Passing on the Passion – Day 7 NaBloPoMo 2017

07 Nov 2017 2 Comments

by Debra Manskey in Cooking, Produce, Urban Farming, Vegetable Gardening Tags: , , , , , ,

Every Tuesday morning, I teach Food Gardening to folks out at Oak Tasmania. It’s one of the best jobs in the world, sharing my passion for growing fresh food with eager participants and switched-on staff. We have two worm farms that take all kitchen scraps from the building and a small vegetable bed that we’ve been working on since the start of the year, and it’s become very productive. After doing some soil tests, we realised we had to do quite a bit of work to lift the pH (it was too acidic for a lot of the vegetables we wanted to grow) and with a bit of research and effort, everyone pitched in spreading dolomite limestone, and we’ve started getting some excellent results.

Feeding the worm farm with coffee grounds

 

Apart from learning basic horticulture skills, the participants are growing fresh vegetables for a Cooking program one of my co-workers runs on Wednesdays. So we like to test things out on Tuesdays and learn how to make things too. Most of the folks in my program don’t have gardens but they are fabulous, instinctual gardeners and really great cooks, which I believe most of us are if we’re given half a chance.

Today was stunning! We harvested our first broad beans, some celery stems, a veritable mountain of silverbeet (aka Swiss chard), Cos lettuce and one huge head of garlic. It was a little early for the garlic, but it was a good lesson for the team to learn – and we have quite a few more heads still in the ground.

Fresh bounty from our veggie patch

Together, we got a production line going, washed and prepared the silverbeet, finely chopped a few stems of celery and lightly roasted the fresh, whole garlic head and its fleshy stem in a little olive oil. While we were waiting for the garlic to cook, we opened up the luscious beans and scoffed the lot! They were so delicious and fresh!

More scraps for the worms!

Once the garlic was soft, we smashed the whole thing – head and stems – removed the thick, uncured skins, chopped the garlic finely and fried it in a little seasoned olive oil with the fine chopped celery. Finally, we threw in the roughly chopped silverbeet, covered it to sweat down for a few minutes and made sure it was all smothered in the wonderful, rich, garlic flavoured oil.

We served it in a bowl at our section’s lunch table and we could’ve made twice as much! The Cos lettuce and the rest of the celery are being used tomorrow as a salad accompaniment for a Pizza making session – which makes me wish I was out there again tomorrow!!!

Delicious food we grew and cooked ourselves

Rainy Day Self Care – Day 13 NaBloPoMo

13 Nov 2016 1 Comment

by Debra Manskey in Biography, Chickens, Cooking, Preserving, Produce, Rabbits, Tasmania, Urban Farming, Vegetable Gardening Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

I’ve been really struggling today, feeling physically unwell but also quite inexplicably sad since I woke this morning.

Perhaps it’s the weather. It’s been very wet and bleak almost all day, so I didn’t have much chance to be in the yard. I’ve become very aware of how sensitive I am to such things. So I decided to remain as positive as possible, do things that made me feel better and generally engage in some self-care.

I got out my uber-fabulous rain jacket, found a beanie and went to splash around, feeding the hungry hordes and finding little things to photograph – something that always makes me feel good.

First stop after feeding was to check the greenhouse. Usually by November I need to water fairly thoroughly in there but today it was so damp it wasn’t necessary. I did find breakfast though 😀

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I only picked the one on the right and while it was lovely, we really haven’t had enough sunny days to encourage fructose production. I’m concerned the raspberries will be the same too but it’ll be at least a couple of weeks before they start producing significantly. And surely the sunshine will be back by then!

Of course, the best way to cheer me up is to see new things happening and I was very pleased to discover several flowers on the Cayenne chillies this morning. I really love these long, thin skinned chillies. They are great fresh but dry easily and they have a light and bright flavour, that lifts all manner of dishes.

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Meanwhile, I decided to make a really hearty slow-roasted organic chicken for tonight’s dinner so I headed for the French Tarragon patch, which is booming at the moment.

This is my take on Tarragon Roast Chicken.

I had some chestnuts left in the freezer that I dry roasted and shelled back in autumn. They were chopped up finely with a couple of the small garlic heads and the Tarragon and thrown in a bowl. I beat in an egg and a little olive oil, and mixed in about half a cup of fine sourdough breadcrumbs to help bind it all together.

In the slow cooker I made a trivet of a halved onion, some small carrots, a few celery sticks from the garden that were too big for using in salads, a few more little garlic heads and the rest of the Tarragon. I put the stuffed chicken carefully on top of the vegetable trivet, seasoned it and poured over about a cup of white wine. Then I put it on low and forgot about it for a few hours.

After some quiet time reading, watching trashy Sunday afternoon television and a long luxurious shower, we prepared potatoes, parsnips and carrots for roasting. Now, this is totally decadent but it was a household decision to add some home made garlic butter to the roasting pan – because fresh garlic!

After the veggies were starting to brown, the chicken was carefully lifted and finished off in the oven with all those lovely vegetables. I decanted off about 3 cups of rich liquid from the slow cooker as a sauce base and made a cornflour roux. A tablespoon of homemade mushroom ketchup and a dash of cream finished off the sauce.

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This was utterly fabulous. The Tarragon and garlic shone through without overwhelming, the chicken was succulent but cooked through, vegetables crisp on the outside and fluffy inside, and the stuffing was nutty and rich but not stodgy.

I’m now going into a food coma – but feeling much better than I was earlier in the day 😀

And to finish, here’s Bernard Black Bunny, telling me to “go away woman, can’t you see I’m eating?”

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Take care friends, and don’t be shy about looking after yourselves ❤