A Brief Hello for the Month | What I have Learned This Month | New books | Latest Awards
Schedule for the next 12 Months
The May Garden
. What to plant
. Winter scents
. A Small Beginners Guide to Herbs (the guide is small, not the herbs, and applies to tall beginners as well as small ones)
A Few Recipes
. Caramel sauce
. Turkish Delight (the real stuff)
. Vanilla Icecream (also the real stuff)
. Pineapple Sorbet
A Brief Hello for the Month
Am just back from Brisbane- a wonderful time, with wonderful people, both family and at the schools and seminar I spoke at.
But oh blimey: every time I fly I can’t believe what humans endure and accept as ‘normal’. Budgies in cages have more room than passengers in planes; even at it’s best, the food is only edible; most times it’s hardly that, but you eat it anyway because of the long foodless hours ahead.
This time I ate an airline apple- softer and more tasteless than any other apple on the planet- and water, which tasted of the plastic it’s bottled in.
I think what irritates me is that it’s all so silly. There is so much great simple food that could be taken up on planes: good cheese with decent crackers, fruit that has seen trees and sunlight sometime in the past month; olives and marinated vegetables and salads with varied greens; decent bread rolls with tubs of butter or pesto or genuine jam.
It isn’t hard to get decent bread; all you need is flour and yeast and water and knowledge of how to cook it, and good bread freezes well, too. It doesn’t need to be the spongy preservative filled blobs you get on planes. Biscotti with almonds, flour free almond macarooons, and a proper cup of tea or coffee.
The planes are silly, too. All that jet fuel just to hoosh us up into the air, spewing out fumes and heating up the world, when we could be lifted gently on a zeppelin- under a giant helium balloon- so cheap to propel once you are airborne that there’d be enough space to roam around. No great airports needed, no aircraft noise. It’s not even a fantasy as working models exist (See The Tomorrow book below for details).
Instead we have a claustrophobic horror that we just endure, halted when the earth gives one of its frequent volcanic burps. I felt like standing in the aisle and yelling ‘it doesn’t have to be like this!’
But I didn’t, because they’d have gently and politely removed me from the plane, and I wanted to get home.
It is so good to be home. Bruiser wombat padded out to drink from the garden pond- the creek has dried up again- and looked wistful, so I took him out some oats and lucerne mix. Ten seconds later Mothball galloped up the steps, glanced at me balefully – an ‘how dare you put food out when I’m not here’ look- then advanced on Bruiser. I put out a second lot for him. When I looked out again there were three wombats eating.
The wombats here aren’t dependent on the food we put out for them- it’s too irregular. But it does help keep them strong and healthy enough to forage more widely, and to resit mange or infections. We humans have taken so much of the world that perhaps we need to provide ‘artificial’ food and water sometimes, just to maintain genetic diversity. There are only about one sixth the number of wombats in this valley that there were 25 years ago: humans have taken their water, feral goats their food. So many other animals- the red necked wallabies, the brush tailed wallabies, the bandicoots and bettongs- have vanished completely in that time, too.
So Bruiser will get his food, some nights, and Mothball too, and hopefully in another 25 years- despite more humans, despite the other and mine threats upstream- there will still be wombats in the valley.
What I have learned this month
. That as I drove down into the valley, the dust haze turned orange in the sinking sun, the ferns wilted and dead trees on the skyline, I knew that no matter how dry the valley; despite bushfire or mining threat, that this is home.
. You don’t get those horrible kids in the front row to stop giggling and muttering comments to each other by yelling ‘George Briggs I’m watching you behave yourself.’ Tell them a story that moves them, about heroism, love and sacrifice; make them think about deep issues: that giggling is boredom. If you challenge them, they’ll respond.
. Each day brings stuff that just has to be endured, so keep focusing on the good bits
. It is impossible not to smile when a wombat plods past the window
. All of my clothes labelled ‘dry clean only’ still look extremely good when gently hand washed in a basin, and dried in the shade on a thick towel. This isn’t to say that yours won’t shrink, dapple, felt, or cause the downfall of civilisation if you don’t take them to the dry cleaners; but on the other hand, if you’ve worn them out in the rain and they haven’t shrunk, dappled, caused massive earthquakes etc, it’ worth test washing an inconspicuous corner to see if you can get away with it. Also only wash one garment at a time, GENTLY, and often the colour does run and you don’t want a red tee shirt and which sock to turn into pink tee shirt and pink socks.
. Over beating a lime syrup cake while you are waiting for a symphony to end makes it a but dry and tough; which may be why almost all commercial cakes are dry and tough. (I say ‘almost’ just in case there is an undiscovered one that is okay).
Recent Books
Coming soon: The Underpants that changed an empire: Queen Victoria’s Underpants, co created by the magic Bruce Whatley
A Year in the Valley
This is a reissue of ‘Seasons of Content’, with a new introduction, as well as a new ‘what happened next’ section about our lives in the valley since I wrote the book, more than twenty years ago now. I wrote it mostly for my own pleasure then, and only hauled it into publishing shape on an impulse many years later and sent it to HarperCollins. It is about the valley – the wombats, our lives, and the dances of the lyrebirds. It is also very much about food; the growing of it, the cooking, the sharing with friends, human and otherwise.
The Tomorrow Book
Illustrated by Sue de Gennaro… a look at the paradise we could create, maybe just tomorrow.
This is a special book. It’s closer to my heart than anything I’ve written before and Sue’s work is inspired: funny, whimsical and extraordinarily beautiful. It’s what happens when the king and queen retire and go off in their campervan, leaving the kids in charge, who find the solution to each of the world’s major problems in their library, and create… tomorrow.
Every one of the solutions really does exist – and the possible tomorrows are very, very good indeed.
P.S. Sue created the extraordinary artwork in collage, using materials she found in her kitchen, from tea bags to labels. It is too magic to even have words to describe it.
Dance of the Deadly Dinosaurs
The sequel to ‘Lessons for a Werewolf Warrior’ continues the crazy adventures of Boo, werewolf and hero-in-the making!
 Boo’s back… in another crazy adventure of Heroes, dinosaurs and the most fearsome weapon in the universes… the zombie sausage!
Boojum Bark, werewolf puppy and student Hero, is about to do what no Hero has done before – go into the scariest universe of them all, the Ghastly Otherwhen, rescue his mum and come back alive.
And he’ll need help from his friends: mysterious Yesterday, gorgeous Princess Princess Sunbeam Caresse of Pewké, Mug the down-to-earth Zombie and Squeak the warrior mouse.
But the Ghastly Otherwhen isn’t what Boo expects! And his friends start acting strangely, too…
What is the bond between Yesterday and her dinosaurs? Why won’t she let Boo rescue her from slavery? Can Mug really be as dumb as he looks, or are Zombies smart in Zombie ways? And could Princess Princess be an actual Hero underneath her cowardly exterior?
The bogeys are scarier – and the food is grosser than ever!
And illustrator Andrea Potter’s dinosaurs are the best in the universes.
The Night They Stormed Eureka
A fresh look at the history we thought we knew.
Are the history books wrong? Could the rebels have succeeded? Could we too have seceded from Britain, like the USA?
This is the story of Sam, a modern teenager, thrust into the world of the Ballarat goldfields, with the Puddlehams, who run the best cook shop on the diggings and dream of a hotel with velvet seats, ten thousand miners who dream of gold and rebellion, and Professor Shamus O’Blivion, who tries not to dream at all. But there is a happy ending for Sam, who discovers that when you stand together, you really can change the world – and your own life, too.
Schedule for the Next Few Months
I’m sorry I can’t accept every invitation – there are often two or three invitations to talk somewhere each day, and much as I’d love to, there is no way I can do them all, or even most of them. Basically, I can only do one trip away from home a month, and that includes trips to Canberra, so I mostly only speak to groups of more than 200 and when it will take no more than six hours travel each way (except Western Australia). I’ve also stopped doing early morning and after dinner talks.
But as I have family in Brisbane and Perth I always love an excuse to travel there... or anywhere that might involve a stopover in Perth, too.
New South Wales bookings are done by Lateral Learning, Queensland bookings by Helen Bain at Speaker’s Inc, Victoria by Booked Out, simon@bookedout.com.au, and for other bookings contact me at jackiefrench72@gmail.com.
But please don’t use this address for help with school projects; help in getting a book published, or just to have a chat, again much as I’d love that, too. There are answers to nearly all your project questions and queries on how to get books published on the website, and answers to all gardening questions so far received in my books. Questions come from overseas as well as Australia these days, and I already spend half my day answering queries. I can’t manage more- or, truthfully, even the number I get now.
April onwards: Sue de Gennaro’s artwork for ‘The Tomorrow Book’ will be at the Fremantle Children’s Literature Centre. Contact the Fremantle Children’s Literature Centre for more details.
May 22, 23: Sydney Writer’s Festival, including two workshops on creating picture books, a talk with Bruce Whatley about our ‘Diary of a Wombat’ books, and a panel talk, A Wombat At My Table.
Jun 3, 4, 5: Talks at libraries in Melbourne, including the Monash Literary Festival on Saturday. Contact Booked Out (simon@bookedout.com.au) for details.
June 6 Melbourne Talks at Dymocks bookshop. First session 10am-11am, second session 11.30am-12.30pm.
contact levents@dymocks.com.au
June 18-19: NSW Children’s Book Council Conference, Sydney. Session with Bruce Whatley, the genius who created those incredible images of the wombat in ‘Diary of a Wombat’ and ‘Baby Wombat’s Week’. There is also a regal cocktail party to launch our next joint book, ‘Queen Victoria’s Underpants’, the almost entirely true story of how Queen Victoria revolutionised women’s lives. (It is rumoured that Victoria and her Albert may actually appear at the cocktail party, but I don’t know about the underpants).
Saturday 19th June SYDNEY
10am Story time author event with the magic Bruce Whatley at The Children’s Bookshop Tel: (02) 9481 8811
6 Hannah St
Beecroft NSW 2119
2pm Another talk with Bruce at Shearers Bookshop Tel: 1800 442 935
99 Norton Street
Leichhardt
June 29 Sustainability seminar and workshops at Queanbeyan, NSW. Contact Geoff Pryor at Queanbeyan council for more details.
July 7: Sydney, National History Conference.
July 14-17: Whitsunday Literary Festival, including a public gardening talk, Mackay, Qld.
July 30: Seymour Centre, Sydney. Opening night of Monkey Baa Theatre for Young People’s incredible play of ‘Hitler’s Daughter’. I’ll be there, with knobs on.
August 2-7: Talks and workshops at the Fremantle Children’s Literature Centre, contact the Centre for details or bookings.
August 18: Abbotsleigh Literary Festival, Sydney.
September 7. Talks at Wollongong NSW. Contact Di bates and the Wollongong Children’s book Council for details.
September 18: Talk to Friends of the Botanic Gardens, Canberra, 12.30 in the auditorium. All welcome, adults and kids.
October 2,3,4: Talks each day at Floriade, Canberra.
October 10: Talks at Floriade, Canberra.
October 27: International Children’s Day. I’ll be speaking at the awards in Canberra in my capacity as ACT Children’s Ambassador, and probably giving a talk or two somewhere else in Canberra that day too, if previous years are anything to go by.
November 6 and 7: Open Garden workshops at our place. Contact the Open Garden organisers for bookings, act@opengarden.org.au. If you want to make a weekend of it, there are lots of places to stay, from cheap pubs to luxury B&Bs close by. Look at the Braidwood web site.
November 20: Eurobodalla Slow Food Festival at Moruya, NSW. I’ll be giving a series of talks during the day, on everything from fruit trees to wombats, and launching the festival once again as its patron.
March 19, 20, 21 2011 Keynote at Wombat Conference, Albury.
18, 19 talks at Gold Coast Schools. Contact Helen Bain helen@speakers-ink.com.au
July 18, 19 2011: talks at Brisbane schools. Contact Helen Bain helen@speakers-ink.com.au
20, 21 July 2011 Cairns: Cairns Writer’s Festival
Recent Awards.
‘Baby Wombat’s Week’, ‘The Donkey Who Saved the Wounded’ and ‘A Nation of Swaggies and Diggers’ have all been made Notables in the recent Children’s Book Council awards, Wombat in both the Younger Readers and Picture Book categories. The Shaggy Gully Times has just been short listed for the Yabba kid’s choice awards- and many many thanks to all the kids who voted for it!
The May Garden
The limes are ripening- including a whole tree full of kaffir limes that I’m not sure what to do with, as they are a bit dry for marmalade- the tamarillos are red or orange, depending on variety, the medlars and persimmons plump, the kiwi fruit delicious, the avocados unmissable, especially in a salad with walnuts and sliced apple, the chestnuts blow down with every breeze, and the garden is full of flagrant red, yellows, golds, and oranges. Even the dry hills look gold in autumn light.
According to research that I read somewhere or other and forgot to make a note of, it’s not just lack of sunlight that makes people feel gloomy in winter. They may also be missing the good fragrances of summer, like freshly mown grass and scented flowers.
Which is a good excuse to look for winter fragrances, as well as winter colour.
. grow lots of citrus, so the ripe winter fruit subtley scents the air
. eat lots of citrus, so that you get the crop before the birds do.
. plant winter blooming salvias, for you and the birds. We have red, purple, gold and blue blooming just now, despite the frosts.
. plant a few perennial pineapple marigolds, that bloom all winter and spring and smell like passionfruit (not pineapple) when you brush past them. Your clothes will be perfumed for the next four hours. If you remember to prune them once they are about a metre and a half high, they make a great and even neat hedge.
. Plant two fruiting cumquats in tubs by your front door. Cumquats make great marmalade, good cordial, and are superb soaked in gin for a few weeks. (You then drink the gin. NB This last one is adults only, in moderation, after a long hard day.)
. Splurge on a BIG indoor plant. (No, not just one mingy little plant- if it's worth doing, go whole hog!)
. Go camellia hunting in the nurseries, to see which blooms you fall in love with. A camellia costs about the same as a frozen pizza- but you'll get far more pleasure from it, and so with others for the next couple of hundred years, which is a heck of a lot more than you can say about a frozen pizza. There ARE fragrant camellias- you just need to hunt them out.
. Plant a daphne bush or some Earlicheer jonquils for the strongest, most beautiful winter scents of all
. grow winter-fragrant herbs, like thyme, winter savoury, rosemary, and use them every day.
. bake fruit every night for dessert, so the house smells of that wonderful caramelised fruit scent. Baked apples, baked bananas, baked pears, dried peaches cooked in port, apples in cider, pears in red or white wine, spiced winter fruit salad of prunes and dried apricots and dates ibaked in water spiced with cloves, cinnamon and cardamon, served with thick yoghurt, pineapple with syrup with just a touch of rum. (The alcohol will evaporate as they cook)
Jobs for May
What to plant:
Coastal and northern areas:
Flowers: (seeds in frost free areas; otherwise seedlings): ageratum, alyssum, aquilegia, bellis perennis, calendula, candytuft, Canterbury bells, delphinium, honesty, forget-me-not, lupin, mignonette, pansy, primula, pansy, statice, strawflower (Helichrysum), stock, sweet pea, verbena, viola, wallflower.
Veg: artichoke suckers, broad beans, broccoli/brussel sprouts/cabbage/cauliflower seedlings, cress, winter lettuce seedlings, spring onions, onions, peas, radish, shallots, English spinach seedlings, potatoes in frost-free areas
Trees and shrubs: citrus, avocadoes and other evergreen fruit trees, ornamental evergreens and evergreen climbers
Cold Areas:
Flowers (seedlings): saponaria, carnation, gypsophila, pansies, primulas, polyanthus, violas, wallflowers
Veg and fruit: broad beans, rhubarb and asparagus crowns, strawberry plants, cress and onion seeds, shallot bulbs, English spinach, turnip and broccoli seedlings
A Small Beginners Guide to herbs (the guide is small, not the herbs, and applies to tall beginners as well as small ones)
The best definition of a herb is 'a useful plant'- and that gives you a clue how to grow them!
Most herbs do best if they're picked regularly- either pruned back by a third at least once a year, or even better, a constant small pruning as they're plucked as needed.
It's a myth that herbs do best in poor soil. Herbs need feeding and watering as much as any other plant- and the more you pick them, the more tucker they need! Herbs that you pick by the handful, like basil and parsley, need feeding at least once a month if they're to grow green and luxurious.
The Most Beautiful herbs
It always surprises to me when the plants our guests exclaim over aren't the ones I've planted for their beauty- they're good old useful herbs.
Many herbs are beautiful enough to be grown simply as ornamentals- and some are simply stunning.
Golden Marjoram
Golden marjoram is one of the fastest spreading ground covers I know, wonderfully heat and drought tolerant. I grow ours all down a steep bank, and in summer it's a great glowing carpet of gold. In winter or in semi shade the bright yellow fades to green, but it's still pretty.
Plant your golden marjoram plants at any time of year about half a metre apart in full sun. They'll easily fill up the gaps in a growing season!
Growers tip: While golden marjoram is not as strongly scented as oregano, you can still gather a handful to flavour tomato rich sauces, or to scatter on pizza.
Russian garlic
The great purple pink heads on Russian garlic are one of the glories of our garden in early summer. Both the bulbs and stems are much larger than ordinary garlic, but you can eat Russian garlic too- the bulbs are very large, and somewhat milder than the garlic you'll buy in the supermarket.
Garlic prefers very well drained, fertile, moist, sunny soil, though it will tolerate semi-shade and much harsher conditions - but as a consequence the bulbs will be much smaller. Don't try to grow garlic in wet humid summers or in damp boggy areas - it will rot.
Plant Russian garlic cloves in early winter. Enjoy the flowers in early summer, and then harvest the bulbs when the top begins to yellow (don't wait till it dies down completely or the bulb may rot).
If you don't pull harvest your Russian garlic, the bulbs will multiply, so you'll get great gorgeous clumps of Russian garlic that will bloom year after year.
Growers tip: pull up Russian garlic bulbs straight after flowering, before the 'paper' between the cloves has formed. You can use them like mild garlic flavoured onions- truly delicious.
The Best Herbal Teas
Most herbs lose a lot of their flavour when they're dried- and unlike humans, the older dried herbs are, the more flavour they lose. The taste of older herbs changes too- fresh chamomile tastes of flowers and sunlight; elderly dried chamomile tastes like where the cat's been (okay, I haven't exactly tasted essence de moggie, but you know what I mean).
While tea and coffee keep most of their flavour for years, if you want the best possible herbal cuppa, you need to grow your own.
Lemon Verbena
Possibly the best herbal tea is lemon verbena. It's one of the few herbal teas that most men enjoy, though you may have to threaten to wrench their teeth out to get them to admit it.
Lemon verbena is a sweet smelling bush about one and a half times as tall as you are. It loses its leaves in winter, but you can dry the leaves easily by leaving them on a sunny table for a couple of days, and taking them indoors at night.
Lemon verbena tea is made just like ordinary tea, but triple the amount of leaves. You can drink it with milk, but it's best without, either plain or sweetened with sugar or honey. It's also great chilled. It's a gently relaxing tea- it won't make you nod off, but it does help relieve stress on those days too horrible to describe.
Growers tip: drinking lemon verbena tea is said to increase clairvoyant powers. There is absolutely no research that says this works.
Peppermint
Peppermint tea is an after dinner tea- a good way to ease indigestion after you've eaten long and well. DON'T use ordinary mint for peppermint tea, and certainly not spearmint- it tastes like toothpaste. You need either black or white peppermint or apple mint, or even the rarer lemon or orange mint, for a good peppermint tea.
Grow either peppermint or apple mint in full sun or semi shade in a fertile moist place. Prune it back or pick it often, or it'll become straggly. Peppermint dies down in winter; apple mint stays put except in incredibly cold climates.
Be warned though- apple mint is VERY vigorous, and can become a weed. If you don't want it exploring all over your garden, plant it in a pot, or choose variegated apple mint, which is prettier, and much less vigorous.
Mint leaves can be dried, although I wouldn't keep them more than two or three months or they'll lose a lot of their flavour. Make the tea in the same way as ordinary tea- 1 good spoonful of fresh or dried leaves per cuppa.
Chocolate Mint Leaves
Melt a little good quality chocolate; add a few drops of peppermint oil - one drop per tablespoon of chocolate. If the chocolate seems a little dry, add a little oil or copha - not water, which will turn it grainy.
Take perfect looking mint leaves and coat the fronts with the melted chocolate. When they are dry peel off the leaves gently. The chocolate will be leaf shaped and delicious. Eat them after dinner; use to decorate cakes; or scoff the lot before anyone else finds them.
The Best Eating Herbs
There are a squillion herbs that can be used for flavouring food, but if I had to choose just four they'd be basil, glorious basil; chives, parsley, thyme and winter savoury. Once you've got those five you'll have the luxury of being able to add fresh herbs to just about everything all through the year- and all of them grow very nicely in pots.
Basil
Most people don't realise that while common basil dies down in winter, you can also grow perennial basils that will give you leaves for cooking for years and years.
Perennial basils are killed by heavy frosts, but in cold areas you can keep them on a sunny windowsill in winter, or grow them next to a large heat retaining rock. Perennial basils have smaller, furrier leaves than common basil, but they can be used in the same range of dishes.
One of my favourite forms of perennial basil is sacred basil (Ocimum sanctum). It has a much sweeter scent than common basil, and an almost flowery taste. It is incredibly delicious with anything cooked in coconut milk, and good chopped into tomato dishes too.
Basil MUST be fed every three or four weeks in summer or it will be pale and stunted; you MUST prune off all flowers and seed heads, or it'll be straggly and the leaves small and tough. Keep picking off the tops though and it'll bush out beautifully.
Simple Basil Sauce for Pasta
Blend equal parts basil and good olive oil; mix in with hot spaghetti; sprinkle with grated Parmesan cheese or a scattering of chopped FRESH walnuts (older ones can be bitter or rancid). Either common basil or sacred basil can be used in this recipe.
Parsley
Give parsley full sun and lots of tucker. Moisture stressed parsley can be attacked by aphids or develop root rot when it is watered again.
Sow parsley seed as soon as the soil feels warm.
Pick parsley often, and chop it into just about everything, except possibly icecream. Parley is a great way to get the family to eat their greens without realising it.
Growers tip: Parsley goes to seed in spring- but if you cut off the seeds heads as soon as they form you can keep harvesting last year's parsley till your new parsley is ready to harvest.
Chives
I adore chives- either the thin round ones common ones or flat leafed garlic chives. Common chives die down during winter, but garlic chives can be harvested all year. Both are very pretty while flowering, and look lovely as an edging for a flower or herb bed.
Chives prefer moist fertile soil, prefer full sun but tolerate semi-shade. Sow seeds in spring or divide clumps at any time.
Chives can be cut repeatedly and used wherever you might use onions, scattered on omelettes or sandwiches - and a thousand other culinary uses.
Growers tip: Try not to pick all the leaves at one time - this may exhaust the plant. Pick a few leaves from each plant instead.
Thyme
Thyme is probably my most used herb- and it's one that simply doesn't dry well. If you want the thyme's true fresh subtle fragrance you have to grow your own. There are literally thousands of varieties of thyme, all with subtle variations in flowers and taste.
Thymes prefer slightly limy soil, well drained, with good sunlight. Thyme will tolerate even the heaviest frost, except for older 'woody' plants that can be damaged in cold weather. Cut back older plants by three quarters every year and this problem should be eliminated.
Growers tip: If your thyme is very woody or if it has been damaged by frost spread moist soil over the stems. The bush will 'layer' itself by growing new roots from the stems and within a few months these new roots will stimulate new growth to cover up the bare patches in the middle of the bush.
Winter Savoury
This is like tougher, more fragrant thyme. Grow as above, and use in much the same way- different flavour but same uses. The leaves are e tougher though, and so are the stems, so make sure the leaves are pulled off the stems before you use them.
The Best Medicinal Herbs
Just about any herb you can name has a medicinal use, and more and more herbs are being investigated commercially for their medicinal potential. Two absolute necessities in our garden though are aloe vera and chamomile.
Aloe Vera
Aloe vera needs moist, well-drained soil - it will soon die in wet soil. It won't tolerate severe frost or severe heat - in tropical areas it is best grown in semi-shade. I grow ours in a hanging basket over sun reflecting paving and it survives winter okay - not happy, but at least alive.
How to use aloe vera:
Cut a leaf and squeeze the jelly on dry skin, eczema, minor burns and rashes. (NOT on broken skin or blistered skin) The pain will be immediately relieved and the gel will speed up healing.
Chamomile
Chamomile can be confusing to the herbal beginner. There are two chamomiles - the perennial Anthemis nobilis, and the annual Chamomilla recutita. They look very similar, and the fragrance is much the same too- and they are both used for chamomile tea,
Chamomile does best in full sun in moist fertile soils. It prefers temperate conditions, though it can be grown in semi-shade in sub-tropical areas.
Both chamomiles grow from seed. Perennial chamomile can be grown from runners as roots form wherever the stems touch the ground. Annual chamomile often self sows.
Chamomile tea
Pick the flowers in the early morning just as they begin to open. Either use them fresh, or dry them for use during winter.
Cover a tablespoon of fresh or dried flowers with two cups of boiling water. Leave till cold (chamomile needs at least 10 minutes steeping to release the active ingredients). If necessary reheat to make the tea more palatable. Drink before bedtime when you are stressed or if you have a cold or hay fever. .
Herbs in pots
For most of us a potted herb garden is all we will ever manage, so it's a good thing that most herbs are quite happy in pots, as long as they are cherished.
As with any potted garden, choose the biggest pots you can. Small pots dry out faster, and plant roots heat up or freeze faster. Feed with a slow release plant food in spring and mid summer, and water often- few plants do well it their roots are alternatively dry then waterlogged.
If you're a herbal beginner, plant just one herb per pot. Some herbs are so vigorous they easily outgrow their companions. Once you know their growing habits you can experiment.
Herbal hedges
Herbal hedges are stunning, useful, and hardy and usually fast growing, although like all hedges they need to be regularly trimmed to keep them healthy and attractive. Any of the lavenders can be hedged, except perhaps sprawling French lavender (Lavendula detata). Dwarf lavenders make sweet neat hedges around flowerbeds.
One of the most fragrant hedges I know is a rosemary hedge. Plant about 200cm apart, and trim as soon as the branches start to touch. The more you trim the top the thicker the growth will be.
Other good herbal hedges include rugosa roses (great for rose hips to add to your herbal cuppa) fruit salad or pineapple sage and lemon verbena
Growers tip: If you want a really neat hedge, grow your bushes with a tightly strained wire in the middle, to keep the bushes upright.
Plant each bush about half a metre apart.
Herbal Ground Covers
If you have a hot dry bank or even a small rockery, herbs are some of the most attractive ground covers around. Many of the thymes, with their bright lavish flowers, look lovely sprawling over rocks or spilling over walls. Prostrate rosemary with its bright blue flowers too is wonderfully hardy, as are winter and summer savoury.
In moist shady areas areas gotu kola (Centella asiatica) makes a great ground cover.
Windowsill Herbs
Most herbs need fresh air as well as sunlight - stick them near a window that you open often. With luck you can grow basil all year round - a luxury in cold winters; try coriander, oregano or marjoram, chives, chamomile (pick the fresh flowers for a relaxing tea - even if you don't like dried chamomile teabags (erk) you may love the taste of the fresh flowers), sage, thyme, rosemary (keep it well pruned by picking it regularly) or dwarf lavender (not above the sink though - it'll get mildew), mint (mints are great by a well lit bathroom window - the whole room smells of mint - but don't try it if you have frosted windows as they may not get enough light).
Most herbs need lots of heat and thrive by hot windowsills, but they won't take humidity, so keep them well watered but well aired, away from other pot plants with lots of moist foliage that might increase the humidity around them. With luck a VERY big pot of basil, tansy, feverfew or wormwood will help stop the flies from coming in.
Parsley is the perfect potted standby - even if it stops growing in winter outdoors it may still keep unfurling new greenery on a hot windowsill. I like to have parsley where I can grab it easily otherwise I forget to use it, which is a pity because even kids who don't like their greens will eat chopped parsley in other dishes. I nibble parsley toward the end of the month when I need a quick fix of iron. (Whenever I find myself gulping parsley I check the cupboard to see if I remembered tampons last time I was in town.)
As a general rule grow each herb in its own pot - some herbs can overwhelm others.
Herbs that naturally die down in winter they become unthrifty if kept unnaturally alive indoors. Take plants that require dormancy like your tarragon, turmeric, and ginseng et al outdoors for a month or two so they can get back into a natural seasonal rhythm.
Also - the more you pick your herbs the healthier they'll be - new growth is more disease resistant. This is yet another reason to use your herbs lavishly. After all, a garden on the windowsill is there to use, as well as to delight you.
A Few Recipes
The recipes this month are for Rory, who loves all things caramel, for Emily, who adores Turkish delight, and for Liz, who loves icecream but finds that the preservatives, colourings, stabilisers and other weird ingredients in most icecream disturb her sleep.
Caramel sauce
This is very, very easy to make, and incredibly delicious. Pour it over icecream, or add a spoonful to a glass of milk to make a caramel milkshake. I love it best with bananas. Peel a banana, and cover it with sauce. Eat cold, or heat for 10 seconds in the microwave or a hot oven. Slices of crisp apple are also wonderful dipped in a little caramel sauce.
Ingredients
2 cups brown sugar
300ml container of thickened cream
3 tb butter
You also need:
A saucepan
. A wooden spoon, or an ordinary spoon and an oven mitt so you don’t burn your fingers
. A container for the sauce
Method:
Put it all in a saucepan. Turn the stove on to a low heat; put the pan
Stir over low heat until butter melts and the mixture just starts to bubble glop, glop, glop.
It will thicken as it cools.
Pour it over food while it’s hot, or store in a sealed container in the fridge for up to a week. Don’t pour it into a container while it’s still very hot though- wait for about half an hour till it’s cooler so the container won’t crack or melt in the heat.
GENUINE Turkish Delight (not like that red jelly stuff that pretends to be the real thing)
Turkish delight originally comes from ancient Persia. The ancient Persians loved all sorts of jellies. The ancestor of what we now know as Turkish delight was one of these, 'rahat lokum', meaning 'giving rest to the throat'.
Turkish delight isn't the easiest sweet in the world to make. It’s fairly simple if you follow the directions, and not nearly as complicated as you might think once you start making it, but it does take a lot of time. Not as much as you might think when you first read the recipe, because you can watch TV or read while the stuff bubbles.
Don't let any oft his turn you off. Genuine Turkish delight is so extraordinarily stunning that all the effort is worth it- and it will be quite different from any other sweet you've ever tasted.
Ingredients
4 cups caster sugar
4 cups dark grape juice
Juice of 1 lemon
1-cup cornflour
2 tbsps rosewater
Three quarters of a cup of icing sugar (not icing mixture)
A quarter cup cornflour, extra.
Take two saucepans.
In the first one place the caster sugar, one and a half cups dark grape juice and the lemon juice.
Boil till a little sets into a soft ball in a saucer of water.
Take off the heat.
In the next pan place one cup of cornflour and half a cup of grape juice. Stir to a paste then add two more cups of grape juice. Simmer on a low heat till thick, stirring all the time, and then pour the hot syrup into the thick cornflour mixture, stirring all the time.
Simmer on a very, very low heat for about an hour. Stir every now and then. You don't need to stir it all that often till near the end of the operation.
It'll get thicker… and thicker… and very, very, very thick... but don't give in. It'll be almost solid by the time it's ready.
When it's really, really, REALLY thick and you are quite sure it can't get any thicker and anyway your arm is about to break take it off the heat and add the rose water.
Pour onto a greased tray. Leave uncovered for about three hours. Lightly oil a knife and cut into squares. Don’t worry if it’s still a bit gloopy and won’t cut neatly- just roll balls in the icing sugar and cornflour mixture instead of neat squares. It will taste just as good.
Now mix three quarters of a cup of icing sugar and a quarter of a cup of cornflour and roll each piece in this. Store in an airtight container.
Vanilla Icecream Without an Icecream Machine
This is very rich, and very very good. After two spoonfuls you’ll have that lovely ‘I have eaten wonderful icecream and don’t want any more’ feeling. (With commercial icecream you want to eat the whole tub because it never does quite satisfy.)
Bryan eats this most nights with either a couple of spoonfuls of pineapple sorbet, or a small tart or piece of cake. (Bryan needs a dessert each night or he gets too thin. Sigh.)
1 300 gm container thickened cream
1 1/2 cups caster sugar
2 tsp vanilla paste (It has a far better flavour than vanilla essence)
4 egg yolks
You will also need:
Wooden spoon
Saucepan
Electric hand mixer Freezer proof container for icecream, with lid.
Method
Place all ingredients in the saucepan. Stir with the wooden spoon till the sugar is dissolved.
Place on a low heat- as low as possible. Stir ALL THE TIME till the mixture just starts to bubble at the edges. If you don’t stir, or let it get too hot, you will end of with a grainy texture, a bit like runny scrambled eggs. Don’t panic if this happens, as whipping it later will help it bind together again, but it won’t be quite as good- it will taste a little more ‘cooked’ and the texture won’t be quite as light, but it will still be excellent.
Take the mix off the heat as soon as it bubbles.
Put the hand mixer on to HIGH and whiz it for three minutes. It will become much paler as you whiz it, and froth up to almost twice its size.
Pour into container, put the lid on. Place in the freezer for about 2-3 hours.
Take it out, and whiz it for 2 minutes on high.
Leave it in the freezer till set. This will depend on how cold your freezer is- it should be set enough to serve in another 2 hours, but may need overnight to get really firm.
This keeps in the freezer for at least a month. Throw out if you leave it out accidentally and it defrosts, and don’t refreeze it, or it may go ‘off’ Remember that it doesn’t have preservatives.
Note: This isn’t suitable for children under three or the very elderly, pregnant women or anyone with a compromised immune system, as the egg yolks may not be totally cooked, and if they contain salmonella the cooking may not be enough to destroy it. If you are serving it to anyone in a ‘risk group’ who shouldn’t eat say, soft cheeses or lightly boiled eggs, you will need to cook the mix on LOW for three minutes, stirring all the time, to make sure the mix is well cooked. It will taste a bit ‘cooked’ if you do this- just as milk that has boiled tastes different from milk that hasn’t been boiled- but will still taste superb.
Pineapple Sorbet
2 pineapples, peeled and cored
2 cups castor sugar
Juice of three lemons or limes
4 tsp tartaric acid (this makes the taste more piquant so you don’t need to add more sugar)
You will also need:
Freezer proof container, with lid
. Hand held blender
Blend everything together. Place in freezer with lid on. When it is half frozen- about 2-3 hours- blend it all again. Place in freezer till set.
This lasts up to two months in the freezer.
A good serve is about 2 tb. Bryan has 1-2 tb icecream and 1-2 tb sorbet next to each other in a small bowl.
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