5th May 2008

Our dehydrator is going full time right now, drying the last of the seeds, the mushrooms that are popping up all over the place, and pumpkin seeds for our own use. 

We have a pine forest behind us here and right now there are thousand upon thousands of large yellow Boletus mushrooms. It’s lot of fun picking them with the kids here and I find that they make a great addition to winter soups that are broth based, or miso type soup. I’m drying them and I just pop a couple in a pot of soup for a subtle flavour enhancer.

We harvested our peanuts this week, we were pretty happy with the result even though they were an after thought. We realized in late November that maybe it would get harder and harder to find peanuts that would sprout with the whole irradiation thing going on as it has been hard to find beans that will sprout. We planted a lot of seed from our Chantal organic peanuts and a small percentage of them sprouted, so we planted them. In the end they went into the ground way too late, probably 8 weeks later than they should have, and on top of that I didn’t realise until to late that I should have hilled them up several times like potatoes. They sent out sort of runners from the flowers that appeared in the leaf axils on up the stem as the flowers went up and they really should have been hilled up to the flowers as they went up.

However even so each peanut produced about 30 pods with 2 peanuts in each. My guess is that they could have produced at least twice that number if we had known what we were doing. Possibly 3 times I would say. Anyway for those of you in warm areas and light soils, I think peanuts are a go.

I also watched a grower harvesting his huge clean beautiful kumara crop from his tyre system this week, I’ll expand on that early next season, however I’m sure his system means that almost all of us could successfully grow kumara, no mater what soil type you have, and no matter where you are in NZ up to appoint. There are certainly many places in the South Island it will be possible but not all.

We’re also threshing a large crop of amaranth right now, and our summer breakfasts of popped amaranth have changed over to either corn meal porridge or amaranth porridge. This is our amaranth porridge recipe… using the principle expounded in Sally Fallons book Nourishing Traditions where she points out that grains were never eaten traditionally, because of the phytic acid they contain, without soaking or fermenting for long periods.

Amaranth porridge (for 3 or 4 depending how hungry you are!)

1 cup of amaranth

1 can of coconut milk (you can use ordinary cows or goats milk too)

2 cardamon seeds,

1 curl of cinnamon stick

1 handful of dried fruit, possible raisins or dried apricots sliced

1 Tbspn of whey (you can easily make your own, just and a little yoghurt in a cloth with a bowl underneath, it will turn into cream cheese in the cloth, and whey in the bowl)

Soak the amaranth in 2 cups of water and they whey for 24 or even 48 hours, the longer the better, drain through a sieve – make sure the seeds can’t go through the sieve- and put grain and can of coconut milk and all in gradients into pot with 1 cup of water. Bring to boil and simmer on slow heat until grain swells, turn off and sit for 20 minutes.

Serve as is or add fresh or bottled or dried fruit, and sprinkle with toasted ground pumpkin seeds. Enjoy!!