Okey dokey...
~ Weeded out my herb garden yesterday in the gorgeous warm sunshine. It was a very meditative session and I was amazed at how fast the one hour out there went by so quickly and I had something to show for it at the end as well.
~ Continually getting the shopping bill down - I'm surprised that despite grocery prices rising, that I am still managing to reduce the amount of food I'm buying with not too much effort. We are not feeling too deprived (I guess the year long slow changes have made this easier on the mindset rather than just making chops all at once) - it just makes me realise that there is still more room to make adjustments too.
~ I still have a focus on eating as locally (that just means food made in New Zealand at this stage) as possible. A tricky one since even a lot of NZ made products source their ingredients from overseas. I feel trapped when I think about cereals and breads though...
~ As a gluten free family I find it challenging to think about how we would get grains/flours if they become too expensive or inaccessible. A lot of our gf breads/pastas/cereals are made from rice or corn and various other flours that are imported. Corn is really the only one that is able to be grown here as far as I'm aware (oh, and potato flour if I can learn how to make that) - so I'm thinking I might need to find some organic corn seeds (Ecoseeds don't stock them, but I have been told that Koanga Seeds do some varities) and then get a grain mill to process my own cornmeal and cornflour.
~ Seems we need to return to a lot more traditional food to take away this problem. I think I will create a challenge for myself to come up with a menu plan that is based on all whole foods, all available in NZ and no processed cereals/breads or anything using imported grains - I've been dragging the chain on making this sort of move forwards. So, please share with me any ideas - all I can think of are meat and 3-veg dishes 3 times a day with the odd soup thrown in (using herbs, but not spices)! Depending on ease or resistence from the family, I will then try to have a "NZ grown" meal day and build it up from there - as with all things, it takes time to make these types of changes if I want them to become long term and permanent (hence my slow going with cutting back on tea).
~ I'm in the process of planning out how I will increase the size of my garden this year. Last year, I had just over 50 sq metres of garden plots on the go. On the whole, that really only provided food over the summer period and didn't leave a lot to store for use throughout the year. I have another 30 sq metres that I can easily add into the mix this year which has a good nutrient rich soil (perhaps I could do potatoes there to condition the soil). If I want to increase my garden size further I would need to move onto the higher up sandy area which needs a lot of compost added to get it to a good state.
~ As already blogged - I'm in the process of replacing imported black tea with homegrown herbal varities.
~ Had friends for dinner last night and we yakked and yakked about Peak Oil, Climate Change, community, growing food and all that stuff. Was so good to talk face to face with others on the same path and not feel too weird (and hopefully not freaking them out with our weirdness lol).
12 comments:
We're gluten free for the most part too so I understand where you're coming from. I've recently planted some arrowroot, which is supposedly easy to grow, and easy to process into a flour. Arrowroot is also one of the better gluten free flours I believe, so perhaps that is worth looking into?
Great post Nikki. So much to think about. Buckwheat should be growable. If you don't have the recent Organic NZ magazine which talked about this, I can photocopy and post it to you. I have had a little buckwheat in the garden as it is part of the 'beneficial insect blend' seed packet I bought last year. Didn't attempt to harvest though.
An entire NZ day! Really hard without gluten. You can do egg at least though. I loved starting the day with omelette in Spain - a thick potato and egg omelette.
Might be worth trying to grow quinoa as well. I think Kings seeds sell it.
I am thinking at the moment that as I cannot grow enough for self sufficiency, I need to just focus on what I can grow and free up that money for other foods which will be increasingly very expensive.
I agree that it is hard to find Nz made products on the supermarket shelves. I have been enjoying Alison Holsts meat free cook book. The dishes are filling and use many ingredients from the garden and beans/pulses.
Rinelle - I will look into the arrowroot, thanks!
Sandra - I would really appreciate a copy of that article thanks! I will check Kings for different grains and beans to try growing. I'm starting to think I might get a few more chickens - eggs could definitely be a good way of supplementing our diet. We love spanish omelettes too! I think you're right though, do what I can self-sufficiently, and then reallocate funds to purchase just those hard to grow items.
Ingrid - thanks for the reminder - I have that AH book, so will have a trawl through it for new ideas.
I'll find the article and post to you Nikki.
The extra chooks could live on the more sandy soil you mentioned and help get it ready for food production. Of all the gardening books I have read in the last two years, Linda Woodrow's helps me the most with what I am trying to achieve.
Hi Nikki - yeah, I've been worrying over flour lately as well - especially since my favourite flour for making pasta (kialla white from Aussie) has been unavailbale recently. I believe you can, with great skill, make gnocchi out of just potato with no wheat flour at all, so I've been thinking of experiemtning with that ...
Very interested to read someone's mention of buckwheat here too. I've been looking iinto growing a bit of buckwheat as it sounds like it might go okay in our climate ... but I keep hearing that it's really hard to hull without an expensive hulling machine. I've started asking round on some other lists about this, but so far am a bit confused by the answers ...
I might go look up that recent article too.
Thanks a lot for this post - and all the helpful replies it has provoked ... plenty to think about ...
Nikki - just wondering can you grow millet or amaranth in your climate?
Best wishes
Johanna
Hi again Nikki - I just looked again at some of the replies about processing buckwheat by hand that I got on another email list - and I think to condense it all down - the answer is - sprout it and dry it first, hulls and all ... then pound it up in a mortar and pestle or put it through a mill.
I still can't quite visualise it all though - especially what happens to the hulls after you sprout the buckwheat. Do you remove them, or put them through the mill as well? If you or anyone reading your blog comments can shed any light - I'd be really keen to hear more.
P.S. when I referred to 'your climate' - I'm assuming that even though you're in a neighbouring region to us, your climate is quite a lot warmer than ours! :)
arggh - you'll be getting sick of me this morning Nikki! (I read your blog regularly but don't often comment - so I'm making up for it all in one go).
But I just thought - have you grown - or eaten -spaghetti squash? I have never even tasted it before, but it sounds cool, so I have got some seeds to plant this spring. Sounds like it *might* be a good substitute for makjng wheat noodles ... (I'm a little obsessed with finding wheat noodle substitutes at the moment! :o)
Sandra, great idea about putting the chooks on the sandy area. Thinking about doing this has seen me emailing the chicken breeder to put in an order for some more girls. You know, after all this time, Linda Woodrow's book is still the only one I've read from cover to cover and is still the book I rec to people.
Johanna, I haven't read up too much on what grains grow in this region yet, but you've got me on a new mission now. I too have noticed my rice flour I used to buy hasn't been in stock for over a month now (imagine that, no rice flour at Commonsense at all!)
I'm also not sure about processing of the grains, I am interested in the corn mill (which is good for other grains) that Koanga stock (but is out of stock till October). perhaps they would have some good info on processing?
Ha, we cross posted Johanna. No I have never heard of spaghetti squash - you'll need to let me know how you get on with it - sounds interesting, noodles sound good and quite a staple around here! BTW, are your other blogs still active?
Hi Nikki - I took my old blog offline, and I'm just in the throes of setting up my new one - hoping to have it active at the end of this weekend.
Oh - heh - I was just about to tell you that I'm a new contributor to the Aotearoa Slow Food blog as well - but see you've already found it ... (That wasn't actually the one I mentioned I was working on the other week. lol. That'll be a personal one.)
x
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