Travelling, foraging and local shopping

One thing I was looking forward to on our trip was trying some different local food sources, and maybe even do some foraging. There just seems to be so much more to forage once you get out of QLD, although I haven’t actually found or tried too much yet. I also haven’t found too much local food, but hopefully that will all change this weekend when we go to the Bungendore Farmers Markets. 

I’m a member of a facebook group “Edible weeds, wild food and foraging in Australia”. This group is amazing - both the knowledge and the willingness off the members to help out. I thought this one looked like it could be edible but after posting the photo was told what it was and that it was toxic. So always a good idea to check! 

Traveling through Rylsdale, we found some local free range eggs at the butchers. They were in a box labelled with caged eggs, but the lady assured me that they were definitely Chookie Charlies eggs and were free range - he just doesn’t bother with the extra expense of cartons! This was reinforced by the friendly tradie that stopped to chat while we drank our coffee on the footpath - I do think he just wanted to talk to Jack the Russell (our dog and the reason why we were outside the warm cafe in the cold of the footpath). It just shows that if you can trust the person you’re buying your food from, it doesn’t need to be certified free range, or organic. 

Same deal with roadside stalls - if the guy that grows the produce is there to tell you that of course it’s organic, you can tell when you taste it! And yes, you can tell when you taste it. We bought up fairly big at one stall between Kyogle and Scone (not sure exactly where it was). We bought some of the yummiest apples I’ve had for a while and picked the day before we bought them. Potatoes, kiwi fruit and tomatoes were added and then of course we had to buy some jam and chutney as well. 

The kilogram of tomatoes was half green and half red, so when I got to my sons house I decided to make a small batch of green tomato pickles. My mum has the best recipe for this, so after texting to ask for it, I got a text back with the recipe. I’ve tried many different recipes for green tomato pickles and none match my mothers. I cooked mine in the thermomix so it does look a little like a chutney. I had to reduce my recipe down a lot because I only had 320g green tomatoes and so had to do the math to reduce, and I’m not sure I did it correctly, but it does taste pretty good! I did put extra sugar in because I felt it needed it, so I’ll let you decide what to do if you have a go at the recipe.

This is the message I got from my sister: "Mums lost the scrap of paper that had the recipe on it, but these are the ingredients - 4lbs of tomatoes and 4 large onions, 1 litre of vinegar - 4 chilli's optional- 2 cups of brown/raw sugar(to taste), 2 tablespoons dry mustard, 2 tablespoons curry powder, salt. Mix all together, bring to boil, cook approx 30mins. May need some thickening with cornflour. Bottle as desired. Mum says add other stuff to taste."



This is what I did:

Green tomato pickles
320g green tomatoes
50g onion
65g vinegar
65g sugar
1 teaspoon mustard powder
1 teaspoon curry powder. I used half cumin half coriander and 1 turmeric
1 teaspoon salt
In the thermomix - 30 minutes 100 rev 4 - I did 30 minutes, but I would check after 20 if I did it again. Mine has a chutney texture rather than a pickle, but I quite like that.

Eating Seaweed

Recently we went to the beach - it was a very quick visit, just an overnighter. We stayed with my brother and he suggested a quick walk on the beach to take Jack the Russell for a walk, and then to pick up a coffee afterwards. There was heaps of seaweed on the beach, which he said was unusual. I was telling him about how great it is for the garden, and for eating, and that I'd recently seen a recipe for a foraged seaweed condiment. I don't know much about seaweed, but I don't think there's any that are unedible - maybe some just taste better than others. This one is a small leafed seaweed and it tasted okay so I picked up some of the fresher, greener looking bits. Most of the seaweed was a darker colour, so I assumed it was deader than the pale green seaweed. The darker seaweed is the one you would collect for use in the garden. I didn't have a bag, so I only collected a small amount, mainly to make Gomasio which I'd never heard of until I saw it on a Milkwood face book post. Watch the video here

We did chop a little bit of this fresh seaweed into our breakfast mushrooms after we got back from our walk. It had a very mild flavour, certainly not as strong as it smelled and I really could've put more into the mushrooms.

I brought the seaweed home , washed and dried it for about 3 days and then turned it into Gomasio.  Basically it's equal parts of dried seaweed and toasted sesame seeds ground up and mixed together. I also added some salt to mine.

A couple of pieces of the fresh seaweed. 

This is not the first time I've foraged seaweed, but certainly the first time I've foraged for eating! Using seaweed in the garden, either to make a seaweed tea or put into the compost, or even put directly on the garden as mulch, you don't need to wash the seaweed, I only washed it because I was going to eat it.

Our soil in Australia tends to be deficient in iodine, therefore our food is deficient, so it's always a good idea to add seaweed to our diet. I usually have Dulse flakes mixed in with my celtic sea salt, so then it goes in everything I cook - both sweet and savoury. When cooking stews or bone broth, I usually add a little extra dulse flakes.

On the Milkwood video, Kirsten mentioned a white powder that might grow on the dried seaweed and that its called manite, which is a combination of sugars and salts and that it's close to a natural form of MSG so is a Umami flavour. I'm glad that she mentioned it, because mine had it and I may have been concerned otherwise.

Dried Seaweed and you can see the manite on it.

I crushed the dried Seaweed in the thermomix to get a measurement of amount. I had half a cup of dried crushed seaweed, so then toasted half a cup of sesame seeds. Then added them to the thermomix with the seaweed and 1 teaspoon salt.

I've added it to most meals since making it - it smells devine and gives a really nice flavour to food. I reckon it'll be something I make as often as I can forage seaweed.

An end and a beginning

I've been wanting to get back to blogging now that I have more time on my hands. We recently stopped our Free Range Pork business and have plans to go on holiday, soon I hope. I was going to wait until we got away to start writing as there seems to be still a lot to do before we can get away, but I fear that may not happen as soon as planned (the latest plan is to head off in about 5 days time). And I feel like I'm ready to write now. I wasn't for a while, I've been feeling out of sorts since closing the business. Anger, sadness, a sense of failure and a sense of loss, all mingled together. I know other people have bigger problems than losing a business, and while there is so much I have to be grateful for, I can't really help feeling those emotions. I'm certainly grateful for the fact that I met so many wonderful people, some of who will remain friends well into the future.

Some of the reason I want to write now, is because of the emotion - Anger. Why am I angry? I'm angry because we had a business that I loved. It was a lot of work, and we did put so much work into it, Kim and I, plus our children at various times. We loved the pigs and we love farming regenerative, and at least we can still do that. We have loved seeing the land improve under our management. Seeing the different grasses come back seeing areas of erosion heal, seeing so many examples of the land and wildlife improving. This pig business was going to be a chance to make a living off our small block so that neither of us had to work off farm. So I think the anger comes from the fact that it just didn't work out. It nearly worked and I could think of many contributing factors to it not working but I don't really want to dwell on that. I need to start thinking far more positively - I have so much to look forward to.

I'm also feeling sad because we aren't the only free range pig farm closing it's doors. It's going to be very hard to buy free range pork and it will also be very expensive. Makes eating bacon an ethical dilemma for some. Luckily we managed to keep a small supply so I'll ration ours out until one day when we have pigs again. Yes, we'll have pigs, not many, just enough to keep us in bacon (hopefully smoked by me) and a little bit of pork.

If you can support a free range pork farmer, please do, before they become extinct. One subject I want to explore in the coming months, is how important regenerative farming is to stopping climate change. I believe it's one of the best ways to fix our environmental problems, but reiterative farmers need the support of the consumer.

Not sure what our future holds exactly, but I do know it will include farming animals and getting a food forest and big vegetable garden happening. It will also include the beginning of semi retirement.....well that's the plan for now......after we have a holiday.

I have the time now to go out and help Kim do stuff....with the dogs coming along too.