It’s a golden, autumnal day today. Just right for enjoying.
Pause here
On the edge of winter
Among dry stalks
Rattling in the breeze.
Pause here
While the sun
Glances off
Golden leaves.
Pause here
To inhale
The smell of
Fading roses,
Cut grass.
Pause here
To feel Earth’s
Smooth slide
Through space.
Pause here.
Last weekend, my husband and I spent a day on the Banks Peninsula doing three short walks we hadn’t done before.
Our first stop was Hay Reserve in Pigeon Bay. This short, family-friendly track circles through lowland old growth podocarp forest. It’s a slice of what the whole peninsula would have been like before human colonisation. Huge kahikatea and tōtara, supplejack looping through the branches, cabbage trees and ferns—so dense at spots, I almost wanted a head torch despite the bright sky overhead. If you’re a fan of big trees, Hay Reserve is a fantastic stroll.
Our next stop was Ellangowan Scenic Reserve, on Hickory Bay Road. Though poorly signed, it’s not difficult to find the track. It follows a two-track to a rocky ridge, with a fabulous 360-degree view of the peninsula, then drops back down through a beautiful patch of bush that includes some very old, though dwarfed native trees. Lower down, massive red beeches punctuate the forest. Just 2.4 km long, the track has it all—forest, views, rock scrambling. Definitely worth a visit if you’re out that way.
Finally, we popped over to Akaroa, where we walked the Children’s Bay Walkway (with a detour to the creek waterfall). I can’t believe we’ve never done this walk (it would have been great when the kids were younger). The out-and-back, well-maintained track winds through a patchwork of farmland and forest. The creek waterfall was minimalist on the day we visited, but magical nonetheless. The really special thing about the walkway isn’t the landscape, though, but the fabulous sculptures along the way. No spoilers, but there are surprising creatures all the way to the end.
All three of these walks are relatively short and easy (though the Ellangowan Reserve track requires a bit of confidence on the ridge), and the three together made for a fun day, which naturally ended with a beer and chips in Akaroa.
We have a lovely cookbook called Tartine, written by the owners of the bakery, Tartine, in San Fransisco.
I sometimes find this sort of cookbook frustrating, because the recipes are often linked very closely with the specific specialty ingredients available in that location. Which is great for a bakery—they should be using local ingredients. It makes it harder to reproduce those recipes, however, from the other side of the planet.
Tartine, however, is full of recipes that are remarkably simple to make, with ingredients available just about anywhere. I’ve enjoyed making several of the recipes from the book, and some of them are ones I return to regularly.
My husband first made their Pumpkin Tea Cake as the base of a birthday cake for me years ago. Since then, I’ve used the recipe similarly—baked in layers for special-occasion cakes.
But the recipe is technically for a loaf cake.
So last week I decided to make the recipe as it was meant to be made. Sort of. I did increase the quantities so that it would be the perfect amount for a Bundt cake, rather than a loaf. And I adjusted the spice quantities to taste. And I switched out some of the regular flour for wholemeal. Oh, and I reduced the sugar a bit. So yeah, maybe not exactly Tartine’s cake, but …
The result was the fluffiest, most divine Bundt cake ever. And it’s so easy to make that it may become my go-to cake for all occasions from here on out.
Here’s my version of the recipe. But do find yourself a copy of Tartine and try out the original, along with all the other lovely recipes in the book.
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 cup wholemeal flour
2 1/4 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp baking soda
2 Tbsp cinnamon
1 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
1/2 tsp cloves
1 3/4 cup pumpkin puree
1 1/2 cups vegetable oil
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 tsp salt
4 large eggs
Whisk together the flours, baking powder, baking soda, and spices in a mixing bowl. Set aside. In a large bowl, beat together the pumpkin, oil sugar and salt until well mixed. Then add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Mix the dry ingredients into the pumpkin mixture, beating just until smooth.
Pour the batter into a greased Bundt pan and bake for 1 hour at 180℃ (325℉), until a toothpick inserted into the centre comes out clean. Allow to cool in the pan for 15 minutes before removing it from the pan and cooling completely on a wire rack.
The original recipe was sprinkled with sugar before baking, but this cake needs no embellishment at all. Eat it with a fork and knife, with a scoop of vanilla ice cream, or with your fingers, standing up in the kitchen. It’s delicious however you’d like it.
First week in April, and instead of having the heat pump on, I’m sitting here with all the windows open, because this year has been weird, weather-wise. It’s made for a challenging gardening year.
Last weekend, I brought in the last of the pumpkins and potatoes. I picked the popcorn, and I processed a heap of sweet corn. The garden is looking bare, though there’s still lots of vegetables coming out of it.
I thought it was time for my annual post-harvest assessment.
The weather was challenging for the spring crops, because it got summer-hot in November/December. Though I kept the garden well watered, the spring crops didn’t stand a chance. The pea harvest was marginal—enough for fresh eating, but not for freezing. Despite several plantings, I never did get spinach to grow—it bolted before I’d even planted out the seedlings. And the broccoli raab and pak choi bolted so fast, we never ate either of them—they went directly to the chickens.
I thought we were in good shape for the heat-loving crops, but in mid-December, summer seemingly ended. It got cool and rainy. There were some warm days, but they were few and far between. The tomatoes, eggplants and peppers languished. Powdery mildew cut down half my zucchini plants in February. I fought slugs, slaters and mould as tomatoes and peppers rotted before ripening. Beans rotted wherever they touched the ground. And aphids were rampant all year on all sorts of plants—the predators couldn’t keep up.
All in all, it was a challenging summer.
We ate well (and still are), and the larder is full of food, but it was hard-won.
Things that did surprisingly well:
Things that did poorly:
Of course, the gardening season never really ends here, and while we continue to eat the remaining summer crops, the winter crops are happily growing. I look forward to tallying up the full year’s production in a few months. Stay tuned for the final tally!
Here we are at the autumnal equinox! Hard to believe my garden year is three-quarters over. But the days are feeling very short, and the vegetable garden is slowing down.
Despite the short days and cool weather, the harvest is really just getting going. I picked over 64 kg of pumpkins last weekend, and there are more to bring in. I’ve been harvesting dry beans for weeks, and will continue for another few weeks as they mature on the plants. Most haven’t been weighed in yet, because they’re still drying, but I’ve recorded over 4 kg so far, and I estimate my final total will be around 10 kg.
Sweet corn is at its peak at the moment, and one of these days soon, I’ll be picking and freezing a whole lot, because we can’t keep up with it, despite having corn on the cob pretty much every day for dinner (it’s a rough life…).
The popcorn still has a few weeks of maturing on the plant before it will be ready to harvest, and there are still two apple trees and a pear awaiting harvest.
Meanwhile, the summer crops continue to trickle in at a pace to keep us feasting.
In total so far, since the winter solstice, the garden has given us over 526 kilograms of fruit and vegetables and 490 eggs.
Having not bought vegetables in about 20 years, I was curious about the monetary value of our garden, so I checked the prices of a few of the currently in-season vegetables at the grocery store. I was, quite frankly, shocked at how expensive fresh vegetables have become.
Some quick calculations …
Our garden has (so far) produced this year:
And most of these calculations are based on the price of conventionally grown (not organic) vegetables, because organic options weren’t available at the store.
Just that short list of vegetables adds up to over $2000, and it doesn’t include any of the expensive berry fruits we produce. And, of course, it doesn’t take into account that we grow things that you simply can’t buy in the grocery store—delicious, but non-commercial crops like ugniberries and quince, heirloom tomatoes that can’t survive shipping, colourful carrot varieties. Add to that the fact that our vegetables have been off the plant for minutes when we cook them, versus days or weeks for the sad specimens in the grocery store, and it is clear that the value of our garden can’t be measured by an instrument as blunt as price. Still, it’s good to know that the hundreds of dollars I spend each year on seeds, pea straw, and other garden supplies are more than paid back in food.
Just three months to go to complete our garden year. The tally continues as delicious fruit and vegetables roll in!
Happy autumn (or spring, if you’re in the northern hemisphere)!
Last Saturday was Summer Soup Day—the day I make vegetable soup to last through the winter. As usual, I started just after breakfast, around 7 am. Picking and chopping vegetables, with my husband’s help, took until nearly lunchtime.
We filled both of our largest stock pots (16-litres and 18-litres) with soup, and our 12-litre pot full of vegetable offcuts for stock. Just getting all that soup to a boil took nearly an hour, and then it had to be processed in the canner. It was a long day in the kitchen.
A long time to contemplate soup.
We’ve been making summer soup for close to twenty years, now. Each year it is slightly different. Each year reflects the summer’s weather and our garden wins and fails for the year. It truly is an encapsulation of the summer.
This year, the summer soup was full of beautiful carrots—long and straight, including some fabulous purple carrots. The soup is a record of my successful raised carrot bed born of my frustration at previous carrot crop failures.
This year’s soup contains blazing hot jalapeño from a plant a friend gave me, because my jalapeño plants (a variety called Jalapeño Early, which is milder) were devoured by slugs as seedlings.
This year, the summer soup is devoid of sweet peppers, reflecting the cool, wet weather that has delayed ripening and rotted peppers on the plants.
This year’s soup is rich in green beans, which are often long over by the time I make soup. Planting only runner beans this year, instead of mostly dwarf varieties, gave me a longer season.
This year, there’s less sweet corn in the summer soup than usual, the result of abysmal germination in my first sweet corn planting.
Despite the cool, wet weather, germination woes, and devouring slugs which have affected this year’s soup, it is delicious, as it is every year. It is a slice of summer’s bounty, bottled up to remind us of sunshine and warmth on days when both are scarce.
The tally at the end of the day was 25 litres of soup, and 6 litres of vegetable stock (plus the two dozen cupcakes I made while waiting for the jars to run through the canner). I pulled the final jars out of the canner at 8 pm.
A long day, but worth every moment.
We’ve had an overabundance of rain this summer, and not nearly enough heat and sunshine for many of the summer vegetables. Slugs and slaters are running rampant, and fungal pathogens are making an early appearance.
Still, it takes more than too much rain to suppress the exuberance of late summer. The dahlias are blooming, the sweet corn and tomatoes are ripening, and the pears and apples are heavy on the trees. I picked over 40 kilograms of potatoes on Sunday, and we’ve been freezing tons of pasta sauce. It is a time of abundance, despite the summer’s setbacks.
So, I invite you to enjoy my late-summer garden with me on one of our few beautiful sunny days.
I used to live in St. Paul, Minnesota. It frustrates me to be unable to join the protests, the singing throngs in the streets of Minneapolis. To be on the other side of the world with a heart this heavy. Kia kaha Minnesota. Let your outrage bleed all the way to Washington DC.
Renee and Alex took the shots
But we all bleed out.
Out of homes and businesses,
Humanity puddles on icy pavement,
Floods the streets in protest.
When one bleeds out,
We all bleed out.
Compassion spills from keyboards
Into the flow
Of online vitriol.
Humanity seeths,
Bristles with outrage.
My pen writes in blood
Blood spilled
Blood boiling
Blood coursing through
A heart
A heart
A heart
That bleeds out.
When one bleeds out,
We all bleed out.
I can’t really call cake season crazy anymore. There are no children at home demanding quirky cakes in the shape of peripatus, octopi, hobbit holes, or the city of Wellington (all cakes I have, in fact made).
But I can still pull out the stops on the birthday cakes, and to be fair, the ‘adult’ cakes taste better than the kid cakes.
This year’s first birthday cake was a 4-layer lemon cake filled with a cornstarch-thickened blackcurrant jam and iced with mascarpone frosting. Fresh berries on top and a bit of blackcurrant-coloured frosting swiped on the sides of the cake were the only decorations.
For looks, I’d give it a 4. Pretty average, though it did look nice sliced on the plate. For flavour, it gets a 9—a good combination of tangy and sweet.
This was the first time I’ve worked with mascarpone, and I have to say I expected more from it. Nothing wrong with it—it was easy to work with and made for a very nice, fluffy, not too sweet frosting. But flavour-wise, I prefer the bolder cream cheese frostings.
But that’s okay. This cake, with its generous blackcurrant filling, is deliciously bold, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with the mascarpone icing.
If you want to make your own, I baked my lemon cake in three 15-cm cake tins (they took about 45 minutes to bake, as opposed to the 30 minutes in the recipe). After baking, I sliced two of the cakes in half horizontally into two layers each. The third cake I froze for later.)
The filling is the blackcurrant jam from my blackcurrant twists recipe—super simple and quick to make. I made it the day before and refrigerated it so it was nice and firm.
The mascarpone frosting recipe is from Of Batter and Dough—I used a full 500g package of mascarpone, eyeballed 400 ml of a 500 ml bottle of cream, and used the smaller quantity of sugar called for in the recipe.
For once, I also cut my layers flat, piped my icing on, and worked with a cold cake. This helped make the thickly-filled layers stack solidly.
And though I was a bit disappointed by the final look, the taste makes it definitely worth doing again.
We’re nearly at the summer solstice, so I thought it was time to do a check-in on the garden tally project I mentioned back at the winter solstice.
Since 21 June, we’ve been keeping a record of all the food that comes out of the garden. Whenever we bring something into the kitchen, we record it in a little notebook I’ve placed there for the purpose. The months of June, July and August include lots of days when we brought in nothing but eggs. No surprise, the dead of winter is a slow time in the vegetable garden.
That’s not to say we weren’t eating from the garden. All winter we enjoyed the stored up bounty from last summer—tomato sauces, pickles, jams, chutneys, pesto, pumpkins, frozen corn and peas … There may have been little fresh coming in, but we didn’t lack for delicious vegetables and fruits.
Since September, the incoming volume from the garden has grown rapidly, and some of the half-year numbers are already staggering, despite the fact that the early onset of summer heat wreaked havoc on the spring crops.
We’ve harvested over 56 kilograms of vegetables, 40 kilograms of fruit, and 335 eggs since the winter solstice.
Those 56 kg of vegetables only covered about half of our theoretical daily need, but that was the ‘lean’ season, when most of what we were eating was stored food from the previous season. Even as a vegetarian, I didn’t feel any lack of vegetables over winter.
There were also some stand-out individual harvests.
The final sweet pepper from last year’s crop was harvested on 2 August! For those of you in the northern hemisphere, that’s like harvesting peppers in early January. The new greenhouse is truly amazing for extending our growing season.
And it not only extends the later crops, it also gives them an early start. This year, I was disappointed, because the zucchini I planted early for the greenhouse never germinated. So the plant I stuck into the greenhouse was sown at the same time as my outdoor zucchini. Despite this, we harvested the first greenhouse zucchini on 13 December, well before my ‘zucchini by Christmas’ goal.
Oddly, however, the first ripe tomatoes have come from the outdoor tomato plants. These plants are currently less than half the size of the plants in the greenhouses, and honestly look like they’re only barely hanging on. Yet the Gold Nugget cherry tomatoes are already ripening out there.
All these stats make me eager to see what the second half of the growing year has in store. I was blown away by how much we’ve harvested during the leaner half of the year, but the real harvest has yet to begin.
I hope you all have a lovely solstice full of family, friends, and good food.
