Easter Sunday

It's a clear still Autumn day in Marrickville - indeed so mild and lovely that I feel some hope for our poor warming planet. Richard's been working hard on the vegie patch the last month or so - paving & planting & staking. What a star. I can take no credit. The patch seems to be on a bit of a rollercoaster and I suspect I could chart its level of order and productivity over the past year in inverse proportions to my own.

Here it was, racked & ruined, in February.

Last September it looked pretty good.

And in August it was just a baby.

Today it looks like this:















Can you see our little cat, Led Zeppelin? We'll sneak up on her...















Hello?















She is not amused.

Fedeterranea and Global Warming

It's struck me lately that fedeterranean homes are very sensible when it comes to global warming. Their Mediterranean elements add a number of features that help to keep them cool, like pale paint colours and internal glazed tiling. The characteristics they retain from their Federation roots have some good anti-heat features too: verandahs, double-brick walls and high ceilings.

Lots of Marrickville people who live in fedeterranean homes cook in their yards, on barbeques and in small wood fired ovens. On my evening walks with Sailor I smell lamb marinated in oregano and garlic, being cooked over coals, and sometimes smoky wafts of fresh fish being grilled in one of these. We do have dining rooms in Marrickville, but they're rarely used, remaining preserved as pristine altars to crystal cabinets and polished wood veneer. People like to eat on their decks, in their yards, and often in their garages, roller doors open to the back lanes.

Fedeterranean gardens are often very water-wise, with dry loving trees like citrus, olives and figs.

My friend George Morgan has generously sent me a box of Marrickville Backyards. These are really lovely books, very close to Marrickvillia's heart. I intend on giving them away to anyone who pleases me, and taking a pile next time I go to Hackney. If you want one, let me know.

This very old lemon tree has its trunk painted bright white-blue every year.

A tree heavy with olives.

A fig tree, draped like a new bride to keep the birds away from the ripening fruit.

Glory, the grape

We noticed a tang of richness, bordering on decay, on our back deck on Saturday. It was the grapes from our vine, only planted two years ago, ripening a little too much (regular readers know that lately my garden has been neglected).

So, what to do with kilos and kilos of grapey fecundity? We ate as many as we could. Then I found a recipe for grape jelly. This wasn't something anyone was really happy about, except me, as I've been known to be an enthusiastic but haphazard cook and in fact I've never had jam set. Richard appeared dubious & hovered about. I promised to follow a recipe and not go my own way (a public service psychological exam once said I was neither a team player nor a leader).

First, boil the grapes (2 kilos) with three sliced lemons, until the grape peels start to come away from the flesh.

Then strain the mixture through some cheesecloth, overnight. Overnight! Outrageous. I like things to be instant. Oh well... now, I couldn't work out how to get the fruit-hammock dangling over a bowl, until I remembered this post from Ampersand Duck. The wonderful blogosphere to the rescue! So I inverted one of the kitchen stools, dusted its legs, & set up this contraption:

It dripped away all night and in the morning I boiled the 8 cups of liquid with 6 cups of sugar. Boiled it until "setting point" which I've always been hopeless at. So I kept boiling and boiling and testing and testing, by dripping liquid on a saucer to see how thick it was, until finally I lost interest, drifted away, and it boiled over rather dramatically. Ruby rescued it but set a tea towel on fire in the process (at that point I had to put the camera down so no photo).

Finally, after about 2 hours of cooking, it began to set, hooray hooray, it seemed like magic (how did white grapes produce red jelly?) & I felt like a domestic goddess. I'd even sterilised some jars... and guess what, it tastes as good as it looks, so Nigella move over.

Gone to Seed

Remember my vegie patch? It started off looking like someone's peggy hair transplant. It grew quickly, almost frighteningly so. Now, because of nothing but simple neglect, it is out of control.

You wouldn't know we're in the middle of a drought. This hasn't been watered in months. I've been dreading going out there to deal with it, but yesterday made a quick scan of the damage. I'm yet to actually pull a weed.

These tomatoes have sun-dried themselves.

There is a tiny rainbow silverbeet struggling for sun.

Phallic friends hiding...

A dead raspberry plant.

Mr Fawlty gone to seed. Perhaps I could make some of this.

A baby artichoke, hiding way up the back.

Day of the Triffids

I've just read a lovely review in the London Review of Books of Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker and Apprentice to a Butcher in Tuscany, written by Bill Buford. The reviewer is Steven Shapin and he offers a great little history of our relationship with food as well as a critique of how we eat and cook now. I'm going to buy the book - I love the quotes from it, the interchanges between Buford and his pasta mistress best:

"...just when he thought he'd cracked the secret of working the dough with the matterello, she announced her disapproval with a blow on his shoulder: 'You look like an old woman... You will never learn if you roll it out like an old woman.' "

Buford, former fiction editor of the New Yorker, went to Tuscany to "learn meat".

"...by the time he returned to Manhattan, he was able to schlep a whole still-bleeding pig (only recently bereft of life) from the farmers' market back to his apartment, taking it up in the lift - together with an unamused Wall Street banker - and butchering it in the traditional Tuscan way: a tub of pork confit, chains of salsicce, a rosticiana, an arista (the aristocrat of roast, herbed rolled pork), vast quantities of ragu, brawn: 450 servings of food from one animal, skilfully dismembered."

This getting in touch with the sources of food is utterly admirable, but not for the faint-hearted, or those like me who don't eat pork for ethical reasons. The pig may have been lovingly carved up, but its life was still most likely absolutely misery, especially if it was female. I'll do my bit for the slow food movement by continuing to tend my vegie patch.


Remember when I put it in, not even two months ago? (see before shots)


We have lettuce galore - butter and frilly, which is more bitter. They're a great combination in a salad.


I never knew brussels sprouts grew like this, along the stem like parasites... I picked these and ate them on Sunday, lightly boiled then tossed in butter and a little white wine vinegar.


The broccoli head, still only about 4cm in diameter, is protected by this huge fan of bluish leaves. I wonder if the leaves are edible? It seems such a waste if they're not.

And... I looked for a pic of a triffid but only found out that John Wyndham's full name was John Wyndham Parkes Lucas Beynon Harris.

The most lovely Fedeterranean Home in Marrickville?

I can't believe I've been walking past this house for years and never noticed how lovely it is. Perhaps it's because Spring has arrived that it caught my eye - the garden is delightful. Part of me loves the order and prettiness apparent here although I know I could never achieve these heights myself. See more photos in this set on my flickr account.

Vegies & Beer

We have some home produce happening. Richard's brewing beer & I've rejuvenated the vegie patch. The beer is a Coopers Pale Ale & has been fermenting in the laundry for a couple of weeks. Richard is going to bottle it this weekend in these bottles that Luke from the Union Hotel in King St gave us. In the vegie patch I have spinach, eggplant, tomatoes, cauliflower, broccoli, brussels sprouts, rhubarb, beetroot, cos & frilly iceberg lettuce, artichokes and asparagus. It doesn't look like much now but should be a forest in no time; I can't wait. I'm trying to espallier a little lime to the back wall - a bit twee I know but we've run out of room...