Asparagus!

/ Robinne Weiss / 2 Comments

100_3847The long winter wait is over! The first of the spring crops is here! We’ve been watching carefully for weeks now, hoping, waiting…

And yesterday the first asparagus pushed up through the mulch (and, yes, these are purple asparagus. We have green, too). Asparagus and artichokes are the two perennial vegetable crops that get us through the end-of-winter gap. They always show up just in the nick of time (just a few freezer-burned bags of summer veggies left). That they are delicious, gourmet foods is a special bonus to the spring season. While we wait on the early lettuces, spinach, broad beans, and other crops, we will gorge on asparagus and artichokes.

Asparagus has been eaten for at least 5000 years, and I can imagine that it was an even more welcome springtime sight in the days before our modern food system did away with the lean periods of the year for many of the world’s inhabitants. Full of nutrients, it would have served to bolster people’s health in spring, just like the spring herbs like dandelion.

We always have plenty of food, with the supermarket making up any deficiencies in our own production, but we still feel that lean season. We crave fresh greens and fresh green vegetables. We’re tired of potatoes and pumpkin. So when the asparagus comes on and the artichokes begin to put up flower buds, it’s a cause for celebration.

So happy spring to everyone!

Dust bowl

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment
hay5 sm

On a relatively clear day, we can see the Southern Alps.

Sustained winds of 63 kph (39 mph) today, with gusts to 150 kph (93 mph). That’s not unheard of here, but it is severe. Though it is warm and sunny, we are largely spending the day indoors—it’s just not very pleasant out there!

Today, we can barely make out the neighbour's hedge.

Today, we can barely make out the neighbour’s hedge.

I watered the garden well before the wind picked up, to give it the best possible chance to survive the day, and I added an extra tether to the greenhouse, lest it blow away entirely. So far, most everything seems to be holding up.

It’s really the dust that’s most bothersome. Visibility is poor—even the neighbour’s house looks vague and hazy. Indoors, a fine grit settles on everything. My mouth feels gritty, and I find myself wiping off the computer keyboard every few minutes. It’s nothing like the dust storm we had late last summer—the ground is relatively moist still—but it’s an impressive show, nonetheless.

Pretending…

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

100_3827 smIt was a lovely spring day today—wind strong and biting, but the sun warm and kind.

We took the opportunity to spend a day on the Banks Peninsula, hiking and going to the beach. It was a glorious celebration of the season, and we topped it off with a meal to match.

100_3831 smWe picked up a few fancy cheeses from Barry’s Bay Cheese on the way home. Added some homemade sourdough bread; home grown olives, dried tomatoes, dilled beans, and sweet gherkins; and a salad made with the last of the winter spinach—a veritable feast!

And with a lovely glass of Sauvignon Blanc to wash it all down, we could almost pretend it was summer…

Garden Update—2 October 2015

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

100_3813 smThe spring school holidays are always a crazy time in the garden. There’s so much work to be done, and the clock is ticking down the weeks to “plant out” day, when the whole garden is finally filled with vegetables.

I spent two days this week weeding the strawberries and re-establishing paths through the strawberry patch. The plants are blooming, and we should have our first berries in a month. The early potatoes are in the ground, as are the onions, spinach, lettuce, peas, beets and chard. I planted out parsley, celery, celeriac, cilantro, dill and fennel this morning, and seeded in my carrots. And the tomato and basil plants have graduated from my office to the unheated greenhouse.

100_3809 smMost importantly, today I planned out the garden tasks for the next six weeks. It’s the only way to ensure that I pace myself, getting everything done, without stressing about whether it will all be done in time. The schedule is always daunting, but having a plan makes it manageable.

Of course, the house is unlikely to get much cleaning in the next six weeks—that doesn’t make it onto the list at this time of year!

A Saucy Meal

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

100_3799 smI made kūmara (sweet potato) chips for dinner today. Normally I would just serve them with ketchup. But our new chickens are already laying, and Ian celebrated by making mayonnaise with one of the new eggs. I remembered a bit of salsa verde sitting in the fridge, and voila—we had a very saucy meal!

It was quite the mix of cultures—ketchup originated in China, salsa verde (my version with tomatillos) is Mexican, mayonnaise is French (or Spanish, depending on which side of the border you live on). And the sauces were all served on a South American vegetable that spread to Polynesia around 700 AD, and came to New Zealand as a traditional Maori food.

But there was no clash among these cultures this evening. All three sauces tasted great on the chips!

So…

¡Buen provecho!

Bon appétit!

Kia mākona!

Chī hǎo!

Enjoy!

Everyday Cake

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

100_3796 smI made an ‘everyday’ cake today—a whip-it-out sort of chocolate sheet cake. I normally don’t frost my everyday cakes, but I had a hankering for peanut butter with chocolate, so I looked for a peanut butter icing recipe…and didn’t find one I really liked the look of.

So I tried a new one—a broiled icing—a hot mixture of butter, honey and peanut butter spread on the warm cake and lightly broiled.

“Hmmm…Looks like moth-eaten dragon breath,” said my daughter when she saw it.

“Caramel sludge!” declared my son.

“It looks more like a disease than an icing,” I said.

But the disparaging comments ended when we tasted it—very nutty and not too sweet.

“Pretty good, even if it does look…weird.”

For an everyday cake, that’s really all that matters.

Dinner cheat

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

100_3792 smOut late today, coming home tired and sporting a headache, I decided to just pull a jar of soup out for dinner.

Then I felt a little guilty about copping out of cooking, and thought I’d make biscuits to go with it.

Then I remembered the pie dough in the fridge (always make extra pie dough when you make it—there are so many glorious ways to use it). Score!

I rolled the dough out as if for a pie, then cut it into shapes with cookie cutters. After I placed the shapes on a baking sheet, I sprinkled them with grated parmesan cheese, and baked them at about 200C (400F) until they were brown and crispy (10-15 minutes…I didn’t really look at the time).

So fun, and so easy!

Garden Gloves

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

100_3697 smLess than two months.

That’s how long a pair of garden gloves lasts me in the warmer half of the year. I wear through the tips of the fingers. Once the finger tips are gone, they don’t do much good. I buy a new pair almost every time I’m in the gardening section at Bunnings, just because I know I’ll need one sooner rather than later.

I used to garden without gloves. When my kids were born, my mom bought me a pair, “So that you can garden, and just take the gloves off when you need clean hands to deal with the baby.”

Made sense, so I started wearing them.

I can’t remember if they helped at all with the baby, but they did help with my hands. Until I had gloves, I never realised that the itchy welts I seemed to always have on my fingers were a form of eczema caused by contact with plants (any plants, not just poison ivy; tomatoes are one of the worst). Once I started wearing gloves, those itchy welts all but disappeared.

Now I’ll hardly go into the garden without my gloves.

And since I wear through them so quickly, it’s probably a good thing. Think if I were wearing through my skin that fast!

Dementors

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

chocbar2 smJ.K. Rowling got it right when she decided that the treatment for dementor attack should be chocolate. Dementors (for the one of you out there who hasn’t either read the Harry Potter books or seen the movies), are horrible creatures that suck all your happiness away, leaving you with only your worst memories.

I’m convinced dementors primarily attack teenagers. In fact, one ambushed my daughter the other day. It was terrible…anger and tears that no motherly words could console.

Fortunately, I knew what to do. We were in town at the time, so treatment was as near as the corner petrol station. I raced in, bought a chocolate bar, and administered it to my daughter.

The effect was immediate and dramatic. Crisis solved! Dementor banished!

Looks like I may have to keep some chocolate on hand for the duration of the teen years…and it must be time to start teaching them the patronus charm.