All Good Things Come To An End

Well, this is it! The last post of War On Lawn.

The house is for sale, and various inspectees have said either that they love the fruit trees, or intend to rip them out if they buy the house.

I have loved picking and eating the fresh apples, pomegranates, finger limes, Tahitian limes, lilly pillies, blueberries, guavas and everything else!

My only regret is that I couldn't get the Davidson's plums to ever set fruit.

Goodbye, little front lawn orchard. And thanks for all the fun.

Lomandra longifolia, aka Spiny-headed mat rush.

Bush tucker is so interesting to me. Not only is it a continuation of culture, it’s sustainable and often delicious. So it was that when I heard the word “Lomandra” in three different places in the space of twelve months, I yearned to try the taste of ten thousand years ago.

 

The three places I heard about Lomandra were:

1.      Uncle Terry mentioned it on a Tribal Warrior Sydney Harbour Cruise – he said the popcorn-like seeds were made into damper (bread) by Eora people. He also said the leaf fibres were good for dilly bags and other woven items, and that it was important to, in thoughts or words, show gratitude for the gift of food or materials taken from the plant.

2.      National Parks rangers mentioned that the white part of the stems and the flowers were edible on the Hidden Treasure Walking Trail in Copeland Tops State Conservation Area – this is Biripi land

3.      Port Stephens botanic gardens publication - interviews with Worimi women from Nelson Bay area – one recalled her aunty making the seeds of the Lomandra into Johnny-cakes (are these fried, like pancakes?)

 

Three saltwater nations, Eora, Biripi and Worimi, all using Lomandra, apparently as a starch staple. But how, exactly?

 

At around the same time a good friend told me she had a heap of it growing on her property down the south coast of NSW. She harvested a bunch and sent it to me in March. I had some growing around my place, and I harvested that late in January.

 

Here are the results of my experiments; my best guesses.

 

Here are the Lomadra longifolia seed heads.

 

When I picked mine in January, I found there was only a matter of days between the seed capsules still being green (they did not ripen after picking) and the yellow-brown seed capsules already being open and the seeds fallen out (or maybe birds had eaten the seeds?).

Once I’d gotten the seed capsules off the spiny flower head, I left some of them in a bowl for the seeds to fall out. There were three seeds in each capsule.

 

 

The seeds darkened as they dried out. Each one had a little brown spot on it.

 

 

 

Below is my first attempt to grind the seeds, still in their cases, into flour. I also had some other seed cases that were older and dried out (from last year) - those are the dark reddy-brown ones. I also tried grinding up the seeds alone - and that did not work AT ALL.

 

 

 

The seeds were extremely hard and no matter how I hit them with the stone pestle, their cases stayed intact. I do not know if you can get nutrients out by digesting them, or if they pass straight through you if you don’t turn them into flour with a proper one of these: http://www.outbackchef.com.au/upload/article_cat_img/grindstone.jpg

 

 

Anyway, below was the seeds-in-cases ground as finely as I could manage. Anti-clockwise from the bottom: Last year's seeds, this year's seeds, this year's seeds mixed 50-50 with wheat flour.

 

 

 

Mixed with water, each one formed a smallish loaf:

 

 

 

When baked in a moderate oven, neither last year's nor this year's seeds held together. Last year's seeds were dry and inedible when they came out of the oven. This year's, alone, were fibrous but edible...and the 50-50 mix was pretty darn tasty.

 

 

Could have been even better with some native bee honey.

 

When my friend sent me the next batch in March, I decided to try boiling the seeds in their capsules. Maybe, like rice grains, the seeds could be softened that way.

The full seed cases sank to the bottom so it was easy to strain out the spikes and cases with no seeds in them:

 

 

After they had cooled, I put them in the mortar and pestle again, only to find the seeds were as invincible as ever.

 

 

 

The seeds were lighter-coloured and fatter, but I still could not make a dent in them!

 

 

 

 

No doubt the proper tools or techniques would mean a starchier ground up material and the ability to hold together during baking without adding wheat flour.

 

Experiments on hold for now.

 

Anyone like to volunteer their muscles, or their mill?

 

 

May '13 Lime Harvest

 

 

This is the bowl I used last year. It holds enough finger limes for a cheesecake. You couldn't even tell that some were missing from the tree.

 

 

 

 

 

Total 2013 Finger Lime Harvest: 5.5kg of fruit. YUM!

 

In contrast, the other tree produced zero fruit. Drought periods saw it suffering from brown scale, which I treated with Pestoil and a prune of the most seriously encrusted branches. We'll see in spring whether it recovers or dies, I guess. There was also scale on the mandarin and the Tahitian limes but they seem to have fruited regardless, which just goes to show that pests are a symptom of unhealthiness (no water, clay soil, sloping position, etc) rather than the cause.

What Summer Tastes Like

What summer tastes like.

 

It tastes like guavas...

 

 

 

 

 

 

...like mandarins...

 

 

 

 

...like apples...

 

 

 

 

...blueberries...

 

 

 

 

...fresh mint in yoghurt and fresh oregano in bolognaise...

 

 

 

 

...addictive lilli pillies...

 

 

 

 

...tabbouleh...

 

 

 

 

 

...pomegranates for breakfast...

 

 

 

 

 

...tahitian limes grilled with salmon for dinner...

 

 

 

 

...and the promise that there will be more Davidson's Plums when I eat the last of the jam...

 

 

 

 

 

...(not that I made jam with the crab-apples or anything).

 

 

 

 

 

Summer sounds like lorikeets and blue-faced honeyeaters fighting with the friarbirds over grevillia nectar...

 

 

 

 

...and it smells, of course, like roses :)

 

 

What To Do With Australian Finger Limes

Crush 100g hazelnuts and 100g chocolate tiny teddies in a mixing bowl. Add about 2 tbsp of melted butter - just enough to make it stick - and press into the bottom of a 20cm diameter cake tin to form the base.

Take your 250g block of not-in-the-fridge philly cream cheese and beat it in another mixing bowl with 400g melted white chocolate (don't bother about fancy double-bowled chocolate melting, just chop the stuff into a saucepan and heat it on the lowest possible setting until melted). Add 1 cup caster sugar, a 300mL tub of sour cream, and keep beating until the sugar's dissolved.

Squeeze out the insides of a bowl of Australian finger limes. These are the pink variety but they come in yellow, green and red. This sized bowl gives you about 1.5 cups of finger lime "caviar" (read: tiny sacks of sweet-sour lime juice)...and is a great workout for your fingers.

Stir the lime pulp into the white chocolate mixture. Add 3 egg yolks one at a time, beating well in between each one. Whip the whites of those 3 eggs in another bowl before folding in gently. Pour this mixture into the tin.

1 hour in a 180C oven did the trick for me, but others have had this set (firm and brown on top) in as little as 35 minutes, so keep an eye on it. Serve with whipped cream.

(Cor, bLimey!)

Apple Harvest 2011

So! The results of the Great Fruit-Fly Experiment are at hand!

As you recall, I bagged about half the apples with fruit fly bags that were supposed to be for tomato plants:

...and this worked out pretty well. When I took the bags off today, voila! (These are Dwarf Annas):

Of course, the half that wasn't bagged was a dismal failure. Not only did the unbagged fruit have fruit fly stings on it, most of them were half-chewed. I suspected fruit bats (there is a large colony near here) until Action Man reported seeing a pair of King parrots making their morning visit at daybreak for a bit of an apple snack attack:

Apparently they were there at daybreak every morning for a couple of weeks. I don't mind sharing with King parrots, especially. But the harvest was only 6 or 7kg this time, instead of the 20kg we got last time. (Dwarf Golden Dorsetts):

Yay!

Start of Summer!

Some pics to show where everything's at for the (almost) start of summer.

After an amazing waterfall of pink blossoms, there are actual cab apples on the crab apple tree:

Finger limes are getting bigger:

And the mandarins are holding their ground, despite the loss of all the limes (again) from the two espaliers: