Intro | Wombat news | Monkey Baa is off to the USA!
Latest Awards | Latest Book News
The September Garden: Weeds, frosts and slugging it out with snails…
Spring Recipes… eating artichokes, asparagus and peas.
Introduction
This is one of those times when I seem to have three lives: the gardener and the moocher about the bush, watching wombats and the flowers of spring; the writer, so deep in a book that hours pass before I remember to take a break; and a third person that includes wife, mother, friend and the one who answers the phone and emails, makes the dinner and picks the peas…
Which is why this newsletter is so short. For the first time in a decade we have water for tomatoes, corn, lettuce, and celery...all the annual veg I’ve ignored for so long, relying on our drought resistant perennial veg instead, the deep rooted avocadoes, sturdy apple trees. I’m planting; Bryan is mulching with woodchips from some felled wattles; the wombats fat on grass and fallen fruit.
Every moment at my computer is spent lost in the past…no, not lost. Firmly rooted in the idealistic decades before Federation with A Waltz for Matilda, the 1790’s, or the sequel to Queen Victoria’s Underpants (not for next year- Bruce is working on another Wombat book for 2011).
Anyway, I’m there, not here, if that makes sense. I promise, there’ll be a longer and better newsletter next month.
Wombat News
It’s small, it’s grey, and it’s almost certainly the baby of Bruiser, the timid wombat released here more than a year ago after he was badly wounded and starving at two ‘release sites’ before.
Bruiser is now bigger, fatter...and a father, as no other wombat here is young and grey- they grow grey gradually as they get older. I have a feeling he’s pretty happy, too.
Monkey Baa is off to the USA!
The fabulous Monkey Baa Theatre for Young People is taking Hitler’s Daughter: the play to the USA in January. Many many thanks to all who helped raise money to send them on their way. I’m one of their patrons, with Morris Gleitzman and Susanne Gervais. Their production is extraordinary, so moving that the audience is silent for long seconds before they applaud. This invitation will mean they’ll have the chance to be seen by representatives from theatres around the world.
Latest Awards
Baby Wombat’s Week (created with Bruce Whatley and with thanks again to Mothball) won the 2010 Australian Book Industry Awards Younger Readers Award last week and so many thanks not just to those who voted for it, but also to the booksellers who have always been part of the partnership of the ‘wombat books’. Many many thanks to everyone who voted for The Shaggy Gully Times (again created with Bruce) for its shortlisting in the Yabba, Cool and Koala Awards.
New Books
Queen Victoria’s Underpants should be back in the bookshops- the first printing sold out faster than anyone thought it would.
The revised Chook Book will be in the shops in the next few weeks- 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.
The last in the Animal Stars series is The Horse That Bit a Bushranger – the true as I can make it account of a few of my ancestors and bushranger Ben Hall, the story of a young convict who rode a giant brumby stallion no one else could tame; who won a race, a farm and a wife… and of what happened next.
Oracle is out, too. It’s the most exciting of all of my books so far; set in ancient Greek, at the court of Mycenae, where Niko and his sister Thetis are acclaimed as the greatest acrobats in Greece, so valued by the High King that they are even sent on embassies to other kingdoms. But Thetis has both a curse and a gift – if she speaks at all, she must tell the truth. And when the walls of Mycenae fall in an earthquake Niko and the wild horse dancer Euridice must follow Thetis as she finds her true place – as the first of the oracles of Delphi.
Coming December 1 for Christmas: A Waltz for Matilda.
This is, perhaps, the best book I have written. It wasn’t quite the book I thought I was going to write, either. Other voices kept intruding, more whispers from the past. Finally the book was twice as long as I had expected, more saga than story.
In 1894, twelve-year-old Matilda flees the city slums to find her unknown father and his farm. But drought grips the land, and the shearers are on strike. Her father has turned swaggie and he’s wanted by the troopers. In front of his terrified daughter, he makes a stand against them, defiant to the last. ‘You'll never take me alive, said he... ’
Despite the setbacks she encounters along the way, Matilda is determined to make her father’s farm the best in the district. With the help of Aboriginal elder Auntie Love, the ladies of the Women’s Temperance and Suffrage League and many others, she confronts the unrelenting harshness of life on the land, and the long-standing hostility of local squatter, Mr. Drinkwater. She also discovers that enduring friendship can be the strongest kind of love.
Set against a backdrop of bushfire, flood, war and jubilation, this is the story of one girl’s journey towards independence. It is also the story of others who had no vote and very little but their dreams.
Drawing on the well-known poem by A.B. Paterson and from events rooted in actual history, this saga tells the story of how Australia became a nation. It is also a love story – about a girl, and about the land.
Other new-ish books
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, and they 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, Mugg, 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 Mugg 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 friends and 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 Learningbookings@laterallearning.com.au,Queensland bookings by Helen Bain at Speaker’s Inc, Victoria by Booked Out, simon@bookedout.com.au, SA bookings by Carol Carralloe (c.carroll@internode.on.net), WA bookings by the Fremantle Children’s Literature Centre, and for other bookings contact me at jackiefrench72@gmail.com.
But please don’t use any of these addresses 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, I can’t manage to answer more or, truthfully, even the number I get now. I already spend half my day answering queries and, despite having help in the office, am not quite sure how to cope, as questions come from overseas as well as Australia these days.
There are answers to nearly all your project questions as well as queries on how to get books published on the website, and answers to every gardening question so far received are in my gardening books, which should be in most libraries.
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.
October Sunday 17: Old Bus Depot markets, Canberra. Free talks at a special market day for Green Savvy Sunday.
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.
October 27. Talk for the Walking Bus programme, ACT at Duffy Primary School.
November 6 and 7: Open Garden workshops at our place. Contact the Open Garden organisers for bookings, act@opengarden.org.au. (Though I think this year’s places may be booked out- many people book a year ahead). 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 website.
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.
November 25: Botanic Gardens, Canberra , talk on This Generous Earth. Entry is free.
Early February, 2011: probably a trip to Darwin
1-4 March: probably talks in Melbourne: contact simon@bookedout.com.au if you’d like to make a booking.
March 19, 20, 21, 2011: Keynote address at Wombat Conference, Albury. (And if any schools or libraries nearby want talks while I’m there, this is the time to book)
March 31, April 1 2011: Newington Literary Festival, Sydney
May 9-13: I’ll be in Adelaide and country SA, available to talk some days.
May 18, 19, 2011: Talks at QLD 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
July 20, 21, 2011 Cairns: Cairns Writer’s Festival.
October 24-31: Fremantle, Perth and Albany WA. Contact the Fremantle Children’s Literature Centre for details and bookings.
The October Garden
This is the exciting time: trees are setting fruit, and are bright with pale-green leaves – it’s a time to dream about the abundance to come in a couple of months. October is just too encouraging. The days are balmy, and you feel like you can cultivate the world.
Take a grip on yourself. Whatever you plant now you’ll have to tend at Christmas. Three dozen tomatoes planted now mean one week bottling or freezing or sauce making in late summer; three zucchini plants will mean you’re forcing them on your friends. The more you dig now the more you’ll have to weed in a month’s time.
Start small, and extend your plot week by week. That way you won’t start more than you can tend. Don’t dig either. Sometimes I think humans have a sort of instinctive urge to dig – like kids digging in a sandpit. Dig if you must, but don’t assume it’ll make your garden any better – try a no-dig garden instead
Cool areas will start spring planting now. In warmer areas, plant more lettuce, beans and corn.
Harvest Like September, this is a month that tells you how good your garden planning was last year. We’d have had peas if the wallaby hadn’t eaten them, and young dandelion leaves if the wombat hadn’t sat on them. (The leaves are probably still edible but I don’t fancy them.) Keep picking the tops out of silver beet that goes to seed so they’ll keep cropping till the new lot are ready. Pick brussel sprouts as soon as they form, so more grow. Asparagus will be yielding now, and early artichokes. In warm areas lettuce, Chinese spinach, corn salad and peas may be starting to yield, if planted in August.
Fruit Loquat, navel orange, lemon, lime, tangelo, mandarin, avocado, early strawberries, very early raspberries in warm areas, rhubarb, banana passionfruit, and tamarillos ripening from last season.
Other jobs Broad beans don’t set seed in hot weather: mulch them thickly now to keep the soil cool. If they start getting spots on their leaves you’ve probably got a potash deficiency: throw wood ash on the plot, for next year. Let excess or old broad beans dry in the pod – then keep them to add to soups and stews later.
Chop up vegies gone-to-seed and stew them into a rich vegetable stock – either have it for lunch or freeze it. A friend grates them, adds wheat germ, and bakes them into crisp dog biscuits.
Many veg, like carrots and celery, that have gone to seed can be eaten simply by peeling away the tough outer membrane: the centres will be soft and sweet.
Plant green-manure crops that can be slashed and ready for January plantings of winter vegetables: broad beans (cut them at flowering, don’t wait for pods to set) or sunflowers, buckwheat or even radish if you pull them out before the bulbs form.
Mulch strawberries and rhubarb now, and cut off any rhubarb heads going to seed. Mulching now prevents leaf disease later.
Buy young chooks now: they’ll lay through to next spring. If you don’t raise your own chickens, try buying black, white and red ones alternately, to ‘colour code’ each year – or leave different colour roosters with the females each season.
If your chooks aren’t laying well, check their water: fresh, running water means more eggs, while a stagnant puddle may keep your hens alive but they won’t thrive. Hens won’t lay in very hot weather either: scatter branches over the chook run for some shade, and plant some trees, preferably trees like mulberries, tree lucerne or avocados which can provide chook food.
Chooks are paranoid creatures. They can be scared of anything that flies over them and anything that chases them – from kids to foxes. Scared chooks don’t lay well. Once, chooks were jungle birds, living in the broken light of the undergrowth. If you want secure, non-paranoid chooks, stick branches, old corn stalks, etc. over their run so that the light below is shifting and semi-shaded. They’ll feel less vulnerable, no matter what is around.
Pests No matter what pests are bugging you, try not to do anything about it for at least another two weeks – see if natural predators won’t start doing the job for you.
Quick maturers Early summer can be a lean time when you’re living from your garden: last year’s plants have gone to seed and the next lot are still too young to eat. Try some of the old peasant stand-bys. Luckily we have a lot of peasant cultures to choose from: Australian ‘backyard peasants’ can have a much more varied diet than any traditional peasant ever dreamed of.
Radish Round red ones are ready in about one month and the leaves can be snipped for salads or steamed after two weeks – more will re-grow. If, like me, you don’t like raw radish, try cooking them – they taste a bit like asparagus.
Chinese mustard Also called Chinese spinach or Bok Choi, this can be eaten small and young – again, in the same way you’d use spinach or lettuce. It’s a very fast grower but resists running to seed when it gets hot.
Tampala or Chinese spinach This is another fast grower. Use it as soon as you can bear to pick the leaves. The plant will eventually grow to about one metre tall, when you just eat the leaf tips. Tampala is very tender and delicate – much more delicate than silver beet, and it suits even conservative eaters.
Baby carrots like Amsterdam forcing Don’t thin them – just pull them as soon as they’re big enough.
Cos lettuce Just pull off individual leaves as soon as they are big enough, without pulling up the lettuce, so the rest eventually hearts. You can do the same with Prizehead Red: simply harvest a bit whenever you have a salad. Rocket also gives quick salads, but it is a bit pungent and smoky for some tastes. Try soaking it in milk overnight before serving.
Cut celery A celery used like parsley, very strongly flavoured. Seed can be sown all year round throughout Australia.
Rocket Also called ruccola or Eruca sativa, it can be sown all year round – it self-sows with vigour. Steam the young leaves or eat them in salads.
The older leaves are slightly bitter and smoky – loved by some, but not by me.
Purslane An annual sown in spring in cool conditions, and all year round in tropical to subtropical areas. Cook it or eat it raw. Cut the leaves at 10 cm high or less, when they’re soft and tender.
Watercress You can be eating this in a month, but beware of tiny snails which carry liver fluke: wash even home-grown watercress in three changes of water.
Silver beet You should have your first picking in a month if you feed
Eating Flowers
Most flowers taste as good as they smell. (Some can kill you, so don’t try any you’re not certain are safe, and never any sprayed with pesticides or fungicides)
Calendula (Calendula officinalis) (NOT Marigolds, which are toxic)
This short lived perennial with a bright yellow to orange flower are called marigolds in England - which can lead to some confusion
Calendula flowers can be scattered in salads. They look pretty but the texture is a bit like a wettex. Soothing calendula ointment is made from the blended petals which are strained to remove the juice.
Dianthus or carnations
Dry and layer in castor sugar for clove scented sugar, or toss into mulled wine to spice it.
Chrysanthemum
Toss in petals for a smoky bitter taste in salads.
Heartsease lotion
Puree the flowers and mix with sorbolene or other bland lotion that will help soothe as well. Keep in the fridge for up to a week- don’t use if it ferments or goes mouldy.
Fuchsia fruit
Some are sweet and good; some will give you the runs; avoid if they taste bitter or leave a strange taste in your mouth. Try at your own risk - if your fuchsia fruit do turn out to be edible, you can make apple and fuchsia jelly.
Hibiscus
Hibiscus tea
Pick unsprayed flowers; shake out bees and beetles; cover 1-cup blooms with 3 cups boiling water. Drink hot or chilled, sweetened with honey if you like but it should be quite sweet and also high in vitamin C and a few other goodies I can't remember.
Hibiscus flowers are often added to rose hip tea for better taste and colour.
Pickle the buds in spiced vinegar – just pour over boiling vinegar with brown sugar or honey to taste, and a touch of cloves and mixed spice. Eat them after six weeks, like olives.
Young hibiscus shoots and buds can be eaten raw in salads or boiled as a vegetable; or steam them and serve them cold with vinaigrette dressing.
Hibiscus fruit – the seed container that matures after the petals drop off – can be eaten fresh or cooked.
Lavender
Use English lavender. Others have a camphor under taste. Avoid beetles.
Lavender and Orange Salad
Mix:
3 sliced very ripe oranges, with the pith and membrane removed
1 teaspoon chopped fresh ENGLISH lavender flowers
3 teaspoons red wine vinegar
A very little chopped Spanish onion
Lavender and Almond Sweets
Mix one part dried crumbled lavender flowers with four parts marzipan. Roll into small balls; then roll in almond meal with a little orange zest added. Leave to dry before storing.
These are very good.
Lavender cold cream
1-cup beeswax
4 cups olive oil
6 cups lavender flowers
Combine the lavender and oil, and heat gently till almost simmering. Take off the heat at once and cover so none of the oil is lost. When cool strain. Melt the beeswax and add to the cool oil, stirring vigorously. If it won't combine totally heat it gently till it does - but on no account let it get too hot.
Mix.
How to Dry Lavender
Lavender in fact needn't be dried for most purposes - it is the only herb that can be used fresh, placed in bunches in the cupboard or between sheets and not mark them. Lavender doesn't even have to be dried before it is added to pot pourri.
If you want to dry lavender for pretty posies, cut the spikes with scissors to keep them neat and hang the small bunches in an airy dark place - from a frame in a darkened room or in an airy cupboard. If the room isn't absolutely dry, separate each stalk so it doesn't touch. Re-gather the posies when the flowers are so dry they crackle.
You can also dry lavender is an oven or a microwave, on high for one minute. Lay the lavender on brown paper to absorb the moisture. This is a good way to dry lavender if you want it for cooking - it can then be crumbled off the stem and added to other ingredients.
Lavender can be dried in the oven at 50 C for about an hour.
Where to Keep Dried Lavender
• in your clothes cupboards to keep away clothes moths.
• in your linen cupboard to sweetly scent the sheets, and take away any mustiness.
• keep small posies in your shoes to cover up the smell of sweaty feet.
• in your handbag when you're not using it - the scent will waft out when you pen in
• in food cupboards to help keep away food moths and weevils.
• in the dog's bedding to help repel fleas.
• keep a bowl of lavender pot pourri above the toilet.
Headache Tea
Mix:
1 part china green tea
1 part chamomile flowers
1 part lavender flowers
half a part yarrow flowers
I keep headache tea in a jar to be ready when ever it is needed. Make it like you would ordinary tea, by pouring on boiling water in a teapot and leaving it to brew for a couple of minutes. Headache tea is excellent when you've had a day of stress and worry.
Nasturtium
Nasturtiums also used to be known as Jesuit's Cress - the leaves make a pungent but attractive addition (in small amounts) to salads. The buds can be pickled in spiced vinegar so they look (but don't taste) like capers but are still pleasantly vinegary in white sauces etc. The flowers can be stuffed and simmered in chicken or vegetable stock and eaten hot or cold, or tossed at the last minute into salads.
Suck the nectar out of the end 'spike' of each flower. (We used to do this for hours when I was a kid.)
Nasturtium fritters
Blend together half a cup of beer with a third of a cup of plain flour. Let stand for two hours. Now stir in a beaten egg white. Dip nasturtium flowers in lemon juice then in the batter. Cook in oil till puffed and golden. Drain, serve dusted with caster sugar.
Pickled Nasturtium Pods to Taste Like Capers
Place the unopened pods in a jar; boil two cups of vinegar with two tablespoons of salt, one tablespoon of peppercorns, one teaspoon of brown sugar and a few juniper berries if you have them. Pour the hot vinegar over the capers, seal at once. Keep for at least three months in a cool pace before opening them.
Note: Use tiny bottles if possible, unless you are very fond of caper sauce, as they go squishy soon after opening.
Nasturtium for Pimples
Crush the green seedpods and apply as a paste to pimples.
Pansies
Toss pansies into salads at the last minute so the dressing doesn't stain them - or dip in beaten egg white and then icing sugar and use as decoration on a chocolate cake.
Primulas
The flowers can be candied - dip in egg white then icing sugar or just in sugar boiled to setting stage. The flowers can also be eaten in salads. The leaves were once boiled for early spring greens.
Roses
Rose petals. Cut out the white base of each petal, as they’re bitter. Scatter them in salads
Rose Essence/Rosewater
Throw away your vanilla extract - make your own essence of roses to perfume custards, icecream and cakes instead. Roses taste as wonderful as they smell.
Take very fragrant roses, cut off the white at the bottom of the petals (this tastes bitter), place in a jar and JUST cover with vodka or brandy. (Brandy will add its own flavour; use vodka for a purer rose taste). Leave overnight then strain and add new petals. Repeat till you can smell the rose scent as soon as you open the jar - then use liberally wherever you might use vanilla essence
Winter Rose Hip Soup
This is another good soup for sipping from a mug though it looks delightfully elegant in china bowls.
Most gardens have a rose bush or two lurking somewhere and, if you don't, there are sure to be some along the street, possibly where you can pluck them across the fence but if you see a gardener in residence, ask - very few people would begrudge you their rose hips, unless of course they like rose hip soup too. (And yes, if you don't grow roses use rose hip teabags. It's easier and tastes reasonable.)
Pick your rose hips when they turn deep winter red and shrivel. Some are sweeter than others. If yours produce an anaemic gloop try again. (Don't pick briars sprayed with herbicide, or hips beside busy roads impregnated with lead from car exhausts.)
You need:
4 cups rose hips or 2 rose hip tea bags
1 large onion, finely chopped
1 clove garlic, finely chopped
a dessertspoon olive oil
2 cups chicken stock
4 cups water (2 if you are using tea bags)
Sauté the onion and garlic as slowly as possible in the oil till soft.
Steep the tea bags, or cover the rose hips with boiling water, cool, then reheat slowly till boiling. Simmer 10 minutes, cool and strain.
Pour the (hopefully) deep red liquid in with the onions and garlic; add the stock, simmer for two minutes.
Rose hips are rich in vitamin C, but by now they won't be. The taste though will be superb. Serve hot, in tiny portions, perfectly clear (this isn't borscht so don't add sour cream). A few finely chopped chives though go very well.
Rose hip soup is warming, not sustaining. Drink small cups when you're cold.
Sauce Eglantine
This was one of Queen Victoria's favourites.
Boil 6 cups rose hips in as little water as possible. Press through a sieve. Add 1 cup white sugar and the juice of three lemons. Simmer till thick. Serve with roast mutton or any fried food
Rose Hip Syrup
This is high in vitamin C and was the traditional 'spoonful of medicine' to keep children healthy over winter. The less you cook your syrup, the fewer vitamins will be lost.
Ingredients:
6 cups rose hips
1-cup sugar
2 cups water
Juice of two lemons
Boil the sugar, water and lemon juice for ten minutes, stirring well till the sugar is dissolved. Chop the rose hips as finely as possible - there is no need to top and tail them or remove the seeds - and place them in a warmed jar, then pour on the boiling syrup. Put the lid on the jar at once.
Shake the rose hips in their syrup every day for at least three weeks, then strain, rebottle and store in a cool dark place.
Sunflowers
Scatter the petals in salads; eat the very young flower buds deep fried in batter like artichokes.
Sunflower Seeds
Hull sunflower seeds; fry them in oil or butter with garlic or black pepper. Eat hot or cold. Once cold they can be ground for sunflower 'peanut butter.' Sunflower seeds can also be eaten raw - crack the shells like peanuts.
Violets (NOT African violets)
Violets were once dried to be used as a sweetener in the days when sugar was a luxury.
Violet Syrup
Use this in cakes and biscuits or as the liquid for icing (it beats florescent coloured artificial colouring); or beat it up with whipped cream.
Soak the violets in just enough hot water to cover them. Leave till cool, press through a sieve, add an equal weight of sugar, bring to the boil and take off at once. Store and seal.
Violet Jelly
Take a kilo of violet petals, bruise in a mortar and add the juice of two lemons. Put a kilo of sugar in a pan with a few drops of water; cook quickly till it is dissolved and coats the back of the spoon. Add to the violets. Mix with 500 grams of apple jelly reheated so it is liquid again.
Chinese cabbage Don’t try this in subtropical areas: it’ll bolt to seed unless you grow it in a cool, shaded place. In cooler areas you may be picking it two months from planting.
Eating the Spring Harvest.
Artichokes
Fresh Eating Period: about three to six months; plants that are heavily mulched in late winter will bear later, so harvests can be staggered.
Storage: several months in the frig or a cool cupboard, but the artichokes will continue to toughen as they keep. They are best straight from the plant. Pick artichokes as young as you can- they are tender and flavoursome at this stage, and more artichokes will continue to fruit. Old artichokes are tough, hairy and prickly, and you may only get one per plant if they are left on too long.
Recipes:
Artichokes with vinaigrette
Boil the artichokes till tender- between three and twenty minutes, depending on their size and how soft you like your vegetables. Drizzle over vinaigrette dressing or oil and lemon juice while still hot. eat hot or cold.
Baked Artichokes
Tiny fresh artichokes can be deep fried whole. For a simpler and lower calorie dish, I spray with olive oil and bake for 20 minutes or till crisp at the edges in a hot oven- the stove turned up to maximum. (My olive oil sprayer is a small affair you pump up till pressurised by hand. I love it- use it for oven-baked chips and other veg too).
Asparagus
We eat asparagus twice a day for about six weeks ever year. Then we get sick of it - boiled for three minutes then served either hot, cold or tepid with vinaigrette dressing, or dipped into home made garlic mayonnaise, or simmered in chicken stock then purred for simple soup with perhaps a dollop of cream, or just crunched fresh and sweet from the garden. (Don't try raw shop bought asparagus - it'll be rubbery and almost tasteless.)
The bit to cook is the tender tops- bend each stalk over till it snaps. Use the tough ends to make asparagus stock- simmer 20 minutes then throw tough stems away, and add a little chopped crisped pancetta or thicken with potato.
Asparagus and pasta with Currants and Pine nuts
Cook your favourite dried pasta- a small handful for each person. .
While it is cooking boil a handful of asparagus tips for each person.
Place 1-tb pine nuts for each person on a tray in the oven to brown.
Drain cooked pasta.
Add 1 tb olive oil, 1 tb currants and 1 tb grated parmesan for each person, mixing well, then the hot pine nuts and asparagus.
Serve and eat hot.
Note: this is also good with broccoli or brocollini instead of asparagus, or wilted red-stemmed Italian chicory, or just-cooked leaves of English spinach. I’ve also used pecorino instead of Parmesan.
Peas
Pick peas when the pods are well filled but while the pods are still tender. Older peas don't taste as good. This goes for sugar/ snap/mange tout peas too - and snow peas should be picked as soon as the white flower drops off the end and they are about a long as half your finger and the peas inside are still pin pricks, not true seeds.
Peas are sweetest and less rubbery if they are picked in the cool of the day - best in the morning, or in the evening after dusk, just before you cook them.
Peas are easily shelled (a few decades ago women used to carry bags of peas with them, and shell them as they watched an afternoon concert in the park, or had a cup of tea with friends). If you are going to cook the pea pods, wash them very well if they have been sprayed with fungicide.
Coping with surplus peas
Dry them for soup or stews (just leave them in the sun till hard or let them dry in the pod on the vine); grind the dried peas in a flour grinder or coffee mill for pea flour - add it to stews etc for thickening, or to bread for flavour and protein. Old-fashioned blue flowered peas used to be the classic ones for drying and grinding into pea flour - but most peas can be dried, though only the blue flowered ones will give truly fine flour.
Pea flour chapattis
Add water to pea flour, roll out very thinly and fry in very hot oil. Eat hot
How to cook peas
Fresh peas need nothing else. JUST cover with water - no salt - and simmer for five minutes or till tender. The time will vary - very tiny peas (one of the most exquisite things in the world) only take about two minutes.
If your peas are slightly older add some of their pea pods to give more flavour or add a little honey (not sugar - the taste isn't as good). Older peas need longer cooking.
(I have to hide our freshly picked peas from my offspring - otherwise they're all eaten raw. Very very fresh raw peas are delicious - very tender, very sweet.)
Cooking snow peas
Chomp them raw - they are sweet and delicious. Don't avoid them just because you've tried raw snow peas in salads before and hated them - snow peas need to be eaten as soon as they’re picked or they turn rubbery and very slightly bitter.
Steam them till they turn bright green, and then take them off the heat at once. They don't need much cooking.
Or stir-fry them - just toss in hot oil with a bit of garlic or grated fresh ginger. Again, hoik them out when they turn bright green.
Mange tout peas
Steam or boil for about ten minutes - the older the peas the longer it will take to make them tender.
Whole Peas
This is good for peas that are very slightly past their prime. Cover with hot water, boil for 5 minutes, drain and serve whole on wide plates. You pick up the pods with your fingers and suck out the peas. Peas cooked in their pods are sweeter and more flavourful.
Peas in Cream
1-cup peas
1-cup cream
1 egg yolk
Nutmeg
Black pepper
Chopped parsley
2 tablespoon lemon juice.
Just cover peas with cream. Simmer for about ten minutes. The cream will have greatly reduced by now. Add the other ingredients, heat again gently till the sauce thickens more, but don't boil or it may curdle.
Fresh pea soup
1-cup peas
3 cups stock
6 lettuce leaves
Cream
Nutmeg
Simmer peas and lettuce in the stock for ten minutes. Scoop out the lettuce. Purée and serve with a dash of cream and a dust of nutmeg.
NB: Don't use frozen peas or bought peas - if the peas aren't young, sweet and fresh the soup will be bland and boring.
Medicinal peas
Peas are said to lower the blood cholesterol level. They are a good source of protein in vegetarian and low meat diets, and excellent for diabetics and those with hyperglycaemia.
Pea magic
If you want to know the name of the person you'll marry, find a pea pod with nine peas in it and lay it under the door or on the door lintel. The name of the next person who comes in will be the name of the person you will marry - or else that person will be very like the person you'll marry.
Alternatively you’ll marry the first single person - or dark haired man - to come through the door. (If you are already married or don’t want to get married for a decade or two this may be inconvenient)
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