March 2023 – MakeCookGrow.com

A Beach Holiday

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I know the calendar says it is autumn, but temperatures here are still in the mid 30°Cs ( 90Fs) so we headed down south to a beach cottage at Prevelly, on the coast from Margaret River. It took just over three hours to arrive in Margaret River where we stopped for lunch, some magazines and a few groceries. Then on to the beach house.

Nice surprise nearby and we were welcome to eat them!

Unpacked then set off to look at the beaches. Wonderful. Then later I walked around the local area. We’d enjoyed a generous sized lunch so settled for some soup and chocolate. Not the perfect dinner but we’re on holidays!

Next morning we went down to Gnarlabup Beach. There’s such a lovely, calm little beach there and I loved being in the water. There’s also a cafe, The White Elephant, with amazing views and good coffee. Nice way to start the day.

To Margaret River to pick up a few things before heading to Augusta. Despite a long, hot summer the gorgeous scenery is green and lush. Farms, vineyards and forests. Beautiful. To Augusta, on the coast. When I was about twelve, we visited Augusta as part of a holiday visiting and staying at various beaches along the coast. My Father hired a rowing boat and we set off in the estuary, exploring the beaches. I think he had planned to do some fishing, but the weather changed suddenly and it was very windy and choppy. Dad was rowing as fast as he could, but things were a bit scary for a while! We finally arrived at the shore wet and cold and not keen on doing it again.

Monument commemorating the arrival of the first English settlers to the region, on the Emily Taylor. 02/05/1830

This is the Augusta Boat Harbour, servicing the fishing, tourist and charter boat industries. The whale watching boats depart from here.

It was windy in Augusta, today, too, but as we sat at the hotel looking over the Blackwood River over to the southern ocean, eating lunch, we were amazed at how beautiful the view was in every direction. We were in a beach town, overlooking water so it only seemed right to share an entree of chili prawns on noodles, followed by an occi (octopus) Greek salad and a serve of calamari. Great food, great view and we really enjoyed it.

The food was very good and very generous serves.

After a drive around Augusta we set off for Hamlin Bay, one of the gorgeous beaches along the coast. There’s nothing between here and Antarctica.

Driving through the winding karri forest roads back to Prevelly was very beautiful too.

The beach at the end of our street. Pristine and cool on a hot evening.

We visited an old favourite, St John The Theologian, built by a West Australian soldier, Geoff Edwards (more information here). Edwards had been evacuated from Crete during WW2. This beautiful church is his remarkable monument honouring the Cretans and the Monks of the Holy Monastery of Preveli who saved him and so many other Allied Troops.

Glowing icons watching over the visitors. A peaceful place in a beautiful setting.

The garden at a vineyard. So many of the regions vineyards, breweries and distilleries have remarkable gardens, featuring sculptures, salvaged historical artifacts and water features.

We rented a small rammed earth cottage in Prevelly. It was close to the beach and in a quiet area. I could go to sleep listening to the waves crashing on the beach.

We went for walks, read, ate local seafood and went sight seeing. It was a lovely break.

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Gardening on a Small Plot

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garden things

Autumn has arrived so I’ve added bentonite and water crystals and new soil to all the pots and most of the garden beds. We live near the coast and our soil is grey beach sand. It is not plant friendly! Unfortunately, the dreaded chili thrip has reappeared so I’ll have to spray the roses, something I’ve avoided but finally resorted to doing to prevent the roses from dying.

One of the problems with chili thrip is everyone with roses in the neighbourhood need to treat them to prevent further outbreaks. I have friends who have given up on eliminating chili thrip and have taken out their roses. I want to avoid that as I really like cut roses in the house! Some of my bushes are very old, too.

In other gardening news, an end of season roundup.

LEMONS

Two weeks ago I wrote about bringing unripe lemons in to see if they would ripen on the end of the table where they got the morning sun. Some branches had to be removed to allow room for the new umbrella so I cut off the lemons before disposing of the branches. The lemons with a touch of yellow ripened, those which were green didn’t ripen at all. I think they also had less juice than usual but this may also reflect the seasonal changes.

Day One

Day Eight

CITRIC ACID

I’m a big fan of citric acid as it leaves the toilets really clean without using perfumed products. I buy a kilo at at time (it’s very economical) and keep it in a large screw cap jar.

To use as a flower preservative, add half a teaspoon of citric acid to a litre of water. Stir to dissolve.

I tried using it to preserve the freshness of cut flowers and the water they were in. It worked really well! The water stayed clean for four days, then I changed it and added more citric acid and the roses looked fresh for ages. These are bought roses, a lovely gift, which are now bred to last and last. They don’t fully bloom like a garden grown rose.

BLOOD LILIES (haemanthus coccineus)

Belonging to the Amarylidacaea family and originating in Southern Africa, these bright orange lilies appear towards the end of March every year. The bright orange colours really pops! Later, when the blooms are spent, a pair long, thick strap like leaves will appear.

CANNAS

I don’t know what these cannas are called! I dug them up years ago from under a kitchen window at the farm. The flowers can be yellow with red speckles through to entirely red. My son has a pot of them in Kalgoorlie where they thrive and bloom for a much longer period than here in Perth.

HYDRANGEAS

The hydrangea hedge is still blooming. Hydrangeas look beautiful all summer and are so easy to propagate. Big fan of them as cut flowers, too, as they last for ages and ages. The leaves are beginning to look a bit sunburnt.

OLIVES

There were about 150 olives trees growing on the farm where I grew up. They were very old. Italians from Brunswick, a nearby town, used to come laden with fruit and vegetables for us, then they would pick the olives and shoot some birds. The olive trees were two different types, one sort had complex branches cris-crossing one another and narrow leaves. The other type had branches that grew out and wider leaves.

I propagated one of each and potted them up. After about ten years of repotting them in bigger and bigger pots, I planted them big ceramic pots and kept them closely clipped, almost like a bonsai, to keep them compact and neatly shaped. About six months ago I dug out a wedge of the soil in each pot. It was hard work as the soil was full of thread like roots. I refilled the holes with new potting mix and fed both trees. I also cut out the dry, grey twiggy dead bits. This one must have liked the attention: it has grown an olive! Just the one!

DID YOU KNOW?

Before Australia was settled, about 55 to 65 000 years ago, Australia had mega flora, three metre high kangaroos, horse-sized ducks and seven metre long goannas.

Much later, the kangaroo and emu featured on the Australian Coat of Arms. Not only are they animals peculiar to Australia, but neither can walk backwards, one of the reasons they were chosen!

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Cut Flowers and International Women’s Day

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cut flowers

Do you always have cut flowers in the house? My mother and both Grandmothers, all three keen gardeners, always had fresh flowers in the house. My mother still does and so do I, so I’m always interested in ways to keep them fresh.

Probably the most important thing is getting flowers into clean, cool water as soon as possible after cutting. Before you put them in the vase, trim the end of each stem. Make sure your vase is clean as the bacteria in a dirty vase will hasten the decay of the flowers. Strip the leaves from the stem so none are submerged in the the water.

Little sachets of preservative work well. (I buy boxes of them from EBay but am trying to find a way of buying a jar full of the preservative or a big paper sack.) Apparently, half a teaspoon of citric acid per litre of water works well, too. I will try this soon. Don’t add sugar, it feeds bacteria. Ethylene, a gas produced by ripening fruit, will affect your flowers, too. Keep them apart. Try to keep vases of flowers out of direct sunlight and change the water regularly. Roses last longer than many other flowers.

If you’re buying flowers, ask where they’ve come from as many flowers for sale in Australia are flown here from overseas. They have probably been dipped in glyphosate or been fumigated. The Australian climate means not enough flowers to can be produced here to meet the market demand. If you’re picking them yourself, go out early in the morning or late afternoon and place them in a bucket of water until you’re ready to arrange them. I often put them in the sink as there’s plenty of work space.*

Traditionally, stems were cut at angle (still a good idea) then singed on a hot stove. This is not necessary to prolong the longevity of your blooms.

I use vases I have inherited, been gifted or, in the case of very long stemmed roses, a vase I found at an op shop (thrift store) It is just the right size! Another favourite is an old, lidless, Willow Pattern teapot. I remember my Grandmother using a metal hedgehog type of fitting, a ‘frog’ to support stems in arrangements but I resort to scrunched up chicken wire, a crisscrossed pattern of rubber bands or sometimes sticky tape arranged to make a grid.

* I was motivated to write about cut flowers after reading Helen Young’s column “GARDENS Cut Above’ in the Weekend Australian magazine, March 4-5th, 2023

international women’s day

In the 70’s as young women in an all girls school we were encouraged to believe we could do anything and go anywhere. Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch had been widely read and we though change was in the air! We did have more options when we left school as we were well educated and exposed to an array of possibilities rather than just nursing, teaching or secretarial work. (Male teachers were paid more than females at this time.) Sadly it seems the barriers preventing women worldwide from participating in all levels of society and employment are still in place in every country.

It was very sobering to read the goals and data behind International Women’s Day. The three obstacles preventing women worldwide from participating fully in the economy, as defined by the World Bank are:

1. Nearly one in three women globally have experienced violence, with intimate violence impacting women in every country.

2. During the last three decades the gap in opportunities between male and female participants in the economy has not narrowed.

3. More than one in five women around the world have been child brides, limiting their life long participation in paid work.

Women are still frequently paid less than men for the same work, are passed over for promotion and retire with significantly less superannuation in Australia. When will it ever change?

Adobe Series of USA stamps featuring Mary Cassatt’s images

Woman with a Fan (1878-1879) by Mary Cassatt.

Women With A Fan Rawpexel

To commemorate International Women’s Day we went to the cinema to see Mary Cassatt:Painting The Modern Woman. American by birth, Cassatt (1844-1926) decided at a young age she was going to be a painter. Unable to join the more important schools of art in America which didn’t accept females student she headed to Paris. Well traveled as a young girl she identified the opportunities to develop as an artist in Europe. She studied at a minor school of art in Paris before joining the Impressionists.

Mother’s Kiss illustration by Mary Cassatt (1844-1926). Original from Library of Congress. Digitally enhanced by…

Mother’s Kiss

Her style of painting was also influenced by her European travels. Financially secure and very determined, she was initially trained in the style of the classics but soon joined the radical group, the Impressionists. She was particularly friendly with Edgar Degas who was also fascinated by women going about their daily business. Cassatt’s artworks, including pastels, prints and paintings, featured light colours and loose brushwork. She painted women involved in everyday occupations. She wanted to present the woman’s perspective.

The Child’s Bath

Leaving France at the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian war she returned to America. She is best known for her paintings and prints of the social and private lives of women. She never married or seemed to have any romantic attachments but is famous for her paintings of women and children. Her style of painting continued to evolve for the rest of her life.

There was a funny account in our local paper, written by a woman, describing how she was left to ‘mind’ the office while all the men went out to celebrate International Women’s Day. They didn’t return to work that day.

I’m not laughing.

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Sleep and Food

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sleep

Do you sleep well? I haven’t for years. Poor sleep is related to cognitive decline, obesity, hypertension, diabetes, depression, heart attacks and strokes. I’ve spent an enormous amount of energy trying to improve the amount and quality of sleep I get. I rarely buy books, preferring to borrow them from the library, but I have a collection of books about sleep. I’ve followed the instructions from each, precisely, without improving the outcome.

In fact, the current book about improving sleep sits beside the bed with a bookmark half way through as I’m not supposed to follow the advice in the next chapter until I’ve mastered the first step towards wonderful sleep. It’s never happened despite my dedication and determination to master the technique. So, just like every other book about sleep, actually, no help at all.

There’s no better click bait online for me than ‘How To Get Better Sleep’. That one item lead me to many other items about caffeine in the morning interfering with sleep. Apparently, the best time to enjoy your first cup of coffee is about 90 minutes after you wake up. Your cortisol levels peak three times a day and one of those times is when you wake up. About ninety minutes later, your cortisol has returned to normal levels.

Cortisol controls alertness, focus, regulates blood pressure and your immune system and metabolism. Cortisol follows your sleep-wake system and peaks about about 30 -45 minutes after you wake and then slowly declines. So here’s the problem; coffee interfers with the build up of cortisol and adenosine, which induces the sense of sleepiness later in the day. Caffeine is an adenosine blocker and therefore interferes with your circadian rhythm. The recommendation is to avoid caffeine for about 90 minutes to allow cortisol to be released which increases alertness naturally.

Prepared to try anything to get more sleep, I delayed the first cup of coffee for 90 minutes each morning for five days. After three nights of worse than average sleep I dug a little deeper to see if there were other variables which might help. Discovered drinking a glass of water, exposure to sunlight for about 10 minutes, stretching, eating breakfast and meditating are all recommended. Being outdoors as the sunsets works for some people, too. As this is my preferred time to garden, as it is cooler, I began this recommendation immediately.

The result? Three consecutive nights poor sleep, one night great sleep (so exciting), another dreadful night. I will persist a little longer

food

Usually I feel the last months of the year rush by, but March seems to have arrived very quickly this year. In the Southern Hemisphere, March marks the beginning of Autumn, but you’d never know it here in Perth, where the temperatures continue in the high 30°Cs. Humidity is high, too.

The early months of the year seem to be favourites for celebrations. We’ve finished with the really big one, Christmas, then the new years starts with St Valentine’s Day, next is St Patrick’s Day followed by Easter and finally, Mother’s Day. Then we get a bit of a rest depending on your family birthdays’ and wedding anniversaries. Preparing for Easter is always special so I’m beginning to plan now.

Meanwhile, I’ve used sourdough ‘discard’, leftover from feeding the starter, (getting it ready to make bread) and made more scones. Delicious.

Sweet corn, considered animal food in some countries, but popular in Australia, is at its best at the moment. Do you cook it in the microwave?

I put the cob onto the plate in the microwave and cook it for three minutes, trim the end, strip off the leaves and serve with butter and grated pepper.

Another vegetable in good supply at the moment is celery. I have begun buying it. I was growing celery from the cut off base but the stalks have begun to taste bitter. It is now compost. The last bunch of celery I bought was huge and I knew we wouldn’t eat it all while it was fresh. So I made celery soup using the recipe from Feasting At Home (here) There’s no cream or milk in this recipe so it was wonderful served cold. The recipe includes a pinch of cayenne pepper which really adds flavour.

Thickened with a small amount of potato, this celery soup is delicious hot or cold. The recipe makes quite a lot, so a jarful went into the fridge with two more containers of ratatouille which I made the same day.

When it’s was very hot and humid chilled celery soup and ratatouille were very welcome.

The new sourdough bread recipe from Feasting At Home, discussed on in previous two blogs, makes very good bread. So good in fact, we are eating it so quickly I am making bread every few days. The latest recipe I’ve tried to use the ‘discard’ from feeding the starter was corn fritters. So good with sweet chili sauce.

Loved the rustic looking boules/balls I first made but it is better for us to make a rectangular loaf. That way we cut of similar sized slice each time.

Did you know cigarette butts take 10-12 years to decompose?

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Making, Cooking, Growing

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making

Last week I made a new sourdough starter. It took seven days to develop and is now ready to use. I followed a ‘no knead’ recipe from (here) to make the first loaf of sourdough. The loaf had very little rye flour in it as I will increase the amount slowly. I’d sprinkled the top of the boule (round ball) with fennel seeds and caraway seeds and really like the burst of flavour when you bite into it. I have fed the starter to make another loaf in the morning as we couldn’t stop eating it so it only lasted two days. This is good bread!

Also made more bruschetta. After trying several recipes, our favourite is on bbc good food site (here). The only change is that I drain the chopped tomatoes before adding them to the other ingredients.

Do you feel the supermarkets make it hard to buy tomatoes, or any fruit and vegetables, without plastic? Normally I shop at a green grocer but had to dash into one of the big supermarkets for a few more tomatoes and they were on trays sealed in cling film!

cooking

Motivated by the availability of fresh summer vegetables I made Ratatouille. Originally from the Provence region in France, Ratatouille traditionally has tomatoes, eggplant, onions, capsicum, zucchini, garlic and olive oil. I know authentic ratatouille has capsicum/peppers in it but we’re not very keen on them but I like the dash of orange in the mixture, so I added two diced oven roasted sweet potatoes. There’s no eggplant/aubergine in the ratatouille I make either, because I am the only one who will eat it regardless of how cleverly it is disguised!

This is my own take on Ratatouille and we like it! My husband and I had already shared a cob of corn, so I simply poached an egg to put in the middle the of the vegetables in each bowl. Not at all authentic either, but it tasted just right. What I hadn’t expected was how good the leftovers tasted the next day, eaten cold!

I’ve made a second loaf of sourdough bread because we’ve eaten the last loaf. I am impressed by the recipes I have used to create the new starter and for this ‘no knead’ sourdough loaf on Feasting At Home. (link above)

While I was waiting for the bread to cook I made a chocolate fudge slice, too, which went into the oven when the bread came out. We were expecting our son later in the evening after a seven hour drive from Kalgoorlie. He would have stopped somewhere for dinner but I wanted something to offer with a drink when he arrived.

growing

I don’t normally buy basil as it tends to self seed. I only realised it hadn’t when I needed some and the pot was bare. Bought three stalks with about 20 leaves on them, encased in plastic. Wont be doing that again! I quickly planted two well established basil plants to use in summer dishes.

I now have a lush pot of basil.

Prepared a few pots to plant other summer herbs. Our grey beach sand needs lots of additional products to support plants. I start with bentonite and water crystals and add compost and really good potting mix. Later I’ll add a rotted manure fertilizer. Finally, I planted coriander seeds and some sage, too. They’ll germinate in about 18 days and will need protection from the blazing heat.

our new umbrella

We’ve just bought a new outdoors umbrella to protect the potted plants and the table out in that area. The last umbrella, bought for its canvas fabric and timber frame, was so romantic and so useless. The timber warped and the canvas tore and shredded in the wind and sun. The new umbrella is made of powder coated aluminum and polyester fabric and will withstand the heat, rain and wind.

I have removed all the cording used to put the old market umbrella up and down and will harvest some of the timber, soon, too. The canvas was too shredded and worn to reuse which is disappointing.

The new umbrella is slightly larger so the lemon tree needed some branches cut back. I’ve cut off the almost ripe lemons and saved them. Some online articles say they’ll ripen if stored in a bright place, others says they wont ripen at all! I collected lemons already showing yellow, some still a bit green and a few very green ones. Time will tell (and fingers crossed they do ripen!) I’ll let you know next week.

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