Week 6 - Balancing "The Project" Against Everything Else (or Me Versus The Universe)

Hello all, 


I am proud to announce, in no small measure, with great gusto, and not to soon, my lovely partner Nessie has joined the Showing Rib Campaign! Now the gardens are producing for the two of us and doing it quite easily too I might add. Initially I was a little concerned, but as if to allay my apprehensions mother nature is laying on a real spread. 



The chooks, who seemed to be going off the lay there for a while, have bumped up their production again. We are lucky that the pumpkin vines, who have been in the ground for months now, are finally starting to produce. Also starting to boom is the Ceylon spinach - a hardy climbing perrenial that has thick juicy spinachy leaves - great in a fritatta. The tomato vines are producing plenty, though some are splitting from the wet and the pineapples I spoke of a few weeks ago are goldening and almost ripe on top of the fridge. The climbing beans, Purple Kings, that I planted to grow up the sunflowers are starting to bear fruit and the silks in the corn patch are just starting to brown. That will be a joyous day, when we sink the chompers into those golden cobs, Mmmmm.

Three of our Pineapple crop.

When I was first drafting up this post I was thinking of all the things that I must balance when carrying out this project. There was initially some trepidation from some quarters regarding my ability to sustain myself and whether I would have the energy levels and time to do the things I normally do.


Our family has always had a garden of some sort and so growing food for us all to eat was certainly nothing new. What was new was a certain buffoon getting a monopoly on the crops because of some hair brained, starvation based death wish. A number of times I heard something along the lines of "You are choosing to do this and we shouldn't be penalised. We should be allowed to eat the food too." and of course they're right. In some ways it seems even more unjust to be making the kids eat the rubbish food bought from the shops, filled with all of its delectable pollutants and moorish preservatives. I have overcome their indignant demands by making the most unappetising meals you care to imagine. Mashed green banana and beetroot fritters with tomatoes boiled in balsamic vinegar and Cayenne Pepper. Curried greyish brown slop is another of my favourites. The littluns aren't so keen for that kind of action.


There was a moment during the earlier stages of the project when Rubes asked me if she could have a piece of dried banana. Picture me, anxious about my future,  snatching them behind my back, and snarling, wild eyed and dog like, "Get your own banana from the shop, you're allowed, go on get." She took it well, after she had calmed down and the doctor had given her her shots. She understood my worry, and though I offered her some later she has had the grace to only nibble politely. Sorry Rubes. Ness was adamant that the bananas were for all and after some considered debate and a bit more snarling it was decided no one would go near them while I was watching. Since Ness has joined the fray there have been similar moments where that niggling fear of not having enough to eat has prompted us to question what the kids are eating.


As to the question of whether  I am handicapped by my current diet I can answer emphatically no. Despite the initial first month of withdrawals, cravings and light headedness, I can safely say that I actually have more energy now than when I was stuffing myself with processed goodies and their associated toxins. My mate Ben who has made a few comments now, hi Ben, asked me if I'm feeling weak now that I'm losing weight. I think he thought that my body would be eating away at my muscle to supply sustenance. Rest assured dear reader, I'm still at the very heavy end of a healthy weight range and there is still some fat to burn before I start wasting. I have been doing some weight bearing exercise to keep toned and yes Ben, I did manage a chin up the other day. Check out what appears to be some kind of kinky medieval torture set up that Ben claims could be a Lofty Meadows outdoor gym.

I wouldn't know where to start....

Colleagues at work have asked me how I manage balancing work in the garden with work at work. "Quite easily," I reply casually "excepting the hour and a half most afternoons spent weeding, digging planting and picking." Preparing the meals, with all of its washing and chopping takes time too. It is great to have some wonderful wwoofers weeding willingly  while we work during the day. Wwoofers are great and I recommend them to anyone with a garden and a spare bed. Though the labour involved with growing and preparing our sustenance doesn't get in the way of my employment too much it does conflict with other work around Lofty Meadows, for example: welding up some racks for timber, building a duck enclosure, filling in the ruts on the driveway, doing the washing, cleaning the house, sitting down and scratching myself. Somehow things seem to happen and everything gets done, eventually.


It has been wonderful the interest that the blog and the project in general has created. There have been many conversations about how I am going, perceived problems, my dwindling weight and the "rules" of what I am "allowed" to consume (these come particularly from my students). You can hear the echoes of those conversations in these blog posts.

Every time I post one of these weight photos I get embarrassed by the dirtiness of my feet. I've been working in the garden!

Put your email in the bar at the top of this post to receive instant updates of any posts I make.  


Thanks for reading,

Showing Rib

Week 5 - Nuking My Food: Just One Technological Quandry.

Technology is great. 


I was thinking the other day about the philosophical side of my project and wondering were it positions me in the increasingly technological world that I find myself existing in. I mean, food is cheap and plentiful in our society, why the hell would anyone make life difficult for themselves, especially at such a fundamental level as their day to day dietary habits? If I'm honest, it does seem like a bit of a backwards step, Amish style but without the cool outfits. When people hear about my project they do tend to assume that I have to be providing my own power, riding to school, carving my own computer out of balsa wood etc. They seem a little disappointed when they find out how soft I am, not going completely back to the stone age. "No, just the food," I say. One thing at a time.


But really, why not get rid of it all? Why stop at just feeding myself? Where should I draw the line?


I guess even the most dedicated computer nerd may ask at some point "Technology is great but does humanity need it in every instance? To solve every problem? Is it always necessary? 


Take as an example the  axe. A useful and obviously quite benign piece of technology, unless of course you chop yourself with it. OK, lets say a shovel. Gardening, burying things and scraping up dog poo  would be quite difficult without a shovel. It takes relatively low energy input to produce, is long lasting, useful and mostly harmless. A great piece of constructive technology.


You hear people slagging off at "the evils of technology" and the like, but what about the good stuff? For instance, if I had my leg chopped off in some kind of nasty combine harvester accident I would be begging to get someone to stick it back on, probably quite loudly. I would not be eschewing the surgeon's arsenal of useful medical tools and tricks in order to maintain some kind of luddite morality. Even a less gruesome scenario like seeing my dying aunty in Honolulu might justsify catching a plane, another very useful piece of tech.


I spoke at our highschool assembly the other day and pondered monoculture as a sustainable ideal. Most of the students expressed that it was a pretty high tech, high input kind of food production. We talked about low tech alternatives like hunting and gathering food from a jungle a la natural and how that would probably not support every hungry belly on the planet, not to mention the mosquitos. I spoke about one thing that inspires me - Permaculture: a thoughtful, sustainable and responsible form of food production. Google it if you're not familiar with it. It involves intelligently designing living and built systems to utilise natural flows of energy to create a synthetic ecosystem that is capable of producing food and other resources without massive energy inputs. Hows that for a definition? It was "invented" by an Australian no less; a guy named Bill Mollison. I confess I have no Permaculture training but really like the concept. It is kind of like the ultimate organic technology in my opinion.

My favourite piece of technology - my long handled fork.

I'm pondering all of this because my colleague Ted and I were talking about what sort of method would be the most appropriate to reheat last night's Dahl at school for lunch. To me, and perhaps it is just me, and Ted of course, it didn't seem entirely Kosher to be nuking my homegrown, organic, hand planted , hand picked, lovingly cooked tucker with 1400 Watts of microwave energy. Do I need my food heated up, pronto? Do I need it heated up at all? Am I just becoming some reactionary middle aged Hippie owned by his own extremely paranoid fears? I know that this is a debatable topic, the safety issue of microwave ovens, mobile phones and the like. Perhaps a small anecdote is in order.


I played in a band once with a fellow who had worked for a large telecommunications company and who had had, if you'll pardon the expression, "fried his tadpoles", if you know what I mean, by working in front of a transmitting microwave dish for too long. Granted the energy levels were far greater than the silver box on top of the fridge, but it still makes you cross your legs thinking about it doesn't it? As an aside he also hurt his back on the job, the poor fellow, and lives in pain, childless, but very well on the compensation money. Is his story an indication that all mightn't be apples down at techno city?


Ted and I came up with a simple solution for the Nuking Food Quandry: buy a small charcoal stove from China town, steal some charcoal from Mark's forging stash down in the hardcraft shed and fire it up at morning tea. It shouldn't smoke out the staffroom too much. We haven't yet tackled the issue of refrigeration technology which cooled the food down so much in the firstplace!


All of this talk to get to the crux of my position. 


In acute situations such as losing a leg in a combine harvester, seeing dying aunties or having to heat dahl up in 45 seconds, technology is really the business we want to be dealing in. Shucks, would you be reading this if I had to post it to you? Humans have a right to assisting technology in acute situations - it can be incredibly useful, interesting or lifesaving.

 But when technology becomes ingrained in our lives, I believe that chronic problems can develop. An obvious example of this that we all see is physical and mental health in the western world. Our patterns of work are such that they no longer entail physical labour, but rather stress inducing tasks. We now have to work, to get money, to spend on keeping fit at the gym  or trying to relax.

My second favourite piece of technology - my super skinny digital scales. Note the upside down nature of the picture - my computer being pesky again.

The day to day use of technology for convenience leads to chronic problems. I think there is a certain amount of subconsciously smug egoism in our use of technology. I think we all get a little thrill watching what our latest smartphone App can do, a secret "gosh" that the doctor can take our temperature by shining a light in our ear, a small swell of pride when seeing what my Cyclone "Farmer's Friend" can do in the garden compared to my old sharpened digging stick. 


To be controversial I will go as far as to say that the tacit assumption that simple technology constantly needs improving is fundamentally an extension of the "White Man's Burden" of the colonial period. Technology is essentially a "civilising" force, the bane of primitives the world over.


All of this gasbagging is of course moot. People will not put away their smartphones and take step back in time and make their lives harder for themselves, unless they are embarking on some kind of Individual Research Project. The real question is - Can technology solve the problems created by technology? Harvester technology induced injury fixed by medical technology? Probably. Can Bruno be hopeful that modern science can get his tadpoles swimming again? Maybe. Will modern science improve on the shovel? Hmmm.


Thanks for indulging me in this spiel. I promise I'll talk about corn next week,


Till then,

Showing Rib

Week 5 - Family Feud

I think that if it were not for two families of plants (and I mean that literally, in the taxonomic way) I would be dead by now, or at least lying wan on my bed feverishly dictating my last will and testament while Toby asks cheerfully, "When you're dead Dad, can I have your pocket knife?"


The way I see it there is a battle going on down in the peaceful front garden of Lofty Meadows, a family feud if you will, between two of the heavy weights of the vegetable world. The two families are vying for superiority, to see who can be the most delicious and sustaining to me. The first family has been extremely productive for me so far in this project but I am expecting the second to come through later as the plants we have in the ground start to mature and bear fruit. Lets have a look. 


If you have been following the blog, and bless you if you have you little darlings, you will have noticed many of the plants from the first family featured in the Inaugural Compendium of Lofty Meadows Cuisine. If you had a horticultural bent you would've noticed a theme of the family Solanacae.  For those of you with horticultural straights I mean Eggplant, Tomato, Potato, Chillis, and Capsicum. Quite a collection of useful plants wouldn't you agree? These have all been staples in my diet for the past five weeks and I can honestly say that there hasn't been a meal that hasn't contained tomato in some way. Where would I be without Solanacae?

These are Thai Pink Egg tomatoes just like the ones we are picking now. Beautiful colour.

There are a few others in the Solanacae family that haven't made it into the Compendium but which a large part of the population find irresistible: my old acquaintances Tobacco and Datura and the mysterious but romantic sounding Deadly Nightshade which I've never had anything to do with, thank goodness. Sounds like a lamp cover gone wrong. 


There is only one other family that I think could rival such a useful bunch of delicious foods and that is the Cucurbits. Check it out: Cucumber, Watermelon, Pumpkin, Loofah, Zucchini, Sqaush, Gourd, Rock melon and probably others that I can't think of at the moment or, God forbid, don't even know about. Still, a pretty formidable list eh? Cucumbers have been fairly high up there on the menu lately too. Someone told me once eating a cucumber actually takes more energy to digest than it provides. Can anyone verify this? Banana and Cucumber, eaten bite for bite makes a very quick, convenient and tasty breakfast. 


The other family that I will probably blabber on about later, in the cooler months, is the Brassicas. Their fifteen minutes will come another time though.


I weighed myself this morning and blow me down if I haven't punched through the magical three figure barrier. Punched through it like a skydiver does a bank of cloud I might add. Check it out! 

For some reason my picture has been turned upside down. Can you work out what weight I am?

Will it ever stop it's perilous downward descent, or should I hide my pocket knife now, while I have the strength? Maybe just stop eating cucumbers.


Thankyou all for for reading. I hope it is enjoyable and you keep coming back. 


"Showing Rib" is also available on your smartphone of course, in an exciting mobile format! 


Please comment, or I may have to start saying something controversial to stir up some conversation.


Toodles till then,

Showing Rib

Week 4 - A Peek at Pineapples

This little post is to show one of the slowest growing foods here at Lofty Meadows - The Pineapple. For such an exotic fruit, they are very easy to grow, if you are patient. From planting to fruit takes no less than two years. A long time yes, but like a good friendship, they are very low maintenance.

After cutting, we keep the tops of any Pineapples that we buy from the shop. Sometimes, if we are driving out to the throbbing metropolis that is Dayboro we pass a pineapple farm which has an honesty box out the front next to a big crate of Pineapples. Most of the day-trippers wouldn't want to soil the boot of the Mercedes or Audi with pineapple fronds and so there is often a large pile of tops there for the taking.

A juvenile Pineapple

I feel that many gardeners like to propagate the view that there is a certain art or perhaps science to growing plants, and pineapples are no exception. Some people say that you should cut off a certain amount of the pineapple with the top and then let it dry for a certain number of days before planting in a certain type of soil. Perhaps we're lucky, but we just stick em in the ground as is, where ever there is space. Behold, the field of Golden pineapples!

Well, almost golden

"Hmmm..." I hear you mathematical types wondering out there.

"Yes, you have a query?" I ask, you obviously have something on your mind.

"Dave, if you get one pineapple from one top, and then another pineapple from that one's top, then it stands to reason that there is a finite number of pineapples in the world.

"Well that is a reasonable assumption I suppose but....."

"When the Big G first turned on the lights, separated water from earth, and came up with the Pineapple, she only made so many, to replicate one for one. A simple cloning really...." you go on, becoming more animated.

"Yes it is cloning I suppose, they don't set flower. They're a bromeliad you know but I still think tha...."

"......there is set number of Pineapples like so many imaginary towers metaphorically balanced one on top of the other, sprouting upwards in ever tottering poles." you go on indulging in increasingly extravagant poetic imagery

"Er..."

"But wait!"

And I do wait, agape. A sudden wave of what can only be described as blind terror has overcome you. Your logic is relentlessly unravelling your very being.

"If there are a set number of Pineapples in the world and not everyone is setting such a sterling example at pineapple breeding as yourself, then the Pineapples are rapidly approaching extinction! Total annihilation! Maybe that's what 2012 is about!"As you splutter and turn blue I begin resuscitation.

The final product

But, dear reader, please fear not. The tops actually get shoots coming out of the sides too. Side shoots, I call them, although I think the pineapple masters have a fancy name for them. It turns out that these side shoots, when separated from the mother plant and planted actually fruit in just eighteen months.

Sorry about stretching an otherwise innocuous subject into a B grade melodrama. It is a weakness of mine I confess.

Thanks for reading and have a go at growing pineapples. It's easy.

Till then show some rib and do all those social media things that people do. I'd love to hit 10,000 page-views. That would be an inflated ego. (click on label at the right hand side for a previous post)

Showing Rib

Week 4 - Going Bananas and Feeling Corny, Not Cheesy

This week I have been going bananas – quite literally. Green ones, yellow ones, boiled, fried, raw and dried. You may remember from a post or two ago the bunch of bananas I picked too early and which, as a consequence, weren’t ripening. Nessie was beginning to give me sideways glances as the whole bunch stubbornly refused to yellow. But, Hoorah! All is not lost! I have found out that these are perfectly edible, giving me an easy out from the unforgivable crime of wasting a whole bunch of otherwise perfectly good bananas, while also giving me a large source of starchy carbohydrate. 

The Raw Material

Potential "fries"

Behold, the Deep Fryer.

You boil them, smash them up with a splash of olive oil and they taste like Mum's homestyle mash - a little lumpy. Boil them and then roast them with a bit of extra virgin and it's just like Sunday roast any day of the week - without the lamb. You fry them like chips and they’re practically indistinguishable from the fries you get at MacDonald’s, excepting of course the price, shape, packaging, texture and perhaps the taste. As a result of this versatility my freezer is now full of the humble,boiled, frozen, green banana.

Whoops!

Number 42, your chips are ready

The boiled green Lady Fingers ready for peeling

Here are a few bananas which did ripen, eventually, about to be put into my Christmas present - the dehydrator. Thanks Mum!

Another breakthrough came this week with the manufacture of some corn flour. Well, more corn meal I guess you'd call it. (By the way, have you ever looked at the ingredients on a packet of corn flour? Go to your cupboard and check it out. Weird eh?) 


The "breakthrough" started with some extremely manky cobs of corn I scavenged from the school garden beds after we returned to them post Christmas holiday break. 


Insert Defensive Disclaimer Here: Yes I know its not strictly food from Lofty Meadows but I reckon it is allowed seeing as how I helped plant all of the crops there too, even if I was being paid to help the kids do it, it still passes the "Did I grow it?" test. So there.


Rather than look at these old, brown, dried out,  and frankly quite useless cobs of corn as being merely chook food, I was determined to see them as Dave food. But how? I happened to be cooking "Taco Mix" (beans, tomato, spring onions mashed with enough cayenne pepper to bring a tear to a Mexican's donkey) for dinner so I thought - "How bout some corn flat bread senor? Come on Hombre, let's mill some flour."

The Raw Material

Young Tobes expending some valuable kilojoules for me on Nessie's Vintage Husqvarna  mincer (Made in Sweden!)

Watch the goodness flow......

The course meal out of the mincer

After about half an hour in the mortar and pestle, with cramped elbows all round we finally achieve our goal - A cup of corn meal. It smelt delicious by the way.

A fuzzy picture of the "Nacho Mix"

The "corn flat breads", note that that title is now in inverted commas, were not as successful as I had first envisioned. There must be very little glutenous substance in the corn, at least in the sweet corn that I used, to bind the "bread" together. Ness suggested whacking an egg in there; always a safe option when looking for cohesion. The result were lumpy little, grainy textured pikelets. 


They were delicious of course, but then again that is one of the upsides to being constantly hungry.


The rain over the past couple of weeks has been both a blessing and a curse. This is the case with many things in this world I suppose. The rain of course is essential out here at Highvale, God's own nature strip, not only for the growth of the garden, but also because we are on tank water exclusively. 


Putting drinking water on vegetables is hard to swallow, especially when you have to buy it in lean, dry times. And so, I hear you exclaim: "Get a dam you eegit!"


Thank you for your input. We have a dam, which is actually more of a pond, which for most of the time is actually more of a depression with some anxious looking lilies at the bottom of it. For those of you not in south east Queensland at the moment, it has been really wet of late, and though our dam was full to overflowing a week ago it is back down to half way level now. 


I feel I have to confess at this juncture that this inability of our dam to hold water is from some home grown Wwoofer powered excavating we did to enlarge the it. Apparently dams have a clay seal in them that when ruptured can tend to leak like the proverbial unhousetrained puppy. This leaves us no water to pump out for the gardens. So you can see the upshot is that the rain is great for us in two ways - it fills the tanks so that we don't have to buy water, and it wets the gardens so we don't have to irrigate. 


The type of consistent rain that we have had in the last two weeks can be detrimental to the garden though. Many plants don't like wet feet. Some of the smaller carrots have been rotting. The Zucchini vines are completely cactus and the squash plants among the corn are looking a bit sodden. I thought I heard one ask me for a trip to the bahamas the other day, you know, for a spot of sun bathing to burn off some of the fungus - a bit like an Englishman I suppose. The tomato flowers probably haven't set to fruit as well as they could have and to cap it off, I fell on my fundament negotiating a flooded, slippery and quite frankly treacherous path. At least the lilies look relieved for the time being and our new Muscovy ducks are looking very pleased. It's nice weather for ducks. I'll have a picture of them next week, once they've stopped looking so gosh dang cute


I'm loosing weight like a jellyfish in a sauna. See....

From Mama Cass to Karen Carpenter in three short weeks

I dreamt of cheese the other night. It was melted. There was crispy toasted bread under it with some kind of tomatoey stuff looking red in there. Oh Cheeses.... cripes. 


I have heard that some other people around are doing an IRP (See first Showing Rib post). What project are you going to do? Please comment


Until then, spread the word. Link me. Like me. Show some rib. 

Showing Rib

Week 3 - Get Thee Behind Me Satan

I have tried dieting before.  It seems when I try to control my food intake and other nefarious vices I inevitably fail through lack of will power. Sound familiar to anyone? I seem to fail slowly though, through Salami tactics, to quote Sir Humphrey.  You don’t eat a stick of salami in one go like a banana, you eat it slowly over weeks, bit by bit. That's how my willpower is usually eroded. It often goes like this:

The little demon usually kicks back on my left shoulder casually drawling something like “One little bowl of ice cream here, it won’t matter; one cup of coffee there, just one, to make you sparky; you can have a glass of wine, to be social; sure you should tear off a big night on the town for your friend’s birthday; go on, people will be impressed with how many profiteroles you can eat in one sitting...  etc. etc.” and the next thing I know, slice by tasty slice, I’m back to where I started, often in worse shape than when I began.

This project gives me one solid rule to go by. It’s given my willpower an iron rod up and down the spine. One simple question that puts Satan behind me and stops me from even going to the fridge for the Pepperoni: Did I grow it? 

Oh, by the way, we got a puppy. His name is Martin. He's a Sausage dog and no, I'm not going to try to eat him.

Tobes and Martin

Some Sunflowers drying

Yet again a few pages drawn from the ever thickening Inaugural Showing Ribs Compendium of Lofty Meadows Cuisine.

Lofty Rostis

The mix of green, not green and egg shaped

Ingredients 

A few baby carrots

A few baby Potatoes

A few babies (just joking)

A leaf or two of Silverbeet

A leaf of Comfrey

Some spring onions

A Clove or two of Garlic

A sprig of Rosemary 

Two eggs

Method

If it is green, chop it finely

If its not, grate it (Except the eggs)

If it is egg shaped crack it over the top of the green and not green things and stir with a fork. Pour into fritter sized lumps in an oily frypan and flip when they start smelling crispy and tasty. 

The crispy and tasty Lofty Rostis

Nessie’s Special Stuffed Capsicum with Steamed and Roast Vegetable Salad on the Side

The delicious raw ingredients

Ingredients

A capsicum

A handful of baby Potatoes

A handful of baby Carrots

Two spring onions

A cob of corn

2 Squash

3 Asparagus spears

A handful and a half of Tomatoes

3 green Bananas

Two eggs

Some Basil

Some Vietnamese mint

Method

Boil the green bananas for at least half an hour in their skins. Drain peel and mash.

Halve baby carrots and Potatoes and put in baking dish with oil salt paprika, pepper, spring onion whites and a couple of tomatoes. Roast them. These are the roast part of the salad. Steam asparagus (that’s the steamed part). Separate the eggs and whisk the whites until light and fluffy. Stuff the halved capsicum with a mix of mashed boiled green banana, herbs, tomato, squash, corn, the rest of the spring onion and whisked egg. 

The delicious final product - Thanks Ness!

A Rather Flowery Salad

A refreshing breakfast

Ingredients

Some Rose, Calendula and marigold flowers

A spring onion

A cucumber

A handful of tomatoes

Some young Amaranth leaves

Some Basil

Some Lettuce leaves

 Method

Pick flower petals into bowl. Chop and combine rest of ingredients as you like them. Dress with oil and balsamic, salt and pepper, also as you please.

Thanks for reading and taking an interest. Write at you next week.

 Showing Rib