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SEPTEMBER 2008 JACKIE FRENCH NEWS

In this month's news:

• The Lure of Lemons
• Wombat News
• Latest books
• Awards
• Schedule for 2008-'09
• September garden
• Fruit Tea and Some Good Afternoon Tea Things to Nibble
• A Few more Recipes

Introduction - The Lure of Lemons

Once upon a time (in other words I can't be bothered looking up the date) King Edward I decided to give his Queen a present -- the sort of 'Hey, darling, I'm supremely rich and powerful' present that only a king could give.

Silver plate? A ruby ring? Brocade? No, it was a lemon -- a shiny perfumed lemon, with a few bitter oranges as well. Back then lemons were more precious than a ruby ring ... and to be honest, even these days I'd prefer the lemons to the rubies. (Admittedly I rarely wear rings -- even my wedding ring, shaped like a platypus made by a friend).

If I had to choose one totally indispensable plant, it would be a lemon tree. If I am ever spirited away by aliens, I'll take a lemon tree with me on the spaceship, with a pot large enough to grow it in. If I had to winter in Antarctica I'd take my lemon too -- plus a grow-lamp so we'd both survive the long winter dark.

Our house is particularly citrus-oriented at this time of the year. The limes are ripe, the navel oranges are so fat and orange they glow like jewels, the tangeloes are sweet -- a bit too sweet for me -- and so are the mandarins, and the lemons are round and bright and beautiful on the trees outside my study window, and we are all quaffing lemon or lime cordial at a rate of one bottle every two or three days. There is nothing like fresh lemon or lime cordial in mid-winter, when you can almost see the viruses lurking when more than two people meet.

Lemon trees are stunningly simple to grow, once you accept their quite reasonable demands: a sunny spot, a bit of moisture, food and mulch twice a year. A word, though - never ever leave ripe fruit on the ground or bung it in the compost, because the smell of rotting lemons attracts fruit fly, stink bugs, citrus gall wasps and other beasties you simply don't want to know about.

Lemons are hungry beasts. They must have a good scatter of food (and preferably organic food) at least twice a year. I find a lucerne mulch keeps them thriving too. I've also found that those I don't mulch and feed get far more pests -- we have about 100 citrus trees of various sorts here, so it's relatively easy to test this out -- and it's true: cosseted plants get fewer pests.

You'll find literally hundreds of uses for your lemons. We use about half a dozen lemons or limes (Tahitian, Kaffir, plus a couple of species of native lime like microcitrus) a day, squeezed over steamed veg or dribbled into a soup or sauce to add piquancy, or to replace vinegar in salad dressing. We drink home made lemon or lime cordial all year round, with added passionfruit, blueberries, raspberries etc, according to season.

I probably wouldn't bother buying lemons for most of these things. But when you have a happy surplus of fruit you find you do find extra uses for it, and that means of course you buy less of other stuff too.

But to get back to the cordial... I used to hate lemon or lime cordial as a kid, mostly because my mother always bought some green stuff that smelled like bathtub scourer that had Lime Cordial on the label. Even after we had our own trees I made lemon butter, lime marmalade, pickled limes, preserved lemons, lime tart -- all of those,  but never cordial.

Then one hot dry Christmas I was given an iced glass of something sweet and sour and tangy -- and I was hooked.

Fresh lemon or lime cordial is indescribably wonderful. It has the most penetrating flavour, the richest freshest scent. If I were an ancient English Queen and someone presented me with a bottle of lemon cordial I'd reward them with at least a dukedom. Jewels and silver plate are nothing in comparison...

Fresh Lemon, Lime, Grapefruit, Tangelo or Mandarin Cordial

A word before we start: Fresh juice does not mean from a bottle. Even if it says it's fresh it's not. And curses on any cafe or hotel that puts 'fresh orange juice' on its menu when the stuff came out of a bottle via a factory weeks or months before. Use half mandarin and half lemon juice for mandarin cordial. If you can find Ruby grapefruit they make the most stunning blood red drink. And this also works well with Meyer lemons -- those strange half-way house fruits that aren’t piquant enough to be true lemons nor sweet enough to be used where you would an orange. But they are perfect for the production of cordial, and for making sorbet too, especially if you add just a little grated Meyer peel.

Ingredients:
2 cups fresh juice
8 cups white sugar
4 cups water
6 teaspoons tartaric acid

Boil the sugar and water for five minutes. Add the juice and tartaric acid and boil for two minutes. Use a funnel to pour the hot liquid into clean glass bottles. (Plastic does slightly pollute the taste, though I suppose most people wouldn't notice -- and also it buckles and distorts when you pour in the hot liquid!)

Serve with ice and chilled water, or with hot water and a dash of rum or whisky to soothe the throat. (Well that's my excuse anyway.) Throw out the bottles if the contents grow interesting fungi, or the cordial changes colour, or starts bubbling, but mine never have.

PS: If you are one of those very sophisticated and elegant people who pretend to like chinotto you can make this with chinotto juice too.

Wombat news

The wombat droppings are fat and healthy. Not sure about the wombats, as it's been a good damp winter and spring here -- not enough rain to fill the water table, but enough to keep the grass green in this part of the valley. So the wombats are coming out late and going to bed early (i.e. before I get up) and all I see are the droppings and the odd brown wombat bum vanishing in the darkness if we drive up to the house after dark. One wombat has been leaving droppings every morning on the front and side stairs, which traditionally means that there's a younger smaller wombat who needs politely telling, 'Watch out. This garden's mine.' But there are no wombat yells in the darkness, so it's a very well-mannered discussion. And at least five wombats leave dropping around the house, so no one is being too territorial.

Latest Books

The Camel Who Crossed Australia

The Burke and Wills Expedition should have been one of the greatest explorations ever... brave men venturing where no other white man had gone before.

This is the story told by one of the camels on the journey, and by one of the 'Afghan' cameleers hired from the Indian subcontinent to look after the camels, too. It's also told by cameleer Dost Mahomet and soldier John King, who wonder if the expedition can ever survive such lunacy in its leadership. Who -- if anyone -- will survive?

How High Can a Kangaroo Hop?
Most of us think we know all about kangaroos. But do we really...
Why do 'roos and wallabies have such big tummies?
Who were the kangaroos with fangs that lived 10 million years ago?
What's the best way to become invisible (to kangaroos, at any rate)?

This book also tells the stories of Rosie the wallaby, and her passion for devouring flowers, the Apricot Guzzler wallaby clan, and of course Fuchsia, the real-life dancing kangaroo who became Josephine in 'Josephine Wants to Dance'.
         
The Wilderness Garden (new and much larger edition)
Aird Books
The new edition of this is finally out. Want to create a wilderness of flowers, fruit and veg in your backyard, with only a day's work a year? This is the book you need. It shows how we've created our own wilderness garden -- to feed and delight us, the birds and wildlife.

New Awards

By the time you read this Diary of a Wombat will have been awarded the Bilby Award by the kids of Queensland ... many, many thanks, from me and Bruce and Mothball Wombat. Well, to be honest, wombats don't do 'thank you', even for carrots. But for authors, awards from your readers are the best of all to get, and I am awed and happy and grateful. And many, many thanks too for all who voted for the short-listings for various awards of The Goat Who sailed the World, Hitler’s Daughter, Pharaoh and The Shaggy Gully Times this year too. It means more than you can know.

Schedule for this year and part of next year
Please forgive me if I can't come to your town, school or event -- it doesn't mean I don't want to. I wish I were Superwoman and could do them all, and respond to every request for help or mentoring too. Here's the list of commitments for the next few months:

2008

October 14:
Ceremony for the winners of the ACT Chief Minister's Reading Challenge at the National Library (I'm the Ambassador this year).

October 22:
Children's Day Awards, Canberra

October 28 – 30:
Talks at schools in the Southern Highlands (Contact Lateral Learning for details).

November 16:
Open Garden workshops at our place -- contact the Open Garden Scheme (they take all the bookings and do all the arranging).

2009

March 23-27:
All Saint's Festival talks, Perth, including a gardening talk one evening. Contact All Saints for details.

April 1–3:
Newington College Literary Festival, Sydney

May 5–6:
Talks in Brisbane. For more details contact Show and Tell

Also talks in September (TBC)

The September Garden

What to Plant:

Frost-free climates
Food garden: Choko, lemongrass, sweet potato and passionfruit vines,  Jerusalem artichokes,  paw paw and Cape gooseberry seeds, also  seeds  of artichokes, asparagus, lots of basil (try Thai basil and sacred basil too), beans, beetroot,   capsicum, carrots, cauliflower, celery, celtuce, chicory, cucumbers, eggplant, endive, fennel, lettuce, melons, okra, parsley, peas, peanuts, pumpkin, radish, rosellas, salsify, scorzonera,  sweet corn,  tomatoes, turnips and salad greens like mizuna, mitsuba and spinach.
P.S. Don't forget rosella seeds – they make the world's best jam and are almost impossible to buy.
 
Plants for beauty: Seeds or seedlings of ageratum, alyssum, amaranthus, carnations, celosia, coleus, cosmos, dichondra, echinops, erigeron, gaillardia, gazania, gloxinia, gourds, hymenosporum, impatiens, nasturtiums, phlox and salvia.

Very hot and dry gardens: Move a shade cloth to cover vegie and flower gardens now to shelter them from the worst of the heat, pull out tired plants that grew all winter, mulch and water twice a day if you have the energy. Concentrate on a few small bright patches of flowers rather than struggle with large areas.

Temperate
Food garden: Citrus, avocado, guava and banana trees, seed potatoes, sweet potatoes, choko and strawberries. Plant  seeds of artichokes, asparagus, lots of basil, beans, beetroot, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, burdock, cabbage, capsicum, carrots, cauliflower, celery, celtuce, chicory, collards, coriander, corn salad, cress, cucumbers, eggplant, endive, fennel, kale, kohl rabi, leeks, lettuce, melons, okra, parsley, peanuts, pumpkin, radish, rosellas, salsify.  scorzonera, sweet corn, tomatoes, turnips, zucchini and salad greens like mizuna and mitsuba.

Cold
Food garden: Jerusalem artichokes, rhubarb, strawberries, varieties of spuds -- red ones, blue ones, yellow-fleshed ones --  fresh spuds taste as good as fresh tomatoes. Plant seedlings  of artichokes, asparagus, beans, beetroot, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, burdock, cabbage, capsicum, carrots, cauliflower, celery, celtuce, chicory, collards, corn salad, cress, cucumbers, eggplant, endive, fennel, kale, kohl rabi, leeks, lettuce, parsley, peas, pumpkin, radish, salsify, scorzonera, spinach, sweet corn, tomatoes, turnips and salad greens like mizuna and mitsuba.

Flower garden (temperate and cold): Achillea, ageratum. alstromeria, alyssum, amaranthus, aster, balsam, bellis perennis, bells of Ireland, brachycome, calendula, candytuft, Canterbury bells, carnation,  celosia, clarkia, cleome, coleus, coreopsis, columbines, cosmos, delphinium, dichondra, echinacea, echinops, erigeron, euphorbia, foxglove, gaillardia, gazania, globe amaranth, gloxinia, godetia, gypsophila, helichrysum, heliotrope, hellebores, honesty, lavender, marigolds, nasturtium, petunia, phlox, Flanders poppy, portulaca, rudbeckia, salpiglossis, salvia, scabious, sweet William, viola, zinnia and snapdragons.
 
Jobs for September

This is the best time to browse the nursery for seedlings -- planting a few punnets in spring will give you months of flowers or vegetables. But seeds are much cheaper, almost as fast (seedlings go into shock when you transplant them and may take a week or so to establish -- by which time your seeds have forged ahead) and you have a much wider choice of varieties.

Feed lawns now -- stronger, well-fed roots will help the grass stay greener longer. But don't feed lawns if they are dry -- you may do more harm than good. Wait till after rain then water fertiliser in well. The best lawn tucker is a scatter of compost. If it won't scatter, it isn't compost -- good compost is so well rotted you can't see what its ingredients used to be.

Feed everything else too! Plants GROW in spring -- and they need good tucker to grow well. And water if at all possible -- this is the one time of year when lots of water will mean lots of growth, both root and top... and good strong roots are better foragers in dry times.

If your mower won't work, ask the kind person at the repair shop to show you which bit is the spark plug, so that next time it fails you can take out the spark plug and just buy a new one.

Pick enormous bunches of sweet peas and inhale the scent ... or make a note to plant sweet peas next year!

If birds fly into your windows, dangle something in front of them -- a stained glass parrot, a line of glass beads -- anything to indicate to a fast flying bird that this isn't open space!

Fruit Tea and Afternoon Tea Things to Nibble

Once upon a time tea was a luxury, a wonderfully expensive 'Chinese herb' drunk only by the rich.

In those days most people drank ale; low-alcohol, freshly brewed beer. (And many authorities were aghast when tea became cheaper after the Indian tea plantations came into production and the masses took to drinking tea. Not a bit of nourishment in it, they cried, not like a good glass of ale! Tea drinking would surely lead to the complete degeneration of society!)

'Drinking a dish of tea' was the prerogative of ladies and gentlemen, as opposed to ordinary women and men. Ladies partook of elegant afternoon tea with their friends, or sipped tea after dinner, while the blokes got stuck into the port, though the men might also drink tea at supper after a convivial game of cards.

If you were really affluent, you might have a dish of tea upon waking, though most ladies preferred a more sustaining chocolate drink, flavoured with cinnamon and sugar and perhaps cloves.

Tea was far too precious in those days to be slopped into a mug with a glug of milk and a spoonful of sugar. You sipped it daintily from a fine China cup, while nibbling at cucumber or watercress sandwiches or teacake or plum cake or extra thin bread and butter.

Milk in those days was unheard of in a cup of tea. How could you savour the true taste of tea with milk in it?

This isn't to say that nothing was ever added to tea.  A man might add a dash of cognac for an extra warming drink, while ladies preferred fruit tea.  Not common fruits like plums and pears, of course, but strawberries or ultra-expensive oranges or lemons or slices of fresh apple.

Nowadays fruit tea has almost disappeared -- the one remnant of the tradition is having a slice of lemon in your tea instead of milk.

But fruit tea is quite delicious and definitely worth reviving. It makes tea a treat again, instead of just something to revive you mid-morning and mid-afternoon.

It is also good for you, made with extra healthy China green tea, full of antioxidants and with all the virtues now claimed for green tea -- excellent for helping to reduce heart disease, a variety of cancers and possibly even to help you to lose weight.

Fruit Tea
 A note before you start: Alright, you can use teabags in an 'I need tea now' emergency, but for Pete's sake empty the tea out of the little bags first. The flavour of warm paper adds nothing to the delights of fruit tea -- and actually the tea in a tea bag does taste quite different and part of the reason is that the leaves have been pulverised to almost a dust-like consistency, whereas when you make a pot of green tea with loose leaves they unroll as recognisable leaves. I used to think that green tea was foul -- a strange sort of flat-tasting compost water -- until I started drinking loose leaf green tea which is another beast entirely.)

Ingredients:
4 level teaspoons of China green tea
8 cups of boiling water
2 very thin slices of unpeeled orange
2 very thin slices of unpeeled lime or lemon
1 large thinly sliced, extra ripe strawberry
4 thin slices of tart unpeeled apple, like Granny Smith or Lady Williams
4 fine China cups, with saucers (don't even think about making fruit tea in mugs)
1 teapot, preferably silver, glass or fine china (the taste will vary according to what it's steeped in) or one of those small squat iron Japanese tea pots
1 plate of thin bread and butter or cucumber sandwiches
1 plate of teacake or plum cake

Place half a slice of orange and lemon in each teacup, then a slice of strawberry and a slice of apple. Now fill the tea pot with half the boiling water; leave it for five minutes; pour it out and immediately add the tea, then pour in more boiling water before the pot gets cold. Put the lid on, let it steep for two minutes, then pour it into the cups.

The fruit will slightly cook in the sudden heat. If you think you are going to want a second cup add more hot water to the pot while you sip the first cup.

Fruit tea shouldn't be hurried. Sip it delicately, while exchanging the lightest, happiest gossip with your friends.

And don't forget the sandwiches, the bread and butter or the tea or plum cake cake either.

Bread and Butter
Good bread and butter is one of life's simple glories, almost forgotten in these days of pre-sliced bread and margarine.
Take an unsliced loaf. Turn it on its end. Dip a bread saw in hot water, then slice the bread as thinly as you possibly can. Butter it lightly, cut off the crusts and arrange with artistry on a plate.

Cucumber sandwiches
Peel and thinly slice a young cucumber. Sprinkle the slices with salt and allow them to drip for half an hour, rinse and pat dry.  This ensures that your cucumber is not so watery as to make your sandwiches instantly soggy. Slice and butter bread as above.

Place your cucumber slices over a slice of bread; lay another slice of buttered bread on top of it (both sides of a cucumber sandwich need to be buttered, or one slice will end up soggy.)  Remove the crusts and cut diagonally into neat triangles.  Serve on a fine china plate.

Teacake
Teacake was traditionally made with yeast. When baking powder came along in the 1840s people started making teacakes with self-raising flour.

My Grandma still made teacakes back in the sixties, but I've never seen one since -- except in our house, of course, where all sorts of eccentric items are still eaten.

A teacake needs to be eaten fresh i.e. straight out of the oven, or perhaps toasted for supper or breakfast. If any is left after that give it to the chooks.
 
Grandma's (Mrs Thelma Edwards) Recipe for Teacake
(from the recipes she collected from 1919 onwards.)

Ingredients:
1 egg
½ cup sugar
1 cup milk
2 ½ cups self-raising flour
1 dsp butter
Pinch salt.

Mix salt and sugar with the flour, sift two or three times, rub in the butter, beat the egg, add with the milk and mix the whole to a soft dough.

Grease a deep dish (a pie dish will do) and bake in a moderate oven for 20 mins or half an hour.

Sometimes Grandma poked slices of peeled apple into the top of the cake before it was baked, sprinkled on cinnamon and a little brown sugar and turned it into apple teacake. Sometimes she added currants and sultanas and a little candied lemon or orange peel too.

Each slice of hot teacake needs to be buttered, as there's not much fat in it. You can eat your teacake warm from the oven, or you can cut it into slices while hot, butter each slice and reform it into a cake shape; or leave it till it's cool, cut it into slices and toast each slice.  Butter them, reform into a cake shape and serve hot.

A Few More Recipes

Munchy Echidnas
Note: No echidnas were harmed in making this recipe, though one called George did upend a pot plant outside my study window to get to the ants below. The pot was broken, but not the echidna. 

Munchy Echidnas are a form of meatball (though without much meat - or any, if you prefer) for those 'totally bushed' times when you want dinner in five minutes, sitting in front of a good DVD and eating with your fingers... though they can be gussied up to looked rustically elegant too.

There are many versions of meatballs. But I've adapted these to be a fairly healthy meal in one bite ... or 20 bites, anyhow. No added vegies or salad -- just a bowl and a napkin to wipe your greasy fingers.

Serves: 4
Ease of preparation:  Very simple
Time taken:  5 minutes to assemble, 10-20 to cook, 5 minutes or less to reheat.

Ingredients:
500 gm mince -- beef, pork, or turkey. For a vegetarian option. Use mashed cooked red kidney beans or mashed cooked chickpeas, in which case omit half the bread and tomatoes. 
3 cups good multigrain bread, crusts removed -- the healthier the bread, the better.
2 cups chopped tomatoes, either canned or fresh (and skinned)
½ cup finely chopped parsley OR coriander leaf
3 grated carrots
2 eggs
1 cup dried breadcrumbs OR chopped macadamias OR chopped peanuts
Optional extras:
6 cloves garlic, chopped
3 tsps Worcestershire sauce or barbecue sauce
3 tbsps chilli sauce
olive oil

Place all except the last in a bowl. Use clean hands to squidge it all together till blended -- the bread and meat should be indistinguishable.

Roll into small balls, about the size of walnuts, then roll in crumbs or nuts. Roll them in olive oil for extra shiny brownness.

Bake on baking paper on a tray at 200ºC till just browned.

Cool. Place portions in freezer bags. Freeze.

Reheat in microwave or moderate oven for about 5 minutes.  Make sure they are fully thawed and hot inside. Don't freeze a second time.

Can be kept frozen for six weeks.

To serve:
Place in a bowl; have another bowl of tomato sauce -- bottled or home-made -- or chutney (ditto) or chilli sauce, plus plenty of napkins or tea-towels to wipe fingers on.

Fresh pea soup

Ingredients:
1 cup peas
3 cups stock
6 lettuce leaves
cream
nutmeg

Simmer peas and lettuce in the stock for ten minutes. Scoop out the lettuce.  Puree and serve with a dash of cream and a dust of nutmeg.
 
Rumbledethumps
2 cups mashed potato
2 cups cooked cabbage, chopped finely and well drained.
1 large chopped onion, sauteed in lots of butter or olive oil i.e. at least 4 tbsps.
grated sharp cheese (your choice)
1 egg – optional
pepper

Mix all the ingredients except the cheese. Place in the oven, top with cheese.  Bake till hot.

For more information from Jackie, please go to her website: www.jackiefrench.com

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