Plenty

Cucumber plenty
Look what I found in the undergrowth! Talk about treasure in unexpected places. This "dead" cucumber plant had been looking so awful, with its decaying leaves and limp stems. I decided to put it out of its misery on Saturday, and to clear out its caterpillar-ridden tomato neighbours while I was at it.

But when I started pulling, one of the vines was way too heavy for a dead plant. It was kind of like hauling a loaded long line into a boat. Awesome. Five fat crunchy juicy cukes -- 1.5 kilos. I love surprises like this.

This plant (all from one tiny seed I can't help adding) has been giving us cucumbers since January. I planted it in a bag of old potting mix, put it in a hot, sheltered corner, kept it watered and gave it a couple of seaweed spa treatments while it was flowering. Given its root restriction, I wasn't expecting too much from it. Hmmm.

Simple cucumber salad. Salt, pepper, a splash of white wine vinegar. I don't bother removing the seeds. They're so soft, silky and plentiful it just seems like a waste. I will be saving a few for next year's crop though.

Crab apple plenty
Did anyone else describe someone (usually a girl) who was sharp and nasty as a crab apple? We did. "Don't be such a crab apple!" I think the insult went. Anyway, like all sharp, nasty things, crab apples have their soft side. You can see a hint of it in their gentle blush.

But it's only when you take the time to get to know them and find out what makes them tick, that you get the full joy out of these little tarts.

Sure, it takes more than a casual chat over a cup of tea to find the crab apples' inner beauty and true potential  -- which is jelly. You've got to chop and mix and simmer, strain and sweeten and skim off the scum. Only then do you get something worth bottling.

Guava plenty

They float like cranberries, but they are super sweet and way more plentiful than the cranberries. The Chilean guavas have been wafting their delightful toffee-flavoured perfume over the front path for weeks now. I mixed them in with the crab apples, hoping to end up with a toffee-apple jelly. But no. I'll see what I can do with next year's crop. I think it's an idea worth pursuing.

Lettuce and onion plenty

I can never get over the over-the-topness of seed production in some plants. One tiny black spec of an onion seed, one slither of a lettuce seed... and look at how many new seeds they produce. These seeds will drop and blow all over the garden, and soon I'll find buttercrunch lettuces and Welsh onions in the path, in the spouting, in cracks in bricks... and some in the vege beds even. Free salad all winter.


Strawberry plenty + a giveaway

A couple of years ago, Kaye from Grow From Here gave me a cute little strawberry plant. She said it was descended from the first strawberry ever to grow in Wellington, arrived in a boat from somewhere far away. Cool, I thought, and stuck it in a quiet corner, not giving it much more thought. Now I'm stunned Wellington isn't the strawberry capital of New Zealand -- these little blighters breed like rattlesnakes.

I've trained them around the edges of the vege patch and path, where they provide convenient dog snacks and make a wonderful natural weed mat.

But I've got way too much of a good thing going on now, with strawberries growing all over the the garden, crowding the vege patches and paths, and tumbling down the walls. I figure it's time for my first blog give-away. Free strawberry plants to a good home. You pick up in Wellington. Comment below to get some.

They're all packed up and ready to move to good homes.

I love this time of the year. It's like the plants have all woken up from their summer holidays and thought "Holy shit! It's autumn already." And they all get busy making sure there's another generation to survive them. The intelligence evident in even a little garden plot on a Wellington hillside blows me away. And all this writing about plenty reminds me it's probably an OK time to go look at the winter seed catalog.


Don't forget to let me know if you want strawberries. There are enough for everyone.

Gazing Into the Salad Bowl

I have had a shocking case of writing block for weeks. I keep giving myself the same advice I give other blocked bloggers. "It all starts with the camera! Take some photos and use them to inspire your words and shape your post."

Yeah right. How annoying does that sound when you're in the pits of feeling you've got nothing new to say about anything any more -- when you're feeling uninspired. 

But meditate on that sorry thought for a moment -- I'm uninspired -- and it uncovers a couple of human foibles called arrogance and blindness. I mean, really. I only have to open my eyes and get over myself for one moment -- just look in the salad bowl for crying out loud! -- and Be Inspired by what's right in front of my eyes, if only I would give it some attention and appreciation. So let's just gaze into the salad bowl for a moment and be amazed, enthralled and inspired.

Before we get into the salads, let's admire the ingredients. Tomatoes have been the stars of the salad bowl recently. They're just like people really. Some are a bit gnarly, some polished and neat, some sweet, others a bit on the harsh, sour side. Some are a bit dodgy-looking but the best ever inside. These were all planted from Kings Seeds's heritage seeds.

The Oaxacan Jewels -- the orange gnarly ones -- are my favourites. They're colourful, very sweet tasting, quirky and plentiful.


Really Good Tomato Salad

Gazing first into the blue glass bowl, we have Really Good Tomato salad = a selection of ripe tomatoes + slithers of red onion + a green onion + a shake of olive oil + a few drips of balsamic vinegar + a sprinkle of salt. Great flavours dancing on the tongue. Here's a story about the original Really Good Tomato salad.

Salsa Fresca

Finely diced tomatoes, chillies, red onion, green onion, chilli oil, and generous squeezes of lime juice make an amazing salsa for scooping up with crunchy corn chips.

Salsamole

Staying with the Mexican theme, if you're pressed for time, avocadoes and tomatoes with a good dash of salt and a load of lime juice make a mighty fine substitute for salsa and guacamole.

Dripping with Pearls

Moghrabieh or Lebanese couscous will give you the pearls in this recipe. I boiled them in salted water for about 20 minutes until they were tender but still with some bite. Tossed them with tomatoes, green onions, cooked sweetcorn and carrots. Slick with olive oil, dribble over some red wine vinegar, and season with sumac.

Almost Greek Salad

Is it still Greek Salad without feta and olives? Probably not, but cucumber, tomato, red onion, green onion and mint with olive oil and tarragon vinegar is as Mediterranean as it gets. Try it with grilled lamb chops to Greek it up.

Simply Tomatoes

There is a point when the tomatoes are so perfectly sweet and tart, meaty and juicy that the only preparation they need is chopping into bite sized pieces. When the harvest is coming thick and fast, we eat them with pretty much every meal.

There is something so adorable about Roma tomatoes.Their shapely bodies, and perky hair-dos always make me happy.

So I guess I wasn't really uninspired at all. I probably just needed a bit of time off writing. Now I've started again, my brain wheels are spinning and I'm thinking about writing about the peppers stuffed with spicy lamb that we just ate for dinner.

Fruit and Nuts

The dream of walking up the front path nibbling on fruit and nuts is coming true. And nibbling is the right word for it. No gorging this year yet, but sometimes the things you grow in the garden are even more special because of their scarcity.

3 Hazelnuts
I noticed these hazelnuts weeks ago, and have loved watching them toast up to a gorgeous hazelnutty orange brown.

These three nuts are the only offspring from five trees, so they qualify as miracles. I'll have to figure out what makes hazelnuts fruit more (or is that nut more?), and I'll have to work out when to harvest them too. Right now I'm happy enough admiring them, but one day I'd like to eat them. I think I'll write a chocolate cake recipe that finishes up with "toast exactly three hazelnuts, chop them finely, sprinkle over the wet chocolate icing, and eat immediately."

9 Damsons
Three still left on the tree, starting to split after all the recent rain. The other six eaten on the way down to the mail box. They are yellow-fleshed, tart, and the flesh clings for dear life onto the stone; sucking the stone is a bit like sucking a really sour lolly. Nice.

1 Peach
Yes, just one, from two trees, but what a peach! It was an unplanned picking, prompted by a scary thought: what if someone passing by notices it and absentmindedly plucks it and eats it? That's just the sort of thing I'd do, so I quickly picked it and ate it before anyone else could. I almost forgot to take a photo. Small, sticky, sweet and very very peachy. I'm really glad it didn't get stolen.

6 Orangeberries
The orangeberry carpet fruited for about five minutes a few weeks ago. I ate all six orangeberries in one go, and didn't stop to take a photo. They looked like pale orange raspberries, and tasted a bit like plum, a bit like apricot and a bit tropical. I would be thrilled to get a big crop next year -- they would make an amazing jam I reckon.

0 (yes zero) almonds, currants, passionfruit
The almond tree is healthy and leafy, so let's hope it does some nutting next year. The currants did give a wee bit of fruit -- but it all got eaten by a tenacious blackbird who set up shop on the power pole and swooped in and out all day, stripping the plants. I did my share of yelling and broom waving, but it just looked at me with that "what a crazy lady" look and ate all the currants.
The single passionfruit flower dropped off the vine before it set fruit. Not enough hummingbird action maybe.

Plenty to come

Slowly, surely, the blackberries ripen. There will be enough for a pie -- hopefully without a blackbird in it.

Guavas, starting as tiny elegant fireworks, morphing into goofy stars, and bulking up into pop-in-your-mouth tropical snacks.

The Chilean guavas have started to fill the very front border. This year there are hundreds of little baubles, plumping up, but still too tart to eat. The birds don't seem to be interested in them, and neither do the passers by, so I should get enough to make a jar or two of jam.

Dozens of crab apples this year. Last year the crop looked amazing, but every crab apple was black inside -- a lack of calcium apparently. I've been putting crushed eggshells around the base of the tree, and also giving it comfrey leaves, and so far, so good. There's jelly on the menu -- one of my very favourite things.

Can't resist another brag about the hazelnuts. Only three, but so so beautiful, so hopeful, so exciting.

What's exciting you in your garden? I'd love to know.

WTF?

This stopped me in my tracks on the way down the front path this morning. It was one of those "What's That Flower?" moments. Holy flaming Flamenco dancers -- it looked almost dangerous in the early sunshine, dangling from the stair rail on a thread-stem, flapping about in the wind. And it wasn't there yesterday. I keep a very close eye on my garden, and I know when something this spectacular is going to happen. So my first thought was that someone had put it there. You know, as a surprise or a joke.

But no. This is the passiflora on the front bank. The one I've been admiring for its clever tendrill knotting patterns.

Handrail detailing anyone?

In the grip of passion

This is the passionfruit I thought would never flower, out there on a steep clay bank, catching the Southerly blast, fighting for space and soil with ivy, jasmine, clematis... It's Passiflora Antioquiensis, red banana for short. It looks quite like the noxious banana passionfruit, Passiflora mollissima, which has smaller, light pink flowers, and is famous for smothering native bush and anything else that gets in its way. I study that one in the wild in the green belt, Mt Victoria. The council hacks and poisons. The banana passionfruit grows back. Over and over again. Anyway, back to my front yard.

The five petals on the outside seem to have leaves grafted into them, only visible from the back - or the top in this case. The stem looks to be made from exactly the same matter as the tendrils, only it's straight, 28 cm (almost a foot) long, with a flower hanging off the end -- so the flower hangs upside down... which got me thinking.

About pollination.  

The Echinacea flowers out the back are doing the exact opposite to the passionfruit out the front; they're thrusting their pollen laden centres up to the sky, luring in the bees and butterflies that ensure a healthy sex life and successful reproduction. That's what plants do -- whatever is necessary to produce a next generation.

So why is the red banana passionfruit hanging upside down, modest, hiding its reproductive organs -- effectively giving the bees and butterflies the cold shoulder?

I had to turn the flower over to take this photo. I'm pretty sure it blushed.

As I tipped it over, I noticed some drops of clear liquid dripping back into the white center. It was super sticky and very sweet. (Yes, I tasted it; perhaps that was stupid, but I'm alive to tell the story). And I thought idly "wouldn't it be cool if we had humming birds in New Zealand... they would flock to this flower." And there, I think, is the answer to the pollination question.

Perhaps in their native habitat, these flowers aren't pollinated by bees at all. A passing hummingbird, dropping in for a spot of nectar, which just happens to be hanging there in big oozy drops, would do an amazing job of spreading the pollen with its whirring wings. If the flower faced upward, they wouldn't suit the hummingbird anywhere near as well. Hummingbirds feed on the fly, hovering as they sip, and hanging flowers accommodate that habit perfectly.  They drip nectar where the humming bird's beak can reach it, keep their petals out of they way of those crazy whirring wings, and conveniently dangle their reproductive organs where they'll get the most pollination action. Genius.

Sure enough, these plants are native to the cool rainforests of Columbia. Maybe they don't even have bees there. But they do have hummingbirds, and butterflies with long curling tongues used for slurping up nectar. Mystery solved.

It's amazing what can happen to the innocent gardener as she trots down the front path first thing in the morning. Sometimes she ends up on a trip to the Columbian rainforest.

Meanwhile, up the top of the back garden, the waxeyes and tuis are plundering the figs as they ripen. The native birds don't seem to care where the trees are from. If the fruit's ripe, they'll eat it.

Farmers' Market Pasta

No doubt about it, farmers' markets are the place to be grocery shopping at this time of year. Here's a really easy, tasty vegetarian pasta dish that's super cheap if you pick up ripe ingredients from your local market. If you're growing your own, even better!

Roast pepper and tomato pasta

Nigel Slater to the rescue again with the inspiration for this juicy, sweet, moreish pasta. It's from his Simple Supper series, and hard to improve on... but you can roast any summer veges you like, and throw in your own flourishes. As long as you include a good dose of tomatoes, you'll have a great sauce for your pasta.

You'll need

Peppers: red, yellow, orange, any or all colours and shapes. Sliced lengthwise, and seeds scooped out, so they're like pepper boats.
Tomatoes: any colour, any shape; mix it up. But they must be ripe and juicy. Cut up the big ones, leave cherry tomatoes whole.
Garlic: whole cloves. Peel them by giving them a firm whack with a knife handle or other blunt instrument. The skins should pop loose, and the flesh crack a bit. If you totally smash them they'll fly all over the kitchen, so be firm but not reckless.
Red onions: or not. I like them, but not needed. Roughly chopped.
Olive oil, salt and pepper: as usual!
Fresh basil: if peppers and tomatoes are ripe, there's fresh basil about. Get a bunch.
Dried pasta: your choice, but "little ear" pasta, orcchiette to get all Italian about it, is Nigel's choice, and mine too.

How much of everything?
Roughly:

• Two or three peppers per person depending on their size (people and peppers).
• A big handful of tomatoes per person. 
• One clove of garlic per person. 
• Half an onion per person.
• An overflowing handful of pasta per person -- a double scoop, or two cupped hands for the blokes and the starving. 

The veges will shrink as they cook, so what might look like way too much, will likely end up just the perfect amount.

How to
Heat the oven to 180 degrees.
Pack the pepper boats into an oven-proof dish (glass,ceramic, or metal). A snug fit is good.
Fill the boats with tomatoes. It doesn't matter if a few go overboard.
Sprinkle the onions and garlic over the top.
Drizzle with olive oil. We're not looking for a drenching, just a thin trickle of oil shaken over and around each boat.
Sprinkle with salt and pepper.
Sprinkle is one of my favourite words.

Oops, photo taken before salt and peppering.

Cover the dish loosely with foil. No need make it air tight.
Pop the dish in the oven, on the middle rack, and set your timer for half an hour.

It's ready when the boats have capsized, the tomatoes have gone sloppy, and their juice is flooding about. If you're using fresh basil, chop it up and toss it on top now. Let the dish sit and look pretty on the bench. It tastes richer if you eat it slightly cooled.

While the veges are roasting, get the pasta going (Skip this bit if you've got pasta boiling sorted.)

Fill your biggest pot two thirds with water. I cheat and use hot water from the tap so it boils faster... not sure how OK that is in professional circles, but it works for me.
Add about a tablespoon of salt. They (they being the TV food celebs) say to make the water as salty as the Mediterranean. I've never tasted the Mediterranean, so I wing it on that point. Just make the water good and salty.
Wait until the oven timer goes off, then...
Pour the pasta into the boiling Mediterranean. The water will stop boiling. Wait until it starts boiling again, and then set the timer for 11 minutes (or if your pasta packet recommends a different timing, use that.) When the timer goes off...
Fish a piece of pasta out of the pot and bite it. If it's to your liking, drain the pasta and get ready to serve. If it's still a bit dry and chalky inside, give it another minute and test again.

To serve

You can just mix everything up, swishing the drained pasta into the veges and getting it all covered with the juice/sauce. Or you can put the pasta in each plate, gently spoon over some juice/sauce, and balance a pepper boat with its tomato crew right on top. A basil leaf is a good show-off touch.

What are those specks of green in the pasta? Minced basil. Strictly not necessary for this meal, but I really wanted to use my newest kitchen gadget, so it could feature in this blog! Meet my beautiful Spong mincer...

... fresh from the 1970s, found by my lovely sister Julie in the Invercargill Hospice Shop, complete with original cutters and recipe book.

With a wonder such as this, I can mince basil, garlic, and lemon peel to make one last herby, zesty, punchy sprinkle for this dish. But honestly, it is absolutely Nigel Slater perfect without my mincing antics.

A New Year Forage at Home

Who knew? In among the gone-to-seed fennel and coriander, the strawberry and oregano invasion and the giant sweet pea take-over... there lived a healthy crop of carrots.

This was a very nice surprise when I finally decided to clear the bottom vege patch of the over-growns and over-stayers, and install some nice new tenants for the rest of the summer. One and a half kilos of carrots. Grated carrot salad is on the menu... probably for the rest of the week.

I find it really hard to clear plants out of the garden. Even a mess like this, because it's such a fantastic mess. The coriander has been crawling with bees and lacewings, and I'm convinced it's responsible for keeping this bed bug-free for the past several months. Even after I'd pulled it up, the lacewings stalked it into the compost bucket! There are new seedlings sprouted already, so the legacy continues, just on a more manageable scale.

It was these sweet peas that really held up the proceedings though. They grew so tall and sprawled so wide that they've delayed the salsa garden planting by almost two months. I just couldn't pull them up until today. They were so huge, so mad with blooms and generous with scent... I gave them until Boxing Day, thinking it would be a shame not to have them around for Christmas. They lasted through New Year, but today it had to happen. I ripped them up, but not without picking every last bud.

Another surprise find. A rather fatter than normal Lebanese cuke, hidden under the rough cucumber leaves and a sprawling tomato.

We ate it simply sprinkled with salt and white vinegar. So juicy and cool.

The last of the potato crop from next door, where I've claimed squatter's rights to the soil. Boiled until just cooked, then swaddled in mayonnaise spiked with chipotle sauce and lime juice.

After last year's bean crop failure, this abundance is a pleasant surprise. This year I provided some slug protection collars made from toilet rolls, and gave them a couple of seaweed sprays. A little thought and consideration helps us all thrive.

Steamed for 5 minutes, and served with a slick of butter. Swoony.

The first basil plants are thriving under the shadow of the tomatoes, and the leaves are big enough to graze from now.

They ended up in a bread and tomato salad, a spicy and sweet contrast to the tart tomatoes (not from the garden, yet), salt and red wine vinegar.

Filled with laundry on the way outside; filled with veges on the way back.

From farm to table in less than twenty paces. Carrot salad, steamed green beans, cucumber salad, potato salad... oh, and rack of lamb. Definitely an outlier, but more than welcome at our feast.

Happy New Year everyone. I wish you a fruitful, abundant, lush and magical 2013.