Newsletter - November 2011
Introduction | Appeal to Save the Valley
Recent Awards | Book News
Schedule for the next 15 months
The November Garden, including more than you probably want to know about lettuce
A Few Recipes, including fruit rich Christmas biscotti and spiced Christmas Biscuits
Introduction
Four giant fruitcakes, laced with whisky, to serve 260 slices: check;
200 spice biscuits: check;
260 Christmas biscotti, rich in crystallised pineapple, red and green cherries and raw almonds: check;
8 gluten-free apple cakes: check;
8 plum and coconut cakes: check;
260 gluten-free chocolate rice crisps: still to be made;
300 rounds of varied sandwiches and rice crackers topped with varied good things: still to be made.
Teacups assembled.
Marquees ready to go up.
Chairs dusted.
Urn ready to go.
Bumps on the track almost filled in…
It’s our annual open garden workshops next week: 260 people in four workshops over a weekend. The roses are blooming – in fact some are already past their best, but that is the way our garden is planned, a treat for every week of the year, so there is never one time when all the glorious things bloom together. The wombats are fat, and the grass is green.
To say we are busy is a slight understatement.
I’ve just come back after ten days in WA, working for the Fremantle Children’s Literature Centre’s inspiring programme of master classes for talented young writers, plus a talk at the lovely North Beach Primary, where they have planted hundreds of thousands of native trees in salt-affected farmland and designed a magic school garden…
It was wonderful: the wild flowers, the sea crashing onto the rocks out from Albany, the patchwork of farmland below us on the various flights, having breakfast at the dog beach with a Ridgeback, a Great Dane puppy and a fat Beagle trying to share our eggs.
Just sometimes I wish I was three people though and feel that I’m trying to do the work of three people too. At times in the past month it’s meant long hours late at night just trying to keep up with emails, questions from kids about books or wombats, or from parents desperate for help with their children’s reading problems or beginning authors wanting mentoring, questions growing avocados and problems with fruit fly…
New Year’s resolution: try to grow four more hands, to cope with it all.
In the midst of all that, too, there is the appeal against the decision to approve the gold mine just upstream of us (see below)…
And despite all that, life is good. I actually like making 260 biscotti, as long as I only have to do it once a year.
Grandma always complained that people just don’t eat enough these days. She loved feeding people and so do I, and so does my niece and so did great-grandma and her mother too. Plus Bryan is a conservative eater (which is a nice way of saying he’s picky) and would eat his favourite choc chip biscuits every day of the year and so it’s good to be able to make spice biscuits and biscotti (which Bryan has now decided he likes as well as choc chip biscuits) and choc rice crisps.
Plus I have never seen the valley so beautiful, not just green but the lush green of three good years in a row. The black wattle is blooming and the rose petals float in wisps of pink and white cloud. Mothball is so full of green grass that she just bumps the front door and is satisfied with a token three rolled oats placed in her bowl – she just wants our obedience, not the oats.
Life is good.
The Fight to Save the Valley
This is an appeal for donations to help fight an appeal in the NSW Land and Environment Court against the approval of the Dargues Reef Mine at Major's Creek.
The mine will suspend 800,000 cubic metres of toxic waste contaminated with xanthates, their breakdown chemicals and heavy metals less than a kilometre upstream above the Major's Creek Gorge, an extraordinary refuge for endangered species. The loss of water to processing, as well as a drop in the water-table, may be even more deadly to the bush and orchards downstream, as well as for the communities along the river and in the Eurobodalla Shire.
This land is the home of Mothball wombat, of Diary of a Wombat. It is also the land I have walked and loved and written about for nearly forty years.
We need at least $20,000, and much more if we can raise it, to pay the barrister and expert witnesses. Some have donated their services, but costs are still overwhelming. The case will begin on February 1, but expert testimony needs to be in by December.
Please, can you help us, either with money or expert support? A $5 or $10 donation from many people would mean that with the help of the Environmental Defender's Office we can really fight this case.
Please pass the appeal to others, too, or to anyone you know who can help us with expert witnesses: botanists, zoologists, ecologists, hydrologists, geologists or economists, or any other expert whose testimony would be valuable in a case as complex as this.
This is just one of so many similar cases around Australia. But if we can win stricter conditions – including independent monitoring and the necessity for baseline studies before development begins – it will be an important precedent that may help others who fight these battles too.
Donations should be made to Araluen Valley Producers and Protectors of the Ecosystems Coalition (AVPPEC) Inc
Mail: PO Box 63, Braidwood, NSW, 2622
Or direct deposit to:
Bendigo Bank BSB: 633000 Acct No: 144327145 (for bank transfers)
If you would like updates about the appeal, too, or more information about the issue, could you let me know?
Recent Awards
Hazel Edwards and I are among the 184 candidates from 60 countries nominated for the Astrid Lindgren Award. The Award is given for an author’s body of work and contribution to children’s literature generally, not for one specific book. It is an honour and privilege to be among the nominees.
Book News
Christmas Wombat is in the stores. I even read it to Mothball and she didn’t try to eat it. She didn’t pay much attention either, but I thought that the fact she didn’t bite the cover was a good sign.
Christmas Wombat, gloriously illustrated by Bruce Whatley, is what happens on Christmas Eve when the wombat meets Santa’s reindeer in a battle for the carrots across the world. I think my favourite part is when the wombat meets the polar bear… but there’s no way I can describe that. You’ll need to see it for yourself.
Nanberry: Black Brother White – the story of four extraordinary people in the early NSW colony: Surgeon White, who hated Australia, loved a convict girl, a loyal father not just to his white son but to the black one he adopted; Rachel, who escaped the gallows to become the richest, most loved woman in NSW; Andrew, their son, who became a hero of the Battle of Waterloo, finally coming back to Australia; and Nanberry, orphaned by the smallpox, who would stride between the white world and the black, as a sailor in the merchant navy and a Cadigal warrior and leader of his people.
It’s as accurate as I can make it, two hundred years after it all happened. But it did. They were heroes, incredible and they need to be remembered.
Other books: A Waltz for Matilda (perhaps my favourite book) came out last year, as did A Year in the Valley, a book (for adults) about life here with the wombats and the trees and garden and friends. Queen Victoria’s Underpants is the (almost) true story of how Her Majesty’s underpants led to freedom for women.
The revised Chook Book is in the shops too now – twice as big as the original edition and much changed and updated. It’s all you ever wanted to know (and probably a bit more) about how to keep chooks in your backyard or at school.
Schedule for the Year to Come
Here’s what in the diary so far, though there are several other tentative bookings that aren’t listed here. And really, really and truly (or my husband and best friends are going to take away the car keys) I can only manage one trip of four days a month at most – including travelling time away.
This is what the calendar has so far, but there are already another half dozen trips pencilled in.
November 12 and 13: Open Garden workshops at our place through The Open Garden Scheme at act@opengarden.org.au but they are now all booked up. .
November 18: Talks at Sydney book shops on Christmas Wombat
9.45-11.00 am: Story time at the Children’s Bookshop, 6 Hannah Street, Beecroft, reading Christmas Wombat and telling wombat stories and perhaps even singing a wombat song.
4.00-5.00 pm Shearer’s, 99 Norton Street, Leichardt, a Christmas Wombat event.
November 19: Picture Book workshop, ‘Mastering the Art of the Bedtime Story’ at the NSW Writer’s Centre. Contact the Writer’s Centre for details (20 places only).
November 30: Eureka Day Dinner and Talk at the Irish Club, Canberra.
December 9, 10, 11: Talks at book-shops in Melbourne.
Schedule for 2012
1-15 February: Appeal against the Dargues Reef Mine in the NSW Land and Environment Court
March, Saturday 17: Harvest Festival. Moruya, NSW.
March, Sunday 25: Talk at Old Parliament House, ACT.
May 7, 8, 9, 10: Talks in Brisbane. Contact Helen Bain at Speaker’s Ink for bookings.
June 5: Talks at the Australian Jewish Museum, Sydney.
July, somewhere around the 8th: Talk at the Australian Literacy Educators Association Conference, Sydney.
July 22-25: Curtis Coast Literary Carnivale, Gladstone, Queensland.
August 12: In Perth/Fremantle for the West Australian Association of Teacher Assistants Conference, and possibly doing a few other talks once I’ve gone that far.
August 22, 23 (Book Week): Talks in Brisbane. Contact Helen Bain at Speaker’s Ink for bookings.
September: three days talk in Melbourne. For details or bookings contact: Simon O'Carrigan - Booked Out <simon@bookedout.com.au>
October 25-27 Fremantle WA for the Fremantle Children’s Literature Centre’s Celebrate Reading Conference, and possibly doing a few other talks.
The November Garden
This month is roses, roses, roses, drifts of petals tracing patterns in the wind, unless it’s callistemons, callistemons, callistemons with the bottlebrush flowers in purple and red (there are white and yellow ones too, but I love the purple best). And salvias, pomegranates, avocadoes swelling on the trees, the first of the mulberries to pick each day I pass the tree and the first zucchini flowers…
What to Plant in November
Plants: strawberries, sweet potatoes, choko, herbs. Seeds: artichokes, asparagus, basil, beans, beetroot, burdock, cabbage, capsicum, carrots, celery, celtuce, chicory, corn salad, cress, cucumbers, eggplant, endive, fennel, kale, kohl rabi, leeks, lettuce (may not germinate over 26º C), melons, okra, parsley, pumpkin, radish, salsify, scorzonera, sweet corn, tomatoes, turnips, salad greens like mizuna and mitsuba, and zucchini. Avoid pumpkins, cucumbers, melons and zucchini in humid areas.
Flower garden: Achillea, ageratum, alstromeria, alyssum, amaranthus, aster, balsam, bellis perennis, brachyscome, calendula, candytuft, Canterbury bells, carnation, celosia, clarkia, cleome, coleus, coreopsis, columbines, cosmos, delphinium, dichondra, echinacea, echinops, erigeron, euphorbia, foxglove, gaillardia, gazania, globe amaranth, gloxinia, godetia, gypsophila, helichrysum, heliotrope, hellebores, honesty, lavender, marigolds, nasturtium, petunia, phlox, Flanders poppy, portulaca, rudbeckia, salpiglossis, salvia, scabious, Sweet William, viola, zinnia and snapdragons.
World’s Easiest Weed Killer
Q. I’ve got weeds springing up everywhere, but I hate using poisons. Is there anything else I can do?
A. Try feeding them to death. Seriously. This stuff is great… it kills weeds in your flower or vegie garden, and even bindies in the lawn.
Fill a small hand sprayer with sulphate of ammonia or other granulated fertiliser. Add half a cup of water. Shake well till dissolved. Add a VERY little more water if needed.
Spray the leaves... and watch them brown and wither overnight. Once the weeds are dead the ‘weed killer’ will fertilise your garden.
A Lot More Than You Probably Want to Know About Lettuce
If you can grow lettuce you can grow endive, silver beet and most other 'greens'.
'Lettuce delighteth to grow in manured, fat, moist and dunged ground: it must be sowen in faire weather in places where there is plenty of water... and prospereth if sowen very thin.'
Palladius (A fourth century Roman writer on matters horticultural)
Annual
Germination temperatures: 7-24º C, but prefers temperatures over 16ø C.
Seedlings emerge: 6-10 days.
Time until first picking: Matures in 6-12 weeks, depending on variety and how big you want the leaves. Of course with a lot of lettuce varieties you can pick them leaf by leaf from the moment they are big enough to bother with.
Number of plants needed for a family of four: Plant 12-36 non-hearting, oak leaf lettuce to pull a few leaves every day (in cool areas they won't grow much – if at all – in winter, so you'll need to grow twice as many as in a subtropical climate).
Plant twelve lettuces every two weeks so you have continuously maturing lettuces to eat nearly every night.
In cool areas plans fifty or sixty lettuces to mature for winter and spring eating.
Number of sowings: Plant lettuces every two or three weeks for continuous crops, or oak leaf lettuces once a year.
Essential information: Feed and water well or you'll get bitter lettuce; plant the right variety for your climate and time of year; don't offend your lettuce or it will turn bitter.
Lettuce is easy to grow – in fact lettuce was once a wild herb springing up along the banks of the Nile after its annual flood. It was probably first cultivated in Central Asia, Kashmir or Siberia, and was being cultivated by the 7th century BC in China.
Good lettuce is much harder to grow. (That original wild lettuce happily seeding itself among the pyramids was tough and bitter.)
Lettuce wreaks a terrible revenge on anyone who neglects it. It becomes bitter if its growth is checked in any way – or else it bolts to seed. Too little water, too little feeding or too hot a summer all can contribute to a lettuce failure.
Lettuce growing just needs organisation. Anyone with a plot of ground – or a dozen pots – can pick their own lettuce whenever they need it – as long as they remember to feed and water it regularly and pick it when it's ready.
Lettuce was eaten both raw and cooked – the cooking probably removed a lot of the bitterness. It was also used medicinally '… they extract its juice at the time of the wheat harvest [Autumn, when it would be going to seed and bitter] and it is said that it purges away dropsy and takes away dimness of sight and removes ulcers on the eye.' (Theophrastus, 320 BC)
Lettuce was also used to soothe unwanted lust. When Adonis died, Venus flung herself into a bed of lettuce to soothe her passion. The medieval herbalist Nicholas Culpepper recommended even more interesting ways to use lettuce to sooth unwelcome amorousness, see below.
When to sow your lettuce seed (or plant your seedlings)
Lettuce can be planted at any time of the year – just choose a winter or summer or all-year-round variety. Lettuce won't grow in cold weather, though, so if your ground is too cold to sit on comfortably your lettuce will just sit there sulking then go to seed as soon as it warms up.
I usually stop planting in late autumn and start again in spring. In frost-free areas lettuce keeps growing all year. In very hot areas lettuce is best grown in semi-shade or under a shade cloth in the worst of the heat. Lettuce is really a cool season crop, but luckily many heat-resistant cultivars have been specially bred for Australian conditions. Look on the back of packets of seed, or trust that your local garden centre knows what it's doing with the varieties that it's selling for your area.
Planting your lettuce
You can either plant lettuce seeds or buy seedlings. One pinch of lettuce seeds will give you almost enough lettuces to feed Australia. Beware – it is very easy to overplant lettuce and very hard to harden your heart and pull up the ones you don't want. (Turn them into lettuce soup – see below.) I often buy punnets – there are some very good ones that give you a wide range of lettuces that mature at different times. I also like to plant seed of unusual lettuces – but then we eat a lot of lettuce. Lettuce seed can either be sown in a pot and transplanted, or scattered in place and the ones you don't want thinned out. In hot weather it's best to sow them where they are to be grown, as transplanting can cause them to go bitter (I warned you that lettuce was temperamental). If you do transplant in hot weather cut the tops off to reduce transpiration and loss of moisture). Don't worry – more leaves will grow back.
Keep the soil moist, either with a very thin scattering of sawdust, very fine grass clippings or even by spreading shade cloth over it to stop a hard crust forming.
Lettuce seeds may not germinate if the temperature is over 30º C. Don't panic. Spread the seeds on wet blotting paper, cover with another sheet of wet blotting paper and keep them in a plastic bag in the fridge for two or three days, then scrape them carefully onto the soil, cover and keep moist.
Plant a few seedlings regularly. It's a temptation to plant lots of lettuce seedlings at once – then you end up with a bumper crop for two weeks and none coming on afterwards. Stagger your lettuce plantings.
Lettuce doesn't like competition. Make sure the soil is well weeded and there aren't other plants crowding it – if lettuce is too crowded it may grow slowly (and become bitter) or too much humidity will turn the lettuce slimy.
On the other hand lettuce do seem to like being crowded together – just not with other plants – and are sweeter and more tender if they are shoulder to shoulder with their friends. I plant lettuce about as far apart as the width of my hand.
Keep lettuce seedlings mulched. This will help keep the soil cool and moist and help feed them. Well-mulched lettuce are much less likely to turn bitter or 'bolt' to seed.
Water every second day – or every day in hot or windy weather, preferably in the evening – hot wet lettuce can rot.
Feeding your lettuce
Lettuce has shallow roots so need excellent feeding and frequent watering if they're not to be 'set back' and turn bitter.
Lettuce is best VERY well mulched and fed every week with liquid fertiliser – home-made, rich in all sorts of things, not just nitrogen. As it's so shallow rooted it can be planted in a very shallow trench of compost with good results. Avoid using fresh raw manure – it may cause puffiness and also appears to attract pests to lettuce. Old cow manure or wilted comfrey make excellent mulches for lettuce.
A good way to grow lettuce is to dig a small shallow trench about half a finger depth and plant your seedlings, then as they grow fill in the trench with compost or sieved old manure.
If you don't have compost then feed your seedlings with a sprinkle of blood and bone or old hen manure – say 2 kg per thirty metres of row.
You can also feed lettuce every week with liquid manure – either a commercial variety (there are several good ones on the market) or homemade. I cover weeds with water in a bucket with a lid and add either a little blood and bone, hen manure or fresh urine. Scoop off the liquid and water well. Another easy liquid manure is made by covering compost with water. Compost water is also good to combat rotting lettuce.
If your soil is very acid a gentle sprinkle of lime or dolomite will help your lettuces flourish. Wood ash will add potash as well as neutralising the soil. Sprinkle gently as though you were sieving icing sugar onto a cake.
Lettuce tolerates acidic to alkaline soil.
A Box of lettuce
One styrofoam box filled with lettuce will give you enough lettuce for one person four times a week.
Fill your box with compost or potting mix. Make sure there are holes in the bottom or the box will fill with water and the soil will turn sour and the lettuce roots will rot.
Choose a non-hearting lettuce variety like Cos or Red Cos or Salad Bowl lettuce, so you can pick a few leaves whenever you want to. Plant the seedlings about a handspan apart. (They won't grow very big because you are going to keep on picking them.)
Now start feeding. Give a little diluted liquid manure once a week. The small amount of soil in a styrofoam box can't possibly hold all the nutrients your plants will need – so you'll have to keep adding them in small amounts regularly. Water every day too – remember, if you treat your lettuce badly it'll turn bitter.
Which Lettuce?
Lettuce can be 'hearting' types – like the crisp hearted Iceberg found in supermarkets, or the softer hearted lettuce like Buttercrunch and Mignonette.
There are also cylindrical lettuces like Cos or Red Cos or Rabbit's Ear. My favourite lettuce are the loose leaf perpetual or continuous lettuce, like Oak Leaf or Perpetual – often with frills like 19th century opera singer's knickers.
Most lettuces grow best in either winter or summer. (You can buy Icebergs in the shops all year round because they are shipped from all over Australia.)
There are dozens of lettuce varieties around – summer and winter varieties as well as all-year-rounders, frilly ones, curly leafed ones, crisp-hearted lettuce and broad leafed tougher ones. Try them all. Lettuce has as great a range of tastes as apples.
Some lettuce can be grown all year round. We grow red and green Mignonette lettuces all year round. They are small – one meal's worth – and sweet, and take both frost and extreme heat. Cos – either red or green – is another all-year-rounder and is an excellent lettuce for just picking off the occasional leaf as you need it. Cos lettuce doesn't heart, and the leaves are tougher than most commercial lettuce.
Great Lakes is a common summer lettuce – sweet and crisp. Narromar stands hot weather well; Green Velvet and Winterlake are Iceberg-types that grow slowly through the winter months. There are dozens more around. Lettuce seed keeps for at least three years, so it's fun to buy several varieties of seed at once and plant a pinch of all of them.
In very hot weather I find that the red lettuces survive better – especially Red Salad Bowl lettuce – a mound of frills and wonderful to pick leaf by leaf.
Winter lettuce has thicker leaves than summer lettuce. They aren't as sweet either, though they have a more pronounced lettuce flavour. There are several winter lettuce available that look like the summer Iceberg, just tougher.
You can now buy punnets of mixed lettuce – very good value. You can also buy packets of 'mesclun mix' seed, which will give you a mix of delicious and ornamental leaves for salads, including lettuce, rocket, endive and others.
Companion planting for lettuce
Lettuce seems to grow best in mid-summer in the semi-shade of climbing beans or corn. Tomatoes may shade them, but lettuce seems more prone to mildew next to tomatoes.
Lettuce grows very well with celery. Both need massive amounts of water and food and the celery will partially shade the lettuce, while the shallow-rooted lettuce won't compete with the deeper-rooted celery.
What can go wrong
Bitter lettuce
Lettuce that has had any check in its growth may become bitter. Keep your lettuce well watered and well fed. Mulch heavily in hot weather
Lettuce that races to seed (with thick central stalks and no hearts)
Lettuce seedlings may appear to transplant well – but run to seed prematurely. If you are transplanting large seedlings in hot weather cut off two thirds of their tops to cut down moisture loss. In hot weather keep a sprinkler on them during the heat of the day for a few days. Use bolt-resistant varieties like Narromar, Red Mignonette and Great Lakes.
Slugs and snails
No, you have not lost your memory – you really did plant those lettuce seedlings yesterday. The slugs and snails ate them all last night.
Slugs and snails love lettuce. They'll also crawl in between the outside leaves of mature lettuce. Slugs and snails taste better with salad dressing, but the texture isn't improved.
Wash mature lettuce well – or at least check for wild life. Place snail pellets in old margarine containers with a little door cut out. The snails will eat the pellet and die – but other animals like dogs, cats kids and worms won't be annihilated as well.
Slimy lettuce
This is caused by too much overhead watering. Mulch. This will keep soil moist and prevent contact between the lettuce and the soil so that soil pathogens are not washed up onto the leaves during watering.
Lettuce that fail to heart.
Some lettuce never heart – don't expect a Cos lettuce to look like a supermarket Iceberg. Lettuce can also fail to heart if you've fed them too much nitrogen and water at the expense of other necessary elements, especially during hot weather. Avoid artificial, nitrogen-rich fertiliser. Mulch well.
Big-veined lettuce
This is a virus. Dig plants out and burn them. Only use seed from healthy plants. Practice crop rotation.
Aphids (small green clustered insects)
Run your fingers over them to squash them. Other aphids will avoid the cemeteries of their brethren. Or cover marigolds with boiling water, cool, strain and spray. Marigold spray kills and deters aphids.
Downy Mildew (pale to darker brown spots on leaves)
Avoid overhead watering, mulch to stop splashing spores and spray with seaweed spray as a preventative. Badly infected plants should be pulled out, as they probably will never be appetising. Compost-fed plants are much more resistant.
Keeping lettuce seed
This is easy. If you grow Mignonettes that grow all year round just let a lettuce go to seed and sprinkle allow the seeds to fall on the ground – then plant out the seedlings.
Lettuce are self pollinating – but if you grow any other variety nearby that flowers at the same time you may get some crossing. Don't collect lettuce from the first plant that goes to seed – its kids may go to seed early too. Choose the best lettuce you have, stake it as it goes to seed so it doesn't fall over in a storm then when it's finished flowering pull it up, roots and all, and hang it up in a shady airy spot and catch the seed as it ripens – or just leave the whole plant in the garden and gather what you can, the first seed to ripen is usually the best.
I don't bother cleaning the chaff of my lettuce seed – just make sure it's all quite dry and leave it in an envelope (don’t forget to write the variety and the date on it at the time – too late six months later when you have totally forgotten!) in a dark dry place. Use it all next season if you can or the season after. After that long many of the seeds may not germinate, till after five years or so none will.
Coping with the harvest
Fresh Eating Period: All year with planning – Red Mignonette can be harvested all year round, but won't grow much in cold weather.
Storage Time: At least a week in the fridge. Lettuce purée can be frozen and used for soup.
Food value: 76 kj per 100 gms, vitamins A and C, potassium and thiamin.
Picking lettuce
Non-hearting lettuces like Cos can be picked leaf by leaf, as you need them. Other lettuces may regrow if you slice them off at the roots – but, except in cool weather, the regrowth is usually bitter. I pull our lettuce out by the roots, then plant another seedling straight away.
Most lettuce goes limp soon after picking. Pick it just before you need it or keep it in the fridge. Don't soak lettuce to recrisp it – it will lose vitamins and flavour. I prefer not to wash lettuce – just wipe it with a damp tea towel. No matter how well you drain a washed lettuce some water remains – and wet lettuce means a soggy salad. (If I am keeping lettuce for a day or so in the crisper drawer I find that putting a piece of damp kitchen paper in the bag with it provides enough moisture to help it not wilt but not so much that it makes the lettuce wet, slimy or undressable.)
Lettuce salad
Like bread, rice and other basics, a lettuce salad can be wonderful – or horrible.
Firstly, make sure the lettuce is fresh. It must also be dry – either drain it well, or better still, just wipe it with a damp cloth, instead of rinsing it. Never soak lettuce – if it is limp try putting it in the fridge to crisp it, not in water.
Mix in the dressing at the last minute or it'll go soggy. Don't beat a lettuce salad like a cake – the most gentle mixing possible is best, either with a broad spoon or even with your hands.
Lettuce and crouton salad
Take large chunks of very fresh French bread. Toast it very lightly. The outside should be crisp while the inside is soft. Dress your lettuce salad, then add the toasted bread chunks at the last minute. Serve at once. The light toasting will help stop the dressing soaking into the bread (as long as the lettuce isn't swimming in vinaigrette).
Thin slivers of cold chicken also go well mixed into this salad with the bread.
Lettuce Soup
This is good when you want to use up all those lettuce seedlings you planted too lavishly or if you're a canny soul and just can't bear to waste the outside leaves and don't have a rabbit.
Simmer one cup of lettuce (I know it's hard to judge this but the exact proportions don't matter) in three cups of chicken stock for five minutes or thereabouts. Purée. Heat again or chill. Serve with a splash of cream or light sour cream and maybe a sprinkle of well-chopped parsley or a little winter or summer savoury or fresh dill.
Other uses for lettuce:
. Add a few lettuce leaves (the outside ones will do) to your peas as you boil them – it accentuates the flavour. Throw out when serving.
. Puréed lettuce stalks make a good deodorant – if you don't mind pale green underarms and stains on your clothes.
. Lettuce stalks have also been used as a mild soporific – munch them before you go to sleep. (Beatrix Potter's baby rabbits ate lettuce and fell asleep – but you need to be a baby rabbit before eating a salad will make you drowsy.)
'The juice mixed or boiled with oil of roses, applied to the forehead and temples, procures sleep and cured the headache proceeding from a hot cause… '
Nicholas Culpepper
Lettuce and health
A diet high in lettuce had been associated with lower rates of lung, stomach and endometrial cancer – the darker green lettuces are best.
Why you should grow your own
Commercially-grown lettuce may be treated with Mancozeb, Maneb or Zineb every 7 - 10 days for mildew. These are all dithiocarbamates, possibly carcinogenic and teratogenic. A residue of the dithiocarbamates, ethylene thiourea, stays on the skin even after it's been washed or cooked. Lettuce may also be polluted with endosulphan – this has possibly delayed effects on human health and is extremely harmful to birds, earthworms and other animals.
A Few Recipes
Christmas Biscotti
These are chunkier than the usual biscotti, crisp outside but softer within and fruitier.
1.5 cups caster sugar
2 eggs
½ cup SR flour
1.5 cups plain flour
1 tbsp vanilla paste
1 cup green crystallised cherries
1 cup chopped crystallised pineapple
1 cup red crystallised cherries
1 cup chopped glacéd apricots
2 cups raw almonds with the skin on, soaked in water for 20 minutes and still wet
Beat eggs and sugar and vanilla till well-mixed and turning pale. Gently mix in other ingredients.
Form into two long loaves and place on baking paper on an oven tray. Bake at 200º C for about 25 minutes until firm and pale brown on top.
Cool.
Cut into thin slices with a serrated knife. They won’t be very thin – the fruit and nuts are too chunky.
Place slices flat down on the baking tray again – you will need two or three goes as they won’t all fit.
Bake on one side at about 150º C till crisp on top; turn and bake for another 20 minutes or so till crisp on the other side.
Keep in a sealed container for up to two weeks. They can be recrisped if they turn soggy.
Jackie's Christmas Biscuits
These are delicious – an Aussie biscuit crunch with the colour and tradition of old-fashioned Christmas goodies
125 gm butter
1 ½ cups brown sugar
1 egg
1 cup SR flour
¼ cup rolled oats
½ cup dark or white choc chips
½ cup of your favourite nuts (sliced almonds are good, or macadamias)
3 cups finely chopped glacéd fruit, or just glacé cherries if you
prefer, or glacé ginger
Optional: 3 tbsps candied peel
Optional: 2 tsps ground ginger or mixed spice
Cream butter and sugar. Mix in egg, then flour, then everything else.
Preheat oven to 200º C. Place on non-stick trays or grease them first.
Place teaspoons of mix on the trays – they'll spread. Bake about for about ten minutes. They should be pale brown and still softish – they'll crisp as they cool.
Store in a sealed container.
Serves: about 30 biscuits
Fruit Tea
Once upon a time tea was a luxury, a wonderfully expensive 'Chinese herb' drunk only by the rich.
In those days most people drank ale, a low-alcohol, freshly-brewed beer. (And many authorities were aghast when tea became cheaper after the Indian tea plantations came into production and the masses took to drinking tea. Not a bit of nourishment in it, they cried, not like a good glass of ale! Tea drinking would surely lead to the complete degeneration of society!)
In those early days 'drinking a dish of tea' was the prerogative of ladies and gentlemen, as opposed to ordinary women and men. Ladies partook of elegant afternoon tea with their friends, or sipped tea after dinner, while the blokes got stuck into the port, though the men might also drink tea at supper after a convivial game of cards.
If you were really affluent, you might have a dish of tea upon waking, though most ladies preferred a more sustaining chocolate drink, flavoured with cinnamon and sugar and perhaps cloves.
Tea was far too good in those days to be slopped into a mug with a glug of milk and a spoonful of sugar. You sipped it daintily from a fine China cup, while nibbling at cucumber or watercress sandwiches or teacake or plum cake or extra thin bread and butter.
Milk in those days was unheard of in a cup of tea. How could you savour the true taste of tea with milk in it?
This isn't to say that nothing was ever added to tea. A man might add a dash of cognac for an extra warming drink, while ladies preferred fruit tea. Not common fruits like plums and pears, of course, but strawberries or ultra-expensive oranges or lemons or slices of fresh apple.
Nowadays fruit tea has almost disappeared – the one remnant of the tradition is having a slice of lemon in your tea instead of milk.
But fruit tea is actually quite delicious and definitely worth reviving. It makes tea a treat again, instead of just something to revive you mid-morning and mid-afternoon.
It is also good for you, made with extra healthy China green tea, full of antioxidants and with all the virtues now claimed for green tea – excellent for helping to reduce heart disease, a variety of cancers and possibly even to help you to lose weight.
Fruit Tea
For four cups of fruit tea you need:
4 level teaspoons of China green tea (yes, alright, you can use teabags, but for Pete's sake empty the tea out of the little bags first. The flavour of warm paper does NOT add to the delights of fruit tea).
8 cups of boiling water
2 very thin slices of unpeeled orange
2 very thin slices of unpeeled lime or lemon
1 large thinly sliced, extra ripe strawberry
4 thin slices of tart unpeeled apple, like Granny Smith or Lady Williams
4 fine China cups, with saucers (don't even THINK about making fruit tea in mugs)
1 tea pot, preferably silver
1 plate of thin bread and butter or cucumber sandwiches
1 plate of tea-cake or plum cake
Place half a slice of orange and lemon in each teacup, then a slice of strawberry and a slice of apple. Now fill the teapot with half the boiling water; leave it for five minutes; pour it out and IMMEDIATELY add the tea, then pour in the boiling water before the pot gets cold. Put the lid on, let it steep for two minutes, then pour it into the cups.
The fruit will slightly cook in the sudden heat. If you think you are going to want a second cuppa add more hot water to the pot while you sip the first cup.
Fruit tea shouldn't be hurried. Sip it delicately, while exchanging the lightest, happiest gossip with your friends.
And don't forget the sandwiches, the bread and butter or the tea or plum cake either.
Bread and Butter
Good bread and butter is one of life's simple glories, almost forgotten in these days of pre-sliced bread and margarine.
Take an unsliced loaf. Turn it on its end. Dip a bread saw in hot water, then slice the bread as thinly as you possibly can. Butter it lightly, cut off the crusts and arrange with artistry on a plate.
Cucumber sandwiches
Peel and thinly slice a young cucumber. If you want to be really fussy you can sprinkle the slices with salt and allow them to drip for half an hour, rinse and pat dry. This ensures that your cucumber is not so watery as to make your sandwiches instantly soggy. Slice and butter bread as above.
Place your cucumber slices over a slice of bread; lay another slice of buttered bread on top of it (both sides of a cucumber sandwich need to be buttered, or one slice will end up soggy.) Remove the crusts and cut diagonally into neat triangles. Serve on a fine China plate.
Teacake
Teacake was traditionally made with yeast. When baking powder came along in the 1840s people started making teacakes with self-raising flour.
My Grandma still made teacakes back in the sixties, but I've never seen one since – except in our house, of course, where all sorts of eccentric items are still eaten.
A teacake needs to be eaten fresh i.e. straight out of the oven, or perhaps toasted for supper or breakfast. If any is left after that give it to the chooks.
Grandma's (Mrs. Thelma Edwards) Recipe for Tea Cake, from the recipes she collected from 1919 onwards.
'Take one egg, half cup sugar, 1 cup milk, two and half cups self-raising flour, 1 dessertspoon butter, pinch salt.
Mix salt and sugar with the flour, sift two or three times [I never do – flour was lumpier back then], rub in the butter, beat the egg, add with the milk and mix the whole to a soft dough.
Grease a deep dish (a pie dish will do) and bake in a moderate oven 20 mins or half an hour.
Sometimes Grandma poked slices of peeled apple into the top of the cake before it was baked, sprinkled on cinnamon and a little brown sugar and turned it into apple teacake. Sometimes she added currants and sultanas and a little candied lemon or orange peel too.
Teacake really needs to be buttered, as there's not much fat in it. You can eat your teacake warm from the oven, or you can cut it into slices while hot, butter each slice and reform it into a cake shape; or leave it till it's cool, cut it into slices and toast each slice. Butter them, reform into a cake shape and serve hot.
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