A WEEKEND IN BRIGHTON

After our last day of planting, D and M dropped us off in Brighton, where we went to the cinema to see Tintin (really just to fill in a couple of hours without dragging our packs around) then headed up to our next accommodation: our friend G's place. G and her partner A showed us around, taking us to a number of good eateries and purveyors of coffee, pointing out some of the tucked-away shops, waiting while we rummaged through the stalls lining the lanes and letting us tag along with them as they did some of their real-life errands.







As well as to see friends, we were in Brighton on a bit of a reconnaissance to see if we still liked the place (we'd been there once before) and if we still thought we could live there (DB is applying for a Masters at the University of Brighton). One of the things we hoped was that we'd be able to find some nice food and (for me) good coffee. We found some delicious food and the best coffee I've had in England on this trip, so we'll count that as a win!







By the end of the weekend, we'd been WWOOFing and travelling for 15 days, and we were looking forward to getting back to home base, washing our clothes and minding our own business for a bit! It was lovely to see how the leaves had turned in the time we'd been away. Even in the week since we'd first taken the train down to Brighton, the countryside had taken on a kind of misty, autumnal feeling and most of the trees had at least some yellow, orange, red or brown leaves.



Goodbye, Brighton! We'll be back!

CIDER INSIDE YOUR INSIDES

Wednesday 12th October, 2011

As promised, here is the post (with pictures!) of our day in the Oxfordshire countryside. You can see all the photos here.



We set off from home at 8am, and once we had passed the traffic of Aylesbury, were thoroughly distracted by what can only be described as the disgustingly quaint little villages of Buckinghamshire.



At our destination - a charmingly tiny Oxfordshire cul-de-sac village - we were greeted by the wonderful J and the adorable Phoebe (the dog), and received the grand tour of the orchard and homestead.



The apple and pear trees were exploding with fruit, and we got to work picking and filling box-loads (only a few pieces of fruit failed to make it past our mouths on their way into the boxes, honestly).



There is a phenomenon we have observed and we are curious as to whether it is just us, or if other people have noticed it too. It is this: eating apples makes you hungry. It almost never fails. And so, after an hour or two picking and munching, we retired to the kitchen and got to work on a fantastic vegetarian shepherd’s pie made primarily from freshly picked ingredients, and a delectable apple crumble. And, of course, a bottle of the 2010 cider.







Pleasantly filled, we returned to the task at hand, and began washing, scratting and pressing the apples (and a few pears for good measure).

Washing:



The scratter:





The scrats? scrattings?:



The press:





Juice:







These few hours were the only part of the day that really felt like ‘work’, but it was a lot of fun - and I get the feeling that J was going easy on us! (Yes, she definitely was!) We soon had a decent haul - well, it seemed decent to us - and got to work (or rather, watched J get to work) pasteurising juice and alchemising cider.



A fabulous day with (mostly) perfect weather was topped off splendidly by a dinner of pie, chips and cheese in Oxford with J and V. It’s a hard life, eh?

CIDER

Yesterday we helped make cider! A more detailed post will come at some stage (with pics, I hope), but for now, YAY!

We picked apples, put them through the scratter, pressed them and then pasteurised some of the juice for drinking (we've been drinking it today!) and watched as J added the yeast and other bits to the rest of it to make it into cider.

What a super day! The sun was even shining...

PLACES TO EAT (AT) BEFORE WE LEAVE

Several months ago we wrote a list of places we wanted to eat at before we left Melbourne. A few people have asked, so here's the list, divided into places we went, places we didn't go (yet) and places that closed before we got the chance. (Places one or both of us have never eaten/had never eaten before marked with an asterisk.)

PLACES WE WENT:
Trippy Taco
Thaila Thai
Thai Nee Cafe
Tiba's
i Carusi
Wood Spoon Kitchen
Disco Beans*
Jimmy Watson's
Hellenic Republic*
Gasometer*
The EBC
Sassy's*
Al Albero
Veggie Kitchen: Intention of Love
The Breakfast Club*
Moroccan Soup Bar
Yong Green Food*
Jackson Dodds*

PLACES WE DIDN'T MAKE IT TO (YET)
Alasya
Hu Tong Dumplings*
Lentil as Anything (or does this go in the next list?)
Friends of the Earth
Las Vegan*
Misty's Diner*
White Lotus
Philhellene*

PLACES THAT CLOSED:
Mr Nice Guy (cafe - they still wholesale the cupcakes!)*

There are also several places that aren't on the list because we go there all the time - A Minor Place, Pearl Oyster and Ceres are probably the most obvious, but there's also Munsterhaus, Tiamo 2, and other places. We went to a few places not on this list for the first time, too - but I can only think of Cumulus Inc at the moment!

WILD FOOD RECIPIES, AN ONGOING COLLECTION?

Over at terralectualism they made made dandelion wine! This is definitely something to keep in mind alongside the pickled wild onions I made last year.

FIGHTING WEED INVASION BY EATING ALLIUM TRIQUETRUM

Allium triquetrum. Angled onion, onion weed, three-cornered leek or garlic. You might notice it growing beside Melbourne creeks or popping up by the roadside – either by the garlicky smell, or by the distinctive clusters of white, bell-shaped flowers nodding in the breeze. It’s very pretty (looks a little like snowdrops), but it’s an extremely invasive weed (in Australia), and authorities are fighting a constant battle to contain and eradicate it.



And . . . it’s edible, so grabbing yourself some for the kitchen (if you do it correctly) means you’re doing the local environment a favour! The flavour of the leaves has been variously likened to garlic, onion, spring onion, leek and garlic chives. The bulbs are described as being slightly milder than most garlic. The flowers are also edible.

Today I decided to try it out for the first time. I thought others might be interested in this, too.

Identification:

This plant looks like a number of others, some of which are poisonous. If you’re unable to make a positive identification, don’t eat it.



Make sure that the flowers have stripes down the middle of the petals, NOT dots on the edges. Make sure the flowers are white, NOT tinged with pink. Make sure the leaves have the tell-tale ‘keel’ on one side and. Make sure that when you crush the leaves you get a garlicky/oniony scent.

Click here for a little video on identifying the weed and suggested recipes (from the UK).

Harvesting:

You will need: a plastic bag, a trowel, identification aide if you’re not sure, gloves if you want. Also a sense of adventure and righteousness, so that when people look at you strangely you can just smile at them and get on with your work.

In Australia, this is a weed. Make sure that the council hasn’t sprayed it with weedkiller before you touch it – and don’t eat it if you’re not sure (in Melbourne the weedkiller is often coloured blue-green or pink so you can see it, but rain could wash the colour off).

Find a patch (easy to identify by the flowers), and disentangle it from the surrounding vegetation until you can see around the base of the patch.



As it is a weed, it’s ideal that you take not only the leaves and flowers, but also the bulbs and roots. It is almost impossible to get the bulbs simply by pulling the stems of the plant - see following picture:



Your best bet is to loosen the earth around the base of the plant with a small trowel (you might find you have to dig right underneath it) before pulling it up. Grasp close to the roots and jiggle it gently if you need to.





Shake off excess dirt, but keep an eye out for any tiny bulbs that might try to escape. Put the lot (plus any other bulbs you can see stuck in the soil – remember, it’s a weed) into a plastic bag.

If you are mainly after the leaves (used like chives or spring onion), you probably don’t need a huge amount. I took three small patches, which was plenty in the leaf department. If, however, you’re also keen on the bulbs, you might need to harvest more.

Cleaning:

Again, Allium triquetrum is a weed, so it’s important that you don’t let any bits get away to infest new places. Keep a strong plastic bag handy for all offcuts and seal it well before throwing it out.



Pop everything into a big colander and rinse (into a sink with the plug in to catch runaway bits). You want to make sure that there’s no dirt, bugs or dog piss on that stuff! You might need to do it in batches. Here is how I cleaned and separated the various parts of the plant:

1. General rinse to remove most of the dirt, plucked off discoloured leaves and put into the plastic bag as I went along.





2. Pinched the bulbs off the end of the stalks, then rinsed the bulbs (and peeled them in some cases) in a fresh bowl of water before putting aside.



3. Pinched the flowers off the other end of the stalks, discarding any discoloured ones into the plastic bag. Rinsed the flowers under running water, shook off excess water, put aside.



4. Rinsed the leaves a second time to make sure there was no dirt left on them.

A word from the wise: this stuff smells. REALLY smells. I actually felt a little ill when I was cleaning it. My advice to you (which I will try to follow next time) is to crush the leaves as little as possible when harvesting and cleaning, and to make sure that the window by the sink is right open! My illness faded when the smell from next-door’s lunch wafted through the window, so perhaps the other option is to have something on the stove that matches well with the garlicky/oniony scent!

Cooking:

The leaves can be used fresh as you would garlic chives or spring onion (chop them into salads, use as garnish, pop into garlic butter), or you can cook them very lightly (toss through a stir fry just before serving, or stir into a soup just before plating). I had some angled onion freshly chopped onto a gorgeous sandwich made on fresh sourdough, with perfectly ripe avocado, a big squeeze of lemon, and a couple of coarse grinds of salt and pepper. The rest I chopped and put into little tubs to freeze – I will use them in soups, stews, and perhaps veggie patties later on (my guess is that they’ll be too slimy for salads after being frozen).





The bulbs are tiny at this time of year, but apparently grow bigger and may be harvested when the leaves die down in summer. I might see what I can find in a few months! As it is, I have half a tiny jar of tiny bulbs! I crunched on one and discovered that slightly milder garlic flavour, with a bit of acidity to boot. I decided to make a simple pickle with them: I popped them into a sterile glass jar with a couple of bay leaves (from my parents!) and a big teaspoon each of black peppercorns and brown mustard seeds, then covered it with white vinegar. I’ll keep it in the fridge for a week or so before trying them out.

Edit: A month later I tried the onions and realised that they also needed a bit of sugar in the pickling mix. I added it then, and a couple of weeks later they were tasting much better.







The flowers can be used as garnish, but might also be tossed through salads. This website suggests making tempura with them (it's is a great post, actually). When I was doing the prep I didn’t know if the flowers were OK to eat, so I shoved them all into a sterile glass jar and covered them with vinegar. If they don’t discolour completely, they might be mixed with the bulbs as a side/condiment or sandwich topping.

Edit: The flowers didn't discolour too much, but they are not as pretty as they were. I probably wouldn't bother with these again.



So that’s that! A real suburban foraging adventure - with the added bonus of doing a good deed for the Australian environment!



And as a disclaimer: everything we do (or don’t do) carries a degree of risk. It’s up to you to assess those risks for yourself. As I’ve said, if you’re not sure you’ve made a correct identification of Allium triquetrum, don’t eat it. If you think it’s been sprayed, don’t eat it. Make sure you clean it properly. Don’t eat a huge quantity on your first try in case it makes you ill. I am really, really not responsible if something goes wrong for you!

SOMETHING I MISS

Barcelona (or even Valencia or Madrid), just me and D eating patatas bravas and drinking sangria; or perhaps sampling the local cheese and drinking good, cheap red wine with other backpackers; or maybe searching the streets to find some surprisingly elusive xurros amb xocolata/churros con chocolate.

I'm trying to make salsa brava, but I don't have a trusted recipe and I don't have much in the way of ingredients. We'll see how it goes!

*

Tomorrow we're walking. It marks the start of a long-term, pie-in-the-sky goal for me, which some of you know and others don't need to know. All we'll share for now is that it is the first day walk in a series that will take us to Warburton from Thornbury along the Yarra, through the suburbs, then along the Lilydale-Warburton trail.

*

There have been some spectacular clouds and sunsets in Melbourne over the last week or so. Here's a sunset from earlier this month.

UK10: LONDON, THE FINAL DAYS

Ooh, what an ominous title! We're getting over jetlag at the moment - yesterday was very hard! We both had naps during the day, but didn't let ourselves sleep for longer than an hour-ish, wanting to spend as much of the night as possible in bed. We went to bed at the nearly respectable time of 8:30-9pm and I got up at 3:30 while D slept until just after 7. So, we're doing OK. We're watching a lot of Poirot to keep us awake and because it is about as complex as we are able to cope with. It is lovely to hear the kookaburras outside, and the magpies warbling as we walked through Brunswick today. I always forget how much I miss Australian birdsong when we're away.

Anyway, thanks again to D for writing this up!

24th March, Wednesday.

Breakfast of champions this morning - |eft over curry. My nephews Y & T came over, and as neither of us have much in the way of energy for children (they are so tiring!), we decided to walk over to M's place, who was making us lunch. However, J's foot was playing up, so we ended up driving. Lunch was pleasant, and was followed by laid back chilling on M's couch.

After lunch, we drove home, bussed to Golders, tubed to Hampstead and had a peek in the local op shop, before taking a seat in the King William IV pub - London's oldest gay pub, apparently. J ordered a Swedish elderberry and lime cider, which was intensely sweet, while we waited for M to meet us. When she arrived, we did the compulsory crepes - however, we deviated from the norm by trying out their sweet crepes. They were incredibly messy, and we would have had pictures of us (especially D) with hilariously chocolate-coverd faces, but J realised that the camera had disappeared! OH NO! We retraced our steps back to the pub, and heaved a sigh of relief when they handed it over. To counterbalance the uber sweetness of cider and crepes, we popped into the Hampstead landmark The Coffee Cup for tea. We were all pretty exhausted and enjoyed sitting down, and headed home satisfied with another day of friends and food.

We also finally managed to catch a glimpse of the never-finished North End Road tube station from the train, after weeks of trying!

25th March, Thursday

LAZY DAY! Hooray! We did very little during the day, and loved it! We have been so busy on this holiday, that we haven't had any time to relax, so a bit of time off was nice.

We drove to A and L for dinner, out in the country, taking a very circuitous route - via Watling Road (an old Roman road), and through St Albans, out to their little village on the outskirts of the outskirts of Milton Keynes. It was so dark when we arrived, and the street lighting non-existent, and the house numbers so impossible to see from the road, that we totally missed their plae, and had to call to get A to come out a meet us on the road. We met their very smily baby R, who had just celebrated her 1st birthday! Dinner was delicious, the conversation was excellently random and inappropriate, and the drive home was slow - partly because the entrance to the motorway was hidden behind a load of road works, so we missed it and had to drive along dark country roads to the next junction, and partly because when we finally got onto the motorway, there was hideous traffic. At 11.45 on a Thursday night. WTF, M1???!!!

26th March, Friday

We spent an hour or so in the V&A today, just because we could. We were going to stop off in the glorious tea rooms for a cuppa, but they were hideously packed. Instead, we checked out the museum's new acquisitions, walked past lots of sculptures of muscled naked men wrestling or standing between each other's legs, and enjoyed the Britain 1500-1760 section - especially the Great Bed of Ware (covered in centuries worth of graffiti!), the recreation of a 14th Century oak-panelled hall, and the hand-illustrated anatomy book from around 1550.







Heading over to the other side of the city, we navigated the labyrinthine Bank Station, walked up Poultry and Cheapside (yes, these are the names of the roads), and met R, down from Manchester for the weekend, at Mary-le-Bow church - home not only to the famous Bow Bells (heart of Cockney London), but also to the rather nice little (and aptly named) Cafe Below, housed in its crypt.



Next it was time for a visit to our other London art regular, the Tate Modern. The three of us explored for a couple of hours, enjoying the landscape art (Richard Long! Hamish Fulton!) and talking critical drivel loudly behind the people filming some kind of tate documentary.





before heading for a coffee near St Paul's Cathedral (J surprisingly declared it to be the best coffee he'd had in the UK - a flat white from Costa Coffee!). J and D then headed over to Bank station, braving the insane rush hour crush - there was a queue for the queue to get onto the platform!





We made it home in one piece, had dinner with the folks, then all settled down to watch A Serious Man. Then retired for A Serious Sleep.

27th March, Saturday

We decided to walk over to Muswell Hill, following the Capital Ring trail, and also discovering a new path for us to explore more fully next time: the Parkland Walk - London's longest Local Nature Reserve. Spring was definitely in full spring - we noticed a few trees covered in a light smattering of new leaves during our last week in London.







We had a thoroughly pleasant brunch with D and G at one of our favourite London eateries - Sable D'Or. The two of us walked on through Ally Pally and checked out the foyer of the Model Railway exhibition (J quickly became a Model Rail Enthusiast enthusiast!), then went back up to Muswell Hill through the rain, and home on the bus.







In the afternoon, we headed over to D's grandparent's place for L's 88th birthday afternoon tea. Sandwiches, cakes, tarts and tea = good times. Check out the colour of the sky when we got back!





Back home for an evening of final farewells, joined by E & L, M, L, M and J & S (these initials are getting confusing!) M gave us all a treat by previewing his costume for the fancy dress party he was heading off to afterwards - he made a glorious Austin Powers!



28th March, Sunday

[NB: I will upload the rest of the photos soon! - J]

One final return visit to Hampstead in the morning, meeting up with R again with the plan of eating crepes for breakfast. Unfortunately, the Hampstead Creperie was closed, so we settled for an average breakfast at The Coffee Cup. While walking down to the Heath, R threw out all his socialist principles and decided that he wants to live in Hampstead (he was relieved when I told him that he didn't have to abandon all his principles, as Hampstead is actually the heart of Champagne Socialism. We paid a brief visit to Kenwood for more tea, before taking a stroll down The Bishops Avenue, ogling mansions, deciding which ones we'd live in, and whether or not they came with helipads (and if not, why not!). We said our good byes on the bus, then returned home for some frantic last minute packing, with family popping in and out around us to say good bye.

The next few days are a bit of a blur - we drove to the airport, checked in, bought and sent postcards, got on the plane. For a few glorious moments, we thought we'd have an empty seat next to us, but literally the last person on the plane came and sat next to us. Bah.

29th March, Monday.

On a plane. On a plane. On a plane. On a plane. On a plane. Off a plane. On a plane. On a plane. On a plane.

We spent our 4 hours at Incheon airport refreshing our selves as best we could, and napping as best we could, and spent as much of the final leg of our journey asleep as we could manage (which wasn't all that much, unfortunately).

30th March, Tuesday.

On a plane. On a plane. Home sweet home. Had a number of naps. The only thing we could cope with doing was watching old episodes of Poirot, and eating pizza. So that's what we did. So there.