Peas from the roof

As I picked a huge bowl of peas from the boxes on top of the garage yesterday,  I admired my new irrigation system with great delight.  Knowing that this was all recycled rainwater made it even better...How to keep the veges on the roof watered well enough has been a bit of a puzzle.  However, the problem has been solved by a bit of lateral thinking.

Making Sourdough Bread in a Breadmaker

I have always loved the tangy taste of sourdough bread, and the fact there's one fewer item to buy and one fewer plastic bottle on the planet when you eliminate the need for yeast tempted me to investigate how to make it myself. 

Every recipe I came across suggested you needed to let it rise twice and then bake it an oven.  Perhaps it was my inclination for laziness, or maybe it was a desire to reduce the power bill, but using the bread maker seemed far easier to me.

The only catch was, I couldn't find any recipe for how to make sourdough bread in a breadmaker.  Of course I discovered that it really is...simple.

Dandelion tea

Sweet, yellow and fragrant...ahh...the dandelion.  Tea, that is.  

Most gardeners have probably spent hours wrestling with dandelion roots, trying to pull out these pesky weeds that grow everywhere.  Well, if you knew how good the roots are, you might realise you have a goldmine of herbal goodness growing free in your garden.  Good for your health - and best of all, good to drink and very easy to make

Olives

Olives...green, black, Spanish, delicatessan gourmet delights.  Their divine flavour belies the fact that when eaten directly from a tree, your mouth will pucker at the sharp disgusting acidity. How can something so foul possibly turn into a taste sensation??
Many people here have olive trees, but noone seems to actually use them, so I thought it must be really hard to make olives.  Well, take a bit of salt and water, and think again.

Nuts!

Well, it's been a while since any blogs got blogged about here, and alongside the fine autumn weather which keeps me happily away from a computer, my top excuse is that I've been busy...
busy increasing GDP?  No, not exactly, but busy investing in my nut supplies during the harvest season.

For the urban gatherer there's a vast amount of bounty to be found dropping into parks and lining the footpaths in autumn.  Walnuts, hazelnuts, chestnuts...

The splinter secret

"Do you know a good poultice??"  a friend asked this morning.  "I've got this enormous splinter in my thumb, it's been in there 3 days, is infected and I've tried...everything"  "Everything??"  "Well, first I did a bread poultice, then silicon paste...no luck.  Someone recommended soaking in cider vinegar for 30 minutes, which didn't work...finally I tried sunlight soap and sugar last night...and it's still there."
"Ah, yes, but it's really easy, all you need is...

Cider vinegar

Cider vinegar - great for drinks, salad dressings or washing your hair.  And as most people just go and buy it, it must be hard to make, right?  Actually, if you have a good supply of apples in autumn, it's a piece of cake.

Stages of vinegar making - L - R: fresh apple juice, 3 week old fermenting juice, and vinegar with mother (after 1 year)

Roof Top Veges

"What's that on top of your garage??!" is a FAQ for us.  A wood pile?  Storage units?  Coffins?  With a garden that lacks sun in winter, we began looking for the sunniest spots to grow veges in.  It soon became clear that the garage roof was begging to be grown on, so our roof top vege garden came into being.

Drying fruit in the sun

Sun Drying
Painting the garage roof last summer made me realise how hot it is up there in the sun.  If the sun could bake me in half an hour, surely I could use it for more useful things like drying food!  We have a food dehydrator, but why use electricity when there's the whole power of the sun up there to make dried fruit and  fruit leather for free?!