All Food is Good Food

All Food is Good Food - this is the message in our house.  There are no 'bad foods'.  This approach is recommended by almost all dieticians and child rearing experts these days, to help avoid food issues later in life, and to prevent attributing values to food.  Since I love food - all of it! - this comes naturally to me.  Someone asked me recently, "but how about all that processed crap?  Don't you want Tabitha to avoid that?"  My answer is, yes, of course, but I don't consider that sort of thing to be 'food'.  It's more like a food-like-processed-product.  Sure, I eat weird processed food from time to time, but I don't consider it to be proper food.  So perhaps the statement should be, All Real Food is Good Food.

Here is roughly 4kg of American-style, slow smoked barbeque meat.  Pork ribs, lamb ribs, pulled pork, pastrami, pulled chicken, pulled brisket, chicken wings, pickles.  We also had hand-cut chips (none for Tabitha, she has still never eaten a chip, she doesn't know they exist for now), beef chili and coleslaw.  All the meat rests on slices of thick bread, which soak up the delicious, homemade barbeque sauce.  We get out BBQ from Big Boy BBQ in Caulfield South.  I thoroughly recommend the place - the owner imported a smoker from the US after becoming frustrated that he couldn't get good BBQ in Australia.  Having eaten a lot of BBQ in the States, I can tell you that this comes pretty close.

As with all things, moderation.  A mountain of BBQ is fine for dinner occasionally - a trip to the Farmers' Market helps swing the pendulum back.  I needed my enormous cane washing basket to haul up all my purchases from the car:

2kg peaches, 2kg nectarines, 2kg apricots, a bunch of skinny new leeks, a bunch of chard, baby colourful heirloom carrots, larger purple heirloom carrots, a few fun types of zucchini, coriander, 3 dozen eggs, 2 litres of raw milk, 16 veggieburgers.  Also in the fridge, some bacon and pork.  Later in the day, a trip to another market, bringing home 2 butternut pumpkins, apples, potatoes, onions, more carrots, celery, lamb chops, 2 whole chooks, organic mince and steaks, 3 avocados, some rockling fillets and assorted capsicum/lemons/cucumber/sweet potato/ginger/garlic etc.

Add to the above, a trip to the IGA for yoghurt, butter, cheese, chickpeas, matzo meal, bread, oatmeal, and we have a full week's worth of groceries.  It's rare that I do a full week's load of groceries in a single day, so it was quite fascinating, to me, to see what our weekly diet includes!  No doubt, I will need to buy something or the other during the week, and the above is supplemented by all the ordinary cupboard supplies and what is in the garden.

I have found that the only way to keep stone fruit from going mouldy while it ripens, is to sit them out on the bench, not touching any other pieces of fruit.  So I have my 'army of fruit', neatly marching along the bench.  As soon as a piece of stone fruit is ripe (by touch and suddenly smelling strongly gorgeous), I put it in a tupperware container in the fridge, taking out what I need for the next day, the night prior.  This is what the stonefruit-selling lady at the market tells me, and it seems to work.

 Since I lugged home two whole butternut pumpkins (on sale and looking irresistible), I made a double batch of pumpkin soup.  Now, pumpkin soup, like bolognaise, seems to be the sort of food where everyone considers their own (or their mother's/father's/grandmother's) to be The Best Recipe.  I would like to throw this recipe into the ring - it is from my father, and includes cumin.  You must roast the pumpkin pieces first for the best flavour.

Roast Pumpkin Soup 

(large batch, makes 3.5 litres or so)

2.5kg of peeled, chopped butternut pumpkin

2 large brown onions, diced

4 teaspoons ground cumin

2 large carrots, peeled and sliced

2 celery sticks, sliced

2 litres of vegetable stock (I use Massel cubes)

Toss the pumpkin in olive oil, then roast at 180 degrees for around 40 minutes, or until softened and lightly browned at the edges.

In a very large saucepan, cook the onion in a little olive oil until just softened, then add the cumin and cook, stirring, for 2 minutes.

Add the carrots and celery, and cook for a further 3 minutes stirring.

Add the roasted pumpkin and stock, then bring to boil.  Reduce to simmer, and simmer for around 40 minutes, half covered, or until the carrots are cooked.

Allow to cool a little, then either blend in a blender or food processor (in batches) or use a wand immersion blender.  A standing blender will get it the smoothest.

Season to taste with salt and a decent amount of pepper.

Serve with a big dollop of natural yoghurt or sour cream, and some chopped parsley or coriander.

This soup freezes well.  It's quite thick - if you want a thinner soup, simply add a little more vegetable stock.  If you don't have a very large saucepan, just make a half batch.

Here is a bowl with natural yoghurt and coriander.  It's not super-smooth, as I blended it in the food processor.  It is so filling!

The old mini-garden is going quite well.  I thought that everything was winding down, as the plants got hit with some major heat and not much water for a week or so, but a good water and feed seems to have given everything a second wind.

The tomato plants (the foliage) is looking a bit worse for wear, but they are nonetheless producing masses of lovely tomatoes:

My thyme and parsley are bushy, despite major harvests of late:

I am shocked by how well the basil is going.  Just two weeks ago, I completely stripped the plants.  Bare.  Just stalks (for making pesto, you remember?).  Anyway, with a good feed and some sunshine, they are looking fuller and healthier than ever.  Something tells me I'll me making more pesto soon...

My little jewel strawberry plant (not sure what variety, the berries are very small but amazingly sweet) has come back from the near-death, and is covered with a dozen or so pretty pink flowers and even more new strawberries:

Speaking of pretty flowers - my awe will never tire for the spectacular passionfruit flowers.  What a wonderful plant to have in the garden.  Masses of these at the moment:

And thankfully, a reasonable number of these (despite The Daddy hacking the vine back to a third of its size, because it was threatening to pull down the fence):

Here it is, post-haircut, along the back fence:

Aren't toddlers hilarious?  They are always up to something, and guaranteed to make you laugh a hundred times a day.  Here is Tabitha, in a t-shirt and nothing else, with her baby 'swaddled', finishing up her game of golf in the yard:

While we are lucky to have plenty of pretty flowers in the garden (snapdragons, petunias, star jasmine and strawberry and passionfruit flowers) I tend to buy-in my house flowers.  I dream of one day having a large enough garden to grow my own flowers for cutting.  In the meantime, I put freesias or jonquils in the bathroom, white lisianthus in the living room,  peonies in the bedrooms, herbs in the kitchen, and roses in the living room.  

Because roses are expensive, I get more bang for my buck by buying very short-stemmed roses, then trimming them down to around 10cm, and popping just 4-5 each in little jam jars.  I can get a few lovely little jars of roses this way, from a single bunch.  It's best to buy varieties which are very full, because as they open out, you might find you can get away with only 3 per jar, transferring the extras to yet more jars.  If you change the water every day or two, and add a dash of small bleach to the water, you can easily get a week or so from the roses.  A few jars of roses, grouped together, look so pretty.  I save any attractive jars - in particular, from my Rose's Breakfast Marmalade.

Do you have any other flower arranging tips for me?  I'm always looking for ways to display flowers that don't cost a fortune!