Craftlove

Dudecraft can be kinda silly, but often kinda awesome too. I love his retro style original posters though.

Yay for crochet.

local?

This piece makes selling craft on etsy.com seem like being your own personal outworker. And I wonder why whenever someone makes something really great we all join a chorus of "you should sell them?"

reading, reading, reading.

Okay I have to admit I don't read a lot of food blogs at the moment. Still loving occassional updates from the pie queen. And I did score a great pizza dough recipe from Bread and Honey. I drool a lot over at Melbourne Gastronome. And then go out and spend a whole lot of $$$ based on Claire's musings..

Mainly though, I am quite into reading about gardening on blogs lately. It's odd reading northern hemisphere stuff with all that crazy wondering about frost that they do but it's still good fun.

I'm particularly inspired reading about gardening projects that get beyond the backyard so I love the manic posts at the free farm stand in SF, where all the produce is gleaned, grown in squatted gardens or scavenged and given away each week. Yay for free stuff. And how much energy does this guy have?

This week I was also hunting for info about different potato planting methods and I was very amused to find this highly geeky aproach to gardening. This computer science student has been doing all sorts of comparative experiments to see where his chillis grow best and the diagrams are great!

So of course this leads me to reflect on my own little blog.. so much fallow digital dirt. And what to sow?

footy fever.

Last weekend we had finally had the Westside progressive dinner we've been trying to get happening for months. It was a lot of fun, though it's not that relaxing to know that you'll have to leave wherever you are as soon as the course you're eating is over.

We let little Jimmie (my 18 month year old housemate) choose the theme. She did this by running around the kitchen and eventually picking up the football. So, footy it was.

Dinner started at Lauren Kenny's with a tuckshop theme. Mini-burgers! And they came wrapped in greaseproof paper which really got us excited. The tinnies helped too.

My house had main course so of course we had to go with pies, the Aussie footy classic. I made a faux-meat pie filling with some soy protein, mushrooms and gravy and we put it in mini-pies. I have to say it was authentically gross. But kind of delicious. I tried putting the stalks from dried shiitakes in to see if they stayed tough like gristle but nobody spat them out.

For the main pie the filling was a bit more classy - roast vegies in a mustard bechamel. The pie dough I used for this one was a vegan version of my favourite russian pastry. It's a yeasted dough which makes for a pretty crazy pie. It actually flattened out a bit in the baking, maybe the filling shrunk. Mostly though, I was just happy the way the lacing and valve looked!

oh dan you make us crazy

The yen didn't favour Dan when he was in Japan so we were very very stoked to get some presents. It was just strange that both the presents involved making food star-shaped.

I thought the bread tin would be a disaster - how to make the bread rise enough to fill the points of the star? What if it spilled out the ends?

But no, with help from the missus I whipped up a batch of baguette dough and it worked to perfection. So so satisfying when guests realised we hadn't just cut the bread slices into these shapes...

baby steps

I keep thinking of so many things I want to tell you about. Garden things. Food things. Things about the whole big rest of the world out there. So it's baby steps - photos I've been meaning to show you for ages.




Me and tal were very taken by these toadstools when we saw them in the Russian cookbook and had to make them ourselves.

show and tell

Well what have we here folks. The one (1) cucumber produced by the Sweet and Stripey cucumber plant. I had a disappointing harvest from the rarer cucumber varieties I bought from diggers but I have to say this one was a plate stopper and also extremely sweet. Almost too sugary.








Here's the missus. Well, she's behind that zucchini plant which is being removed. At one stage it took up over 2 square metres and boy was it pumping out the fruits. Costa Romanesco - ribbed for your pleasure, firm and delightful.









And here's yours truly not afraid to look a little silly cos gosh damn i sure was excited to harvest this little baby. First melon I ever grew. It's a Blacktail Mountail watermelon. Next year hopefully the housesitter won't move my trellises and so maybe the mildew won't get the melons so badly. Not bad for a first try, room to improve. Talks too much in class.



ps. yes i'm standing on a winner's podium.

Carrying on?

In case you thought I was being melodramatic.















This was my table during the heatwave. And there was at least a bucket a day coming in still. The harvest's pretty much done now. So much so that I even felt able to pick up a few windfall peaches and apples on Gordon St today.

But I also wanted to show you something I forgot from my stone fruit crazy faze - these delicious apricot tarts from River Cafe Green.












The recipe was for one tart but made a huge amount of pastry and filling. They were very buttery and very satisfying. Worth turning the oven on during a heatwave good. Sure they did give a certain nephew a tummy ache but hey, we all have to learn somehow. And Shannon's stomach was very robust so she was a great help eating leftovers.

Call me the Nectarine Crazy

An autobiography of my last two weeks might well be titled Sweat and Nectarines. Or, Excuse me for being in my undies but I have to deal with 400 kilos of Nectarines and it's 45 degrees.

It was hot, very hot. And fruit was dropping like flies. And flies were drawn to dropping fruit. And I was spending every morning gathering said fallen fruit and picking juicy big yellow and red Neccas and wandering around Nekkid and then dealing with a table ridiculously laden in fruit which wanted to go mouldy if only I would give it 5 minutes alone. Did I mention I also got 4 bags of Apricots from Ruth to deal with? Yes, sweaty and sticky. Nude. Just how I like to be. Except for when spattering jam hits my bare skin.

So what are we talking food wise?

• Nectarine Salsa. Hell yes. Cucumber, neccas, red onion, lime juice, chilli. Maybe some tomatoes. This started me off on a big Mexican period which continues still.

• Crumble. Of course.

• Nectarines in the freezer. Yes I have tubs and tubs of poached neccas so that when the weather cools down enough I can bake you a million treats.

• Dried Nectarines. After eyeing off dehydrator's for a week I did some of these just in the sun and they are delicious. Afterall it was a heatwave so solar energy was plentifull. I'm not sure if they'll last but I'm keeping a good eye on the jar for signs of moisture. Oh, and I put one of those "oxygen absorber - do not eat" things in there. Might help?

• Nectarine hot sauce - different to salsa cos it's blended and hot hot hot with jalapeno's from the garden, onion, lime and coriander. It's good with sour cream. But what isn't?

Oh and I made this cake:
This is the Pastel De Canela Con Moros from Dona Tomas. They suggest using nectarines instead of berries when seasonal so I took em up on that idea. I didn't really believe this cake would work - the batter seems so huge, the recipe warns that if you use too much fruit it won't cook properly and has other ominous warnings. Plus it has 2 cups of sour cream in it and could have been heavy as hell.

But it was great. It's quite puddingy in the middle where the fruit layer keeps it moist and then the top is a crunchy layer of nuts and cinnamon.

Yes it was a crowd pleaser and I do like to please the crowds. Some people go out and pick up to prove they are well liked. I bake. Killer said "this is the best cake I have ever ever eaten." I scored.

I kinda decided against re-writing other people's recipes onto the internet. What do you think? Want the recipe?

i miss nyc

These whimsical lego pictures are from Christoph Niemann at the Times. So good.

now i'm back. for real.

I have been cooking like a maniac this past week. And the garden has been like a toddler - can't be left alone for a second. And responds well to lots of attention.

Today is a case in point. With that 40 degree forecast I got up at 6am to collect all the fallen fruit from the nectarine trees and pick whatever was ripe on the branches. Then I started a batch of jam using pie queen's method, stewed some nectarines and rode over to Shannon's to cook up some pancakes to eat them with.

Now I've got some pastry chilling in the fridge for the River Cafe's Apricot and Almond Tart, another batch of nectarines stewing and a head full of crazy. Yup.


But this post is about a similar crazy day I had last week where I decided I better finally figure out what to do with this cucumber. I've decided that bitter cucumbers are my punishment for picking up a few seedlings (starts) from Bunnings, evil corporate big-box that they are. They're too bitter to eat so I decided I'd finally try a recipe from Fuchsia Dunlop's excellent Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook that I'd been eyeing up.




It's very simple and it makes bitter cucumber taste deliciously like a mild bitter melon. All you do is cut diagonal half moons, fry in a wok covering as much of the surface as you can. Add a little soy and rice vinegar and some garlic and chilli. Remove from the heat and dress with sesame oil and shiso/perilla (or basil in my case). Yum! And good for my liver too I bet.

Meanwhile, while you're snacking on that if you're really crazy you can whip up a batch of the River Cafe's apricot jam, complete with kernels from the inside of the stones.









































ps - sorry about the ugly blog design. i will fix it someday.

i might return...

Since learning that I am the fourth most famous image source on mini-burgers in the world ¹, I have been considering returning to this blogging game. Seems it brings some fame afterall.

For now I am just excited that people ask the Chicago Style Manual people questions like this:

Q. I am editor for a group of academic writers, who recently squawked when I mentioned the following guideline in the CMOS, 15th edition (8.180): use lowercase and no italics for “the” in a newspaper title, even if it is part of the official title. Their concerns: (1) it seems unscholarly to treat “the” as a generic term when it is part of the official title; (2) doesn’t this flout copyright protocol? (3) why does the rule apply only to American newspapers? I found myself unable to offer concrete reasons for the rule, so I said I would ask the CMOS editors directly.

A. The reasoning is that it’s not practical to make a rule that requires checking every newspaper to see whether its official title has The in it or not. (Keep in mind that the convention was established in pre-Internet days.) And it doesn’t help to use The only in the cases where you can easily confirm it, since that would imply that titles without The were also definitive, when in fact they simply hadn’t been checked. As for copyright, titles are shortened all the time in scholarly writing. Foreign titles are exempt because it’s also impractical to research whether the first word in a foreign title means “the” or not. Most of us can recognize an article in Spanish or French, but even then, are we sure about words like de and da? What about Polish or Portuguese or Russian?

I hope this helps squelch the squawking.

Yes indeed it is excellent and I love the friendly collegial tone, all cardigans and cups of tea. But what about magazines. I argued for The Big Issue even though I always write the Age. Squawk, squawk.

¹ It's true.. try "mini burger" in google image search. Sure it's only 35% of the internet or whatever Alex said google searches, but it's the 35% that counts isn't it? Tal was pretty excited with the fame this brings her too.. as the model posing with the mini burger.

smelly gardeners unite...

Check out the boss looking all pensive in the garden!

Now can someone just do us some t-shirts for the Smelly Gardeners Union?
I water my vegies, and don't wash?

not much less garden crazy....

With apologies for yet another non-cooking post I proudly present today's photos.


For all those who wondered what was happening with the corn I sowed.

Today as I was committing the illegal act of watering in my new seedlings I thought about what I would say in court should my neighbours decide to get all high moral ground on me. What I'll say about local food, about agribusiness wasting water, about feeding people in cities... Yeah, that's me - the big criminal. I just hope they don't get violent. Yes water is life, but hey - come give me a sniff and you know I ain't wasting it in the shower. The lawn don't get any either.

Also, I'm hoping for rain in my new tank:

240 litres is better thank nothing for us renters. And yes, that's just a big wheelie bin. I couldn't show you its face due to slightly less than legal procurement from a friend's now vacant warehouse.

In other garden news, these fellows are now being salted for pickles:


And this monster is making some seed for the next round:


Meanwhile I'm digesting the omelette that had these delicious swiss browns in it. From the shed mushroom farm no-less.

gardening crazies

Ah yes, whatever you're into you can be sure there is a whole thriving world of internet crazies more obsessed than you can ever imagine being.

Ali got me started, with her quick descent into gardening obsession.

She has many links to others, including myfolia - apparently myspace for your plants!

And tal, I know you would like this.

who knew I had a movie?

And can anyone explain why it's playing at Northland Hoyts at the moment?

In itself, it's a riveting story. Unfortunately, director Michael Sajbel has envisioned an overwrought Lifetime movie of the week, complete with an Esther who could be a cast member of Laguna Beach and a king notable only for his washboard abs.

vale yarra-melbourne libraries.

i haven't been reading the Melbourne Times lately so I don't know if anyone else is mourning or not. But I thought, having just faced my first "you can't request this item" page, I would note my sadness at the end of the most excellent amalgamation of libraries that was the Yarra-Melbourne library network.

I shall miss having access to all the cookbooks and gardening books and novels and comics I could want.

I shall miss requesting things from the City and picking them up on the way home from work at the Fitzroy branch.

I shall miss not having to pay for things.

farewell, yarra-melbourne. your life was too brief and your bureaucrats too nearsighted.

(ps. mum, i know that is you even when you leave anonymous comments and no, this isn't a cooking blog or a gardening blog... it's a, uhm, gardooking blog. or something.)

[pps. if I now have to join the yarra libraries separately, and i'm already addicted to st kilda library, then it's good i just found library elf to help me keep track of all my holds and due dates. could be my new favourite friend. works internationally.]

I'm sick of my corn seeds not germinating. Last year I blamed old seed. I dunno but after one batch failing to poke it's head up already this year I'm doing some research. Which is where I came across this excellent olde saying:

"One for the cutworm, one for the crow, one to rot, and one to grow."

Well, no crows here but I think I'll plant in the seedling house to avoid cutworm and cross my fingers for the Balinese corn I'll be planting tomorrow.

broadly...

Yes broad beans have taken over my life. So the essential question becomes again "to pod or to double pod?" But yay for seasonal eating and finally planting enough this year. I'll do photos soon because I have a very pretty type that goes purple when you cook it.

But while I cruise the internets for ideas let me leave you with this thought from stonesoup:

The thing about broad beans is that they really are a lot of work but well worth the double peeling. With all those layers that need removing, you could think of them as the strippers of the vegetable world... sexy and nutritious... all good things.

It is very nice to see some pro-sex worker attitudes in a food simile. Yes it is.

i want carrot ice cream.

Chocolate Lady makes me want it.

Will I have to make it myself? Any suggestions?