A Saucy Meal

October 1, 2015 / Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

I 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!

Five Years on…remembering the 2010 quake

September 4, 2015 / Robinne Weiss / 2 Comments

“Good, good, good, good vibrations…” The sound of the Beach Boys emanating from the wind-up emergency radio made me smile. I bopped to the music, learning then that the best way to weather the aftershocks was to keep moving. Knowing then that my relationship with the earth had fundamentally changed.

I was sitting on the floor in the middle of my dark living room. Just a few minutes earlier, at 4.35 am. We had all been jolted out of bed by a M7.1 earthquake centred about 20 km away. The rest of the family had all gone back to bed, but I knew I couldn’t. I would have been up at five anyway, and the excitement of such a large quake wouldn’t let me sleep.

And so, when National Radio broadcast the Beach Boys minutes after the quake, I was there to hear it and smile.

Memories of the first quake and the nearly 15,000 aftershocks since are still fresh. Just the other day, one of my daughter’s friends was recounting how they had had little food in the house when the quake struck. With power out and shops closed, they subsisted on Weet-bix for four days.

We were more fortunate. It had been a good winter garden, and though it was only early spring, there were plenty of vegetables to eat. And with a gas stove, we were able to cook those vegetables in spite of no electricity.

As for water, we might have been worried, if we’d known what the quake had done to our well. But until the power came back on, we were blissfully unaware that the well had filled with black silt. We confidently used the many litres of water I had stored for this very possibility—a week’s worth of drinking and cooking water. More, if we were frugal with it. The rain barrel behind the shed provided water for the toilet.

We circled the wagons and waited. The family was together. It was spring, and there was much to do in the garden. We spent the days outside in the sun, and the nights eating by candlelight, and riding out the aftershocks. What little we knew of the extent of the damage came through the wind-up radio, which we listened to eagerly. It was an oddly peaceful time—the aftershocks were frightening through the nights, but the sun shone during the day, and we went for walks as a family and played board games.

I am by no means a “survivalist”, but I do believe in being prepared. Though we had no idea what a major earthquake was like, we were prepared. And being prepared, we weathered it well, even when we did discover that our well was destroyed, and when it was another five months before we had regular, reliable water. Even when we were subjected to thousands of aftershocks, some even more destructive than the first quake.

Life has changed since the quakes. I cannot enter a room without assessing safe areas, hazards, and exits. I store even more water, and make sure I always have over a quarter tank of petrol in the car. I keep a torch by the bedside. I expect to get lost every time I venture into the centre city—another building will have been demolished, another will have sprung up, another road will be closed for repairs. More fundamentally, I now understand, in an intimate and visceral way, the dynamic nature of the planet. I know the vast power of the earth, and how insignificant my own is by comparison. I am in awe. I am in love. I am honoured to be allowed to live on this amazing world.

Capturing water

August 29, 2015 / Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

Summers are dry here. Nor’west winds whip hot and dry across the plains, sucking moisture from the plants and soil. Though I protect my garden as best I can, with mulch and shelter, there is no escaping the need to water, at least once in a while.

That’s in a good year, when it rains occasionally during the summer.

Last year, we got almost no rain from October to February, and our autumn and winter have been unusually dry as well. The prediction with climate change is for more of our years to be like that.

Which naturally leads me to worry about water. For now, there is plenty of water in our well to keep the vegetable garden green in a dry year. But if we have more and more dry years, who knows what might happen to the water table.

So this year, when we needed to address some aging guttering on our sheds anyway, we tried to arrange things so we could make better use of the rain that does fall on the property.

We had a rain barrel before—a rusty old 55 gallon drum of unknown origin, from which we were able to draw rust-flecked orange water in an emergency. It was great for flushing the toilet after the earthquakes, but it wasn’t particularly pleasant, and it wasn’t enough water to make much difference if we needed to use it on the garden.

Now we have a 900 litre tank collecting water off our large shed roof, set up so I can easily attach a hose and draw off the water when I need it. And the water from the small shed’s roof is being directed into the pond, so that, hopefully we won’t need to refill it with water from the well when summer evaporation threatens to dry it up. Any overflow will water the garden around the pond.

There is still a lot of water we don’t capture, but the rain off the house roof currently runs out into perennial garden areas, including some of our fruit trees, so it’s reasonably well used.

Waste not, want not. At least, we hope so.

Where the sidewalk ends

August 21, 2015 / Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

Friday afternoons, my daughter and I have two hours to kill in the city between band practices. We usually pass the time by going for a walk. But neither of us likes walking on busy city streets, so we usually drive somewhere close enough that we can walk out of town.

There is a wealth of these magical spots, particularly around the hills, where the city is patchy and interspersed with steep valleys.

Today, we walked from a tidy little neighbourhood of small houses built sometime in the 1960s on the broad flat at the mouth of a valley. We climbed out of the neighbourhood toward the head of the valley, passing houses of decreasing age and increasing size, until we were walking past brand new houses of immense proportions, with wide expanses of plate glass overlooking the valley. Then a few skeletal houses, surrounded by scaffolding, and then no more.

At some point along the way, the road narrowed and the sidewalk petered out. Paddocks full of beef cattle spread out below us, and bush-covered slopes rose above. Bellbirds sang in the afternoon light.

The road narrowed to one lane, and a sign warned motorists that there were no further turning spots and no exit. We walked on until we reached the farm at the end of the road, a vineyard spread out below on the valley floor.

The sound of traffic was just a distant hiss, and I contemplated what it must be like to be the last farmer in this valley, holding out at the end of this long road, with no way in or out, save through the city.

It must be terribly isolating—as much as being on a remote station. None of this farmer’s neighbours share his or her interests, concerns, or outlook on life—they are all townies on their lock-it-and-leave-it properties. They know nothing of calving, fencing, or weed control. They don’t notice when there has been too much or too little rain. Their only concern with a late frost is whether it means the ski fields will be able to stay open another week.

It can’t be easy to stay in that sort of situation, and I admire the farmer that can hold on in the face of the encroaching city. Too soon, I fear they will be gone.

Space Salad

August 11, 2015 / Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

Simple to grow at home. Not so simple in space.

Astronauts on the International Space Station made history today—they were the first people to eat lettuce grown in space. Red romaine, I understand. With a little balsamic vinegar.

It took years to work out how to do it. Things gardeners take for granted like gravity, 24 hour day cycles, water, and air, are a challenge when growing vegetables in space.

So, why is it important that astronauts can eat fresh lettuce? As of yet, we’ve found nothing edible beyond our own planet. If humans are ever to spend significant time in space, we’ll need to know how to produce food wherever we are, not just for logistical reasons, but who would want to eat those nasty pre-packaged astronaut meals for years on end?

This is another example of people taking their crops with them wherever they go, as I discussed two months ago in Eating Native?

Which, of course, makes me think of how some of the foods introduced to New Zealand have become weeds and pests, damaging the native life forms. Will there someday be weeds in space? Let’s hope we’ve learned a thing or two about avoiding introducing pests before we get to that point.

It Ain’t Over ‘Til the Magpie Sings

August 10, 2015 / Robinne Weiss / 1 Comment

Photo: Eric Weiss

We’ve had more than our fair share of beautiful warm winter days this year. Though we’ve had some very cold nights, the days have been sunny, and we’ve gotten only a fraction of the rain we normally do over winter.

So you could have been forgiven for thinking, back in July, that winter was over. In fact, my daughter argued that it was spring a month ago.

I knew better. Winter would assert itself again.

It did so this past weekend, with icy winds bringing sleet, snow and rain. We huddled by the fire, venturing outdoors only to take extra food to the animals and split more firewood.

But in between icy squalls, at 4:00 am two days ago, I heard it—the certain sign that winter is on its way out.

A magpie.

Magpies are noisy all year long, but when spring is almost upon us, their noise changes. They start their wardle-oodle-ardling at four in the morning, and carry on until the sun rises. They feel what we know only because of the calendar—spring is just around the corner.

When the magpies start calling, I get restless. I wake when they do, and their call urges me out of bed.

Wardle-oodle-ardle!

Get up! Get up! Get ready!

But it’s dark and raining!

Wardle-oodle-ardle!

Get up! Get up! Get ready!

But it’s cold! Can’t I stay in bed?

Wardle-oodle-ardle!

Get up! Get up! Get ready!

Wardle-oodle-ardle!

Get up! Get up! Get ready!

Spring is coming!

Soft Pretzels

August 8, 2015 / Robinne Weiss / 1 Comment

Having grown up in central Pennsylvania, I consider pretzels their own food group.

So it was a great disappointment to discover that there are NO pretzels in New Zealand. Oh, you can get small bags of expensive, imported pretzels, but the variety and quality are very poor.

And soft pretzels—the pinnacle of pretzel evolution—are nonexistent.

Thankfully, soft pretzels are easy and fun to make!

I make soft pretzels from a light whole wheat bread dough—any relatively light dough will work fine.

Once your dough has finished its first rise, divide it into 100g (3.5 oz) pieces. Roll each piece into a long snake, then twist into a pretzel shape and place on a well-greased baking sheet (You can make other shapes, but keep them compact or they will break apart when handled). Cover and let them rise until about doubled in bulk.

Now comes the part that turns them into pretzels.

Bring to a boil a mixture of 4 cups of water and 5 tsp baking soda (I use a large pot and need to double this amount to get a reasonable depth of water). Drop the pretzels carefully into the water (you may only be able to put 1 or 2 into the water at a time—my big pot fits 3) and allow them to boil for about 1 minute, until they float to the surface (I gently turn them over once they’ve reached the surface so that both sides boil relatively evenly). With a large slotted spoon, take them out and place them back on the greased baking sheets.

Sprinkle with coarse salt and bake at 230°C (450°F) for 12 minutes or until nicely browned.

Eat them hot, slathered in mild mustard!

Rosemary

July 25, 2015 / Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

In Minnesota, I grew rosemary in pots and brought it indoors for the winter, lest it be killed by the cold. Here in New Zealand, I grow my rosemary in the garden, and have to hack it back twice a year to keep it from growing taller than I am.

Rosemary is one of my favourite herbs, whether in dinner, in the garden, or in a flower arrangement. It is decorative as well as delicious.

Rosemary was named by Pliny in the first century. Ros (foam) mare (sea)—meaning that it grew so close to the sea that the foam sprayed on it. The Greek gods supposedly valued a rosemary wreath more highly than one made of gold (think how much I could make selling my biennial rosemary trimmings to Zeus!).

Rosemary was first used medicinally and culturally. It entered the kitchen in the Middle ages as a way to disguise the saltiness of salt-preserved meat. I’m told it goes well with lamb, pork, and game. As a vegetarian, I like rosemary with potatoes, pumpkin, and in Italian tomato sauces. And I love to brush the bushes with my hands as I walk past, so I can bring that lovely smell with me wherever I go!

Ants!

July 23, 2015 / Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

For nine years, I was owner/operator of The Bugmobile, taking live arthropods into classrooms all over Canterbury in a vehicle festooned with giant pictures of insects. I was known everywhere as The Bug Lady.

Last summer, when I closed my business, I didn’t expect to continue to think of my car as The Bugmobile. But fate, or rather a colony of ants, has interceded. My car is infested with ants.

I wouldn’t notice the ants if they weren’t so fond of Mentos…or if I weren’t so fond of Mentos.

I started keeping a roll of Mentos in the car when I was running The Bugmobile—if I had a sore throat, or needed a pick-me-up between programmes, a mint kept me going.

Apparently, they keep the ants going, too. I collected a few and identified them as the Black House Ant, Ochetellus glaber, an Australian ant that originally hitched a ride to New Zealand tucked in people’s belongings and in plant material. Ordinarily, these ants nest under stones and in tree cavities, but this particular nest is tucked neatly into a hollow in one of my mud flaps.

I should probably evict them…but they’re cute little creatures. Just 2mm long, and shiny black. I rather like them tootling around the car, cleaning up the crumbs the kids leave when they finish off their lunches on the way home from school. Maybe I’ll just find an ant-proof container for my mints.

Once The Bug Lady, always The Bug Lady…

Food Security

July 17, 2015 / Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

A post-quake community garden in Christchurch

After the recent earthquake in Nepal, I wrote a blog post about food security in the face of natural disasters, but I never actually posted it.

But this piece about using vacant red-zoned land to produce food in Christchurch, in the news today, made me come back to that post and decide it was worth posting.

After the February 2011 quake in Christchurch, I saw firsthand how much more devastating natural disasters could be in the city verses in rural areas. Responding to a request for help on Trade Me, my husband and I, along with a couple of neighbours, loaded the car with shovels, wheelbarrows, tools and food, and ventured into the hard-hit eastern suburbs.

We spent a day clearing houses and yards of liquefaction, tearing out buckled and destroyed linoleum, and sharing out the vegetables, bread, and milk we brought from our farms. The people we met were amazingly strong in the face of the destruction around them—not one house in the neighbourhood was still straight and level, and the street was nearly impassable, buckled and cracked.

But they had no tools to tackle the devastation. The carload of tools we brought with us for the day was more than the entire neighbourhood could muster. City living doesn’t require heavy duty wheelbarrows and large shovels, and there were more willing hands than tools to go around.

Then there was the lack of gardens in the city. With stores closed and power out for many days, getting and preparing food was difficult. While meals were airlifted into the city, in the country we simply lived on food from the garden.

So, how do we build resilience and food security into our cities? How do we create cities that can feed themselves, at least for a short time, after a natural disaster? Part of the answer lies in community gardens that can provide food and positive community support, as they did in Christchurch after the 2011 quake. Part of the answer lies in taking a long-term approach to city planning—planting fruit trees in public parks, preserving green space with good soil within the city instead of covering it all with buildings and roads.

I would love to see Christchurch, and all cities, bring food production back within the city limits. No, a city cannot produce all its food, but having community gardens and food-producing commons makes a city a more humane place, even when there isn’t a natural disaster to weather.