I love my soda bread. A loaf would disappear at dinner. Any left overs would be eaten, by me, with honey. There was a bucket of honey in the office/study at Wallendbeen. When I say bucket, I mean an actually bucket. There was a local guy who would come out and put his bees on your property for a couple of months. In return for which you would get a bucket full of your own honey. Yummy!
Anyway, returning to bbqs. I said I haven’t tried much in the way of new or typically Aussie foods. Maybe that’s not quite right. I have tried a kangaroo steak. It was delicious. Nicest stake I’ve ever had. Very lean, absolutely no fat. Simply falling apart. A little bit gamey but not too much so. Completely melt in the mouth yummy!
Since I’ve decided this is a foody entry, I’ll slip out into the veggie garden and the orchard… starting with the fig tree. It’s a really old tree, in full fruit shortly after I arrived. Very full fruit, I was picking a mixing bowl full of fresh figs every day. There were more than anyone knew what to do with. I ended up trying a multitude of figgy recipes from syrup baked figs, which were incredible with ice cream; to fig jam, which was my biggest success. My fig jam was beautiful. It worked perfectly. So good was it that the full batch had been eaten long before I left Wallendbeen but unfortunately all the figs were long gone too.
About the same time, the veggie garden was throwing out equal quantities of zucchini (courgettes) and cucumbers. More than anyone knew what to do with. Apparently though you can’t gift these as well as you can figs so the chickens got a lot of them, but not before abundances of grilled zucchini, stuffed marrow and cold cucumber and tomato soup were served with dinner. From that you may realise there was then an abundance of tomatoes, and the veggie garden became my little pet project. I would go pick all the ripe fruit and veg every morning. I even tried making sun-dried tomatoes with the extras. It probably would have worked but the weather was cooling off a bit, so that was one failed experiment. Never mind.
What else did I have in my little garden? I planted rows of broccoli, leeks, broad beans and peas. Don’t think the peas will make it, particularly with no one looking after them. They went in a bit late and only a couple had poked their heads out by the time I left. Everything else was flourishing though. Unfortunately I won’t be there to eat them but they were looking brilliant. I even created my own bird netting to protect my little seedlings!
Then there were the fruit trees. They had two fully fruiting pomegranate trees, heavy with fruit and they never even ate any. Okay so pomegranates take a bit of time to eat but they are definitely worth it. But no one there bothered. Pomegranate trees were for ornamental purposes only apparently. I bothered and they were messy and delicious, though I never worked out how to tell when they were actually ripe.
Then there were the apple trees, pear trees, plum trees and peach trees that weren’t in fruit when I was there. The crab apple tree was though. This was my second preserve attempt. It failed. I attempted to make crab apple jelly but somehow managed to set it almost rock solid. It was delicious when you actually managed to warm it enough to spread it, which was very difficult.
There was also a persimmons tree. I haven’t managed to work out exactly what a persimmon is. It’s bright orange, a soft fruit, has a smooth skin, slightly bigger than an apple, roundish with a slightly pointed end, texture quite like a mango, and I’ve never seen one before. The taste was nice but the texture was too slimy for my liking. A new discovery for me though.
But yeah, FOOD! And to finish off… Milo!!!! It’s not hot chocolate and it’s not chocolate milkshake, but you can treat it like either. It’s a chocolate flavour malt powder or something like that and it’s yummy!
No comments:
Post a Comment