Can I Get a Kale Yeah!

Kale has been one of the easiest and most satisfying things I have grown in the veggie garden.  Just throw in a few seeds and stand back!  Like most things that I have an abundance of it is now a case of finding things to do with all of this kale.  Just the other night at our book club gathering one of my friends was espousing the delights of home made kale chips, so I went on line and found a bunch of instructions, recipes and tips for making the perfect kale chip.

 So while the oven was heating up to fan force 170 degrees I went out to the garden with my scissors and chopped off a bunch of the biggest leaves.  They had all been recently washed by the big rain storm we had last night so I thought I would just go about removing the stems which can be bitter and woody, and cutting the leaves into chip sized pieces.  There was lots of little green bits all over the tea towel and my hands which on closer inspection were moving!  So another good reason to wash your kale leaves it seems is to avoid having extra protein on your chips in the form of cooked aphids.

Not having a salad spinner I laid the leaves out on a tea towel and blotted them dry, which was time consuming to say the least.  I then tried laying the tea towel on the open door of the oven to finish off the drying process, which seemed to be effective.

Then into the bowl with a tablespoon of olive oil or your oil of preference and massage the leaves until all the little ridges and valleys are coated.   I then spread them out on some baking paper on my very old reliable baking tray and put them into the oven for about ten minutes. Timing will vary dependant on your oven so watch them carefully as they can burn quite quickly. 

Once out of the oven allow them to rest for about three minutes as they continue to crisp up.  Sprinkle with sea salt and sweet paprika or another topping of choice like Parmesan, Dukkah, chilli etc.  There is always enough for a couple of batches so try a couple of different flavours. Most people I have heard from find these little morsels of goodness very addictive but I have to be honest and say I am not a fan!

No, they do not taste like chips, no, they are not as good as a packet of Smiths Salt & Vinegar and quite frankly it was laborious to make a handful of chips that were gone in three seconds.  Particularly as I had to wash them about four times to get rid of the aphids!

So give it a try and see what you think, as I said many, many people enjoy these crispy little things, but me, I say - Kale No!

Making Al Fresco Dining More Pallet-table.

A new restaurant has opened up in the suburb adjacent to us.  A friend and I a couple of months ago went there to have lunch to celebrate her birthday and I was really taken by the use of recycled timber and retro furniture in their decor.  I mentioned it to Benny and so one Sunday after we had had an exhausting 4km walk around the lake at the dog park we decided to go and check it out as a family and have a much needed beverage.

The first thing we noticed were the tables, which were higher than normal and constructed of three transport pallets put together to form two supporting sides and the top.  Extra boards were added to the top to fill in the gaps and the whole thing was sanded til smooth.  Four holes had been drilled strategically at each place setting presumably to hold a frosty beverage.  Nicknamed “beer holes” they were the perfect size for a stubby or can and positioned directly over a crossmember so that they were supported about ten centimetres under the hole in the table. Genius!

The seating was a mishmash of up cycled beer kegs, a collection of new “retro industrial” metal stools, a few dilapidated and dated couches and a couple of old lawn chairs.  Coffee tables were also made from pallets on casters and there were a number of other quirky tables scattered in various corners.  The front counter and bar were decorated with spliced together recycled timber (presumably also from pallets), mirror and iron sheet.  The overall impression was of outback verandah come shearing shed, it was warm and inviting as well as (to me) inspirational!

Rewind several weeks and after my first visit to Jimeez I had casually asked if Benny had any pallets laying around work that he could bring home for me for a project I wanted to make.  As the resort he manages is undergoing a major refurbishment the place is teaming with tradies, skips full of rubbish, tiles, timber and concrete dust.  Surely there were pallets in there somewhere.  I was rewarded a couple of weeks later with about eight of them in various states of repair.  The three best were selected to be the guinea pigs that would form the first of what I hoped to be three new outdoor tables.

A couple of weekends ago, Benny took the job on, with a little help from our neighbourhood five year old helper Tom.  He secured the legs to the top, removed odd boards, stabilised the base and then filled in the top with some scrap boards scavenged from the pallets that were in disrepair.  

This weekend it was my turn to do the finish off  so I donned my proper personal protective gear armed with not one, but three different sanders (doesn't everyone have three of everything in their shed?) I began the laborious task of sanding the rough and ready boards into a smoother version that wouldn't leave all of our guests with splinters each time they propped up the table to join us for a drink.  

Feeling a little like Tim the Tool-Man road testing a variety of sanding implements on a TV show, I began my task.  First I tried sanding with the belt sander which certainly ripped into it the fastest but not long after I had started the third board it slowly wound down and called it quits never to start again.  Next I tried The Renovator with a finishing sander attachment, which was slow but very precise.  I swapped over to the palm sander which was the best by far, grinding off most of the roughness whilst leaving a numbing, pulsating feeling all down my hand.  

This I then followed up with the finishing sander, which saw the table top smooth and ready for a coat of oil.  In homage to Jamie Oliver we used what was handy and we had prolific amount of and that was, yes you guessed it,  generous slugs of olive oil.  During the previous week Benny had yet another trip to Bunnings for a hole saw big enough to create the holes for the stubbies to sit in and so the four holes were drilled to house the first beverages.

Luckily we had four stools that we had claimed instead of allowing them to be taken to the dump and we were ready for our first meal outdoors at a “proper” table.  The table was gingerly loaded into the back of the ute and transported slowly up to the back yard from the shed.  The neighbourhood children were quick to come and have a look at the finished project that they had helped us begin the week before.  Many marshmallows were roasted by the kids in celebration of a job well done and many beers and wines consumed (only by the adults of course).  Oh and I think we had dinner????

BEE B&B

Following on from my last post you may recall that our veggie garden is suffering from a distinct lack of pollinators.  I know the weather has been quite cold and frankly apart from the egg plants there are No flowers in our garden at all to attract them.  So off I went to research and found online a very basic design for a Bee Hotel which quickly morphed into a more elaborate and quirky design for my Bee B&B as I like to call it.

I went straight to Bunnings which as it turns out was a silly mistake as after I came home I discovered all of what I had bought wasn't going to do at all.  I searched around the workshop, the wood pile and the property and found all I needed to make a totally recycled bee environment.

The main part of the house is a drawer out of what once was Lawson’s baby change table which in a fit of madness Brent cut up for fire wood!!!! ARGH!  The table top was saved and has since become the timber frame for a piece of art we bought at the Maleny artists co-op  and takes pride of place on the deck.  The drawers were set aside until they were needed and now I had the perfect project for one of them.  The roof was made from offcuts of timber and the inner will be filled with logs, offcuts and some cut up bamboo stakes.   

Now it seems native bees and other pollinators like about a 6mm diameter hole to crawl inside of and set up home, so with some help from Benny to set up the drill press for me, I went about drilling many, many holes in one end of the wooden sections.  

Now that house and innards were ready to go it was time to attach it to the dead tree stump in the veggie garden.  I asked Benny to saw off a little more of the stump to create a level pad to attach it to.  He cleverly suggested mounting it in such a way that if it ever had to be moved I wouldn't have to remove the logs to do so, by attaching a plank to the tree, and then attaching the house to the plank from the underside.  Therefore the removal of four screws from the base will allow the house to be removed in tact.

I enlisted the help of Lawson to fill the Hotel with the logs and bamboo.  He commented that his time playing tetris had come in handy for just this sort of occasion!  The final piece is something really cute and quirky, with a Motel Vacancy sign out front to let all passing bees and other pollinators know that there is a room with their name on it with a beautiful garden view especially of the flowering eggplant.

Now excuse me while I run off and make the beds in anticipation of the first arrival of our winged guests.

A Worm Called Neeble.

We have a real opportunity now that we have consolidated into one home, to do more of the sustainable stuff that I have been wanting to do.  I am always conscious of the waste that we produce, be it the left over half a sandwich from our son’s school lunch, or the paper bag the mushrooms came home in, all the egg shells that we have each day and tea bags, left over rice and pasta and the list goes on and on and on.  When we were living in two homes I would sometimes make the decision to take the waste from the resort and bring it to the chooks or compost heap at the house, but so often my trip was not that straight forward resulting in watermelon skins souring in the heat of my car while I attend a meeting or banana skins permeating every nook and cranny of the upholstery with their pungent smell, YUK!

Containers for the Worm Food and Chook Food.

So now I have two plastic containers surreptitiously placed on the kitchen bench, labeled for either worms/compost or chicken feed.  This is working quite well too now that we have half a dozen chookies they are always up for a treat as they graze in the backyard of an afternoon, and the worm farm is teaming with slithery little fertiliser factory workers who previously I couldn't keep enough food up to.

A couple of Christmases ago I ask for a worm farm as a present and happily set it up in a shady corner of the veggie garden.  I then had to go and buy worms, which was quite expensive I might add, but I hadn't realised that just any type of worms wouldn't do the trick, you had to have specific composting worms.  I named the worms Neeble, after the talking variety on Men In Black the movie, so each day when I talk to them I picture them lazing back on a carrot top smoking, drinking coffee and talking back to me.  

The Neebles from the Men in Black Movie.

So each day I go and feed my Neebles with the left over peelings, scraps, paper, tea bags and egg shells, being careful not to give them citrus and onion skins as apparently they aren't good for them.  The worm pee is harvested constantly as the tap is left open and an old ice cream container collects the nutrient rich liquid which I mix 1:10 with water and spray on the plants every so often to give them a kick along.  Every couple of weeks I flush the system with five litres of water to help keep the environment moist and reduce ants setting up home in there.  The residual liquid is also watered down and given to the plants.  

This weekend I noticed that the old worm blanket (one of the many components of the worm farm that I thought I had to buy) was disintegrating and so I googled what else could be used to cover them, to avoid having to go back to Bunnings and spend more money.  Thankfully I know a Resort GM who has a box of damaged bath mats and face washers that are 100% cotton lurking in a special corner of his Man Cave, so I asked to steal a couple to make a nice new blankie for my Neebles.

This is the result and now they are snug as a bug in a rug, literally!

A cozy worm blanket made from two bathmats.

Worm farming is easy to do and knowing that most families create way too much waste it is an efficient method of reducing and reusing what would have gone into the bin and become landfill.  My sister in Sydney set up hers very cheaply using a couple of broccoli boxes, wads of wet newspaper and poking a drainage hole close to the bottom which can be fitted with a tap fitting from the hardware store, so there is really no need to go to a lot of expense to get free fertiliser for ever.  So give it a go!

THE UNINVITED GUEST - by Julia Schafer

It was wedding season at the Lodge, the staff all looked their best.

The Head Waiter is in a tie, his staff in neat black vest.

The room was strewn with flower wreaths, adorned with festive lights,

and as we watched the bride approach, she was a gorgeous sight,

But little did she know what had happened over night…

The day before a wedding is frantic to behold.

The staff run round like headless chooks and do just as they're told.

Chef is in the kitchen, chopping, poaching chicken breast.

To make the couple’s marriage feast better than his best.

In hopes that the important guests will all be most impressed.

The Lodge is decorated, the drinks on ice are cold,

And here arrives the wedding cake, a wonder to behold.

A triple layered fruit cake, iced in frosty white

To be adorned with fresh blooms in tomorrows morning light

So leave it on the bench top, it will be fine over night.

The morning of the wedding, I check details in the room

I walk around the table inspecting knife and fork and spoon

I go to move the wedding cake to a table for the cutting

A glance, a groan, a cry escapes, a piece of cake is missing!

And don't tell me that’s a bottom print where a possum has been sitting! 

Calls are made the staff are rallied, how can we fix the cake?

There is no time to start again, to mix and chop and bake

The wedding will be on soon, in just a few small hours

The bride’s mother soon to bring the big bouquet of flowers

She wont be happy about this mess, as the fault at best is ours.

A call to a cake decorator, she says she’ll have a go

Bring it forthwith and she will do her best to save the show

She cuts out the chewed portion and fills it with some icing

She smooths out the big “bum” print and then repairs the piping

I gingerly transport it back with slow and steady driving.

The wedding goes without a hitch, a romantic celebration.

And after vows and rings are swapped, a feast and a libation.

We toast the gorgeous bride, and her very handsome male.

I need to make confession to the woman in the veil.

I steal myself, approach the group and tell them all the tale.

They roar with laughter, toast us all and tell us not to worry.

They wont be rushing off to tell Sixty Minutes in a hurry.

Such a memorable wedding, and a wonderful country stay

The birds, the bush, the possums in the rafters all at play 

and what a tale that they will tell their future kids one day!

o o o

(The other moral of this story goes on for quite a bit

When eating dinner in the Lodge be careful where you sit

When possums play above your head and you have had a tipple

When you’ve ordered minestrone, with an olive oil drizzle

Diners please beware, don't ever drink the soup with ripples!)

TWO BECOME ONE

For the last four years we have operated from two different homes, one an apartment at the beachside resort that Benny manages and the other our Funny Farm in the hinterland.  The First World Problems that this duplicity caused were many, some of which I recounted in past blogs.  But as of last week, two homes merged into one as we gave up our beachfront dwelling opting to consolidate and live full time at the house.  This means for me that I have no commute to work, a short drive to deliver our son to school and no more Mrs Pack Mule every Monday and Friday dragging bags of clothing and eskys full of food foreword and back.  

Packing should have been my profession as I have had to do it so many times I have it down to a fine art.  Thank goodness it was a fully furnished unit as I still managed to fill twenty five packing boxes with the accumulation of five years worth of clothing, books, food and gadgets and that included getting rid of the equivalent of six boxes worth to the Salvos and another half dozen to the dump.  It took me just shy of two days to move us out, including two trips in the Prado and another with the aid of my husband his ute and trailer. 

Two salt, two oil, two this, two that.

So we are home, which is awesome, but the weird thing about this move that hasn't been the case before is we moved into a home that was already fully set up and filled with our stuff!  So now what?  I have two of everything!  Two toasters, blenders, food processors, too much clothing to fit in the minuscule cupboard in our bedroom, two of pretty much everything in the baking department including all the ingredients and not enough space to fit it all in.  The fridge overflows, the pantry door is bulging out, and condiments…. don't talk to me about condiments!

I know I must unpack but where will it all go?  Our dinner set alone can now feed a group of twenty four people all off the same style plates (which by the way this dishwasher doesn't like accommodating).  But as is typical of any move, the one thing I was looking for to use to cook tomorrow nights dinner is nowhere to be found, still in the recesses of a nameless, label-less, hastily packed, bottom stacked box somewhere in the garage.

Pantry bulging at the seams.

But at least we are now in our own home sweet home.  I don't need to feed the dog too early and coerce the chickens into their run before they are ready.  Now they can put themselves to bed at their leisure.  We can enjoy a fire every night if we wish, and welcome neighbouring children over to roast marshmallows on sticks.  Lawson can sleep in on school holidays and I can work before or after normal work hours if I feel so inclined (which is rare just quietly). 

Fridge is finally full!

The person whose routine has been the most upset is of course Benny’s.  He now has the commute too and from work, it has thrown his gym workout into disarray, and he has to open and close the gate twice a day to prevent the chickens and dog escaping.  Hummmmm, four days it took him, and there, at the post office for me to collect was the remote controlled, automated gate opener I have been asking for, for oh, I don't know, about four years!

A SENSE FOR GARDENING

To think I spent years and years avoiding gardening.  In fact I think back in history  as I watched my Mother in the garden spending all those hours on her hands and knees, in the blazing sun, pulling weeds, digging, cultivating, and sore and sorry for herself at the end of the day and secretly thought she was a bit of a loon!  But now I get it!  I totally understand the passion of gardening, its become my solace, a place to spend five minutes a day just to chill, and a weekend’s adventure.  My garden fills me daily with contentment, a true gift to all my senses.

Baby beetroot plants.

The obvious sense that pervades is the calming sight of my garden.  Its location just outside the window of the place where I spend most of my week working in our business.  The view a palette of various green and yellow hues, calming, cool colours which seem to bring a sense of peace to my mood.  When I am at my most hectic and chance to glance out to glimpse a peewee swoop on an unsuspecting insect, a breeze ruffling the lettuce leaves, or a brand new mauve flower the promise of an eggplant to come somehow the frazzle becomes slightly less frazzling.

On certain days a waft of the heady scent of rosemary drifts in on a breeze while I am working.  My sense of smell is indulged as I walk through the garden.  When I venture out I run my hand over each herb in turn, scrunching the leaves and burying my nose in my palm to breathe in the fragrance of Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme (sing with me…), Oregano and Lemongrass.  When I dig, the fresh earth smells rich and dare I say “earthy”.  When my husband mows around the crop circles the grass smells fresh and makes me sneeze.

Climbing beans

I lift the lid on the worm farm and I hear the squirming of hundreds of slithering creatures squelching through the decaying fruit, veg and paper.  Birds chirping, Scruffy barking at birds chirping and me yelling at Scruffy to stop barking at birds chirping.  Sitting at my cute green table, nicknamed the “beer garden” by our neighbour, quiet overtakes me and peace reigns supreme.

The Beer Garden!

Hands in the earth, its cool and soft, the rough bark on the tree stump where my weather station sits catching and measuring rainfall, gauging the temperature and showing which way the wind is blowing. 

The Weather Station zip clipped to a tree stump.

A feast for the senses, a garden of joy, a place of peace, my happy place.  Don't live your life without planting a seed, watering it and watching it burst up through the soil, produce two leaves then four, a flower, a fruit, pick it, smell it and eat it.  Nothing like it.  Now I get it.

Nothing like planting something from seed and watching it sprout.