what i did in my garden over the holidays

Watered. Basically, I watered. And then wondered where that water was going.

Towards the end of January we had some rainfall — heavy and tank-filling; as well as just plain misty and annoying. But before that (and since!) it was weeks between drinks. A dry summer where even the weeds curled up and died. Where I contemplated pulling out all my pretty, wilting flowers and replacing them with native shrubs — until my friend F told me even her natives were struggling (then I contemplated ripping everything up and going with fakes).

Lion's plants, which bring nectar birds to my garden

Oh, if you were to pull up in my driveway and look at the front garden, (somehow) you’d see lots of colours from the climbing roses, pelargoniums and larkspurs. But get down close and look at the soil, and you’d see a dustbowl. I do not know where the water I pour in goes; I do not know how anything survives.

But I’m also learning from this bad season, for next summer, because (perhaps pessimistically) I can only see that this is how it’s going to be — dry, hot summers. So let’s plan for it, to mitigate the tears and frustrations. Plant more of what survived this time (not flourishing, merely staying alive) to be guaranteed some colour. Penstemons are top of the list; somehow those delicate and divinely purple larkspurs put on a good show, as did a clump of these spiky blue things (which prickles notwithstanding, the bees love):

Many things finished very early this season: lavender was over and out by December, as were some other usually reliable perennials. The only way I managed this pretty display of pink phloxes (yes mum, phloxes) and cosmos was by slavishly watering them, just about every day. That was a lot of work to tie myself to.

In my vegie garden, usually reliable stuff that you can sow and grow with your eyes closed and hands tied behind your back just didn't happen. Peas didn't germinate (and when they did, the sparrows nipped them all off — more on that later). Zucchinis grew only about two inches long and then stopped (and tasted bitter).

Lush zuke plants - but very little fruit

This has been frustrating and heartbreaking, and at times I've been ready to give up. All the time and work and energy you devote to the garden, and for what? All the packets of seeds you buy? Puny nasty zucchini! A measly handful of sugar snap peas! All bush and no beans! Pah, that’s not what I signed up for!

My prettiest patch, with spring onions, marigolds, beetroot, beans and self-sown capsicums jostling for space

So I’m given up. Oh, I’ll keep watering everything in some vain hope I’ll get a decent sized carrot, but I’ve decided against doing further sowings, because the elements are too much to battle. I’m now waiting til it’s cooler before I turn my mind to winter plantings. I want summer 2016 to be over, so I can start anew.

I’m also pestering my dad about hammering in more structures once it cools down: for higher and better netting over my vegie beds, to guard against the birds; and that is easy for me to get in and out of. I know the birds are desperate for food in this dry season — but I’m not growing peas and lettuce for sparrows!

 

 Apricots and plum tree protected above; tomatoes below

 It hasn’t been completely bad in the veg patch (and looking back at these pictures, it's all quite lush). My tomatoes are coming on nicely, just enough to enjoy a few each day and cook a tray or too for the freezer. The lazy housewife beans are giving me a modest handful every couple of days (my supply being generously complimented by mum and dad, who currently have scarlet runners coming out of their ears!). They are finished now, but just after Christmas I pulled a small but delicious quantity of beetroot and round Paris carrots. And my fruit trees (as noted in my previous post) offered up small but rich harvests.

 

Carrots on dead lawn 

The weather around Australia and indeed the world has been crazy this season — so perhaps you too are having a poor time in your garden. If so, I completely empathise — come on over for a cuppa, and we’ll drown our sorrows together.

Orangey 'big beryl' above and classic 'mamma mia' romas (and a couple of black krim) below

what i cooked and ate over my holidays

There is nothing better than a fresh melting moment, is there?

What about one with a generous dab of macadamia chocolate goo?

Thought you’d agree.

The sweet summer indulgence actually kicked off with the much anticipated Christmas pavlova. Oh, wow. What bliss. I could have quite happily eaten the lot (and stolen my parents’ servings mid-fork, too) it was sooo good.

So a couple of weeks later, we made another one, this time with a layer of zappy lemon curd that I made just for the occasion. Mm-mmm.

Mum has perfected the ratio of crisp-and-chewy meringue and pillowy marshmallow filling. Modest clouds of whipped cream and fresh berries — am I making your mouth water? We wondered why we don’t make pavlovas more often; like that other classic, the sponge cake, a pav is deceptively easy to literally whip up and the pay-off is wonderful.

In Hobart, summer finally kicks in around Christmas time, and then sweetness comes from our luscious stone fruits. Decadently fat, dark juicy cherries from dad’s trees; this greedy picker follows the ‘one for the bucket, one for the mouth’ rule. Quality assurance in juicy action! I happily gorged myself on these beauties.

 

I’ve also been stuffing myself silly on apricots (mine and dad’s), plums (ditto — here's my first modest harvest, below!) and nectarines, which, with their juicy combination of sweet and sharp, are perhaps my favourite summer fruit. Luckily my digestive system copes well with the extra fruit and fibre!

I bought a new enamel colander for collecting harvests. I'm quite in love with it!

 

Our harvests were modest this year — the dry conditions have meant smaller crops and smaller fruit — which mum and I do agree has an upside; we haven’t been completely overwhelmed by buckets of fruit to cut up and stew or freeze before they spoil. But I am restocking the freezer ahead of the winter months, and that is always satisfying. As were these delicious tarts:

The warmer months also mean lots of colourful healthy veg, too. Sometimes I fall into eating in a monochrome manner — a bowl of greens with vivid pesto, herbs and pasta, all absolutely emerald, can be my idea of heaven. But ‘eating the rainbow’ makes me very happy. How can this not?

 

Between dad's garden and mine, these are completely home-grown meals!

 

I’d like to think with a meal like this, I’m eating at my optimum. I can literally feel all those vitamins and antioxidants throwing themselves at me! 

Makes up for those times I indulge in a short little biscuit daubed generously with chocolaty goo...

farewell 2015!

I have the December blahs. An end of year ennui (I’ve never used that word before!). Tired of the 9 to 5 treadmill, sick of sitting inside on a sunny day, hurry up holidays, what have I done with this year?, December blahs. Actually I probably had them in November, what with that wretched cold, but yes … blah.

The weeks go fast and the weekends even faster. In the evenings, I don’t want to go to bed; I’m happy curled up on the couch with a magazine. In the morning, I don’t want to get out of bed, because the predictability of each day, whether it’s chores at home or going to work, are all that await.

And I don’t feel like Christmas. There, I’ve said it, to someone besides my mother. Admittedly, I don’t ever feel much like Christmas as I get older — I think it’s great if you’ve got little children, or the true religious significance of the season resonates with you. But mostly now, Christmas looks like endless catalogs in the mailbox, junk for sale in the shops, and TV ads of Curtis cooking a ham on the barbie. I’m not completely bah-humbug — if, amongst the chaos and commercialism you find meaning, I applaud you. But me, not so much.

All I want for Christmas this year is a pavlova, and so does dad, and mum reckons she can do that for us. I’m sure a pav will be like a sponge cake — so easy to make, why don’t we make them more often? Then again, only once or twice a year, at Christmas or birthdays, it will retain that aura of rarity and specialness.

So I’m looking forward to my summer holidays, to re-charging my physical and emotional batteries. Reviving my yoga practice, which has slipped away in recent months; that’s good for a stiff body and creaking soul. Reading something longer than the clothes credits in Vogue, which is all I can manage at the moment. I have Nigel Slater’s newest kitchen diaries from the library, and I find his writing so calming and thoughtful; months ago, I bought Michelle Crawford’s inspiring account of creating a new life in the Huon Valley, and I’d like to crack that open.

I also love being outside in my garden in the summer months, pottering about as much as possible. There’ll be lots of watering, because it’s so dry, and has been for months. That is not so uplifting — I don’t know where the water goes, and I honestly don’t know how the plants survive. I’ve got peas and beans that refuse to germinate, but a scattering of self-sown tomatoes with fruit on them. In gardening, you’re not always the one in control. You have to take the good with the bad.

And I’m hoping I’ll find some fresh energy for Dig In. I love this small but thoughtful community that has welcomed me here — that’s you — but the December blahs have made it increasingly hard to write meaningful posts. I always want to say more than just ‘Here’s a cake I made’, but that’s all my brain cells can come up with right now.

So enjoy the rest of your December, your 2015; I hope your celebrations are filled with joy. Thank you for your support at Dig In, and for showing me new and marvellous worlds through your own thoughts and messages and blogs. After a good off-line, real-life, fresh-air break, I’ll see you in 2016.

dark spelt brownies

You know you’re feeling better when you start thinking beyond food as medicine, food as fuel and vitamins, and you start craving dark chocolate brownies. And when you eat a good third of the slab in the first sitting. Sinfully rich fudgy brownies are very good convalescent food I have discovered, whether warm out of the oven or, surprisingly, fridge-cold and chewy-hard.

But hey, you can be in the peak of health and enjoy these too. So please do!
 

 

Dark spelt brownies

Adapted from a Martha Stewart recipe. Melt and mix and you’re done — what could be easier?

• Preheat your oven to 180 and prep a 20 cm brownie tin.

• In a large bowl set over a saucepan of simmering water, melt 110 gms butter with 170 gms 70% cooking chocolate (I used Lindt brand). It will look like a black dream, but resist the temptation to toss aside the recipe and simply eat this…

• Stir in ¾ cup white sugar plus ¾ cup dark brown sugar and once well combined, remove the bowl from the heat.

• Stir in a scant ½ tspn salt, ¼ cup cocoa powder (Martha advises unsweetened; I used Cadbury’s Bourneville brand which was labelled ‘Dutch process’).

• Fold thru 3 large rich eggs and then ¾ cup wholemeal spelt flour (I have to say, with all the deep chocolaty-ness going on, you can’t really tell it’s wholemeal or spelt. But it was a lovely fine flour and I look forward to baking with it again).

• Finally if you wish, fold thru ½ cup walnut pieces.

• Pour batter into the tin, making sure there’s enough left in the bowl and on the spoon for the cook to enjoy. Then bake for 35–45 minutes or until cooked: the sides pull away and the top gets that lovely crinkly top, but a skewer comes out with a few moist crumbs. Cool in tin for a few minutes before lifting onto wire rack. Enjoy!  

Have another fudgy pic!

garden ramble: on garlic and pansies

 

Two very exciting things have happened in the garden this week.

First, I pulled my garlic. I don’t think I’m supposed to yet, if you go by the ‘shortest day/longest day’ rule of planting and pulling, but when I saw Jane’s lovely harvest, I was stirred to action. I’d already been investigating: rubbing the dirt from around the bulbs every now and then, to peek at their progress. But with the stalks drying and in some cases rotting off, I decided it was time to harvest.

And — wow! Best garlic harvest ever, easily. Big fat healthy heads, smelling fresh and garlicky and wonderful. I’d pulled the ones I grew in a polystyrene box (as an experiment — container vs ground) a couple of weeks ago; they were only as big as a large marble and none segmented into cloves. However they smell and taste pungent, delicious.

So I’m hanging these undercover for a few days to dry out a little, but then I’ll separate the cloves and freeze them, as I saw Tino suggest on a recent Gardening Australia. Our summers can be haphazard, and I’m always worried they’ll either rot or start shooting. With this abundance, I don’t want to risk it.

The other great thing to happen this week was I took delivery of a car-boot full of pansy plants. Don’t they look so happy?

I work practically next door to my local council’s offices, so most lunchtimes I walk or ride my bike past their beautiful flower beds. I’ve emailed council before to say how much I enjoy seeing these pretty displays (I’ve also emailed them when the plovers are nesting in the little park near home, to please not mow the birds and eggs over, but that’s another story).

 

 

This time I said, rather cheekily, I’d love some of the pansies when they’re dug out for the next display. Does your council change its flower beds regularly, and seemingly when the colours and plants are at their best? It seems a shame for them to be discarded, so maybe I could re-house them.

To my delight, Council was happy for me to take some plants, and we spoke about probable dates; I made sure I had a big box and plastic sheets in the car. So when they called — we’re digging today, come over in a couple of hours! — I was ready.

The three gardeners were so friendly and helpful, digging and carrying the plants over to my car (I was in my office clothes, not gardening gear). Eight all up; it’s all I could fit. We looked for small plants that would transplant best, and they noticed my preference for purple and white faces, so I picked out a rusty red one too. As much as getting free plants, it was lovely to meet the gardeners who make these colourful displays happen; we talked about watering systems and weeds and mulches.

 

 

That evening, I planted the pansies into my garden beds (which are not as rich and moist as council’s). The gardeners advised cutting off the flowers, to help them settle in, and while I know that is best, I couldn’t bear to. They had so much colour still! So if they last only a couple of weeks before they get straggly and poorly, hopefully their roots will settle in and I’ll be give them a big chop — and they’ll come back next season. Many of the plants had fat promising seed heads on them, too, so maybe I’ll get new plants from those.

So thank you council, you’ve made me very happy. And the gardeners said that going in next were zinnias, and I love zinnias … so I’ll be in touch.

garden ramble: november

I’m warding off a cold at the moment, so my ability to think creatively is being obstructed by many snotty hankies! So instead of words, I share with you some pictures from my vegie and ornamental gardens, taken one lovely mild evening. Lots of cheering colour from the flowers, but not much happening with the veg. I’m waiting impatiently for seeds to poke thru — they are very tardy — and I’m mounting increasing defences against the sparrows and blackbirds who scruff out zinnia seedlings or snip off tender new pea shoots.

See you next week with hopefully more words.

 

Above, under the nectarine tree; below, mesh to keep the birds from my carrots and beetroot

 Above, nemophilias ... and a smudge on my camera lens; below, girly dahlias

 Above, tatty dianthus; below, is that little bug on my new dahlias a friendly one?

 Above, cloud of blue and white nigellas; below, the pea, bean and lettuce bed netted against the birds

 Above, the passionfruit progress; below, plums!

 Above, a Queen Anne's lace with more of those bugs; below, a perfect Pierre du Ronsard

 Above, the climbing rose with all its buds; below, one of my favourite flowers, sweet williams

 Above, tomato progress; below, final nigellas

 

lemon syrup cake

I have professed before my love of plain cakes, and I really think that if I did write a cookbook, it would be all about plain cakes. Because there are so many possibilities. Is it made with butter, natural yoghurt, sour cream or olive oil? Flours or almond meal or polenta? A hint of vanilla or a hint of lemon? A light as air sponge or a denser wodge that is almost pudding? See, I class all of these as plain cake.

 

A plain cake should be able to stand on its own two feet, shine by itself in a quiet, unassuming way. Equally, it should be star enough to play supporting role to say a good scoop of rich berries or dollop of stewed fruit.

 

This syrup cake started out as a plain cake, made with just enough lemon zest to brighten it up. It included a modest amount of semolina — have you ever baked with semolina before? I’ve used polenta, with very pleasing results, but not semolina (I’m not even entirely sure what semolina is…). It made the fine crust of this cake slightly crunchy, in a very good way.

 

I thought this cake was pretty good as it was, without the syrup and candied lemon slices that were next in the recipe. In fact, I was loathe to make them in case they ruined a perfectly serviceable plain cake! Even tasting the syrup I thought — if such a thing is possible — that it was too lemony, too acid.

 

But then I cut a test slice (okay, second test slice — the first was to see what the truly naked cake tasted like), dribbled over some of the syrup, and was wowed. This is one of those occasions when the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, because plain cake (with nice crunchy edges) plus syrupy sauce equals amazing.

 

It wasn’t just me who thought that: I took a still-oven-warm slice to my lovely friend A, who I was sure was in need of sustenance; and gave another slice to the just-as-lovely V, with instructions to zap it in the microwave for a few minutes, as this is a cake best served slightly warm. Both were effusive in their praise (not of me, of the cake). V hit it on the head perfectly when she said it was just the right amount of tartness and sweetness. She also said it sent her to ‘lemony deliciousness heaven’, which is possibly an even better way of describing this cake. So maybe it’s not quite a plain cake afterall.

 

On another note, I’m sharing with you some pictures of my sage, which is growing spectacularly well at the moment, and makes for a wonderful vase in the kitchen. Nothing to do with the lemon cake, it just made its way into the picture.

Lemon syrup cake
Adapted from taste.com.au. I used my deep fluted bundt tin rather than the specified deep 20cm round tin. Cooking time still took the same!

• Preheat oven to 180 and prep your chosen baking tin.
• Cream together 125 gms soft butter, the zest of 2 or 3 lemons, and 1 scant cup of sugar.
• Add 2 eggs.
• Fold in 2/3 cup semolina, 1 1/2 cups SR flour, 1/2 cup natural or greek yoghurt, plus the juice of half a lemon.
• Blob into pan and bake for 45 minutes or so until done.
• Meanwhile, make the syrup. Place 1 scant cup sugar, 1/2 cup lemon juice and 1/2 cup water in small saucepan and gently dissolve the sugar. Then add some very fine slices of lemon; enough to ring around your cake as you can see in my first photo (I needed two small lemons). Increase the heat to bring to boil and boil carefully until syrup thickens. Apparently 'without stirring', but I couldn't resist a prod. This took me a good 15 minutes.
• Allow cake to cool a little before turning out. Then while it is still warm, pour some of the syrup over, reserving some. Arrange your lemon slices prettily and serve each slice with a good slosh more of the sticky syrup and a good blob of the yoghurt you used for baking. As before, I think this is best enjoyed warm.

coffee-choc self-saucing pudding

Despite recent posts, I am not a big drinker. No, really! A nice chilly G&T at the end of a hot day in summer is very refreshing, and a glass or two of bubbles when I stay at my parents, or on a night out if I’m not driving, is de-lovely. But truly, that’s about it.

But, boozy cooking? Ooh yeah. Now we’re talking. My first thought when making a risotto is, white wine or vermouth in this? If it’s Spanish flavoured with smoky paprika, I’ll reach for the sherry. Sherry is such an ‘old ladies drink’ — you’d never catch me sipping it — but a slurp in that risotto or in a pear dessert (or just stewed pears) is divine. And while they aren’t called upon as much, there’s always a bottle of ginger wine and brandy in the cupboard, just in case. I love the depth and mellowness of flavour that a judicious slosh of all these liquors can add to a dish.

Of course, anything chocolate-y, like a brownie, begs for a little booze: maybe some Frangelico or Tia Maria, depending on my mood. It brings out the best in chocolate and makes a fudgy dessert even more decadent. So even though this pudding already has chocolate and coffee in it, I added a good measure of Tia Maria. It seems to deepen and enrich those dark flavours. It makes it a bit more grown up.

Coffee-choc self-saucing pudding

Adapted from a Donna Hay magazine, date unknown. This makes a very modest size dessert — it lasted only three days with me, so for a family, I wouldn’t expect you’d get seconds. After a day or two, the coffee flavour will become even more intense (if it lasts that long).

• Preheat your oven to 180 and butter a medium sized baking dish.

• In a small measuring jug or bowl, melt 35 gms butter. Then add ½ cup milk, 1 egg, 1 tspn vanilla and 1/3 cup Tia Maria. Mix well.

• In a medium bowl, combine ½ cup plain flour, 1 ½ tspn baking powder, 1 tbspn instant coffee, 1 tbspn cocoa, ¼ cup almond meal and ¼ cup brown sugar.

• To these dry ingredients add the liquid, and stir to combine. Pour into your baking dish.

• In a small saucepan, heat ½ cup brown sugar, 1 ½ tbspns cocoa, 1 cup water and a slosh of Tia Maria (probably about 1 tbspn). Stir and gently bring to the boil, then remove from heat.

• Pour gently over the back of a large spoon onto your pudding (does that make sense?).

• Bake for about 35 minutes until firm but with still a bit of give; if you insert a knife you should see two even layers: a jelly-thick sauce layer on the bottom and the cake layer on top.

• Serve warm with a dusting of snowy icing sugar, and a blob of melting ice cream or cream. It’s also surprisingly good fridge-cold.