Time for some baking

First, a lemon syrup cake using the lemons from the food swap and eggs from the girls. I used this recipe and it turned out really well - moist, lemony and not too sweet. To make it look pretty it was scattered with sage flowers and calendula petals.

Then for Little FB's Mum's group annual Christmas get together, some Christmas cookies. We decided on stars and trees, iced them in green and pink icing and covered them with lots of silver sprinkles (he helped). The green looks a bit muddy in the photo; it was nicer in real life! The addition of custard power in the recipe gave them a lovely taste and the texture was also nice - not too crumbly, not too hard.

To generous gardeners everywhere

I've been posting my gardening queries on www.ozgrow.com for a few months now and yesterday I was really pleased to receive four carefully labelled packets of lettuce seeds from a fellow poster. It struck me once again how generous people can be; to take the time and effort to do something like that for a complete stranger makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Here's to sharing and gardening!

Today's harvest and my first blueberry!

Some beets, the last of the red onions (clearing the bed to sow lettuce), a forgotten cauliflower, 4 potatoes (I went bandicooting!) and 4 eggs from the girls.


Everything in the garden is growing so well after the recent rain. Flowers are out everywhere - the calendula that were planted as seeds in the winter, marigolds and sweetpeas. Even the Purple king beans have little flowers.

Oh, and much excitement - my first ripe blueberry! It is securely netted and waiting for Little FB to pick it.

Beautiful sunset

Caramelised shallot tarte tatin

I made this last night for dinner with my shallots and red torpedo onions. It was sooooo good.

10 shallots or small red onions (enough to fill the pan)
Generous knob butter
Splash olive oil
Sprig fresh thyme - leaves stripped
Splash balsamic vinegar
1 tsp brown sugar
1 sheet puff pastry
Goats cheese (about 50g)

Peel the onions or shallots and cut any larger ones in half. Melt the butter and oil in an ovenproof frying pan and add the onions, cooking gently and turning until caramelised on both sides. Add the vinegar, sugar, thyme, salt and pepper and cook for a few more minutes. Cut the pastry into a circle a bit bigger than the size of the pan then put it on top of the onions, tucking it under. Bake for about 35 mins at 200F until the pastry is puffed and golden. To serve, turn out onto a plate, garnish with fresh thyme and slices of goats cheese. Don't worry if some of the onions stick in the pan, just lift them out and rearrange them back on top of the tart.

64.6mm

That's the rain total for Essendon between Friday and Monday. Amazing. The rain tank is full, as are the numerous buckets and pots that I put outside.

Finally.. rain

It started about 3pm and has been going ever since. Such a relief after the long, dry hot spell. I did a fair bit of work in the garden this morning, including some planting so everything is now getting a lovely drink.

Planted seeds
Flowers: zinnia, poppy, pyretheum, sunflower (lemon queen)
Lettuce: flame, heirloom mix
Broccolli
Celery
Perpetual spinach
Basil (sweet)

Planted out
Cucumber: spacemaster, lemon
Borage

Harvesting
Shallots
Spinach
Basil
Cauliflower
Carrots
Red torpedo onions

Fantastic food swap

MMSTL and I went to the Urban Harvest food swap today and it was really good. There were about 20 people there and so much amazing produce: herbs, seedlings, lemons, home made brie(!), home-baked bread, jams plus cake and tea for everyone. It was such a pleasure to share food, and conversation with such a nice group of people. I took along a cabbage, some shallots, some grapefruit from my neighbours tree, and some tomato seedlings and received a wonderful selection of goodies in return. I'm already looking forward to the next swap!

Lunch in the garden

The first freshly-dug potatoes, leek quiche and beetroot and apple salad. Enjoyed by me and little FB outside, in the sunshine, watching the birds. Perfect.

Beetroot and apple salad (serves 2)
2 golf-ball sized beets
1 green apple, cored
50g feta

Dressing 1 tsp lemon juice (or to taste)
2 tsps olive oil
salt and pepper
dijon mustard
pinch sugar or 1/2 tsp honey

Grate the apple and beets, mix in the feta and pour over the dressing.

Sad day

Millie died today :( I wasn't really surprised; she had been sick for a week or so and had lost a lot of weight. She'll be missed though, even though she was hopeless at laying eggs, she was a lovely chicken.

Last of the broad beans

I cut down the last of the broad bean plants today. They were starting to suffer a bit from the heat and no more new pods were forming. I enjoyed a peaceful half-hour sitting on the front porch in the shade of another hot day, shelling them and listening to all the neighborhood kids playing cricket in the street. My broad bean crop has been good this year and I've frozen a few bags full. In the vacant bed I am planning on planting a later crop of sweetcorn. The first plantings are doing well - about 20cm high now.

One of the cauliflowers was starting to look a bit funny: the head was breaking up, also due to the heat I suspect so I picked it for dinner. I made tempura with some other veggies that I had lying around - pumpkin, mushrooms and onions- most of them unfortunately not from the garden. The batter recipe was easy:

1 cup plain flour
1 beaten egg
1 cup iced water

The trick is not to overmix so that the batter is still a bit lumpy, then just cut the veggies into chunks/florets/thin slices, coat in flour then dip into the batter, shaking off the excess and fry in hot oil. Serve with soy sauce for dipping. LittleFB ate a huge plateful and then asked for more!

It's still hot

I take it back about the chickens coping in the heat. Millie (the old chook) has a very pale comb and looks a bit sad. She still came out to see me when I came home but I'm a bit worried about her and with this hot weather showing no signs of abating, I just hope she will be OK.

I gave the garden a really good water from the tank tonight, and topped up the mulch. Not much else you can do really when it's hot like this and there's no sign of rain. The challenges of gardening in Melbourne I suppose. I realise that most people are concerned about the drought, climate change and the like, but I have found that growing my own food has put me so much more in touch with the weather, and given me a new appreciation for the seasons, and the delicate balances in nature.

36C in November!!

Melbourne just had the third day in a row with temps over 30C and there have already been a few casualties - the spinach under the beans is looking a bit toasty and the celery seedlings may not make it. On the bright side, the chickens seem to be coping, I'm always a bit nervous about how they will cope after we lost Charlie chicken last year during the horrible Feb heatwave: Little FB still tells everyone, with strong Aussie twang that "Mummy put Charlie in a hole and she doid" :)


On a more happy note, I discovered 4 small caulis forming so I tucked the leaves over them to protect them from the sun. And the heat has made some of the veg go crazy - the toms are storming along and I even have some small tommy toes starting to form.

First beets

These are the first beets of the season, and in fact the first that I have ever managed to grow! It looks like I might get a bumper crop this year. Not sure what I did differently - maybe the soil has just got more friable over the last few years. I'm looking forward to eating them raw, maybe with the carrots, grated in a salad with lemon juice, olive oil and some feta.

What a difference a fortnight makes

It always surprises me how much the garden can change at this time of year. I got back from 2 weeks camping holiday in the Flinders Ranges - fantastic! - and some things had bolted ( shallots, some sprouting broccoli, all the pak choi), some had grown like crazy (spinach, carrots and beets, and some had not done much at all (cucumbers).

The weather has been a bit strange this year, although Melbourne weather is always strange! We had quite a cool, wet October, just starting to warm up at the end. For the past week it has been much warmer - 33C yesterday - but thankfully with some rain. Last night we had dramatic thunderstorms with heavy , albeit brief rain, and sheet lightning. I dashed outside to put out as many buckets and pots as I could find to catch as much of the precious rain as possible!

Having 2 weeks away meant lots of catching up so I spend yesterday clearing the snow peas and the last of the podding peas. The snow peas in particular have been fantastic this year, producing for months. I still have one tepee left which will probably go for a few more weeks. In t cleared ground I started my 3 sisters plot. I planted out 12 sweetcorn, and some cucumber and squash seedlings underneath. When the corn grows up a bit I am going to plug in some climbing beans.

I also planted out the rest of the solenace seedlings: tomatoes (tigerella, grosse lisse, cherry roma and mortgage lifter), eggplant and capsicum, and bordered them with some basil. Now it is just a case of protecting them from the earwigs. The battle is still ongoing but I think I may be winning. Of the 3 traps that I have in the garden - flowerpots filled with newspaper on sticks, 2 pieces of wood laid on top of each other, and tins filled with water, oil and soy sauce - the wood traps have worked best. The girls love getting their morning feed of protein too!