouting broccoli was propagated in soil blocks and planted with two seedlings to a block. 

Harvest and cooking:  Harvesting a head per person. I pick them when they are nice and tight and very colourful.  I cook them flower up - out of water - so they keep more color.

Red cabbage lightly braised with sesame oil and salt to taste

  

Willow Sizer sings Chuck E's in Love

Growing, Harvesting, Preserving

Waiting for the right season to plant, waiting for the right day to pick, waiting for the wine to ferment, it's all about waiting. 

Food production 1 percent labour, 99 percent waiting. 

Changing Email Addresses

Linked to our identity, and often our financial security,  social networks hold power over our emotional well-being.

Fear: Have I notified everyone who is precious

Anxiety: Have I notified the powers that be: gas, electricity, bank 

Frustration: remembering all the passwords

Long suffering: Helping my husband change his email address that is linked to mine!

Pleasure: Thinking of all the spam that will be lost to the old address

Relief:  I am tech savvy enough to do this.

Thank you google for linking my google stuff so I only have to change address once.  Shame on you google for not letting me use my gmail account in Outlook.

Soil Blocking Tool

There has been no post because I am too busy soil blocking.  

How green is my....pool?

Trout in the swimming pool sounded like an easy do winter project.  How green was I and how green is my pool.  The new project, to save the old project, is understanding how bio-filters work.  I'm off to look for plants tomorrow.  Oh! and by the way,  green scrub pads are out of stock at all local supermarkets.  

Picking

The wheels of fortune are turning in the form of 'hard rubbish'.  The rubbish from the back of the shed becomes  a treasure to be redeemed from the nature strip.  Truly one person's trash is another's treasure.

Summer Reed

Mothers day at Heidi.  Summer Reed did not give birth but she was an amazing mother. A mother to art, a mother to ideals and a true mother of the earth.  

Heidi is  beautiful even on a wet winters day.  Every corner hides treasures and nourishes the soul.  How did she achieve so much? Hard work driven by love.  I hope my own mothering is as practical, ethereal and nourishing.

Seeds for the soul

I  have not yet sown anything but the seeds of the garden have taken root in my thoughts.  The best spot, the fastest growing, and the taste of home grown rocket, spinach and raddish  have all been considered.  The storm last night was the watershed for action. Tomorrow I will plant.

To Market to Market...

"To market to market to buy a fat pig, home again home again jiggerty jig."  Can you imagine this person skipping home with the pig?  I've just spent three days buying school books and there is certainly no skipping.  

Birthday

The love of friends is a measure of our place in this world, superficially true but on reflection it is the love I have given to those around me; friends and acquaintances and perhaps if I have risen just a little higher the love I have shown to those who have not loved me. 

Great Expectations

I have been thinking again about expectations.  Those who have none are never disappointed.  Is it possible to have no expectation?  What of the followers who expected a King and found themselves at a state execution.  

Sold

'First to see will buy'.  All that spit and polish, weeding, painting and home beautification.  I too want to live in this home that no longer belongs to us.

Moving House

Unless you carry your's on your back you too will  have to face this heavy load one day.  Ten years ago we moved six times in two years and two of those were international.  Like childbirth the pain is forgotten or time is a great healer because here we go again.  


The compulsion to finish all the odd jobs, the consolidation of material possessions, the cleaning and weeding.  It is without a shadow of a doubt a stressful life event.  I need to be kind to myself and my house mates. 

Words and Actions

It is not what we say or what we do but what our words and actions do to others.  Not perhaps a new thought but certainly a timely one.  I might speak with truth but if it is not tempered with grace then it rings out of tune and clashes with the spirit of man.


More strength in times of weakness.

'The whips and scorns of time'

'For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, the oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, the pangs of despised love, the law's delay.'  Shakespeare describes our common response when challenged with adversity and the ensuing anxiety and stress.  


I am coming to terms with adrenaline that rushes to my inner most being and screams run.  I pressed for this new position and now I think it might have been better to recognize adversity's wisdom.  Now I must fight or fly.  To be or not to be that is the question....


  

Bread baked in a wood fired oven

Is bread baked in a wood fired oven  better than bread baked with other fuels?  I do not know if my taste buds can honestly discern the difference   

Home made bread however is easy to judge. There is nothing like it: fresh, soft, warm, fragrant, sweet. Labour of love returns delicious rewards.  

It is hard to imagine a world without home made bread.

Old ladies, trains, tears and tea

I begged the conductor to wait for the elderly lady who, in spite of her 70 or so years' had run to get her purse left behind in her car. The train would not wait not even for one minute.  As she ran back onto the platform  the train pulled out and as I apologized for not being able to stop the train I started to weep.


Weeping sometimes comes to me in unusual moments, a visitor who does not always explain the reason for her visit but she did spur me on to tenderness and tea.  Breathless from her efforts but not distressed by the train's ill manners she gladly accepted my company and we gently filled the hours wait with our stories and Earl Grey. 

The Interview

Job interviews, dressed up, prepped up and talking up a storm.  When I turn into the fly on the wall I think 'Wow who is that person I am talking about?'  I am going to let that confident and experienced person out more often.  It is good to remind myself that I can dress to impress and have skills that are valuable.  Interviews an opportunity to impress ourselves.

Cars and other expensive tools

It never rains but it pours, well that is how it feels right now in regards to our aging cars, it is unavoidable and there is no point sulking.  Walking, public transport and other luxuries do not exist in rural Victoria so I must place my life and my trust in the not so trusty steed.  We have reinstated the prayer alter, a sacred space set up for petitions, we are praying for a friend who is in dire need of a car and by the way me too please.

Water, water everywhere.....

When your water is cut off and the precious liquid is bubbling up in a muddy puddle in the back garden you suddenly realise how wonderful  it was to turn on the tap.  I would not need a broken pipe to learn this lesson in Africa.  
I will show more gratitude for these unsolicited gifts.  I am grateful for my home and for running water, for my family and their love.

Sometimes things take longer to process

That  rapid insight that  springs into our consciousness without effort,   for which we can take no credit, can also be illusive.  This is one of those times.  Perhaps it is the cares of the world that have come to steal the magic.  More magic please.

Sometimes things in plain sight are the hardest things to see.

Out of the mouth of my 12 year old son.  Said to his dad who couldn't see the STEP LADDER leaning against the wall in the closet.  

Be at one with yourself and the world

I  have that funny feeling that I am swimming backstroke in a freestyle relay.  Sometimes this means I need to change, often it requires some explanation but when  amongst friends I can enjoy their unconditional acceptance.  

Seeds, seedlings and fruit

How does your garden grow?  By silver bells and cockleshells?  Well not in my book but it does take some daily observations, some planning and a whole army of maids would help, so perhaps some correlations.  Just finished trans-planting  my cauliflower seedlings. They started life under an old fish tank and have been happy there for a while but now they need space.  Most seeds love tight little groups to begin life but then they need to be transplanted to mature.  One other thing that seedlings need is hardening off.  They need some time exposed but still sheltered.  I am sure that this is like my own growth, first tight groups and hothouse stuff, then the  hardening off and then into the big cold ground exposed to the elements.  It is there that all the fruit is produced.  

Rubbish

Sometimes the theme that emerges from my reflexion on the day is not a pretty one.  When I drove the children to school this morning the contents of the rubbish bin were all over the road and nature strip.  All of the bins on the street were akimbo so I suspect there is a new man at the wheel of the rubbish truck.  I cleared up the mess and thankfully caught the truck coming down the opposite side of the street.  It is interesting that I had also planned a massive sort of the 'odds and sods' drawers, which have been left to fester for far too long and have multiplied to a number of locations around the house.  At the end of the day I have emptied sorted and designated most of the contents of said drawers to the rubbish and recycle bin.  


The event on the nature strip was an accident, the event in the house, neglect. The harsh words deliberate.   My conscience is easily pricked by the deliberate  not so readily by the accidental and almost never when the error is that of neglect.  I need a softer conscience.