Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Kitchen to Garden

Several weeks ago I ordered “Chocolate & Zucchini” by Clotilde Dusoulier.
I came across the website of the same name by accident and loved the title. I couldn’t resist ordering the book from my local bookshop.
I picked it up on the weekend and don’t regret the impulsiveness of judging a book by its title. When I get the chance I intend to have a go at making her Beef Bourguignon: perhaps attracted by her use of chocolate in the recipe. The mere fact that I’ve been inspired to make a meal that needs to be prepared over a couple of days and requires more than three hours of cooking is a significant endorsement of this book, considering my cooking ventures to-date have been very limited.

Continuing with cooking related matters, the first series of Masterchef is over, and Julie came out as the winner. On the night of the final I think she was clearly the better of the two contestants despite the almost immediate claims of the result being rigged.

Overall I think Justine’s record throughout the series showed that she was more worthy of the title “Masterchef”, having won more of the shows challenges than any other contestant. The show’s format was not necessarily geared to finding the best chef/cook in the competition but was primarily focused on entertaining the viewer. That aim was certainly achieved considering the size of the regular audience which reportedly rose to a peak of 3.73 million for the finale.
Halfway through the last week the show also out-rated State of Origin football. Maybe next year the Blues and the Maroons should head for the kitchen for a cook-off if they want to regain their usual TV audience.

Finally, moving from the kitchen to the garden, the last part of my order from the Digger’s Club has arrived. Now I need to find the time to plant the following:

Blueberry ‘Northland’
Blueberry ‘Denise’
Chilean Guava x 2
Raspberry ‘Willamette’
Gooseberry ‘Roaring Lion’

I also received two free plants of Salvia Azurea and Comfrey.

3 comments:

Dawn said...

Hi Tim,

Nice blog you have here. Here is another one you might like to visit. I've been enjoying it lately.

http://down---to---earth.blogspot.com/

You're doing a great job with your garden. We once had a successful garden but for one reason or another we stopped gardening. I've been interested in starting another one, but have yet to really do anything about it. Maybe we will actually do one next year.

Onesimus said...

Thank you Dawn.
And I also appreciate the link you gave to down to earth.

I'll have to have a good look at it when I get the chance.

The brief glance I've taken so far shows it to be a tempting blog to visit.

Last night I watched a Gardening Australia DVD called Patch from Scratch where Peter Cundall converts an area of lawn into a very productive veggie patch. His enthusiam is very infectious and it made me want to rush out and dig up more lawn (however it was night time and we had a massive hail storm).
The other thing that tempered my enthusiasm was the fact that I've already made a significant start and it's not been as easy in practice as Mr Cundall made it seem to be. At least not for a complete novice like myself.

Unknown said...

Yes, it is sometimes hard work, especially when heat and humidity are present like in my region of the world.