Garlic harvest 2011

The annual garlic dilemma....will I pull it today? What date did I plant it? Is it too early to lift? Will it get rot if I leave it in the ground? And then the real life factors kick in. Well it is sunny right now and I have a spare ten minutes, and its so, so, so tempting to uncover all those big juicy purple bulbs.

So I did it. In the sun. With Nanna Ponks and Bo. On Friday the 25th of November. And I remembered as I started pulling, that harvesting garlic is just about my favourite moment in the whole year. Its like magic. You push those little segments into the soil way back somewhere around Easter and from then on it grows and multiplies into something big and fat and wonderful that makes our food taste so good from now until about next September when we either run out or it starts turning its juice into little green shoots.

And then I felt so smug because it rained like billyo all Saturday.

Now its all hanging over Toppa the wooden horse, curing beautifully and waiting for the big plaiting session to happen some time this week.

The challenge of blogging....

...is finding time to blog. Here are some photos of the process of making cordial and champagne. My aim is to show how simple it is if you feel like giving it a go.

Sunday weather has been totally all over the show - bright and summery for breakfast, wild and windy for smoko, pouring with rain for lunch and then right back around those right through the day. And despite being caught in the pouring rain at the Wynyard foreshore market, we managed to get some fantastic olive bread and fruit bread, three flowering cornflowers, zucchini and pineapple loaf, a wooden pepper grinder, the freshest bok choy in the north west, a stinging hot salami and Chris' crunchy apples.

Anyway, back to the brews....

Lemon and elderflowers

Rhubarb champagne in the early stages

Straining the champagne through muslin

The final product - now the test is how long you can bear to leave the champagne before trying it

Flower power

Table Cape from the vege garden

Granny's bonnet (Aquilega) I have about five different ones in the garden. And Brahmi (great memory herb) in the background

Quirky leaf geranium

Lucky Chinese ball and chartreusse petunia planted by Bo the garden gnome

Variegated sage (Salvia officinalis) and Bo Hua's petunias

Pop goes the ginger beer...

When we were kids, Mum had a few goes at making ginger beer. The taste was memorable and so was the sticky mess of gb and chards of glass in the laundry as the yeasty brew went feral when the summer temperatures soared. I haven't been game to make it since, but David Herbert was brave enough to put his recipe in the Australian last summer so I reckon its time to test my ginger...

1tbs grated fresh ginger
1 unwaxed lemon, thickly sliced
1 cup castor sugar
1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar
3/4 dried fast action yeast

Put ginger, lemon, sugar, cream of tartar and 750 ml cold water into a large saucepan. Bring to boil stirring to dissolve sugar. Reduce heat and simmer for five minutes then add 1.5 litres cold water and sprinkle over yeast. Cover with a lid and set aside in a cool place overnight. Next day, wash two 1.5 litre screwtop plastic bottles in hot soapy water, rinse and drain well. Strain ginger beer through a sieve into the bottles leaving 5cm of space at the top. Screw lids on tightly and leave in a cool place. After about four hours, ensure pressure isn't building up too much by unscrewing the cap slightly to allow gases to escape. You may need to do this a few times. The ginger beer will be ready to drink in 12-30 hours after bottling and will be fizzy. Serve chilled and drink within three days (unless it smells really yeasty - in which case, use it to moisten your compost).

I have another recipe from a little old book called Food Crafts - they describe this as "a refreshing drink which may go with a bang". So if you are game for incendiary soft drinks.....

First make your ginger beer "plant" and feed it every day for a week.

In a large jar with a screw top lid put:
8 raisins or sultantas
4 teaspoons of ground ginger
4 teaspoons of sugar
juice of two lemons
2 teaspoons of lemon pulp
2 cups cold water.

Feed this daily with 2tsp ground ginger, 4 tsp sugar.

Into a plastic bucket pour:
juice of 4 lemons
4 cups boiling water
4 cups sugar

Stir until sugar dissolves then add 7 litres of cold water. Strain the plant through muslin into the plastic bucket. Bottle the liquid leaving an air gap of 6cm at the top. Leave for 5 days then open WARILY and enjoy.

Now apart from the taste, some medicinal facts about ginger. It is one of the key medicinal plants used to warm us up - it stimulates the peripheral circulation - that means if you have cold hands and feet, nose or ears, ginger is one way of warming up your chilly bits and chillblains. It is also great for nausea - ginger settles the tum in travel sickness and hangovers.

So, if you are feeling the need to take a risk or two, start brewing the soft drink with attitude, GINGER BEER.

Meri, meri quite contrary....

I meant to say that not only is the arti farti dinner delicious, it is also really good for your liver. Artichoke (Cynara scolymus) is one of the bitter herbs that are great for making our livers work well. Just don't dip all your arti petals in the butter or sauce.

Not only is my garden a place to produce food, I also encourage a few little pirate flowers to tuck themselves in around the vegetables. Here is Johnny Jump Up (Viola tricolour) which, believe it or not, is ALSO a great medicinal herb. Really good for skin complaints such as eczema. And you can dip them in egg white and caster sugar, let it dry, then use it as an exquisite little decoration for your cakes.

Arti farti dinner

Loving my spring garden and here is last night's entree. Then lemon chicken with these veges:

And I am really looking forward to these (in a while, hopefully by Christmas. What is that thing about wanting a particular vegetable to be ready by Christmas?):

And you know what is also great? My little garden gnome Bo is really getting into her garden. Here are her peas and knees:

Now if you were wondering about the rhubarb champagne and elderflower cordial - the first batch of both are made and I will show you how I did it in my next post.

More spring drinks - Elderflower cordial

Elders are blooming in North West Tasmania, so its a race between me and my friend Ali to find the best bushes and pluck a few blooms to make cordial.

In my previous life as a medical herbalist, Elder (Sambucus nigra) was highly revered as a wonderful plant for hayfever. In fact David Hoffman says "The Elder tree is a veritable medicine chest..." The leaves used for bruises, wounds and chillblains; the flowers for colds, influenza, sinusitis and hayfever. Elder berries are useful in rheumatism.

I like the cordial for its relaxing properties, as a dash with champagne or in a very refreshing cocktail mixed with gin and soda water. Extremely medicinal on a warm Friday night on the deck after work. And in the winter its great as a hot toddy with some lemon juice if you are feeling down and out with a coldy lurgy.

So how to make this summery wintery deliciously flowery drink... the first thing you need to do is to find an elder tree (its really more like a bush).....

Pick 20 heads and give them a good shake before you put them in your bucket to get any lurking insects out of the flowers.

Place 1.8kg of white or castor sugar into a saucepan with 1.2 litres of water and stir while you bring to the boil.

Pare the skin of 2 lemons into wide strips and place in a bowl with the flowers. Slice the flesh of the lemons and add to the bowl.

Pour the boiling syrup over the flowers and lemon then stir in the citric acid. Try to make sure the flowers are covered with water. Cover the bowl and leave for 24 hours.

Strain through muslin and pour into sterilised (hot wash and heat in oven to dry) glass or plastic bottles and seal.

You can drink it straight away or give it to someone you like as an extra special suprise.

I am going to get my flowers this weekend from Rogers chook pen so I will let you know how I get on.

Next up......remember the explosions in the laundry cupboard when your mother used to brew ginger beer?

Fruit drinks for spring...

Rhubarb champagne - I made my first bottles last year and they were amazingly sucessful. Pale pink, lots of froth, rhubarb aromas and the delightful mystery of determining the alcohol content. Definitely worth a go Leah.

1kg of rhubarb (the redder the better)
3 cups of sugar
six teaspoons white vinegar
4 litres of water
2 lemons

Cut rhubarb into small pieces. Squeeze lemon and cut rind into small strips. Add lemon juice, rind and rest of ingredients to the rhubarb. (I used a v. large glass jar with a screw top lid for this bit).
Leave for 48 hours stirring occasionally.
Strain 3 times (through muslin - if you are buying new muslin, don't forget to give it a good wash in hot water before you use it for straining). Bottle and seal. I used screw top lemonade bottles but I left a good bit of room for gas in them. Leave two weeks to brew. NB The bottles I left for a couple of months were definitely superior in bubbles and taste than the ones we couldn't help ourselves drinking after two weeks.

The first...

"If I keep a green bough in my heart, the singing bird will come" Chinese proverb.