Holidays

Yay, we're on holidays.  For four whole weeks.  Which means I will have something to write about other than gardening.  Lucky huh.

This year we decided we'd start our holidays with a brief holiday in the Perth hills.  We hired a delightful little fibro and weatherboard cottage called Edenside, in the Bickley Valley.  Not too far from our old home (which we didn't go anywhere near for fear it would make us sad!!).  I suspect it was a group home originally. It was made up of four rooms and the bathroom and third bedroom were in the closed in verandah.  Edenside was comfortably fitted out and had everything we needed. Including a good supply of wood for the fire.  It sure was cold up there in the hills.  

 

I'm pretty sure at least one of my sisters will love the colour scheme in Edenside.  Apart from making the inside of the cottage so lovely, welcoming and comfortable, the owners have created lots of lovely places to sit an enjoy the sunshine.  We had a couple of gloriously sunny days and were able to spend time loafing on the front verandah with the paper and a cuppa.  From the back there were lovely views across the valley.

A perfect spot to enjoy a couple of glasses of wine, which we did, or a cuppa and pastries. In our case, it was hazelnut scrolls which we bought at The Little Home Bakery.

Don't they look just amazing!  The Little Home Bakery, for those of you who are lucky enough to live in Perth, can be found in (of all places) a factory unit in Morley.  It's a very unassuming place and it's fair to say that R was a tad suspicious about their claims to make sourdough when we first went in.  But, when he asked how old their starter was, they were happy to tell him that it's 15 years old.  They also talked about the different proofing and fermentation times they use for each of their styles of bread.  So, we walked away with scrolls and some pretty darned amazing bread!

One of the reasons we stayed at Edenside is that we planned to catch up with all our friends over lunch at La Fattoria, a ten-minute drive from the cottage.  La Fattoria offer a lunch they call Nonna's table.  The family hails from Sicily originally (three generations ago) and they're happy to invite you into their home (which is actually a lovely, decked area next door to their home) to share lunch.  There is a set menu (five courses) and they just bring you a range of dishes that are made from whatever is locally available and in season.  We've been wanting to try Nonna's table for years, so we were very excited to be able to do this and share the experience with our friends. 

On the menu was, for starters, a buckwheat, cheese stuffed pancake which was served with a really simply dressed rocket salad. Oh, I should just point out that I kept hoeing into the food before photographing it.  So, you'll see that lots of the dishes have already been attacked.  I'm not sure how interesting food photos are in any case. But here they are.  If you're not interested just skip past. 

  

Next came antipasto. On the platter were olives (Sicilian of course), roast capsicum, salt (for dipping), a range of cured meats (I suspect these were made inhouse), a seriously delicious cheese and....I can't remember that the "and" was, other than it was yum!

Next up was Pasta e Ceci. It was orecchiette with chickpeas, crumbled sausage, parsley oil and chillies and anchovy panagretto on the side (so you could add as much or as little as you liked).  And of course, extra parmesan.

I don't know about everyone else, but I was actually getting quite full by this stage of the proceedings.  But I managed to find a little more room for the main, which was amazing.  Main was Agrodolce Braised Chicken with cranberries and pinenuts.  This was served with lemon risotto cakes and winter pumpkin, fennel and cabbage salad dressed with toasted seeds and sage butter.  Oh, my goodness, that was one seriously good main.  They suggested placing the chicken, and a couple of spoons of the juices, on top of the rice cake.  The rice soaked up the juices and all of the flavours complemented each other perfectly.  This is the kind of food I love. Simple but packed full of flavour and texture. 

Dessert - Warm Sicilian Apple Budino with butterscotch sauce and pecan praline and whipped cream - was mercifully small.  I was just about done in by the time we got there.  It was also delightfully light and not at all rich. A perfect end to a perfect meal.

All up we got to spend a very pleasant few hours with our friends eating good food, drinking okay wine and chatting.  Just the way I like to spend an afternoon.

I've just remembered the "and".  They were anchovy and cauliflower patties. Light, fluffy and full of flavour! Yum.  Nonna's spring table includes lamb.  I wouldn't mind going back to try that!!

A Mixed Garden Bag

A lot of my blogs are about our garden and this one is no different.  If I've bored you with garden content, this is your queue to leave.  I guess we spend a lot of our spare time in our garden.  The rest of the week we're at work and who wants to hear about that.  No-one I suspect. I certainly don't want to even think about it when I'm not there, let alone write about it.

This year we had our first Yuzu fruit off our tree in its second year in.  Yay.    Yuzu is a citrus fruit that is grown predominantly in Japan, although it has its origins in China.  It is a very tasty and very juicy citrus.  And before you ask, it has a flavour all of its own. It is slightly sour like a lemon but that's about the only comparison I can make in relation to taste.  Like all citrus, I love the smell of a Yuzu.  

We picked three Yuzu which we figured was enough to be bothered juicing.  They're seriously juicy and even more pippy.  I've never seen so many pips come out of one piece of fruit.   The first two photos show the pips from one yuzu.

For comparison, these two photos show the pips from a lemon.

I think those Yuzu pips are going to annoy me loads when I attempt Yuzu marmalade next year.  Assuming we get enough Yuzus to make marmalade that is.

Two years ago, we planted a lot of tube stock native trees in our bottom pens.  They just sat there and did, well, not much at all really.  So, we were very excited when we went down to the pen for the first time in several months to find they'd all put on a huge amount of growth and several had grown up into small trees.  Even more excitingly, the Hakea had burst into flower.  Those flowers are so beautiful. I don't think anyone who sees a Hakea could say that Australian natives aren't very interesting or colourful.   The tree was loaded and the birds love it. Success!!

We also had quite a bit of success in our Summer veg patch this year.  After a four-legged creature, we suspect a rat, stripped every single capsicum from our plants, they went on to produce another crop. Phew.  We tried a variety called Candy Stripe. The fruit on the second crop was quite small but very tasty.  You can just see the stripes on this one.  The number of stripes varied from fruit to fruit. They look really pretty on the plant.  

The tomatoes were really late ripening this year, even though I planted them in plenty of time.  Which meant we ended up with loads of green tomatoes late in the season that didn't want to ripen.  That is to say, they would ripen off the vine but, unlike the earlier picked ones, they went a bit mushy.  

This was about the last time we picked any ripe ones from the bushes.  After this, we picked another full trug of green tomatoes.  I turned half of them into green tomato chutney. I don't know what I was expecting, but it tastes exactly the same as chutney made with ripe tomatoes.  I turned the rest into green tomato pickles using a recipe from a chef in Daylesford in the Barossa Valley.  We've not tasted those yet but I'm pretty sure we'll give them a try while we're on holidays.  

I perhaps should have moved from the natives in the bottom pen to the native garden but that's just not the way the photos fell. And sometimes moving the photos around in this blog is just too challenging for me.  So, there it is, natives, veg, natives.  

This is a native plant we got from the community native nursery in Busselton.  The community nurseries focus on plants that are local to the area the nursery is based in.  So, not really local to our area. But we are allegedly blessed with the type of soils that mean we can grow natives from anywhere in the State.  I'm not sure how true this is but tube stock natives are very affordable and we're always happy to give a new plant a try.  I can't remember what this plant is called but it is native to the coastal areas and a bit inland from Busselton.  We were really surprised to see it flower in its first season in the ground. It's a tall strappy plant that wavers around in the wind.  The flowers look magical. We were so pleased with our success that we've put two more in. 

This prostrate Grevillea has also flowered in its first season.  All the natives are bursting forth with flowers at the moment. It makes wandering around the garden a real delight.  

The next photo is of a winged wattle that has been in for three years now.  It sat and did nothing for the first two years. This year it put on a heap of growth and then burst out into flower.  It's about 40 cm and provides a real pop of cheerfulness in the winter gloom.

We love grevilleas and have planted them all over the place.  They're flowers are so beautiful.  I'm very allergic to grevilleas so I have to be careful not to let them touch my skin.  I get very itchy if they do but it's not enough to put me off planting more.  

 Well, that wasn't such a mixed bag after all. It was all about gardens really.    The good news (???) is that we're on holidays for the next four weeks and I might have something other than gardens to write about.  Cross you fingers but don't hold your breath. 

Acer Rubrum

When we first moved to our eight acres in this glorious part of the world, we planned to fill the paddock with an array of trees.  But we've scaled down our plans because our former neighbour is very pleased to have the use of the paddocks for his steers.  Steers and newly planted trees don't mix very well. So while the steers were in the bottom paddock, we decided to plant a maple tree in the top paddock.  But, before we got around to putting protecting it from the steers, there they were, munching happpily on the grass in the top paddock.  And on the plastic tag telling us what tree we had planted.  R managed to put the un-chewed bits together to get enough label to tell us it is an Acer Rubrum. 

So we decided to spend today putting up a fence.  I say we, but in reality R did most of the work. I held on to things and filled in holes and provided moral support mostly.  Some time ago, R purchased a post hole digger. It's fair to say this particular tool saved him hours of hard slog digging the holes by hand.  And what boy doesn't like a power tool right!

The digger in action

The first hole with the maple in the background

The digger does create quite a racket so we each have a set of "you can't possibly lose these" bright orange earmuffs to wear.   We put them down on the ground while we stopped for a drink and a piece of fruit.  Turns out, steers really like bright orange.  The biggest one started to make off with R's earmuffs.  No sooner had we retrieved the muffs, than he went for the bright yellow measuring tape. We could almost hear him muttering to himself, "Right, if I can't have the bright orange plastic thing, I'm having the yellow".  I had to chase him a bit to get that back.  There wasn't any more attractive plastic around so we settled back to our tea break.  But the steer had a very put out look on his face by then.  And he practically stomped over and started munching on the tree we were aiming to protect.  I swear, if he could have talked, he would have said, "So there, hmph!!".  I''m not sure how it happend, but I ended up with the steer slobbered ear muffs, which I discovered when I put them on. Yeuch.  Picture guilty steer sniggering in paddock. 

We finally got the pen finished.  Our neighbour tells us we still need to put some cross rails on to stop the steers pushing the fences over.  Thats a job for another day I think.  The posts for the pen were leftover from when the fence was replaced.  The rest is stuff we reclaimed from our local tip. It's amazing how much useful stuff one can find on a tip.  It makes us very happy to re-use and re-purpose stuff when we can.  So we're pleased with this small effort.

The steers did their best to look uninterested while we were putting the pen together.  But they stayed very nearby.  Obviously waiting to get hold of any plastic they could.  Cheeky!

The earmuff stealing steer.

That is our first effort of building some protection around a tree. We're just hoping it will hang in there until get to put the rails up.  

Pecan Pie

Someone in our household frequently complains that I never make him pecan pie.  So, because his lovely Mum and sister were coming to stay, I made him a pecan pie. On the promise that he would share it. Which he did, albeit a little bit grudgingly, along with some of his quince jelly at breakfast time. I know, I'm in shock too. 

I was a bit worried that I'd overcooked the pie when I took it out the oven.  I must have got it out in the nick of time as it was just right.  It had a nice, crispy pastry crust with a lovely, soft, luscious and (typical of a pecan pie) rich filling.

I'm pretty sure R enjoyed the pie.  He certainly didn't give his Mum and sister any of the leftovers to take home.  But I'm not completely convinced that the pie isn't just an excuse to have ice-cream.  Have a look at the pic and decide for yourself.

One Cold Morning

One Friday we went out bush to gather some wood for the fire.  There are designated areas we can collect wood off the ground from.  The good wood near the road tends to disappear quite quickly in the season. So we were well pleased to find a few good logs only 50 metres or so from the road.  We duly spent several hours sawing and carting the wood and managed to get a good ute load.  But there was still at least another ute load to be had.  So we decided to come back early the following morning, because we knew it would be weeks before we'd get another opportunity.    We had plans already for the Saturday so we got up very, very early.  Well, very early for us at least.  The sun was only just coming up, it was 3 degrees (almost) when we set off and 8 when we got home.  Just as well we like the cold.

The lovely thing about those cold, crisp mornings in our part of the world is that we get the most delightful mists.  Here are some pics of mists across the valley's we drove through on our way to the designated wood collection area.  Such a beautiful sight. We just had to stop and enjoy it for a while. 

We love going out bush to gather wood, or just for a picnic for that matter.  We work really hard not to disturb the bush around the fallen trees that we're gathering.  It is tricky dodging stuff you don't want to tread on when your arms are loaded up with wood and you're concentrating on staying upright.  So we generally find a path first.  One that doesn't have any small or new plants and no rocks or other trip hazards.  This visit was trickier than most because there were orchids emerging all over the place, plus a bunch of fungi and other small plants growing close to the ground. 

I don't know what this little red plant is but it is everywhere.  

There were dozens and dozens of orchids coming up.  They can be hard to see in amongst all the leaf litter, particularly when it's misty.  But we managed to weave a path around them.  We're going to head back out to this patch of bush in a month or so to see what kind they are,

There was plenty of fungi to avoid.  I think the round black balls are fungi at least.  Maybe the wee red plant in the earlier picture is too?

 

 

There were also lots of ant mounds to avoid.  Apart from not wanting to have a hoard of angry ants running up our legs, we really didn't want to damage all of their hard work in buidling such an interesting home for themselves. 

The cobwebs were definitely harder to see.  There is one in this photograph I promise. Once the mist lifted and the sun hit the dew drops on them they were easy to spot and magical to look at.  

This one is a little easier to see.

The bush is so beautiful.  We always make time to just sit and enjoy it when we're out getting wood.

This little beauty was growing on the edge of the track and very easy to spot. What a stunner.

We did have a wee laugh when we stopped to photograph this bush.  We'd been to see Bob Downe at the Regal earlier and the year. He'd done a skit about "you know you're getting old when.....you start admiring the bushes in people's garden".  Ha!! Guess we're getting old then. 

This is what happens

This is what happens when you say to one of your best friends, "Of course you can give it a go."  He mows the whole lawn for you.   

What a legend.  Now we just need to line up a bunch more jobs and find some equipment for him to try out.  Just kidding. 

Chestnuts

This year our chestnut trees were loaded.  We're not sure how, but we managed to beat the parrots to the nuts and bravely picked several kilos. I say bravely because we did have to glove up with our thickest leather gloves before venturing forth to pick the chestnuts.  If you've ever seen a chestnut on a tree - or on the ground in our case - you'll know they are covered in serious spikes.  Those spikes will penetrate the thickest gloves we have. It's fair to say, even gloved up, we picked those suckers up very, very carefully.

In Australia, the chestnuts fall to the ground once they're ripe. I'm kinda thankful we don't need to pick them from the tree. But picking them from the ground has its own challenges. R learnt very quickly that, if you wear thongs when you go chestnut picking, you'd better be really good at hopping when you lose one of them.  Either way, these nuts need careful handling to reap the reward of the smooth, brown kernel that is hidden inside.

This pic will give you an idea of how spiky the husk is.  Inside one husk there is generally at least two and sometimes four nuts.  Just as well. If each nut was wrapped in its own husk, I'm pretty sure we'd let the parrots have them.

I suspect most of you have heard the ever-popular tune, The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire).  It always conjures up images of snow, mulled wine and roaring fires for me.  Chestnut season in our part of the world is at the end of Summer, in March.  Definitely not the season for roaring fires.  Lucky for us we have a good friend who loves chestnuts.  She told us that she boils and peels them for eating.  So that's what we did.  Before boiling, a small cross needs to be cut in each nut.  Apart from the spiky husk, chestnuts have a tough outer brown skin and a softer inner skin.  That's a lot of skins that need to be removed and, unless you're roasting or boiling the chestnuts (or a parrot) you're not getting those nuts clean. 

The nuts need to be peeled while they're hot.  The skins harden up once they cool down.  Seriously, we'd never tried chestnuts before we embarked on picking these.  We had no idea how much danger of injury was involved.  Between us we managed to peel about half a kilo and of course, we munched on several along the way.  They're surprisingly sweet.  I guess we expected them to be savoury cos they're, well, nuts.  I bet they'd be amazing over an open fire.  Next year, if we get brave enough to pick again, we'll stick some in the freezer so we can experience them roasted.

These pictures show the processing of boiled nuts.

I did some research to see what I could do with the chestnuts that didn't involve adding chocolate. Not that I'm against chocolate mind. I quite like it. But I was hoping for something a little main meal.  And I found a recipe for pumpkin, sage and chestnut risotto.  Which is kind of handy.  Because we just picked a pumpkin from our veg patch. Guess that's tomorrow's tea sorted. 

Oh, and if any of you love chestnuts, you're more than welcome to share ours.  Just as long as you come and pick them yourselves.