Ladies who... latte?

Finding a good soy latte is a very special thing. I've been drinking soy lattes for years (probably around 10 now), and even in this coffee obsessed town, the art of a great soy coffee is still, sadly, all too rare a thing.

Luckily, my favourite local cafe - Balwyn's Snow Pony-  has got it down to a fine art, and it's not unusual for me to put aside the time to grab one at the start of a busy day. I've even been known to get up 10minutes earlier or skip putting on make-up just to make sure I get my fix.   

So when I dropped in this morning my plan was to grab a quick soy-latte-to-go. No such luck. 

The wait wasn't catastrophic, but it was longer than I anticipated (maybe I need to get up 15minutes earlier from now on). So I had time to look around. The little cafe was jumping and jazz music melted over the chatty crowd. You'd be lucky to find at table at 9.30 on a Wednesday morning in between cheese on toast and signature smashed avocado's. 

Ok, so a few other people have clued into this great little haunt. But what surprised me was this. In the whole place, out of all the lively, smiley patrons, only 1 was male. 

Yep- single white male. Cafe full of latte-ing ladies- and searching back through my daily routines I felt sure that this wasn't the first 'ladies day' I had witnessed at the Pony.

It was a rare moment of 'what's going on here?' for me. And I'm still not sure what it means. The ladies were all of varying ages and style- so I could deduce nothing there. It's not really in a particularly 'ladyish' part of town and I know that the cafe is a more even split of sexes on weekends. 

So I take from it this, either ladies make more time for social coffee's to exchange work, information, social ideas. OR... they know where the really good soy coffee is on a weekday and go out of their way to get it.    

Either way, as long as I can still wedge my way in for my morning coffee, all I have to say is this... Ladies? Bottoms up!

If you've noticed any gender trends at cafes, I'd love to know where and when?

Surprising last minute dessert- Honey Baked Egg Custard

I am guilty of over thinking dinners- for friends, for family, for friday night. I like to cook, so I often plan in advance and put a lot of effort into menus, themes and trying new dishes. Mostly the love and extra work pays off. Mostly.

But tonight I was lazy.

When my other half turned big brown eyes towards me and hopefully said 'dessert?', I simply could not disappoint him and I felt myself madly wracking my brains for a simple, yet worthy response. I settled for the comfort dessert that my mother would make when I was sick as a child- it has a special place in my heart, and I'd forgotten just how good it is.

Honey baked egg custard:

Ingredients:

* 3 eggs

* 1/2 cup milk

* 1/2 cup thickened cream

* 2 tablespoons honey (warmed for ease of mixing)

* extra honey

Method:

Preheat oven to 200degC. In a bowl whisk together all the ingredients (except the extra honey) until well combined. Divide the extra honey between three 1 cup oven proof ramekins (or any size you have)- about 1 tsp of honey in the base of each. Pour the egg mixture into the ramekins, dividing evenly. Place ramekins into an ovenproof dish and fill the dish with boiling water until it comes halfway up the sides. Bake for 30mins, or until firm and lightly browned on top.

Serve it up hot- straight from the oven.

In this case with extra satisfaction and a small glass of tawny port.

I have been put in my place. Sometimes 'old faithful' recipes are the best- and could even proudly hold their own at any overwrought, overthought, lovingly prepared meal for friends.

Tonight it was a sneaky and unexpected surprise- made sweeter when I spooned to the bottom and found my puddle of melted honey. Never let it be said that desserts are too hard.

All Nations Picnic- Sat April 18, 2009

The All Nations Picnic:

A community comes together through food

-By: Jane de Graaff

Article featured at: www.ieatidrinkiwork.com.au

It was a wonderful day at Flemington community centre, so stay tuned for details of next years event- sharing heritage through food is such a great joy. And tasty too!

Foraging- from weeds to seeds

My garden is greener than it's been for a long time. It's a beautiful thing to see. Chubby, tender shoots sprout everywhere. It's a verdant carpet covering damp, chocolate-brown earth. 

I kneel down in front of it all and then, start hacking away- because it's all gotta come out! You see it might look pretty, but it's weeds. That's right, the garden is green, but it's not green with anything useful... apparently. 

Milk weeds, dandelions, other things I can't name- I hack, I pull, I twist- I rip it all out. 

1/2 an hour later I'm hot and sweaty, covered in sap and only about 1/8 of the way through. I turn around and survey the damage- a huge, lush pile of leaves with roots pointing oddly at the sky. They look at little mournful- and I am suddenly overwhelmed with a huge sense of waste. This pile of leaves looks so promising, so vibrant- I could swear they would be crunchy and probably a little peppery too.

 I suddenly wish that I knew more- more about what I was ripping up and more about weather or not they were edible. What if I was throwing away a perfectly good salad? It sure looked like one? And besides, isn't foraging the 'new black' when it comes to eating local?

My recent mushroom trip must have inspired me. I didn't necessarily trust myself to eat what I'd dug up, but it did inspire me to start looking into what was about to make intimate friends with the compost bin. So I grabbed 'Wild Food Plants of Australia' by the renowned Tim Low and began thumbing the pages, looking to see if perhaps that really was a garden salad on my lawn.

Judging by the pretty definitive pictures in my field guide, here's a couple of the things that I think were mixed into my grass greens:

* Common Sowthistle- tastes like endive acc. to Low.

* Yellow Wood Sorrel- a bit like clover (the little buggers), makes good 'tarts' and salad.

* Yam Daisy, Murnong, or native dandelion- the root is good for stewing, tasty but not too high in vitamins.

To my disappointment I am not growing any chocolate lilies, grass potato or quandongs...   

Still, if the GFC gets really tough- I know that I won't starve. I may not be living in style, but i'll still be able to have you all over for dinner. 

NOTE: I am NOT encouraging you to eat things you think you have identified in your garden- but I am hoping that you might take a healthy interest in thinking beyond the square when it comes to food... I haven't quite got a pot of nettles stewing on the stove... yet.

For now, I better head back to the organic, heritage, grown-from-seed vegie patch, where at least I know what the radishes look like.

Dutch Queen's Day

Nope, I'm not talking about the Dutch cross dressers- although I'm sure the title of this article was misleading. 

Apparently today is the Queen's birthday in Holland and to celebrate everyone cooks orange food, dresses in orange and dances on boats until they fall in the canals! Sounds like fun, but lacking both a boat and a canal- I'll have to content myself with cooking some orange treats to salute my Dutch heritage.

Sweet Potato scones

Ingredients:

2 Tbsp butter

1/4 cup sugar

1/4 tspn salt

1 egg (lightly beaten)

1 cup of mashed sweet potato (cooked & cooled)

2 cups of whole-wheat plain flour

2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp nutmeg

Method:

Cream butter, sugar and salt until light and fluffy. Add lightly beaten egg and mashed sweet potato and mix until well blended.

In a separate bowl mix the flour, baking powder, cinnamon and nutmeg together and then add to the sweet potato. Mix until you have a soft dough that is not sticky.  Add a little more flour if necessary. Turn onto a floured surface and lightly knead.

Break dough into 6 even portions, roughly circular in shape. Bake on floured baking tray 200degC for 20mins or until golden. 

Serve hot with a thick smear of butter and a slice of edam if you like... or maybe that's just the way I like it.

And remember: "AS A FINISHING TOUCH, GOD CREATED THE DUTCH"

Mushroom Magic

It's raining. My fingers are so cold that one of them is aching and threatening to snap off. Wind howls through the trees above us. What the hell was I thinking? I pull the hood of my waterproof jacket tighter about my ears and gently toe at the dead leaves by the side of the walking track. Suddenly a shriek rents the air from further down the trail- and I break into a run... they've found some- Mushrooms!

It's an unexpectedly cold Sunday afternoon and I have left the comfort of my living-room to hunt for mushrooms in Victoria's Woodend. Why? 

Well, quite simply because I don't know a thing about them. I love to fry them up with some butter, garlic and a little bit of thyme for a weekend brekkie, but I wouldn't know the first thing about how to find them, much less identify them in the wild- and I am secretly a little jealous of those people who can tell a field mushroom from a death cap. So, with dreams of skipping through the country-side, basket in hand and plaits bobbing, I signed myself and 3 friends up for a Sunday of 'Exploring the Fungi Kingdom' with ecologist Alison Pouliot.

With the Autumn leaves putting on a show, we arrived at Woodend Community centre at 11am for a full day of mushie madness. From poisons specialists to permaculture enthusiasts and local foragers- there were about 20 of us in all, keen, excited and wrapped in wet weather gear.

From the start we were hit with the vast variety of Australian and introduced fungi. 

Yellow stainers, milk caps, blue meanies (yes we know that means magic), corals and jellies, field and pine- 5 hours was simply not long enough to learn all that Alison had to share with us. 

I scribbled notes till I ran out of paper and then I took photos till I ran out of film. Oh what a silly girl am I, hoping that I could just take some notes and then forgae for my dinner... it's not that simple. 

So whilst I think I can identify a magic mushroom now (and I add even if this were true that I'd be pretty stupid to test the theory), I learned plenty that was far more fascinating than that. 

For a start, in countries like Switzerland where they have been collecting mushrooms from the wild for generations, people who learn from childhood what to look for still have to go through the 'mushroom police' to make sure they have not taken deadly or endangered species. The M-police also record the numbers and types of fungi in any given area, and this has been going on for generations. That's hundreds of years of detailed fungi records.

By contrast, in Australia we have only been recording our fungi for around 16 years, hmmm. 

In addition to these limited records, we have possibly 25,000 species due to our diverse habitats, most of which have not been studied in depth or possibly even named. 

So much fungi and so little time. And that's a lot of native fungi that we know nothing about that I just got mixed up with magic mushrooms... 

So after scrubbing around in the moss, mould and rain, peering under caps with hand held mirrors to identify gill and spore colour and feeling more and more like Alice down the rabbit hole every second, I learned this- I have a lot of work to do when it comes to foraging for my dinner, and I won't be going without a mushroom guide anytime soon. One side might 'make you grow taller', but the other-side could give you kidney failure.

Note: in Victoria you require a parks permit to forage for mushrooms. 

Size and the environment- a huge debate

There's a lot of research and social stigma that tells us being obese is not a great thing. The arguments against obesity range from 'it's bad for your general health' (heart, joints, blood pressure etc x 3...), to 'it's bad for your well being' (emotions, self esteem, social status etc x 3...).

If all that and the raging debates that go with it weren't enough for you - here's the next anti-overweight argument; obesity is bad for the environment. Ouch.

How can you ignore the guilt factor in that statement? Simple, you can't. The argument goes that if you're fat then chances are you use more fuel and create more waste -for the production of your food, your transport and the accompanying lifestyle. Again, ouch. 

But it also makes sense. Even more sense when it's backed up by experts from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine - It's just more convincing when it comes from a white coat. The WHO asserts that the continued weight gain of wealthy populations points to greater consumption in general, leading to greater food production demands which are one of the biggest contributors to greenhouse gasses. 

So that's it... back on the treadmill people and maybe hook it up to the generator while you're there.

 

I have to say that from the standpoint of women and their social liberation, I am a little torn. For a start, whilst I certainly understand all the many arguments against obesity, and I am certainly all for reducing my impact on the environment, I am also not about to jump on the 'heroin chic' bandwagon that has plagued western women and their self image for so long. So where do we go from here? Do we point the finger at fat people even more readily than we currently do and this time claim that 'it's for the good of the environment'? Or do we re-address the problem and refer to it as 'over-consumption' on every level that is the problem rather than just 'over-weight'. It seems to me that perhaps obesity is a symptom of environmental abuse rather than just another cause. But what would I know- I've spent my life trying to convince myself that I am actually ok even if I don't lose that extra kilo.