February
has been a weird month! After deciding on a whim to return to my old job and
getting a position which would mean being away from home for 3 months (I don’t
think the veggie garden or me would last much longer than this) I had 10 days
to prepare for the departure. I did delay the departure date to suit several
events that I was very much looking forward to which both took place on the
Saturday before I was due to depart.
But I do
get ahead of myself a bit – late in January we learned that our neighbours had
been working hard to relocate a swarm of bees from their newly built hanger
(yes, we are not the only ones with flying machines in our back garden) to
strategically placed bee hives. Unfortunately the bees decided that they quite
liked building new homes in aviation facilities and took up in one of the wings
hanging in our shed! It took Bosco and Bernard a few days to realise that this
is where all the bees suddenly in the back garden where coming from and by this
time it was a little beyond their capabilities even with the protection of the
bees suit. So what do you do when you need to move bees? You call Sam the Bee
Man! In preparation Jim had spent the weekend making a new hive and we set up a
stand under the Kei apple tree. Sam came out the next afternoon and it was late
and dark by the time he departed. The moving of the bees was done with out much
injury to those involved but I did end up with a few refugees in the kitchen,
who unfortunately did not make it through the night. Sam also checked out our
hive down by the river and we were rewarded with a small harvest of very dry
comb and some very mature honey which was delicious. Eating fruit or vegetables
grown in your own garden is a wonderful feeling but eating honey that has been
produced by bees in your own garden is even more so (even if we have less
involvement in its actual production, somehow it is a real sense of
achievement). It took a few days for the bees to settle into their new home
(and they did return to the wing a few times). Hopefully by the time I return
home in May they will be happily producing litres of delicious golden nectar.
I am very
keen to add our own honey to the menu of my farmers market produce!
Which
brings us to my newest venture. Our ‘local’ that hosted the very successful
Christmas Market has decided to hold a farmers market once a month. It is the
perfect outlet for my culinary urges and the overflow from the garden. Since
being invited to be involved mid-January, I had been frantically chopping
aubergines and mangoes to produce as much chutney as possible. I was under a lot
of pressure since my friend Fiona has been singing the praises of my aubergine
chutney on facebook! Despite the rainy threatening, Saturday morning dawned
with me packing 60 jars of various preserves, tables, chairs, and all the
paraphernalia needed for a market, into the pickup.
My
experiment was the cheese I made out of 4 litres of my cousins beautiful, pure
jersey milk. It is similar to the Lebanese cheese Labne (see the photos).
Anyway, it is an experiment no longer, it completely sold out (selling at 300/=
for 100 grams) and will be on the menu for the future. Actually the whole stall
was a sell out and I am thinking that I am going to have to be spending much
more time in the kitchen to keep up with the demand and also to expand the
menu. However, it does of course depend what is available in the garden and in
the organic market. Preserves and chutneys have traditionally been produced at
the height of the season when there is a glut of produce in order to have
summers wonderful produce available through out the year and I don’t see any
point in using second rate, expensive, imported ingredients just to be able to
have stock on the table, it sort of removes the sense of achievement and also
the pride in being able to say to customers that I know the complete process of
production is organic and home made every step of the way.
I am now in
Turkey and of course having a wonderful time exploring markets and
experimenting with local ingredients and my small (hopefully expanding)
knowledge of Middle Eastern recipes, but that will have to wait for the next
post (with photos of course)!
your choice of mango, aubergine or green tomato chutney - it all depends on your level of heat tolerance!
sundried tomatoes - and they really were dried in the sun on our front terrace
the limited cheese production -
this, of course was not taken at the market but at the Australian Ball on the Saturday evening - my last night of wild Nairobi night life for 3 months with Jim, Will (who I will truely miss sharing an office with) and my dear friend Helen. And if you are wondering what Jim is up to whilst I am away, one word - planes - he is away from home for much of the same time, flying to his hearts content.
