Getting an Early Start

We always tell ourselves that October is the time to start planting stuff. Accordingly, we put off doing anything about the garden until Labour weekend, by which time life is getting busy again, and so we put it off further.

In other words, we procrastinate, and nothing gets done. We've managed to keep a few pumpkins and potatoes going in the past, and our little crops of tomatoes on the doorstep have been OK, and the herbs - which are just glorified weeds, let's not forget - seem to thrive despite being neglected for weeks at a time.

But in terms of really having a proper vege garden that will yield a significant harvest, in the past we simply haven't done the work to make it happen.

Last weekend, that all changed.
We took a drive to the hardware store and the garden centre, then came home and cleared out one overgrown corner of our little front yard to put our planter down.
After getting it relatively level, we spread a layer of ash, in what may have been a misguided attempt to keep the weeds down.
Then we put down some plastic sheeting, punctured to permit some drainage, and assembled the 4'x4' planter box over top of it.

Now, I'm not saying that you should follow our lead here. We may have done ourselves all sorts of damage, like not permitting the soil to breathe and wotnot, but our main concern was for the weeds. The weeds up the back are the bane of my potato patch, and I don't want them invading this plot too.
Next, we got in some awfully cheap labour to do the grunt work.
Potting mix, about 8 bags, including a bag of strawberry mix, turn this from a wooden square into a miniature garden.
Then we got to planting: Strawberries, Lettuces, Beans, Peas, Tomatoes, Silverbeet, Cauliflower and Broccoli, several of each.
Into the potting mix, with a nice dousing of water and plenty of sunshine.
Finally, a bit of mesh to keep the local wildlife out - particularly our cat (I'd post a picture of said feline but I'm sorry, this just isn't that kind of blog). The mesh is attached to pieces of wire which are stapled into the timber, allowing access to the garden to weed and prune and harvest.

Since it's still winter and there may yet be frost, we also rigged a sheet of clear plastic which will double as a frost cover overnight and as a mini glasshouse of sorts on cooler days.

So there it is, August and we have our vege garden planted out. And the best thing is that a week later, the seedlings are not only alive but actually getting bigger. I hold out great hopes.
So after a big day's work like that (I could be honest and say that it was spread over 2 days, but that would completely dissolve the mystique surrounding our achievements), the hard workers deserve a cold, relaxing brew.
And sausages. There must be lovely lamb sausages.
Which are then made into burgers. What a perfect way to end the day.

(In case you're curious, Sausage Burgers contain sausage, lettuce, beetroot, cheese, sour cream, and sauce. Just like your mum used to make them. )

The Taste of Pork

It seems that pork just isn't what it used to be.

Twice in the past month or so I've had conversations with family members from older generations who have lamented the decline in the taste of pork from how they remember it. As I understand it, the old adage that you are what you eat applies to livestock as well. I've commented before on the way free range meat tastes so much more real than bulk-produced stuff. We're lucky in NZ that our beef, lamb and mutton are pretty much free range by default, and it's only our chickens and pigs that are raised in confinement and fed grain.

Much as I take issue with pen-bred meat, I've also discussed on this blog the dilemmas of trying to eat well, and trying to retain some sort of ethical compass while keeping ourselves nutritionally healthy on a budget that we can afford. I imagine that I'll draw some criticism just by raising the issue of animal rights, but that's OK. Debate is healthy.

Like I've said before, if we could afford to eat all organic free range meat and produce we would, just like if I could grow all the fruit and veges I needed to feed my family I would. No doubt if we were forced into the situation of having to keep animals as a food source we would find ourselves eating a whole lot less meat overall. But the social and economic realities are that I only have so much time in a day, and while I make an effort to do what I can to support humane and sustainable food production, there comes a point when we have to look at what's on the shelf and what's in the wallet, and take what we can for what we can afford.

We all find different ways to manage the minefield of existing as an omnivore in a social order where our eating habits are largely driven by profit-geared corporations, their market placement and their advertising machines. I'm aware that we don't co-exist with our food sources, but exploit them and the land (or sea) that they live and grow on, not simply to survive but to fully enjoy the bounty that agribusiness can supply us with. However, for all my good intentions, I can't provide my family with protein and nutrients simply out of goodwill. And I've listened to all the arguments in favour of vegetarianism, and while I agree with a lot of it, particularly the stuff that relates to how we treat animals, I'm still an omnivore. I feel guilty only when I think about it too much, but never when I'm eating.

As a rule, we only buy free range eggs, and that's a win all round, since good FR eggs have more taste and thicker contents than cage eggs. I also get them from the market, where they're cheaper than similar products at the supermarket. I also buy lamb from the Wai-Ora stall at the market every week, as I've posted several times. I've been pleased to see these guys are bringing more product to the market now than they had been previously, which hopefully means that word-of-mouth advertising like mine in support of suppliers like them is working. And that in itself is a step in the right direction.

I've also made the point before, and I'll make it again: We all (and I mean all of us, not just the Kiwis reading this) need to learn how much is enough when it comes to eating meat in particular, and cut down. There are so many good reasons to do this that it would make a post all of its own, but suffice to say that it's better for the land, the animals, our wallets and our bowels to eat less meat. (I don't shy away from that image - after all, we're all animals made of meat and offal too, remember).

So far this summer, we've only had leftover meat after one barbeque, rather than after every one like we used to have, and those leftovers were eaten up the next day. Reduce the excess, reduce the waste, cook what you need, and enjoy it. And your finances will appreciate it too.

Which brings me back to my original point: If our pork is raised in pens now and is accordingly of a much lower quality and inferior taste to what it used to be, then that might go some way towards explaining why the old methods of cooking pork were fairly simple, letting the meat speak for itself (apologies for the bad imagery), while nowadays there seems to be a fixation with dressing pork up with chilli, herbs, spices, nuts, fruits, and other bits and pieces to give it flavour. Instead of being a taste explosion all its own, pork has become a blank canvas for a good chef to demonstrate his skills on.

It seems a shame. But until free range pork becomes affordable, I'll still eat what they stock in the supermarket (we have a butcher across the road from where I work who stocks organic, free range meats, but at $16.00 for 2 pork steaks, you can see why I'd prefer to pay $6.00 at the supermarket for unethically raised, bland, but affordable meat).

There's always wild pork, of course, but that's just as expensive, and a completely different flavour that Dessert Chef can't abide, so we won't be going down that road anytime soon.

And on that note, here's one of my most recent entries in the Dollying up the Pork stakes.

Pork Chops with Sage and Apple Crust

(Serves 2, with a bit sliced off for the little fella)

In a small pan, heat some olive oil and fry the following:
2 Cloves of Garlic, minced;
1 Onion, finely chopped;
1 small Apple, finely diced;

Once the apple and onion have started to soften, add a splash of worcester sauce and 3T of brown sugar. As this reduces, add the leaves stripped from 3 stalks of fresh sage and 3 stems of fresh mint, roughly chopped. Once this has heated through and is a bit saucy, remove to a bowl and heat fresh oil in the pan.
Season two large pork chops with freshly ground pepper and salt, and place in the hot oil. Allow the chops to brown a little, then add a splash of white wine. Shake, and allow the wine to be absorbed. When the underside of the chops is nice and brown, turn over and repeat. Cook until there is no pink in the juices.

Spoon the apple mixture over one side of the chops, grate some parmesan cheese over top, and place under the grill to brown.
Serve with couscous cooked in chicken stock, fried mushrooms, and fresh veges.

More reason not to trust the NZFSA

I'm trying very hard not to be political with all this election stuff going on here, but this really got my attention.

Frogblog has revealed yet another example of the New Zealand Food Safety Authority's failure to protect the public from toxic imported foods, this time from American agri-giant Monsanto.

The most concerning thing about it is that this is not a standalone product that we can choose to avoid by shopping wisely.

MON863 [is] one of Monsanto’s genetically modified varieties of maize. It struck controversy last year when an independent French study showed that, despite it being approved for human consumption in 2006, it caused signs of liver and kidney toxicity as well as hormonal changes in rats.The Food Safety Authority of New Zealand had approved the corn for use in Australia and New Zealand, in October 2003, based on evidence from Monsanto. FSANZ reports that MON863 is in used in high fructose corn syrup, corn starch, and corn flour. Such products are processed into breakfast cereals, baking products, extruded confectionery and corn chips. If you look on the back of most processed foods you will find high fructose corn syrup or corn starch. It’s a fairly common flavour enhancer. However, our labelling laws make it impossible to be certain which foods contain it and which don’t.

Once again, the Government's unwillingness to implement mandatory Country of Origin labelling on imported foods or foods prepared with imported ingredients means that we risk consuming potentialy harmful substances, usually without even knowing.

It gets worse:

Then today the Sustainability Council said of FSANZ:

New Zealand’s food safety regulator ’shopped’ for alternative advice when a report it had commissioned from ESR questioned the safety of a GM food.

The second report it got replaced an earlier commissioned one which said there were concerns about consumer safety from MON863:

The new document was produced by a different ESR division to the group Gallagher belonged to. However, instead of an “updated” report, NZFSA accepted a letter that carried no clear reference to the Gallagher Report or its scientific conclusions. In place of a formal peer-reviewed report that had answered NZFSA’s brief and was prepared by a scientist with the appropriate expertise, NZFSA accepted a letter that carried just four sentences in response to the original brief, and was signed off by a group that NZFSA knew had originally passed on the work after stating they lacked the appropriate expertise. The letter indicated there was no scientific evidence that MON863 is unsafe to eat.

(Also courtesy of Frogblog)

So, not only are they remiss in their duty, but they are engaged in an active campaign of misinformation. And we are supposed to trust these people with our safety and the health of our children? I am quite frankly appalled.

Trawling the Net

Just stopped by gallimaufree and read this post, which sums up really well many of the things I've been yammering on about over the past few months. Seems to be a site dedicated to the more benign elements of self-reliance and survivalism, with a focus on:

building a non-secret society of nice people who respond to disasters, catastrophes, and apocalypses with humanitarian aid, kick-ass tools, and extensive knowledge.

Maybe a bit more intense than my own attempts at a pumpkin patch (roll on Spring!), but full of good advice and a great attitude towards life and the planet.

Over at Adventures in Beanland, Anne explores making your own baby food. This is something we did when Isaac was starting solids. When we were in Canada last year, and Isaac was only 6 months old, we were stunned by the amount of sugar that goes into baby food over there. He ate a lot of banana and yoghurt in those three weeks. Beanland has a whole swag of Vego recipes, for those of us who are looking for new and interesting ways to reduce our meat intake.

And in a spot of good news from those nice folk in California, someone is finally doing something about Food Wastage, by spearheading a Food Rescue Program in San Francisco. There's also a bill before the California Senate that would allow purchasers of catered food to mandate that all leftovers be donated to a food charity, rather than discarded as so often happens.

Its good to see that the revolution of attitudes towards food and waste isn't limited to my backyard, and its encouraging to know that I'm not just one isolated voice, but one of a growing number of concerned global citizens determined to do whatever they can to make our planet a better place for our children.

Poll Results: Whats more important?

On the surface, I guess it seemed that this poll was really a bit of a no-brainer.

The options were: Organic; Free Range; Both; or Neither.

Essentially what was being asked was:
What matters more: our health; the welfare of the animals we exploit; both; or neither?

Not surprisingly, an overwhelming 50% of readers (4) voted for both. 25% voted for organic, 25% for free range, and no-one voted for neither. Whether this is indicative of the moral norm of the traffic through this site or the simple failure of the poll to really pose a challenging moral dilemma cannot be known. If I had qualified this with the consequences of these choices, particularly the financial impact, then would the survey result have been the same? Or was the number of responses too small to draw any real conclusions from?

I'll say this much: If we could, most people would chose products that are both free range and organic, because most people have it in them to care both for the well-being of the creatures that we eat as well as their own long-term health concerns. But in reality, as I've said before, most families in NZ can't afford to exclusively eat free range or organic meat and produce. The extra costs of producing food this way - the real costs of producing healthy guilt-free food - are more than most of us can absorb in these days of higher interest rates, soaring fuel costs, and the general trend towards recession and the tightening of the purse-strings. The fact is, of course, that we have become accustomed to these cheaper prices for mass-produced food simply because the produce market is driven by intensive agriculture, fueled by cheap oil and the indiscriminate application of fertilisers to thousands of acres of farmland, the true costs of which are now starting to show themselves. For several decades, we have been indulging in this short term gain for what will amount to a nett loss in terms of the environmental and health costs which we are seeing appear now.

So why can we not afford to pay for food that is natural and humane, when it is the food we would have been eating barely a hundred years ago? Ironically, it would seem to be the same consumerism that has made everything else so desirable, cheap, and wasteful. So many families are mortgaged to the hilt and bogged down with credit card and HP debt in this country that we now struggle just to provide the basics. But just like trying to spread the word that it's worthwhile to grow a garden if you can, and that the more we can live as smaller communities sharing what is good between us and the less we rely on mass consumerism the better off we'll be, it's a monumental task for most families to try and wipe out their debt and take steps to break away from the economic models that chain us to our possessions, our desires, and our debt.

Which brings us back to the poll. No-one voted for Neither. Of the whopping 8 votes that the poll received, everyone wishes that they had the option of buying and eating better than what the mass market offers. But there is a cycle of economic hardship and financial ignorance in NZ that needs to be broken. The only question is, will that happen as a matter of market forces, as a result of the potential recession which is threatening, and in the process hurt everyone from big business to mum and dad?; or will it come from the ground up, from people's desire to rise above the economic machine that ties us down? With babies crying in one ear and creditors howling in the other, it's pretty hard to predict.

Sometimes we cheat

Its hard to be good all the time.

Some days, like everyone, we're too tired and it seems like too much hard work to get into the kitchen and cook a meal. So we made the call, and I went and picked up the fish and chips. No photos of the greasy feast will grace this page.

Which raises the issue of how good is good, and how bad is bad? There are fanatics on this topic, and I have to admit I'm not one of them. I'm a realist. We're a single income family with a toddler and a mortgage, and we have to balance our food spending with our concerns for our health and nutrition. There are things we can stretch to, and there are things we do regularly to save money. Apart from the occasional slip when the local chippy gets the call, we walk this line as best we can.

So, How Good is Good? In an ideal world, we would eat only certified organic meat and produce, vegies grown in our own garden, eggs from our own free range chickens, and make our own milk and cheese from dear Daisy who doubles as a full time lawn mower. But the hard facts are you can't have livestock in a suburban area, the levies charged by the council to keep chickens swallows up any savings you might make by having them in the first place, and any vegies we grow will only be enough to occasionally supplement our diet, never to sustain it. If anyone has ever tried to do a full grocery shop in an organics shop, they'll know just how hungry or poor you'll end up as a result. I fully support the concept of organics, but we just can't pay that sort of a food bill. So, next best option is the local grocer's market. We've been going to the one in the Hutt for the past few weeks and I'm loving it. The variety is great, you can shop around for price and quality, and it's a chance for the whole family to get out for a walk around by the river. Even with the extra petrol expense, we come away with more vegies than we ever used to at the supermarket, for less expense overall. This week we'll probably check out the Tawa market, as its closer to home. Looking forward to that.

Also, How Bad is Bad? We avoid as much processed food as we can, but there are things we tolerate and things we don't touch. We know how bad they are, but we still eat processed smallgoods like salami, luncheon and sizzlers, in small quantities. Every couple of weeks we weaken and get the above-mentioned shark and tatie. But we pretty much don't touch the extremes, the McDs and the BKs of the world, unless we're travelling and really too tired to care. There are an awful of people with an awful lot to say about the fast food giants of the world, about how they destroy the environment and the health of everyone they touch, and 99% of the time I fully agree with them. But sometimes, its just what you need. I would be a hypocrite to claim that my position was otherwise. Yes, there is no nutritional value in the food that these companies serve; they are largely responsible for the environmental degradation of several third world countries; there is a strong ethical and health argument to support the general boycott of these companies, and this has been documented by others more thoroughly and succinctly than I could hope to achieve here. But as long as the economic models we live within value speed of service and fat-saturated taste over good health and ethical business practice, there will be a market for KFC, BK, McDs, DQ, and AJs.

So what exactly, I hear you ask, do we not touch? I personally just can't abide prepackaged dinners. TV Dinners, to use the American. I simply have too much pride as a cook and someone who eats to stoop to that. There are a few organic suppliers who do nice risottos and soups and suchlike in single serves, and full credit to them, but that's the limit of it. I just can't imagine what must go into those meals to make them all heat up just right at the same time. And don't get me started on the issue of heating plastic in the microwave.

Well, that was a rant.

To end on a good note, last night we had Stuffed Sausages with Coconut Rice. Very quickly:

Vigorously boil 6 Real Sausages (ie, not precooked) for about 5 mins, then remove to a grill tray and slice lengthwise to about 3/4 deep. While these cool, mix up in a bowl 2 chopped fresh tomatoes, about 4 finely chopped garlic cloves, freshly ground salt and pepper, about 1/4 cup of grated edam and parmesan cheese, and a handful of chopped fresh herbs such as parsley or thyme. Squeeze this into the sliced sausages and place under a grill. Give them a good 15 mins, time enough to brown up beautifully, melt the cheese and cook right through.

This basic recipe can be modified to suit your own tastes and the flavour of sausage you have on hand.

To make the Coconut Rice, first fry up a finely chopped onion in a large pot. Then put 1 cup of boiling water, 1 cup of rice, and a tin of coconut milk in the pot with the onion and a little sprinkle of salt. Bring to the boil then turn down to a gentle simmer until almost all of the liquid is absorbed and the rice is soft to the bite (about 20 mins).


Enjoy.