Drawing weeds

At the moment I'm doing a drawing on the windows of Signal in the city (behind flinders street station on northbank). The breif was to create an unexpected environment so I've decided to focus on weeds, in particular edible ones. It's super fun, you can see more on my Drawing on glass blog, and i reccomend popping by sometime. I'm not sure how long it will be up, it is definately the most interesting and well drawn thing I've done on glass thus far.

On the way to see the delightful and endearing Emma Bathgate sing, I walked past Books for Cooks on Gertrude St and was sparked by this window display. What an incredible looking book, the picture obviously taken through glass while I was on the steer, I thought to my self how great it would be if I was given cookbooks like this to review, and a review meant trialing out all of the recipes. I want to make a cookbook oneday. I also want to go into the shop and look at this book oneday.
Quay, Food Inspired by Nature by Peter Gilmore

I'd be lost without my garden

Today in working in the city - drawing on glass windows of Signal. This is my garden, sitting in a lunchbox, on the floor of the studio. I don't know how I lived before having my garden.

Buy nothing new in October

A proposal:
Salvos Stores is laying down the challenge to not buy anything new for the whole month October to show your support for your hip pocket and the environment.
Buying nothing new doesn’t mean going without. Make a Buy Nothing New Month pledge and you can beg, buy, barter and swap for whatever you need, as long as it is pre-loved, but with the exceptions of necessities (including food, drink, medications and hygiene products) you can’t buy anything new.
An inititive of the Salvos, of course there is always a vested interest, buy nothing new just buy from the Salvo's? It seems to be one of the most overpriced op-shops around, and are they still a charity? They don't seem to give discounts if you don't have enough money to buy a jumper and you are cold, like on the good old op-shop days. And funnily enough if you participate you go into the draw to win $5,000, to buy new things? Read more and find out about taking the challenge. I think it's definately a great idea with a lot of merit. But perhaps buy nothing at all would be a more interesting challenge, find ways of reusing everything you already have and having free garage sales and swap meets to find new homes for things you aren't using. Props to anything that makes me think and re-engage with these ideas.

I suggest investigating in The Sharehood, Transition Towns, bartering, local garden produce swaps. And making your own pledges and experiments that are relevant to you. Turn off all electricity in your house for one month?

More thoughts

The taxi driver who picked me up from out the front of the hospital was gentle and present, in a way it was so normal but after the bright lights and drama of the hospital I was surprised, by his present normalacy. He spoke about how everyone he picks up from the hospital is sad. And I said that one of the big problems of western medicine is that it doesn't recognize that emotional and spiritual health are directly related to the health of the physical body. Everyone in the waiting room is stressed because they are unwell and feel abandoned waiting for an undefinable amount of time in order to be seen by a holy grail doctor, who can only help you if you fit into the right box or simple equation; body + pathogen = handy name brand drug or body + injury / open wound = bandage. I know that is of course a generic and simplistic statement to make and of course there is a huge amount of validity and importance in what the medical profession does and I do not wish to undercut it at all but I think that we need radical new ways of thinking and more education and support to develop our own inner doctors rather than always outsourcing our healthcare. To develop awareness of our innate intelligence. All we need we already have. Presence and participation in our own lives, as performer, creator, instigator of who we really are. All injuries bring new dances. Every moment offers an opportunity to learn something about ourselves, to test our condition, to see where the material of life meets us, where we meet it.

A different way of doing this

Everytime I spend time in emergency wards I am filled with great revelations that this is not a sustainable positive love filled approach to wellbeing and true livliness and we really need a new and integrated way of doing this. More thoughts to come.

Artist Business Workshop

Today I attended an Artist Business Workshop hosted by ABaF (Australia Business Arts Foundation) at the Meat Markets.
"Artist Business will strengthen your business skills and help you build a sustainable art practice. This practical workshop includes presentations by industry experts, leading visual artists, gallery professionals and arts managers. "

I've gone to a few of their workshops lately and they are very informative, inspiring and well catered (I don't usually eat caramel slice but tiny ones cut in triangles are hard to resist especially when they are sitting there patiently on a plate, luckily there always seems to be an abundant platter of amazing fruits next to these rather cheeky cakes).

ABaF have lost their workshop funding and won't be running most of their workshops any more, there are a few more scheduled interstate and in regional centres - Arts Business on 20th Oct in Warragul and Exhibition Planning in Ballarat on 14th Oct - if you were keen you could pop out on a Vline for a day trip, it's really not far. They are really high quality workshops and it's worth taking up opportunities like this while they are there, as it seems if things are too good funding usually mysteriously disappears.

There's a whole world of positive momentum out there

Transition Towns Darebin

Transition Network

Earthdance Peace Watch

In Transition

FILM & DISCUSSION: "IN TRANSITION: FROM OIL DEPENDENCE TO LOCAL RESILIENCE"
Thur 30 Sept, 6.45pm How do we reduce our dependence on oil? Find out! This is the first ever movie all about the Transition Towns movement.
Guest speaker Adam Grubb from Permablitz!
Preston Council Chambers, 350 High Street, Preston.
RSVP to Tony 0419 853 686 or email verseandvoice@gmail.com

Find out more about the movie and see the preview here.

Definately need a rainbow

--
greens from garden, including curly lettuce that tasted salty and dandelion greens
grated carrot
purple cabbage sauerkraut
sprinkle of lentil sprouts
nasturtium
dressing of hemp oil, ume su; umeboshi plum vinegar and organic Eden yellow mustard
then I added a scrambled egg on the side (from our chooks)
I was trying to emulate something similar to my favorite salad I was making when I was Avignon (Sud de France) last year. It was simple - beautiful round leaved lettuce, maybe it's called butterhead in English, carrot lacto-ferment (karotten sauerkraut), delicious gomasio!! (that's what the salad I just made now definately lacked) and a dressing of amazing french biologique mustard, ume su and some organic cold pressed oil made out of yellow flowers. It was the best but the ingredients were all locally specific and I guess all food moments are about time and space and being wherever you are enjoying things as they are. I really enjoyed my rainbow salad moment in the last light of the day.

Karottensuppe

There is something in this carrot soup idea, the development of possible genius. I will keep experimenting until I run out of ideas, as it is delectable and I live eating it!
Today's soup was very similiar to yesterdays though I added 2 small new season parsnips to the blender and garnished with three kinds of sprouts. Rote linsen, puy linsen and buchweizen, if we wanted to talk deustch about our lebbensmittel. The sprouts added a great chewy texture and a sense of protein. I think the garnishing possibilities of a simple yet profound suppe such as karotten are wide open.

Your beautiful parched, holy mouth

A poet is someone
Who can pour Light into a spoon,
Then raise it
To nourish
Your beautiful parched, holy mouth

-- Hafiz (English rendering by Daniel Ladinsky)

Chia

Me and my, me and my, me and my...(friends) chia.

Morning greens

--
Blended with 2 cups of water and 1 banana

Food not Bombs

Sunday night free street dinner
organic and vegan
I really enjoyed this dinner of strangely wonderful flavours and ideals. Sharing dinner with strangers and friends is a very nice thing to do. It would be great to do something like food not bombs with sprouts, kraut and freshly harvested weeds, a free dinner of raw living foods that allowed one feel full of love and bursting with positive momentum. Something to think about, and definately much respect and joy to the FNB's crew. Thankyou.
--
6pm Loophole, 690 High St Thornbury

Orchid nectar

I've been quite excited the last few days because one of my orchids is
flowering for the first time in the three
years we've lived together. With all today's high spring lovin' I just found a bee almost inside the orchid drinking out all the sweet nectar, on my kitchen windowsill. Bees are so cool.

I love carrot soup

I really love raw carrot soup. The main ingredients are carrot and soup (aka water) whatever else you want to add is welcome. Some people out there make carrot soup by juicing their carrots and then blending it with an avocado to make it lovely and creamy. I'm a bit rougher and perhaps more primitive than that, and I don't mind the fibre element. I blend my carrots whole with a little water add some lemon and call it soup.
--
3 medium size carrots
1 cup of water
1/2 cup of chia gel (2-3 tbs of chia seeds soaked in 1/2 a cup of water with a little salt and agave)
grated lemon rind
juice of 1/2 a lemon
salt
serve with quartered cherry tomatoes and a few freshly cracked walnuts and more lemon rind.
This was perfectly delicious for my afternoon sunshine purposes, herbs, greens and something creamy could also be fun to play with with this soup.

Direct fuel bites

'Direct fuel bites' are a Brendan Brazier concept of a pre-exercise snack, particulary useful for high intensity exercise lasting one hour or less, as the energy is readily available and they are very easy to digest.
The ratio of carbohydrate, fat and protein in the pre-exercise snack is determined by the intensity and duration of the activity. Brazier grades exercise into three levels and explains the nutrition the body requires during exercise, the science behind it and some handy whole food recipes.

The recipe on page 125 of Thrive is
5 dates
2tbs coconut oil
2 tsp lemon zest
1 tsp lemon juice
sea salt to taste
Combine ingredients in a food processor, make into bite size pieces / tiny balls, store in fridge or freezer.
They provide a direct source of simple carbohydrate. The body gets the fuel from the glucose and MCT's (Medium-chain triglycerides) even before the dates and coconut butter are digested.
There is lots of interesting information and exercise specific tips in his book, I reccomend reading it if you are interested.
I make something like the recipe above and eat one or two before I go for s run.

--
2 cups of water
1 whole lemon (no rind)
1 mejool date
1 tsp dulse flakes
1 tsp hemp oil
Refreshing electrolyte drink.

This dish gives me so much joy

I can't explain it but this is the most perfectly right thing I have perhaps ever eaten, on a soul nutritional level! Haha, how is that for exaggeration or exclamation? At least the best thing that I have eaten lately, it truly makes me feel joyous and nourished. I made it a few days ago and only posted the photos but haven't written up the recipe. It is loosely based on recipes I have brushed past for raw cauliflower 'cous cous' but I wouldn't call it that rather just 'something delicious that occurs when a very fine cauliflower enters your life,' a much longer meandering title but more apt.
Just now this is how I made it, but I'm sure you'll encounter your own
brilliance if you find a good cauli specimen to work with.
--
process a whole cauliflower in a food processor until fine and grainy, put into a big bowl and add lemon juice and salt, not too much as you will need to adjust to taste as the process continues.
add some de-pipped biodynamic kalamata olives, lots of fresh lemon thyme, a tablespoon of hemp oil, quartered cherry tomatoes...
Then back to the blender, this time either a handful of soaked almonds or sunflower seeds and lots of fresh parsley, blend until it becomes a bit like pesto, mix this thouroughly through your cauliflower and it will make the whole thing go a bit green instead of the pure white of a lone cauli.
one very tiny purple coated garlic, hulled and minced and some lovely big leaves of parsley for texture. It's good to taste it along the way and see how you feel, adjust olive-lemon-salt ratios until delicious and you can't stop 'tasting' it, this means it's ready and you should sit down and enjoy it with a spoon.
I'm sure olive oil and pepper would love to be in on this party and you may choose to invite them. Due to not having much oil around I didn't use it but surprisingly I actually really love the beautifully light and airy quality of this dish as is. Sometimes (quite often) simple really is perfect.

Heirloom seeds

Jankala Organic Seed Organic and heirloom seed varieties, and DOT Pots which are made from natural wood fibres and peat moss and are designed to plant straight into the earth without disturbing the roots.
It is a small company with a lot of integrity and their selection of seeds is humble but there are some great varieties and very reasonably priced.

The Italian Gardener Specialising in Italian heirloom vegetables, all of these seeds come direct from Italy, there is a good selection of organic/ biologici and they sell Yellow watermelon! Delicious! And! Mache / Lambs Lettuce! My favorite! This is the only place thus far I have been able to track down this seed in Australia (I fell in love with mâché in France). One day when I'm rich I will definately buy some, maybe someone wants to go halves in a packet?

Eden Seeds, our classic heirloom seed friends.
OUR AIM is to distribute old traditional open pollinated varieties of vegetable seed, preferably old Australian varieties and organically or bio-dynamically grown where possible.

Select Organic is Eden's Certified organic label with colour pictures on the packets. The only thing with buying seeds online is the rather large postage fee, so I guess it's wise to buy seeds together with a few people?

Or you can SAVE seeds and SWAP them!

Seed Savers Network is quite amazing and brilliant.
Seed Savers Network | Preserving the genetic basis of tomorrow's food
Promoting and organising the preservation, free distribution and exchange of open-pollinated seeds.

Anyway lots to read and research and be apart of, the Seed Savers Handbook is meant to be an awesome resource and there are local groups all over the place that you can join. I reccomend checking it out and becoming apart of this global movement to create a wonder filled deliciously diverse edible jungle!

While waiting in the waiting room to see my osteopath I idly amused myself with reading some childrens books that were laying next to me, when I came across this one that made me laugh. This dog hunky dory eats everything that each of the rhyming characters have to offer until he gets so big that they have to put him in a little sand pit trailer and wheel him to the vet and he has to eat some yucky green medicine. The book was a little bit too moralistic for me but the cheekiness of the dog was funny.

Spring smells so good

I had forgotten that I still had a nose.

Genius

Post Ceres breakfast while waiting for the bus.
-
Australian organic pecans and banana

Cauli's at Ceres

Whole ones hiding away, half ones cut open and showing their insides.
Such beautiful vegetables when vibrantly in season, I'm excited about
making the 'cous cous' type dish again.

Raw is definately a process

What is it to 'go' raw? How do you 'do' it? Is it a mindset or simply an exploration into being? To a point I have found it simple to include more nutrient dense enzyme rich living foods into my way of life, many of these things were already gently considered and apart of my food engagement. But I have noticed that on the last few days I have gravitated to warm easy to digest comforting and sustaining cooked wholefoods, I am in no way passing judgement on cooked things being diminished in value - there is something to be said for the 37• degree soup idea (my Chinese Doctor once explained that the digestive system is like '37• degree soup and when it's not working very well you want to put things in it that are close to that temperature and consistancy so it doesn't have to work so hard) - I guess I'm just noticing that other than green smoothies and salads, I'm not sure what to eat, and I wonder what you need to make raw 'work'? how can you get all that you need when it is cold, you are feeling a bit run down and leading an active lifestyle? Eating a high proportion of fruit and nuts doesnt sit well with me or my body, yet there is something very nourishing about eating a bowl of cooked brown rice. I am open to this playful adventure of experimenting and finding a sustainable wonderment of food love for life, and love the simplicity of eating a high amount of homegrown greens and wild edibles from my garden. The future is definately local and simple.

Botanical Cuisine Potluck

This event looks totally amazing!

The second "Botanical Cuisine Potluck"
To Bring: A Botanical Cuisine inspired living food dish to share (for some ideas you might like to visit www.shiitakeblog.com). Plus your own plate, cutlery and cup. *It'd be fantastic too if at least one of the ingredients in your offering was grown at your place... even if it's a simple garnish of home-grown parsley ;-)
What is Botanical Cuisine? - Well, it is raw food, pure and simple. It is the use of fresh produce (seasonal, local & organic wherever possible). It's light & nutritious with minimal use of nuts, seeds and NO dehydration.
Optional cost: Gold coin donation to the TTS Bali Project (read more about this fantastic charity at www.rawtheartoflivingblog.com )
Optional Fun Activity: The "Seasonal Basket Challenge"

Sunday, October 3 · 3:30pm - 6:30pm
The Natural Health Meeting Room (above Elwood Natural Health Supplies - enter from the ally beside the shop and go up the stairs)
78 Ormond Road Elwood
Melbourne, Australia

You can find 'Botanical Cuisine Potluck' on facebook and stay in touch with the event, there are also amazing pictures of the last one.

The Kimberleys

After pressuring local Indigenous communities with compulsory acquisition during development talks, last week WA Premier Colin Barnett unilaterally declared that negotiations had reached a stalemate and began the process to compulsorily acquire the land. The Traditional Owners are now uniformly opposing the compulsory acquisition, with former Australian of the Year and Indigenous Academic, Mick Dodson, calling the move an act of colonialism and theft of Aboriginal lands.1

1 Compulsory acquisition 'theft' of land; ABC News Online 2 September 2010

Sign the online actions on Save the Kimberleys and on Get Up!

Gubinge

A remarkable aboriginal superfood more commonly known as Kakadu Plum, contains the highest natural source of vitamin C on the planet. In studies the Kakadu Plum has shown to have antibacterial, antiviral and antifungal properties and assists with inflammatory conditions, cancer prevention and anti-bronchodilatory activities.

Gubinge is being harvested by the Nyul Nyul people of the Kimberleys in Western Australia. 
All profits that Loving Earth receive from the sale of this product, will be sent back to the Nyul Nyul community to assist in creating opportunities for indigenous communities to regenerate areas of land for it's production.

Read more about gubinge on the Loving Earth site

Save the Kimberleys
There is a proposal to build a massive gas processing hub in the area where the Gubinge is harvested that would completely destroy the entire region if built. Please visit www.savethekimberley.com and help preserve this amazing and pristine part of the world.

Upcoming Very Edible Gardens workshops

Poultry Systems Establishment within Permaculture Paradise
Come along to a stunning property in Heathmont - one we designed over three years ago - to learn how to set yourself up for chickens and ducks in your backyard.  We'll look at and thoroughly explain an integrated chook house-greenhouse-strawyard-run-garden-orchard system.  We'll also build a duck pond that uses slope to direct nutrient-rich water to fruit trees, look at sensible duck housing solutions, and generally go through all things duck (note - we think ducks are under-rated in the suburbs!).  As part of the day we'll also have a tour of Kim's permaculture system which is like flipping through any permaculture book on suburban possibilities.
Sat, Oct 9th, @9:30am - 01:30PM

Edible Weeds Walk
Many if not most common urban weed species of Melbourne are edible and can provide valuable and nutritious fresh food. Learn to enjoy dandelion, sow thistle, mallow, amaranth, wild onions, wild celery, stinging nettle and many more (with seasonal variation). Many weeds are used by health practitioners for their curative properties. Learn too about some of the ecological uses of weeds as soil improvers, soil indicators and compost additives.
Sat, Oct 30th, @11:00am - 01:00PM

An Introduction to Urban Permaculture
Permaculture is a broad design system for building sustainable human habitats, drawing inspiration from patterns in natural systems.
Sat, Nov 13th and Sat, Nov 20th @9:00am - 04:00PM

Have a look at the VEG website to read more about their workshops and come along, I went to their Fermentation workshop a few weeks ago, it was super great, everything about these guys come highly reccomended.

Food on the table

Just looking at Eating the City and found a few interesting tangents to follow. Sibling/Condiment dinner and a very interesting project by Sydney artist Simryn Gill Food on the table
"My offering for the laneways project is a celebration in a sort of reverse potlatch. Let us understand potlatch to loosely mean (from Wikipedia) “a gathering…where a…leader hosts guests and holds a feast….the main purpose [of which] is the redistribution and reciprocity of wealth.’  If we replace ‘wealth’ with ‘ways of being’, we must try to understand how we might enact, for an afternoon, a redistribution and reciprocity of ways of being. A sharing from across various understandings of what can and cannot happen and be permitted to happen, in our civilised society, as we all try to step lightly through the tangled undergrowth of the rules and regulations which seemingly hold everything together.
What I have in mind is a genuine reciprocity through the form of a brief and open mutual giving and taking, across the boundaries and fences that keep us neatly corralled in the places and roles that we chose for ourselves, or that society gives us. I propose a meal to be made from produce and products from refuse sites - supermarket and restaurant dumpsters.
...
This process will take us into categories, which in the main we receive as givens: about what is good and bad, clean and dirty, possible and impossible. We will find ourselves at that door we often reach in our activities, alone and collectively, as individuals and as card-bearing members of various walks of life, interest groups, even nations, which has a sign on it that says: can’t be done; impossible; wrong way, go back. In my line of work, this is often the most important door to open. 
...
You eat what is available, and give the surplus away to your friends. So this will be the spirit and the nature of any celebration built on the largess of waste: what you will find cannot be known in advance, you cannot make definite plans, just a general one: we will feast on what is to be had. A kind of awkward mirror image of the time when we ate what grew in the season - the bins offer to their gleaners feasts or famines formed in the weather patterns of consumers’ whims."
Read the whole article here

What to do when you feel like a wonky pinneapple?

Make miso soup.

Lunchbox on the bus

Cooked millet with lemon juice, mountain pepper leaves, parsley, sultanas.
Cooked pumpkin, raw green capsicum. Tahini miso sauce.

So long since I've cooked something

After an active day of running, planting seeds and working on a mural in the city I decided that I wanted to eat something warm, cooked and hearty for dinner. Lately I've been eating mostly raw, and mostly smoothies and a lot of greens. A simple highly digestive carbohydrate was called for and so I went down the buckwheat and tempeh bolagnaise route. It was very good, I'm really happy I went there.
--
In one pot cook whole buckwheat, when it's ready add salt, lemon juice and fresh thyme.
In another pot fry chili tempeh (crumbled) with coconut oil and pink salt.
Add lots of grated jap pumpkin and continue frying,
after a little while add juice of 1/2 lemon, handful of sultanas
and when your ready add a tin of canned tomatoes, mash them up and mix through so it all goes nice and saucy, add few tbs of water and allow it to cook a bit further. At some point, perfectly timed the buckwheat will be ready. Serve sauce on top of grain and top with fresh lemon thyme. Olive oil would be a good option.
The pumpkin and coconut oil created a wonderfully sweet and fragrant flavour, buckwheat is very grounding, easy to digest and contains Vitamin P - Rutin.

After yesterdays inspiration I decided to gutter integrate my learning by embracing the half a million or seed trays left at my house by a previous housemate and do some progating! It was really fun and a lot of things I learnt yesterday made more sense as the newness of information settled. I'm growing red pak choy, black zucchinis, tatsoi and crystal salad cucumbers amongst other things.

Embrace life as an adventure into the unknown.
Every moment is a chance to learn; either something new or how to apply what you have already learnt.

Complete Urban Farmer

Day one: Propagation and seed saving
Today I started a 12 week short course at Ceres. We meet once a week and delve into many different topics to develop skills and gain insight into the world of permaculture and sustainable food production.
Learning to propagate and compost and grow things with efficient wonder is really exciting to me right now and feels like a good place to put my energy. Grounding myself by literally spending time in dirt and developing more practical skills is ideal yet definately challenging for someone that loves ideas and literature.
I'm really keen to keep developing this idea of food as my art practice and to incorporate more live growing plants in all my projects of the future. I would also be very happy to exist on plants grown in my garden.

Things I learnt today:
* Soil is amazing
* Seeds rot if the soil is too wet and not aerated enough or the soil is too rich in nutrients.
* Rock - pebble - sand - silt - clay (size order of particles)
* Plant leaves go yellow when the soil is low in nitrogen, and if there is too much nitrogen you will get lots of green leaves and no fruit (which is sad if you are trying to grow tomatoes but I wonder if it's okay when you are happy with an abundance of greens? Oh but I think the point was more about the importance of achieving some wholesome balance in the soil, and either extreme creates problems)
* Seeds are always breathing, they like a warm, moist, oxygenated environment in which to germinate.
* When growing beans you should water the soil first, plant your bean and then not water it again until it has germinated and the shoot sprung to the surface.
* A natural rooting hormone, if making cuttings, is honey

There was lots more, I liked planting seeds the best and seeing other baby vegetables growing in the Ceres hothouses, there was an incredible orange and purple curly kale, I think it was Russian something... I planted a whole tray of different things including lebanese cucumbers, coriander, tatsoi, basil and eggplants. They are going to hang out in the hothouse for awhile and then i'll bring them home and grow them up big.