Second Week - Resist The Tiramisu, Resist the Chook Bucket

Hi all,

I’m well into the second week now and things are starting to even out for me. Last week was hard and a few times I felt quite woozy in the morning. I am starting to feel a lot better during the nights now and am sleeping better. Some mornings I have been waking with a bit of a headache, but it is not enough to slow me down. The empty feelings are a lot less now and I’m learning to expect the hungry feeling that inevitably comes at breakfast, lunch and dinner.

I started this project with a view to it being an exercise in gardening – planning, planting, digging, preserving crops, making sure that I have a balanced diet. When talking to people about my project it seems that all of these practical things are secondary. What is becoming increasingly apparent is that this is an exercise in will. It is about doing things even though I don’t have to. It is about not tasting when I’m making dinner for the family or pinching leftovers from the kid’s plates before they go in the chook bucket. It is about missing out on birthday cake. It is about sitting down with a cob of raw corn at a conference morning tea while everyone makes pigs of themselves on Tiramisu. My God, I think I’m developing a principle!

I am quite amazed at how little we can survive on. There is no doubt that I can live on the food that is available around the place with a bit of thought and work. This isn’t the hard bit at all. The trick is trying to become more flexible and abandoning the notion of replicating my old diet. To some it might be old news, but to me, accepting that salad is a realistic breakfast option is real change in how I view my life. 

Essentially what this project has done is shift my oral consumption away from being a recreational pastime or a source of comfort to something more practical. It sounds harsh, but food and drink for me has become less aesthetic and more an exercise in refuelling – certainly satisfying, if not strictly enjoyable. No doubt I’ll wax lyrical about this in future blogs. 


Speaking of blogging, the page views have reached the big 150 mark - well done team! I'm not sure but I think most of those were from me checking to see how many page views there have been. Tell your friends.


Thank you also to the Showing Rib field editors for picking up my spelling mistakes. Yes, English Teachers are allowed to have lame spelling skills.

But hey, so as not to bore you, here are some pics.

Some blurry Garlic hanging from our kitchen ceiling

Losing weight as you can see...., excuse the grotty feet.

Some bananas. I think I picked the ones on the right too early - they aren't ripening.

I've been coming up with some pretty funky menu items for the Inaugural Showing Ribs Compendium of Lofty Meadows Cuisine.

The Pigeon Pea, shelled and ready for boiling

Rooted Dahl

1 ½ cups of Pigeon Peas

Four or five Baby Beetroot

Four or five Baby Carrots

A handful of tomatoes
A couple of Cloves of Garlic

3 Spring onions

Curry Paste

Method
 Throw everything into a pot and cover with water until “comfortable”. Cook for an hour and then blend.

The Roots

The finished product

Aubergine Stack in Vinegared Tomatoes With a Side Serve of Steamed Asparagus.

The Corn, Squash, sliced Aubergine and Asparagus

A jar of preserved cherry tomatoes (Lightly boiled with red wine vinegar and yes, I admit it, brown sugar. These were made last year and had been in the cupboard)

1 Aubergine (avoid the terribly common “Eggplant”)

1 Cob of Corn

3 Baby Squash

2 Cloves of Garlic

As many asparagus spears as you can muster.

Vinegared Tomatoes

Method
Simmer the tomatoes, squash, corn and garlic for ten minutes. While that is happening, fry eggplant (after salting for 15 minutes and rinsing) and steam Asparagus for no more than 5 minutes. Layer the fried eggplant and sauce and place in oven for a further ten minutes. Arrange all fancy like on your plate and photograph. Enjoy!

Stacked Aubergine with Asparagus

Stay posted for some video entries coming your way soon. I’m just ironing out some capturing/editing/photogenicism issues at the moment.

Showing Rib

A Rough Night and a Few Recipes

I had a pretty rough night last night. Went to bed feeling very tired and had strange dreams and not a very restful sleep. I had a light but lingering headache throughout the night and a mild feeling of frustration and anxiety. I even had the headache in my dreams. Woke up numerous times to go to the toilet, each time feeling very empty and hollow. I remember looking longingly at the fridge but had a glass of water instead. I think that is plain old Hypoglycemia, low blood sugar (hunger in other words) that is making me feel woozy. It was hard to get up this morning but once I was out for a walk in the dawn I started feeling quite good. For some reason I seemed emotionally susceptible to the songs I was listening to on the ipod, it must have been a combination of the breaking dawn and a good play list. After exercises and stretching and a chicken omelette and lemon balm tea for breakfast I started feeling good. Still slight tension across shoulders and lingering wispy headache.

Here are some recipes from the Inaugural Showing Ribs Compendium of Lofty Meadows Cuisine.

Chicken Omelette Filling for two omelettes.

Ingredients

A leg of last night’s roast chicken

Three Marigold flowers

A couple of Spring Onions

About ten Cherry Tomatoes

Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme.

Two Silverbeet Leaves

A couple of Amaranth leaves

One clove of garlic

Method

The Ingredients

Fry Chicken, Garlic, Herbs, and Tomatoes for a while and then add leaves. Cook for a further minute then remove from the heat. Beat a couple of eggs in a bowl with a fork until homogenised and tip into an hot, oiled fry pan. Fry until not much liquid egg on top then flip. Place filling in one half and fold. Slide out of fry pan onto plate and add a sprig of parsley. Yum.

The Filling Mix The Omelette
Banana and Strawberry Surprise	Ingredients Bananas Strawberries Method Put in dehydrator for 48 hours. Eat. Surprise!

Here is a photo of some of today's harvest - Corn, Beetroot and Pigeon Pea. More on the Pigeon pea in later posts.

Remember to tell your friends and spread the word. 

Showing Rib

A Earnest Start

Well it has begun. The week before my birthday (the 14th) I had given up most of the food in the fridge and was eating predominantly from the garden. I was letting myself eat bought veges i.e. lettuce, avocados etc. This week however I'm down to what I can get from the garden alone. I was thoughtful enough to freeze some veges over the last few months so I have been supplementing food from the garden with frozen tomatoes (good for cooking with), frozen tatsoi, frozen beans. We also harvested all of the old beans that went to seed, shelled and froze them. See pic below for bagged up goodness.

Some bagged beans

I'm going to weigh myself each week during this project and so need a pair of accurate bathroom scales. We have been using a pair of "KRUPS" scales that we got from the "Treasure Island" section of the tip, made in the Republic of Ireland no less.

Irish Precision - KRUPS

 Now I know that the Irish are renound for their precision instrumentation but I think that "KRUPS" is actually a misspelling of another less than flattering word. They weren't very accurate and were hard to read and thats not to mention the red vinyl.So the inevitable change to some shop bought,  twenty first century, digital scales took place.

Sexy aren't they?

 According to them I am 110.5 kgs today, close to the heaviest as I have ever been.

WOOAAH there big fella!

I also purchased a small cheap video camera to strap to my hat so that I can record some action shots in the garden. In true small cheap video camera style it didn't work five minutes after I got it home....

I'll be posting regularly from here on so stay posted. Tell your friends. Spread the word.

Showing Rib