In Season- tomatoes

My tomatoes didn't make it to ripe before the frosts hit. Ok- so i planted them late and everybody knows that tomatoes don't 'do' winter...but I couldn't pull out those little plants that got me through summer. Now there's green everywhere and the plants have been laden with green tomatoes for months with no sign of ripening. so I did what I always do when I have too much of a good thing- google recipes!

The first few searches produced 'fried green tomatoes' which, despite the quirky movie of the same name turned out to be quite a disappointment. Sliced green tomatoes rolled in cornmeal, salt and pepper and fried. I only tried them once, but i suspect they only taste as good as the oil they're fried in - which is why all the recipes recommend bacon fat (clogged artery alert!!) and 'rice bran oil' just didn't cut it.

But persistence paid off and google produced a jackpot- Green Tomato Cake - WOW!
so, thanks to: http://southernfood.about.com/od/greentomatoe1/r/bl10712g.htm
the recipe goes like this:

• 2 1/4 cups sugar
• 1 cup vegetable oil or melted marg/butter
• 3 eggs
• 2 teaspoons vanilla
• 3 cups flour
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
• 1 cup walnuts
• 1 cup craisins (dried cranberries)
• 2 1/2 cups diced green tomatoes
• coconut (optional)

Beat sugar, vegetable oil or shortening, eggs and vanilla until smooth and creamy. Sift in the dry ingredients, then the walnuts, craisins and tomatoes.
Glob into a greased 9x13-inch pan, top with shredded coconut and bake for an hour... or 2 at 180 deg C until a skewer inserted in the center comes out clean.

someone elses perspective

I just love this post...he describes the nuanced joys and frustrations of being a development facilitator so well...
enjoy!
http://www.grist.org/article/simpson-onesky/P2

the Stables: from feral to livable...almost

The bad news is, a rat has died in (what will be) my bedroom ceiling. The good news is, my 14000L tank arrived last week and the plumber came yesterday and its all 'can do'...and my little house just might get livable before I freeze!!
here are a few pics of the progress over the last 5 months...

a different perspective

I had a look at my blog yesterday and realised what a strange combo it is. African header and side bar- paused in October last year. Sporadic Aussie content. Mixed up author?!

Its partly cos I don’t have internet at home or hours to spend updating things- but i must say it reflects my headspace pretty well. Divided.

I’ve had a few comments since I’ve returned, that maybe its time to settle down. Questions like “have you got travelling out of your system yet?” give me the vibe that people think the mobility of my life thus far isn’t good. Isn’t normal. I agree that it can make it difficult for me to connect. More challenging for me to understand others and them to understand me... But I also think its an incredible gift. The Bible says that as believers, our citizenship is in heaven. It calls us sojourners in a land not our own, and that is my experience. I will never feel a deep sense of belonging in this country or that because this world is not my home – one day I will go ‘home’ and spend eternity with my creator. But in the mean time, I am acutely aware of the transience of our lives on this planet. That all that we have in the West is not a right, but a privilege. We could have been born in the DR Congo, or Uzbekistan. We have obligations as world citizens as well as Australian citizens. I’m acutely aware that time is short and each day is a gift to be used in worship of God, the giver of all; and settled here, settled there, or travelling- I wouldn’t have it any other way.

FOOD!!!

One of the joys of living in the country – and not just the country, but the ‘fruit bowl of Western Australia’ is the abundance of fresh fruit and veggies all year round. Funnily enough, this also presents quite a challenge at times as these glorious fruit and veggies rarely arrive in little half kilo clear plastic bag portions like the supermarket. Nope, they are usually handed to you as you leave someone’s house, or left on your door step as a 20kg box of peaches, or 3 shopping bags full of apples or pumpkins or tomatoes...

Having lived where people don’t have enough to eat I can’t bear to waste food, so I’ve embarked on a eating in season, ‘waste not- want not‘ foodie experience. Although you may not be in the position where you’re being handed all this sort of stuff for free, it IS in season- which means it’s cheap, and if you have a deep freezer and some time on your hands- you might just find the following recipes useful!

Tomatoes Ok- so there not in season anymore, but were the first item I received in bulk. 2kgs from this friend’s garden, 3 kg’s from that friend and another few kg’s...and I started to feel panicy about what to do! Then I remembered the Jamie Oliver recipe I had tucked away in my cook book- and I’ve been on the look out for tomatoes ever since!

Jamie Oliver’s Pizza Sauce Recipe (I use it as a base for pasta sauce too)

1 clove garlic, crushed and fried about 30sec in olive oil. Then add

3 large tomatoes chopped (or a can of tomatoes if you live in the city and haven’t got around to growing your own yet- but seriously- you should grow your own- they’re easy to get started and are happy tucked away in a pot -or tyre! somewhere. I think you’ve gotta wait ‘til Spring now though)

1 bay leaf

6 chopped fresh basil leaves

1 tspn fresh thyme chopped (instead of paying heaps at the supermarket- I bought healthy herb plants from a nursery. Pinched a few leaves for my recipe and used the rest to start my own herb garden!)

And...( I don’t think this is part of Jamies recipe) half a masel stock cube, or salt/sugar to balance the flavour. Simmer for about 25min for a thick pizza base sauce, less for a pasta sauce. It freezes well, so you can have amazing pizza or pasta sauce all through winter!

Pumpkin My Aunty grows pumpkins and squash for market, so I get loads. I chop up as many pumpkins fit in my pressure cooker, scoop out the seeds (and save a few for my garden next spring) and boil in a bit of water till soft. Then cool, scoop out the flesh and freeze. Pumpkin soup, pumpkin pie, pumpkin scones. YUM! My fav pumpkin soup is Mums Thai pumpkin soup. This recipe’s been sms’sd all the way from Malawi!

‘just use half tsp cumin n coriander lots of ginger n garlic half can coc milk chick stock cude n sp to taste luv mum’

See how ya go with that one!!

Peaches According to one of the organic magazines I’ve been reading, peaches are the highest absorbers of any pesticides sprayed on them, so if you love peaches- it’s really worth planting one in your back yard...or front yard. I never liked peaches until I got a 20kg boxful from a tree down the back of my uncles paddock left at my caravan door. They were so good, a week later I found myself up that tree with 3 plastic bags getting scratched to bits rescuing the last of the fruit from the 4 rams that were circling me beneath the tree. They knew what was good for em. They camped out under that tree til the wind blew, or that crazy human (accidentally!!) dropped the delicious morsels for them.

Unfortunately peaches really don’t last very long-so, after I had distributed the bounty among friends, I had to stew the rest ( i haven’t got room in the caravan to do any bottling this year!). the texture of the skin puts my teeth on edge, so i roll up my sleeves and spend hours in juiciness peeling them, but once they’re stewed they make a mean pie or crumble without any lemon/sugar help.

Lyn’s Crumble

2 Tbspn butter, 1 cup plain flour, ½ cup raw sugar, 1 cup rolled oats, 1 cup shredded coconut, 1 tspn cinnamon or other spices. Combine to make the crumble. Sprinkle over prepared fruit (fresh or defrosted). Moderate oven until golden brown

Apples and Pears As above, OR they are very nice dried. There are heaps of ways of drying, but the consistent part is- soak thin slices of the fruit in lemon and water- then get em dry as fast as possible! Some people have fancy fruit dryers, some people thread apple rings on strings and hang them on their verandas in the sun. I use a potato peeler to get thin slices, lay them out on every rack I can find, then put the racks on the bonnet of my car in the sun, or in the oven with the fan heater pointed at them for an hour or 2. Warms the caravan, dries my fruit!

Figs, Mulberries and Blackberries These are all in one category, cos I always intend on somehow storing them for later- but usually end up eating them fresh cos they’re just so yummy. Picking blackberries helps reduce the spread of this noxious weed- just make sure the plants haven’t been sprayed. Ie no road side picking. Both Blackberries and mulberries make awesome pie fillings. If you don’t have enough berries- bulk it up with apple. Yum. They also all make great jams.

Figs- I had this wonderful ‘figs poached in port’ recipe that I thought about trying with the several kg’s of fruit I had collected at a friends farm. But the recipe had ALOT of sugar in it and I’m not a huge ‘super sweet’ fan. So I decided to sip some port while eating the figs- which was ok. But to be honest- i preferred the figs straight! Or dried, chopped up on my muesli. Mine didn’t last long enough to dry though (hehe).

Last but not least: Carrots We harvest 100’s of kgs of carrots a week at a friends organic farm where I hang out, so I’m always in good supply of delicious, sweet carrots. My waistline says I’m making WAY too much carrot cake, but I also love substituting carrot for pasta to make a light, refreshing meal. I saw the recipe on a vegan website once. Basically, peel your carrots, then using the peeler, make long strips of ‘spaghetti’. Saute a diced clove of garlic in some olive oil, throw in a few carrots worth of strips, toss until lightly brown on the edges, then serve up with your favourite pasta sauce.

My garden is now full of cabbage, broad beans, broccoli, cauliflower, garlic, Swedes, turnips and beetroot... so I’ll let you know how I go!

Farming life :)

The Stables; my 27th Home

So, besides dog training and continuing the quest to find the biggest and juciest blackberry in the world ( I know its out there!!)...I've also been converting stables to living quarters, because living in a caravan- despite what the grey nomaders will tell you- just ain't that great.

I'll be fair though- there are some positives:

-It's only a small space to clean

-I spend MUCH more time outside so I'm feeling much more in touch with the environment and the seasons- from beautiful full moon nights to raging storms buffeting my 'home', to feeling like i live in an oven on a hot summers day.

-I get to sit knee to knee with visitors

-its an incentive not to put on weight, or grow taller otherwise I just won't fit.

that's all I can think of.

The negatives-

-My (and the dogs) every movement is felt by the whole caravan

-the small space requires cleaning and tidying ALL THE TIME because there is no where to store my stuff, hide the mess and no doors to close.

-it seems to magnify the weather outside. if its hot, its REALLY hot in the van. Cold? Its an ice box. Rain or condensation? it starts dripping through. but as I said, nice to feel at one with the environment!

- I can't sleep straight in the bed cos its too short. The bed is too narrow to turn over freely and the mattress has a 'groove' that just cant be escaped.

.. i could go on...but I won't. Now that you know WHY Ive taken on this crazy project, I'll show you the 'progression' of my 'NEW' home, from goat pen/horse stables/junk yard to glorious hideaway. Ok- so Im not there yet, but its happening.

BEFORE

Jan 2010. im having an issue with blogger. so that'll be all the pics for today- but more to follow!! :)

Re-entry and reverse culture shock and all that

This was written abit in Jan, a bit in Feb...but its still current - so here goes.

Well, I’m not living in the deep dark depths of Africa anymore- haven’t been for 2.5 months... so I’ve been wondering whether there is anything really worth blogging about now? Do you care what I think of Australian fashion? Australian’s addiction to stuff, sport, the weather? How would you react, I wonder, if I started blogging about the Australian culture the way I did about my host one; describing odd little tendencies and trying to make sense of it?

Being a stranger in your own culture is hard to describe. Which is why I thought I’d throw caution to the wind and try and share my re-entry experiences with you. Are you game??!! Am I game?!

Did you know there are books written about what I’m going through right now? The little hand book I have says that:
‘In the process of coming home, it would seem the cross cultural worker may move through a number of stages... the excitement phase...the defensive phase ...the re-establishment phase...’

It goes on to describe that I might find things tough coming back and not to be too hard on myself. So I haven’t been. I’m just bumbling along trying to take it all in.

Two and a half months and I think I’m only just beginning to realise that this is where I’m gonna be for a while. ‘What am I doing?’ is a big question on my mind right now. I’ve written a list of ALL the things I want to be doing and am trying to work towards each goal a little bit each day and week, but the reality is- my ideal life can’t go on much longer. I’m going to have to earn an income fairly soon. So I’ve been applying for jobs. But do I really want the job?! How will this job make the world a better place to live?! Oh that’s right- we don’t ask those sorts of questions here. They make people feel uncomfortable.

I feel like I’ve come back as an expanded version of myself. Not quite 2 people- cos it’s all still me, but bigger than I can inhabit all at once. I had ways of relating, being and seeing the world here in Australia, then I learnt different ways of relating, being and seeing our world in Malawi. And I can’t live both simultaneously. I value what I learnt in Malawi, so I don’t want to let it all go. But I have to let something go to ‘fit’ and live with any degree of sanity in Australia. I think this is where living on a farm has really helped. It’s allowing me time to just ‘be’ and sift through what has changed in me so I can CHOOSE how to respond- rather than just react.

The loneliness is kicking in too. I miss my friends in Malawi and I have a lot of ground to cover and head space paradigm shifts to get back on the same page with my Aussie friends. It’s not the ‘no people’ sort of loneliness; it’s worse. It’s wanting to scream in a crowd. It’s seeking out people for company and realising that you feel lonelier than ever. There’s no quick fixes in this life eh?!
Well, at least my dog understands me (haha!) or at least provides company, entertainment and distraction. Allow me to introduce ‘Sookie’. She’ll be dotted throughout my farm photos from now on. You’ll probably never meet her in dog cos she can be a bit aggro- but we’re working on that :-)