Posts tagged ‘fruit’
Reduce: Summer Fruit Food Miles
It’s summer in Australia and that means it’s hot. I live in Queensland, so that means it’s bloody hot! (Ok, South East Queensland isn’t hot to the rest of the Queenslanders, but it is to a lot of the outside world.) My point is, it’s too hot to stand in the kitchen over a hot stove. Summer in Queensland is typically the season of salads. Among others, there’s pasta salad, Greek salad, potato salad, Ceasar salad, mango and avocado salad and (my favourite) – fruit salad!
Fruit salad is soooooo good on a hot summer day!
I’ve been going to town with the fruit eating lately, and I’m not generally a fruity person (fruit is sticky and I really dislike being sticky). The fruit is so cool and refreshing though, that it’s worth getting a little messy to enjoy it. Plus, then you get to have a cool shower afterwards (or a jump in the pool or ocean) to cool off. Mangoes and melons are my particular favourites, and the best thing about them at this time of year is that they’re all in season (you can check here). This means they’re cheap, but as well as that, buying ‘in season’ fruit means you tend to buy local.
Queensland, in particular, grows a heck of a lot of summerfruit (stone fruit, like peaches, plums, apricots and nectarines), melons (such as watermelon, rockmelon and honeydew), pineapple, bananas, passionfruits, pawpaws (papaya) and mangoes in the summer. Queensland farms also grow less well known fruits in summer, like dragon fruit, lychees and longans (which Yankee Elv likes to eat for breakfast). Basically, pretty much every succulent, juicy fruit you can imagine wanting to eat in summer, we have here in cheap, local abundance. I love it!
Now, when I say local, in some instances I really mean local – mangoes are in season all around me, for instance – the neighbours have a massive tree they’ll never completely harvest because it’s just too tall, so the possums, flying foxes and fruit bats are going to have a feast. It gets me every time I go out on the back verandah. There’s this mango tree up the road that I pass on the way to the bus in the mornings… it is so laden with fruit it’s all I can do not to jump the fence and start in on it. Only the fact that it’s not cool to steal, and that it must be a mid-season variety (the fruit is only just starting to get a pink blush on its very full cheeks) is stopping me! We have pawpaws, bananas and passionfruits in suburban backyards and along fences all over the place. Mmm mmm good!
In other instances, though, Queensland isn’t quite that local. Some people, like Asphyxia from Fixie’s Shelf, live in smaller states (in her case,Victoria), so just consider the whole state local. That won’t work for Queensland though. You’ve got to remember – you could fit the US state of Texas more than five times into Queensland. We have a lot of area (no, not as much as you guys in Western Australia, but let’s not go there). Most folks agree that when it comes to food miles, local equals a 100 mile (roughly 160km) radius from your home. For me, that means I can go as far south as Lismore, almost as far west as Dalby, and my northern boundary is between Gympie and Rainbow Beach. To the east, I have Moreton Bay, including the islands I guess, although they’re not really cultivated. If I ate seafood though, I would be set! You can check your 100 mile local food radius using the Radius Around a Point tool – see Julie’s (from Towards Sustainability) instructions to learn how.
So what does having a huge state mean? It means that getting melons from Yeppoon (which I always considered quite close by) is about twice again as far north as I’m supposed to go, according to my radius. Not so local. That being said, I think it’s better to eat a melon from Yeppoon than a packet of biscuits from the nearby Weston’s factory. I guess for me there’s more to reducing food miles than just how far away the food was grown/produced – it also involves reducing the environmental impact of the food I eat in a more general way. In this example, I think it’s better to avoid the plastic and all of the energy expended on producing the raw ingredients and then on creating the biscuits (including the energy required to run the factory and ship the biscuits), and just eat a damned melon. The melon requires no packaging and much less energy is expended to produce raw food as opposed processed food. In addition, most fruit is shipped around Australia by electric train – a far better method than by truck or air.
Aussies are a bit greedy too, we eat most of our fruit right here in the country. Yum. There’s nothing better than a big platter of stone fruit in the middle of the Christmas table at lunch time. It’s the perfect interlude, between a morning spent stuffing yourself on Christmas treats and an evening cool enough to eat a hot dinner. Plus it’s light enough so you can spend the day in the pool without getting a cramp. Yay for local, seasonal fruit!
Spotlight: Composting
So it’s taken me a good long while, but I finally have our compost bin up and running! I used this post on You Grow Girl to guide me, but I didn’t add quite as much to the bin as I want to keep using it as I go along, not fill it up right away.
You could buy a special composter, but I decided to use a big, old, concrete laundry tub as my compost bin. It has three sections, so it will be easy to turn the compost from one section to another as required. I put a bit of gutter guard we had lying around over the drain holes to stop them getting clogged.
The compost bin is an old concrete laundry tub.
First I put in a layer of ripped newspaper (darned free papers they keep dropping off in spite of our No Junk Mail sign).
First, a layer of paper...
Then I put in a layer of browns – mostly dead leaves, sticks, dead camelias and crusty old passionfruits and grapefruits that have been rotting on the ground. I can add to this with old pasta, pet hair, paper and other dead bits and pieces from the garden.
Then, a layer of browns...
Next came a layer of greens – weeds, passionfruit leaves and frangipanis. I’ll be adding to this with grass cuttings I don’t use to mulch the garden, tea bags and food scraps.
Next, a layer of greens...
Finally, I wet the compost. It’s supposed to be as wet as a wrung-out sponge, so I think I overdid it a little bit.
Finally I wet the compost!
Luckily the tubs have drain holes from when they acted as sinks, so the compost won’t stay too wet. I added ice-cream containers underneath to catch any drips (with bricks in the containers to weigh them down).
Too much water - luckily there are drainage holes!
Yankee Elv got me a big piece of wood from Reverse Garbage to work as a lid, and I’ve used bricks to weigh it down so no animals get in. I can’t imagine they would anyway – the bin is in the fenced area under the house so nothing bigger than a possum could get in there.
Yankee Elv got me a lid, and we already had the bricks.
Now I can divert the majority of our kitchen rubbish into the compost bin! I’m very pleased about it, especially when you consider articles like this one indicate that people in the US waste 28% of their food (I imagine Australian stats are similar). I hope I don’t waste that much, but whatever I do waste will at least no longer be going to landfill. Have a look at this video if you wanna learn more.
I’ll be using these two posts to guide me on what I can add to the bin:
- Things you can compost that you didn’t think you could, from You Grow Girl
- 163 things you can compost, from PlanTea.
In several months, I should have some compost to put in my garden (or give to Mum as a gift, just in time for mother’s day). Now all I have to do is control myself enough to not go fiddle with it everyday just to see how it’s doing!
Friday Feast: Quinoa-stuffed Butternut Pumpkin
Today’s recipe is a bit of a quirky one that I made up a few months ago and perfected this Thanksgiving. I really wanted to try out quinoa, a grain commonly eaten in Peru and really protein-rich (great for folks who are after low-carb meals). It’s about the size of couscous, so I figured making it into a stuffing would be a great idea.
Quinoa - it looks sort of like couscous, but it's a protein-rich grain
Here’s the recipe!
Quinoa-stuffed Butternut Pumpkin (Squash)
Quinoa-stuffed butternut pumpkins (squash)
Ingredients
- 1 butternut pumpkin, cut in half with the seeds and some flesh scooped out
- 1/2 cup uncooked quinoa, rinsed
- 1 cup vegetable stock
- 2 apples, diced
- 1 large onion, diced
- 2 ribs of celery, diced (you can also include the chopped celery leaves)
- 1/4 cup fresh parsley, chopped well
- 1 handful of broken pecans
- 1 small handful of craisins (dried, sweetened cranberries)
- 2 bay leaves
- salt and pepper to taste
- olive oil
Celery, onion and apples - oh my!
Method
- Preheat the oven to 180°C.
- Rub pumpkins all over with olive oil and place cut side up in a roasting or casserole dish. Rub some brown sugar on the cut areas. Place in the oven until the pumpkins are justsoft enough to pierce with a fork, but still firm enough to easily hold their shape.
- Meanwhile, place quinoa and vegetable stock in a pot and bring to the boil. Reduce heat and simmer with a lid for 10 to 12 mins. Remove from the stove and set aside, covered (the liquid will absorb).
- Pour some olive oil into a large frying pan and add the veges/fruit as you chop – celery, onion and apple. Add salt and pepper, then cook for 10 to 15 mins to soften the vegetables/fruit.
- Add the parsley, celery leaves (if using), pecans and craisins, and cook for 2 mins more, til the greens wilt and the craisins plump up a little.
- Remove from the heat and add the quinoa.
- Tightly stuff the pumpkins with the quinoa mixture, cover the dish with foil and return to the oven. Cook for approximately 30 mins.
- Remove the foil and bake for another 10 mins, unless the pumpkin is soft.
Pecans, parsley and craisins, ready to go into the pan.
Let me know what you think!
Friday Feast: Natural Immunity Booster
I am sick. It’s nasty. I’m really not feeling good. My colleague at work (let’s call her J-Mo, not to be confused with J-Ho) has been telling me for ages about this remedy drink she makes to stave off colds and boost immunity. I’ve even seen her make it at work when she was feeling really poorly. I’ve been shying away from trying it though, because it sounds like a gross thing to drink, but I felt so crappy yesterday that I figured I’d give it a shot.
This morning I woke up feeling a bit better (really just a lesser degree of crap). I’m not sure whether the two drinks I had yesterday helped or whether I would have felt marginally better today anyway, but I’m willing to give the drink some credit! I’m keeping in mind that the drink works best at the first sign of a cold. I’ll be drinking more today.
Natural Immunity Booster Drink
Natural Immunity Booster Drink - ingredients.
Ingredients
- 1 to 2 cloves of fresh garlic
- 1cm fresh ginger, peeled
- Juice of half a fresh lemon
- A couple of teaspoons of honey
- Hot water
Method
- Chop the garlic up enough that the water can get to it, but not too fine or it the drink will be too strong.
- Slice the ginger.
- Add the garlic, ginger and lemon juice to a cup.
- Pour hot water on top of the garlic, ginger and lemon juice and stir to combine.
- Add however much honey you need to sweeten the drink (aka, cover up the taste).
I feel like I’m drinking a surprisingly tasty stir-fry sauce. Seriously. The lemon comes through very strongly.
Remedy Drink discards - compostable!
I would like to note that even in the midst of my sickness, I am pleased this remedy uses all natural ingredients. The waste can be composted and there are no nasty antibiotics getting out into the environment to wreak havoc. Yay natural living!
[Edit]: Now that I’m vegan, I often use agave nectar instead of honey. It tastes good, although not as strong or sweet. I kind of like that though. (That aside, I am not pedantic about honey in things. I think it can be sustainably and kindly produced, I just don’t think it often is in commercial honey operations, but that’s a long and involved discussion for another day!)
Review: 20 Natural Health Tips
I’m sick today, so when I saw in my twitter feed that Natural Papa had posted 20 natural health tips, it seemed like a timely miracle! Just what I was after. So off I went to look. (I’d just like to note also, that while it might be cold and flu season in the Northern Hemisphere, it’s really not here in Australia. Clearly I didn’t get that memo.)
Natural Immunity Booster Drink - everything is in the cup except the honey and the water.
While I sip my funky drink, here’s a high-level list of Natural Papa’s tips (in bold) with my responses (not bold).
- Wash your hands frequently. I’m a bit of a serial hand washer with a regular bar of soap. I avoid pump bottles of soap as part of my ‘avoid unnecessary plastic’ gig, and I really dislike antibacterials soaps (dudes, there’s supposed to be some bacteria around the place). I’m being particularly conscious of hand-washing at the moment since I’m touching snotty tissues all the time. Gross.
- Change your hand towels often. I washed the darned things on the weekend and I was sick by Tuesday. Humph.
- Clean the places that harbor the most germs in your house (door handles etc). Ok, aside from hand-washing, I could probably do this. But isn’t it a bit OCD to walk around wiping things all the time?
- Get plenty of sleep. If this was a month ago, I’d totally agree that I need to do this. However, the last couple of weeks I have actually been doing pretty well with sleep. I could probably still use more though… I’ve gone from 4 to 6 hrs to 6 to 7 hrs. Aiming for 8 hrs is probably not unrealistic.
- Stay hydrated (especially with central heating). Well, I live in Queensland. We don’t do central heating. Aside from which, it’s a week away from summer over here – it’s plenty hot enough, and not dry heat either (humidity is nice). Also, I drink more water than any other person I know (no, I’m not kidding).
- Take your vitamins. I try to eat foods that have vitamins in them naturally or through fortification (go Milo!), rather than having to remember to pop pills. Good for people who don’t eat like that though.
- Get sunshine on your body. This is so true. Unless I have a migraine or a fever, sitting in the sun makes me feel better when I’m sick. Some of my paler friends think this is weird, but it really helps! That being said, living in the Sunshine State, I get plenty of sun, so I don’t think this is the problem.
- Be active – move your body. I have been doing pretty well with walking from work to the busway over the last week or two, and I’m hoping that as of next week I’ll be able to start back at yoga. I could do more though.
- Be positive. I am usually positive, although sometimes work gets me down. I’ve been ok lately though.
- Laugh. Yeah, I could do more of this. But all the ‘funny’ movies are full of toilet humour, and that’s not really funny at all. I laugh more in general conversation with family and friends. Maybe I should go visit my folks after I’m well, or organise a social outing with work people. Now I’m in a slightly different position at work, I’m missing the chats and laughs I used to have a lot of with J-Mo. I do laugh with other people too, but I think they’re at a lesser level of crazy that J-Mo and I am. Hmm.
- Vitamin C. I’ve been drinking orange juice this week, like it’s going out of style.
- Eat more fruits and veggies. Yeah, I could do this. We’ve started a thing where on Sunday we chop up enough fruit to last the week and pack it into a bunch of containers, so it’s easy to just grab fruit and go. That’s been helping. I could do more with veges though… I really only eat them cooked, so if it’s a lazy night and I just want pizza, then I miss out. I think I eat more than most people… not that it’s a competition. Ultimately, yeah, I could use more.
- Drink your juice. See point 11 – it’s not fresh though.
- Use herbs for healing. Tomorrow, you will see this recipe I’ve tried out for a natural remedy drink. Interesting stuff.
- Use a neti pot. I just can’t make myself do this. All that water going up my nose… nope. Can’t do it. I’d rather go to the beach and let a wave do it for me. (Which is what I was planning for this weekend, if I’m better.)
- Get a massage. I’d love to do this! Who knows a non-expensive masseuse? Anyone? Really, do I need to ask Beuller again?
- Take it easy on the coffee and alcohol. I don’t drink coffee, and I think my body has been telling me to lay off the alcohol (not that I drank much in the first place). Every time I drink wine these days, I get heartburn within 15 mins. I don’t think I’ve had more than half a glass a week for the last two months. It gets too painful and Yankee Elv keeps having to finish it for me.
- Just say no (to going to work when you’re sick). I’m home, for the second day in a row!
- Avoid taking over-the-counter medications. I have been dosing up on the Sudafed, but only cos it was helping make the headache and fever go away a bit.
- Hug your family. I spent a fair chunk of last night lolling on Yankee Elv on the couch, and the previous night snuggling with Mr Teeny-bop whilst watching Xena, so I think I have this covered. Plus I hug the kitties and pat the dog all the time!
While Natural Papa’s list is really quite good, I’m unfortunately already doing most of this stuff. Poop. Maybe there was no escaping this illness. One of my colleagues yesterday (when I called in sick) suggested that maybe I’m just run down. There’s probably some truth to that.
I guess it’s just time to rest up and drink weird drinks.
Update Again
I haven’t posted since the big dust storm, which seems ages ago now. We’ve had a couple more since then, but nothing like that first big one.
I’m sorry I’ve neglected the blog, but it’s just been a bit crazy crazy. Here’s an update on the latest goings-on.
Diva Princess broke two of her toes and has been stuck inside for a month with a bandage on her foot that she insists on trying to rip off. She looks so pathetic with the cone around her head that I try not to make her wear it unless she’s getting really crazy with the bandage pulling. She’s also had an ECG to check on a mild heart murmur we just found out she has.
Diva Princess is highly disgruntled that she is stuck inside with a bandage on her foot.
There are new white Tim Tams. Yankee Elv is obsessed. There have been a lot of Tim Tams in our house. Yankee Elv’s mom is obsessed too, except she lives in America, so it’s hard for her to have lots of Tim Tams in her house. Fortunately for her, they’re staring to sell them in the US soon. There’s lots of excitement about that, on both sides of the Pacific. I feel bad that the Tim Tams come in a plastic tray, in a plastic packet. They need to make eco Tim Tams that come in cardboard and paper. Plastic or not, I still eat them. Bad hippy. Bad.
Dog/cat/turtle-sitting is over. A great time was had by all. We introduced the dogs to a new dog park, which is full of very friendly people and is split into a section for big dogs and another section for little dogs. Loodle was not very sociable with the dogs but wanted everyone to pat him. Everyone loved him. Pseudo-Marley was simultaneously scared of the big dogs and desperate to play tag with them. Everyone loved him too. I like how they supply all the dogs with biodegradable poo pick-up bags.
I got a long-awaited promotion, Mr Teeny-bop has become a Drama-king (lots of school plays) and Yankee Elv has gone back to school.
I walked to the supermarket last weekend (for exercise and to reduce car trips – I took my green shopping bags too). Loodle can’t walk that far with us anymore, but Mr Teeny-bop came on his scooter. It was nice to walk along with him. We’re keeping our eye on a mango tree in a park along the way. In a couple of months we may be able to score some free mangoes. Yum!
Mangoes!
Loodle is getting into shaving season. He’s a North American dog all the way and doesn’t handle the heat, so we have to shear him like a sheep (although he ends up looking like a pink piggy when we’re finished). Shaving will occur this weekend. The first shave of the season is always very laborious, but not as bad as the weekly bath. The arthritis in Loodle’s hips is getting so bad he needs to sit down for his bath now. 
Yankee Elv and I celebrated (quietly to ourselves) a year of using menstrual cups and cloth pantyliners instead of disposable ‘sanitary products’. Going for reusuable menstrual items is one of the best decisions I ever made and I don’t just not regret it, I celebrate it – every month, every time I walk past tampons in the shop, every time I see an ad about pads and every time some poor girl tiptoes up to me at work and whispers “I don’t suppose you have an extra tampon in your bag, do you?” (I actually do keep a few tampons in case of emergencies so they are always lucky.)
Diva has figured out how to open the screen door and Loodle has figured out how to open the gates. I love having smart pets but this kind of extreme Houdini-style behaviour is a bit much. We’ve had to institute some counter-measures. Now our gates rival Fort Knox and the screen doors are always locked. That doesn’t stop Diva climbing them, and with summer coming we can’t close the wooden door all the time. Any suggestions?
Yankee Elv went blonde (partially). Anyone know what the ecological impact of bleach is?
I keep forgetting to water the herbs and veges regularly, so while they are not dead, they are not flourishing as they should be. The Spanish onions down the side of the house are growing best – they are out in the sunshine (but not too much sunshine) and the rain. I have had a tarp down beside the driveway for a couple of months to kill off the grass and hope to create a proper vege garden over the next couple of weekends. I think between exposure to the rain and my haphazard watering, they should fare better.
I got my empty witch hazel bottle refilled at the local organic shop. The cost was nearly three times what I pay for a whole brand new bottle in the supermarket. I don’t think I can justify spending that money to save buying a recyclable plastic bottle, which makes me really sad.
Yankee Elv has been helping me avoid buying lunch at work by cooking up big batches of food and freezing it. It’s like I have a restaurant inside my freezer that I get to go to every morning. I love that I’m saving money, eating super tasty food and not getting a bunch of disposable containers and cutlery each day.
Many, many grapefruit.
We got rid of about 80% of our grapefruits from the fallen branch via Freecycle, which I love! There is no way those hundreds of grapefruits were going anywhere otherwise. There are still hundreds more on the tree – the possums and bats are stocked for the summer. The passionfruits and pawpaws will be out before we know it too (if the morning glory doesn’t choke them), and then they’ll have dietary choice. I hope this choice encourages them not to eat anything out of my vege garden-to-be though. My colleague tells some lovely stories about possums eating her herbs and capsicums and her mad spraying with garlic and chili water (first the plants in an attempt to stave off the eating, and then the possums in retribution).
Cheeky possums eat everything, including bread, grapefruits, passionfruit, pawpaws and people's herb and vegetable gardens. They especially like the flavour of chili and garlic.
We’re planning another local holiday – south this time, just after Christmas. It should be good! No tents for a change. I need a break from holey air mattresses and tarps. I really hate putting up tarps.
So that’s what’s been going. Life has been interfering with my eco-life, which kinda sucks. Why are there so many things I wanna do, that I can’t do, cos I don’t have time, energy or money? (Mostly the first two.) Has anyone managed to find a balance? I could really use some advice.
Spotlight: Window Farming
Check out these pics! They’re photos of window farms in NYC.
Britta and Rebecca with the first window farm, May 2009. Photo by Julia Makarova.
Window farming came about because some folks (Britta Riley and Rebecca Bray) didn’t want to wait around for a new style of urban planning that would bring farms to the city. They decided to join forces with whoever else wanted to be involved and come up with their own DIY version. Thus, Window Farms.
Gabriel Willow's Window Farm, July 2009. Photo by Gabriel Willow.
I really like how cool it looks, that you can grow heaps in a small space, and that so many of the things you use are simple, cheap and/or ‘rubbish’.
The first window farm, Brooklyn, May 2009.
They’ve even had a feature window farm at an art gallery, Eyebeam.
Detail of big window farm at Eyebeam, July 2009. Photo by Sydney Shen.
We have perfect windows at work for this, but I don’t know if work is quite ready for it. The company does rent potted plants, but edible plants is probably a foreign notion. I might start small – a pot of spinach maybe. I have plenty of seedlings! I can put it on the window sill – I scored a window seat when we moved offices. That bit of sunshine makes it so much easier to get through the day. If I worked in NYC, I think I could arrange for the Window Farm girls to commission a window farm for work, but coming to Australia might be a bit much.
Detail of big window farm at Eyebeam, July 2009. Photo by Sydney Shen.
It looks so cool though…
Detail of big window farm at Eyebeam, July 2009. Photo by Sydney Shen.
Check out this video to learn more:
Good clean fun
Good times can be had without trashing the earth. Fun stuff I did this weekend:
Saturday we had friends over for afternoon tea – one of whom I haven’t seen for years as she’s been overseas, and Yankee Elv has never met before. We ate, sat and chatted for hours, ate some more, played with the dogs (they brought their 6-month old puppy over) and ate some more. They want to ‘steal’ the grapefruits from the tree out back, which is fine with me as no-one here likes them. The puppy/cat encounters were quite hilarious as puppy hasn’t interacted with cats before – there was lots of puffing, hissing, barking and hiding behind people (the dog hid, not the cats!). Loodle took advantage of the fact that he’s tall enough to see onto the dining table without stretching way, way too often.
Sunday sleep in + general silliness and laziness made for a gorgeous morning, topped off only by Yankee Elv’s delectable pikelets/mini-pancakes (the nomenclature was a contentious issue). I couldn’t decide whether I liked sugar and freshly squeezed lemon juice the best, or butter and jam (strawberry, or mango + passionfruit + pineapple). It was all so tasty!
Pikelets (or mini-pancakes - it's up for debate).
Yankee Elv and Mr Teeny-bop had some mother/son time at the movies and dinner while I stayed home and spent the afternoon digging a hole (in which to plant a couple of little jasmine bushes) and planting seeds. The ground was so hard I had to stop before getting to the planting as I was getting blisters, but that hole is going well and I felt like I’d accomplished something! Plus I got a work out – my arm muscles would be positively butch if it weren’t for the chubby layer covering them. (Yankee Elv likes them anyway.) As for the seeds, I’m hoping to get mint, basil, parsley, oregano, spring onion and nasturtium sprouts in a few weeks time, to go along with the spinach and onions I’ve already got going.
I didn’t need to offset any carbon emissions this weekend, and it was one of the more satisfying weekends I’ve had lately. Much more appealing that a weekend spent sleeping, or partying, or shopping. Next weekend we’re hitting the markets, going to a mulled wine evening and Mr Teeny-bop has a drama rehearsal. I like doing stuff like this – it helps me get through the long working week.
Mid-week public holidays like this Wednesday’s don’t hurt either!
The Elves in Melbourne!
I had to go to Melbourne for work on Monday, so I booked a flight for Yankee Elv and we went down a day early to take in the city. It was a good way to amalgamate travel costs and reduce emissions. We flew carbon neutral, which was surprisingly cheap, only $3.08 per flight, which is about a third of a tonne of emissions. It’s the first time Yankee Elv has been there, so it was fun!
So what kind of ELV-esque stuff did we see?
The Queen Victoria markets have a really big open-air section for fruit and veg, and one whole big aisle of it is for organic food. It was huge and pretty cool. If we lived in Melbourne we’d definitely shop there. In contrast, the West End markets up here have only a few organic stalls and they all cost a fortune. The ones in the Queen Victoria markets were fairly reasonably priced. Yankee Elv bought an orange for breakfast the next day.
The organics aisle at the Queen Victoria markets.
Melbourne is known for it’s cafe culture, so we tried out a place I’d never seen before – Hudsons Coffee. It looked like a one-off sort of place, but once I got inside and started ordering, I realised it was some kind of franchise, not dissimilar to Starbucks (with better atmosphere), which was a bit disappointing. It was cosy and warm in there though, and we’d already paid for drinks, so we stayed. I couldn’t figure out why they served our drinks in paper cups and our food in paper bags, rather than using crockery since we were eating in the cafe. Weird – and wasteful.
Disposable junk at Hudsons.
Speaking of cosy and warm, Melbourne is cold, and apparently even the locals agree. Why else would you see restaurants with signs advertising heated couches? I wonder how much energy that wastes…
Heated couches!
Public transport is pretty good in Melbourne, and a fair number of people ride bikes… probably about the same as Brisbane.
Trams and cycling and horses, oh my!
I’m not sure how I feel about the use of electric trams. I think they’re better than diesel or even natural gas buses (are they? fossil fuels still go towards the production of electricity), but the wires look ugly and they make the road rules weird! Plus, they scare the horses.
The trams scared the poor horses. Horses shouldn't be in the city anyway!
When I was working on Monday, Yankee Elv checked out this little veg*n fast food place called Lord of the Fries, right on the corner of Flinders St and Elizabeth St. She loved it – apparently the nuggets were particularly awesome. I like that there’s a veg*n food venue in such a populated place. It always seemed to have plenty of customers. I wonder if that’s because they don’t seem to advertise too much that they’re veg. When I was first in Melbourne and looking for a place to eat, I didn’t realise they were veg and I asked if they had any vege burgers. Needless to say, they looked at me a bit weirdly. At the time I felt like Indian though, so I didn’t get anything from there. I will next time though!
Veg*n fast food, Lord of the Fries.
And of course, no trip to Melbourne is complete with a stop at Taco Bill for dinner. Be warned though – although they make the most awesome chocolate mousse ever in the entire universe (that I’ve tasted), it’s not vegan (just vegetarian). I’m not an official convert yet.
Taco Bill and me.
Tell me about your favourite ELV-ish place in Melbourne!
Spotlight: Urban Farming
- Photos like these inspire me.
- Blogs like this intrigue me.
- Sites like this help me.
- Stories like this help me realise urban farming is a bona fide movement now! (Yankee Elv, clearly less obsessed than me, saw this post and commented that she liked the woman’s sleeve [tattoo], although she claims it looks better from a distance.)
In my own forays into urban farming (or urban homesteading):
My spinach has all sprouted except for one seed, and most of my experimental onions sprouts are just poking their tips out of the soil. Mr Teeny-bop helped me plant them, and I was hoping he’d take an interest in their development, but he seems to have gone back to the land of emo-teen again. Maybe next time? I can keep the soil nice and damp now, because Yankee Elv got me a watering can and duct-taped the hose so it won’t spurt on me or the clothesline anymore. These veges are the first things I’ve grown from seed since I was seven, and I’m very proud of myself. Modest too, as you can tell. Now I have to see if I can keep them going! (Sorry no pics, it’s dark outside – I’ll take some later).
I can't wait until I'm eating spinach I grew my very own self! (As opposed to this spinach, which I bought from the grocery shop.)
Next on the list: carrots and snow peas. I have to get the garden bed sorted and work out a trellis. I’ve done nothing with the compost bin since last week’s big clean. Also, I need; herbs for the front verandah, something (what? ideas anyone? maybe nasturtium?) for the hanging baskets, a succulent for Yankee Elv’s bedroom dresser and some water and steam-loving green something for the bathroom.
Not all at once, clearly. I still have a day job.
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