Subsistance farming can be so romantic
August 30, 2005
... if you only have to do it for a week. The long and short of it is that whilst living in the yurt, Lad and I didn't end up doing a whole heq of a lot of cooking, preferring instead to eat what fell into our mouths, right out of the hands that fed us. In the Occitanian summer that means raspberries, and yes, lots of leafy greens.
After the buzz of the new and the raw wore off, we did eventually develop a hunquering for heated food. Turns out that like most lads, mine knows how to BBQ, and is thankfully not averse to grilling a radish (or an ear of corn). We BBQ'd inside the yurt because the mercury did actually drop below 22°c at one point and we feared we might get the wrong kind of shivers.
Our favourite dish was a sorrel omelette prepared with Brillat-Savarin creamy cheese. Now I, in all my decades have never actually heard of a guy liking sorrel, or at least one willing to take it full on and fake it for an entire week. So for the time being, this spells blessing-counting time.
And oh how we turned eating my garden's first tomato into a wondrous ritual. Amen.
images from l to r: Lad eating from the hand that feeds him, domestic work-related gender issues au plein air, leafy green grower talks to leafy green eater about soil tillability (although clearly, Monsieur C. is tucking into more than just leafy greens!)
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Happy spoon
August 29, 2005
Yurt down, lad gone, summer's end. You can hardly blame a gal for eating choco-hazelnut paste straight out of the jar. The spoon came out of my mouth making a mockery of my attempt at food-medicating.
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Salad Song
August 26, 2005
By now we are all well aware of the profound relationship between the citizens of Bejing and Montpellier. Therefore it should come as no surprise when the Occitanian cultural powers that be deem it high time for an 'international biennial' of Chinese contemporary art in their fair city. And why the heq not, if every other city can have one why shouldn't Montpellier?
Of particular interest to me was Song Dong's (Beijing, PRC) leafy greens installation at the entrance of the Pavillon du Musée Fabre. The work is titled, 'Art after Da Zhai' and I have done my best translating the programme description thusly:
Song Dong uses one of Maoist China's most important political catchphrases, "Agriculture takes example from DaZhai." In the Sixties, the peasants of this village of Shanxi multiplied their grain production by seven and Mao Zedong presented Da Zhai with the 'red banner'. The mountains carved in terraces by the farmers became a political emblem.
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Seed
August 19, 2005
Pick the fruit you like, and its seed is for the taking. Everyone does it. 'Shake your moneymaker' is the name of one of the fruits. Or maybe it was just moneymaker.
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Yurt and garden
August 13, 2005
My garden at three and a half weeks old, is thriving! My yurt, set up at the edge of a vineyard, with views into two river valleys and mountains on all sides, is now little more than a glorified bedroom, shouting distance from the 'real house' in town.
But in one week's time a very special guest will arrive and we will among other things, live, and cook (!!!) at the yurt without the support of a proper kitchen. And because I am not a practical woman by nature, I have my heart set upon the notion that the yurt-cooking menu should consist primarily of food originating from my pre-pubescent garden. So I'm digging my toe in the dirt and wondering what kind of grits can a gal dish up using corn, tomatoes, several kinds of lettuce, rocket, chard, red chicory, mint, basil, sorrel, coreander, and everything but the squeal of a radish and a beet using nothing but a BBQ-for-one and an Occitanian 2-ring burner.
Fortunately, he's a vegetarian.
images from t to b: author slash subsistence farmer surveys her harvest possibilities, yurt lighting, flashed-view from the foot of bed.
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Sushi Occitania
August 10, 2005
images from l to r: sushi occitania, messy kitchen, pantry chef making tomato chutney
It's a chic-free zone and we're not fussed about what we wear in the kitchen or anywhere else for that matter.
Sushi Occitania
yaki nori
brown rice prepared in fresh gazpacho (aka homegrown bloody mary mix)
courgette spaghettini
pesto
olives lucques
rosé (just a few drops to glue the nori shut)
Roll up the ingredients and eat. If you don't have a sushi mat you can use a piece of baker's parchment folded double. If you don't have yaki nori, use barely blanched and wrung-out swiss chard as the outer leaf.
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So except for the vodka...
August 06, 2005
We thought that homegrown bloody marys would be an appropriate drink to celebrate his 44th birthday and to give the yurt a proper yurt-warming. All of the ingredients except the ever-important electrolytic enhancors were homegrown or grown within 2 kilometres of the yurt. Thankfully more homegrown (from only 4,5km away) was gifted later. Gawd bless us.
technorati tags: sustainable, organic gardening, vodka, yurt
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Blighted blackberries, all you can eat
August 05, 2005
In the valley, all of the climbing berry bushes are suffering from blight. Blackberries, raspberries, rusty and yellow leaved are making the locals depressed. My neighbour Jean-Louis tells me, 'Take them all, I just can't stand the sight of it'. 'You want me to take all of your blackberries?!' Even when I offer to bake him a blackberry pie he makes it clear that he just wants the blackberries out of his life forever. As if to spite the bush he tells me that he'll never grow blackberries again.
Maybe it's because they're not wild that they taste a bit bland, maybe it's the over-watering, maybe it's the blight. It'll take me a few summers to know the difference, but I climb in the tangle to duke it out with the wasps, who are for some reason unusually passive this summer. Maybe they also can't stand the thought of a crop of blighted blackberries. They're just buzzing around and don't seem to mind me shooing them off the dull and heavy berries. 'Just please take them away,' they're saying in wasp-talk.
Speaking of dull and heavy, afternoons at river's edge we just loll about and let the sun do it's sun thing, chez former folly of the sun king.
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That's French for BBQ practice
August 02, 2005
Last year I bought my first BBQ, a very cute bbq-for-one sort of thing. The level of my naïvete concerning all things BBQ became apparent when it turned out that there really is no such thing as BBQ'ing for one. After giving her a good shining, I announced to the hungry hoard that it was I who would be preparing that night's dinner on the barbie. There were a few grunts and not a little bit of silver-back posing, but in the end the gents were somewhat content to let me have a go at the girly BBQ as long as I didn't fiddle with their well-composed fires or ask too many questions.
Up until this moment, I thought BBQ'ing was little more than guys hanging around playing with fire, but to my disappointment it turned out that there was actual skill and engagement involved in producing and maintaining a fire suitable to transform a hunk of meat into something amazing. And while I was busy making a dog's breakfast of some dainty sardines on my Barbie-doll-barbie, I also realised that the average eleven year old boy has a great deal more BBQ'ing experience than I do due to his vast experience in playing with fire.
No worries, this year is a year for solving all of life's little problems and now that I am generating loads of burning material in the garden I have the perfect excuse to work on my own fire-making skills instead of facilitating others by making meat marinades. And since we're in Occitania, it seems that it's OK to go around lighting fires on hot August afternoons in your garden if you want to. Tonight we're having dainty little sardines, on the big barbie.
And check out my fire! The ash heap was still hot the next day and when I distributed the ashes thoughout the garden I accidentally cinged a little tomato plant in two. It's like youth serum, fire-making.
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