jasmine greens

Back on my bike

2011-01-13T23:08:00.000-08:00

I'm riding to work for the first time in over 6 years! And a year after breaking 4 ribs. It's been a week and I'm very proud to have achieved 6 days in a row on my single speed. Today I pushed my boundaries a little further and cycled from empire bay to woy woy. My legs are paying for it and as I write this from my seat on the long train ride home, I'm psyching myself up for the 7 or do km ride from the station to my car. Commuting with bike has it's challenges. Other commuters don't seem to like me very much especially on tangara trains with no designated bike space. The old smelly trains are better with hooks in some carriages for bikes, bit they are so smelly. Hoping to secure a bike locker at woybwoy next week. Here's to being back on the bike!

spring harvest

2011-01-03T18:46:00.000-08:00

nectarines were a plenty on our fruit salad tree this spring. the mint went wild with all the rain, so did the sorrel, kale potatoes, beans, peas and parsley. our plums and peaches didn't fruit and while my lemon flowered profusely, fruit never came.
growing food take a few more tricks than i've managed to muster, but the rain has certainly sent the garden into a busy growth spurt.

after spending the winter months in Orange reporting on rural topics for the ABC, i have an increased awe for the people who grow the food we eat. so much hangs on the whims of the weather, be it too dry or too wet, getting perfect conditions to grow a perfect crop is near on impossible.

herbs are my crop of choice, you can neglect them and they survive most of the time. we've started a small kitchen garden in the front yard, right outside our kitchen, further away from the bush turkey nest in the back yard, its fared pretty well without a fully enclosed garden cage. cherry tomatoes and basil are in full swing artichokes are flowering their bright flame mauve and the thyme hangs in, despite being trampled by busy little feet running past on a regular basis.

broad bean salad fresh from the garden, peeled, blanched and dressed in olive oil, salt, lemon juice and fresh parsley.

roof and walls to boot!

2010-03-16T17:38:00.000-07:00

After weeks of rain, John finally managed to get our roof on and stop the rain. I hope we haven't triggered more drought. It's rained every week John has been working on our house, making things very slow. Roof's up and the sky is blue.

Inside our new bedroom, lined with Charlie's signature ply, exposed recycled hardwood framing will provide shelves for our precious objects.

crimson grapes and red delicious apples

2010-03-16T17:31:00.000-07:00

Hazy Jane made it to our shopping collective pack and pick up last week. Here's her box of goodies.

It was so lovely to see her with baby and husband in tow.

We were short delivered on yellow zucchinis and tomatoes, but what we did get was absolutely beautiful and (red) delicious!

Bogged down and totally loving P&C admin for now...

2010-03-16T04:59:00.000-07:00

It's only been two weeks and already the P&C seems to be taking all my time. I think I'm just so excited to have a new avenue to use my skills in community organising.
It wasn't until a week after I'd been elected President of our P&C that I realised what the P&C was all about - I've been in a working mum vacuum for the past three years of Gully's school life, but with River and Gully both at school, I wanted to be more engaged in the direction of the school this year. So, here goes!
Reading the 2010 P&C Handbook and the latest P&C magazine on train on my way to uni last week, it dawned on me - we're a lobby group, campaigning for free, quality, non secular public education. It's that simple.
One week in and I've met with over 8 P&C executive members, past and present, to quizz them on their priorities and legacy; done a full day's work in the school canteen; hung outside the school in the rain on Saturday night, to personally inform parents of a cancelled fundraising event; published an information flyer for our school parents and staff about the role of the P&C and put together a survey on survey monkey for staff, parents and keen students to fill in - to inform our new P&C 'business plan'.
I so hope this process attracts an active parent community for our lovely, tiny school..
Certainly feel like I'm jumping in, but also feel really comfortable using my skills in a positive and hopefully community empowering way.

You can visit
www.surveymonkey.com/s/LWMV9FH to view our P&C survey.

blue bower

2010-03-01T17:23:00.000-08:00

we visited Sim and Matt in the Blue Mountains a few weeks ago. they've just purchased a block of land and are embarking on the grand adventure of building their home. This blue bower was nestled in their garden - see how the Bower Bird has shaped the grass - so beautiful!

market

2010-02-23T02:36:00.000-08:00

i went to market myself for the inaugural order of the new jasmine greens shopping collective. headed down the highway quite late and hit all the peak hour traffic. got to the organic warehouse five minutes before closing time, thankfully they let me snoop around and spend up. i spent way too much money, one of the drawbacks of being in a huge warehouse full of organic food. got home with beautiful fresh produce. here it is on the palette. i don't want to make a habit of going to market. the round trip took me six hours & it's near impossible to do it under four. much prefer to pay Trevor to bring our order up from market on his semi-trailer.
next delivery is this Friday.

loripeets

2010-02-23T02:20:00.000-08:00

Gully called them that when he was little and it's stuck. we have five totally wild,noisy and crazy 'runners' in an avery up the back of the garden - our small way of assisting Judith with her Wildlife Ark bird rescue. our lorikeets have psittiscine circo virus, more commonly known as beak and feather. their flying wings have not developed, hence the name runner. they can't fly. we rescued our first bird, Jasper about august last year. i was on my way to pick Gully up from school when i heard a commotion and saw a crow and a kookaburra attacking him in the mud below a mangrove tree. Judith showed us how to care for him and lent us her spare avery. because the virus can spread to other psittiscine species (parrots), we offer a local isolation recovery ward for lorikeets. Jasper has long since recovered and flown off. he was so tame when we first got him, we could hold him and could have focussed on taming him, but we decided to let him stay wild in the hope he would recover. here he is enjoying fresh flowers picked by Gully, River and Akira. at least two more of our birds are recovering and growing their flight wings the other three don't look so promising. we named our first two birds Jasper and Jack after Gully and River's cousins. the new ones are baby one, baby two, baby three and baby four.

cucumbers and chillies

2010-02-23T01:51:00.000-08:00

Charlie and the boys harvested our first hand of bananas today. they're strung up outside Charlie's office in the back yard. tiny little finger bananas - we'll keep them on the stalk and hope they ripen. cucumbers, chillies and pumpkins are all thriving, rhubarb is making a comeback, lettuce doing well, eggplant and capsicums are in flower... parsley, borage and rocket are sprouting. there are eight lemons on the maya tree, two on the fruit salad citrus and three ruby red grapefruit coming along - the few that survived the baby fruit cull. i tried to pull off the baby fruit for the first two years while the trees establish, but it felt so sad pulling off over thirty plums, and all the other baby fruits on the trees, i left a few lemons on the maya tree. the grapefruit snuck under the radar, i'm so pleased they did.

new look house

2010-02-23T01:38:00.000-08:00

the back room and old loo have been cut off and our new bedroom has been half built. the deck is looking amazing - roof framing goes up this week. our last carpenter had done such a thorough job fixing an old wall, John our builder had a nightmare pulling it down today. the new roof will span across the bedroom and deck to the bathroom.

chocolate coated kindness

2010-02-23T01:29:00.000-08:00

breaking my ribs had some rewards... Mum and Pete came up from Sydney with lunch and Laura dropped in these amazing chocolate brownies.. thank you xxxx

eggs

2010-02-20T22:00:00.000-08:00

I went to wish Leah a happy birthday this morning and came home with a dozen fresh eggs from her chooks!
David and Leah have four beautiful chooks in the bottom of their garden and they're in fine laying spirits.
This photo is from the markets in Mondulkiri, Cambodia, black eggs were very popular there. In fact all sorts of eggs are very popular in Cambodia. People would put whole eggs with shell on skewers and smoke them or steam them. They would number the eggs 1-5 - referring to days. Apparently 3 days is very tasty, we didn't ever try - the number refers to the age of the chick in the shell.

Chinese new year

2010-02-16T02:26:00.000-08:00

Hanoi March 2009

Pakse Feb 2009

It's the Year of the Tiger!!
This time last year we were in Pakse, Laos, eating noodles as the new year dragon entered our restaurant with drummers, dancers and a big paper mache-faced man bringing good luck to the premises.
It was a hoot as they let off fireworks & streamers in the street and celebrated in front of the Chinese businesses in this small Lao town.
The Chinese shops all had beautiful potted trees, decorated with gold & red envelopes filled with money - the dragon came and ate them - their good luck for the year was measured by how much they gave, as was the time the spent drumming up a storm in their foyer.

Organic Chocolate Easter Eggs

2010-02-11T15:45:00.000-08:00

Easter is on its way. You can pre-order your organic chocolate easter eggs with Jasmine Greens.

$8.80 each for 130g organic milk chocolate egg
$8.80 each for 130g organic dark chocolate egg
$13.60 each for 200g organic milk chocolate bunny

Be quick, orders have to be in by Feb 21 - they'll be delivered to you closer to Easter.
email your order to jasminegreens@bigpond.com

help Calga stop the sand mine

2010-02-05T00:55:00.000-08:00

the more populated the world grows, the more impact we inevitably have on the environment. i've spent the past couple of days learning about Calga/Peats Ridge residents' concerns about a proposed new sand mine in their neighbourhood.

the mine, located on only 134 acres of classic Sydney sandstone country is expected to extract one sixth of Sydney's annual sand supply. it will do this by cutting 35 metres down into the sandstone and into the local aquifer that Calga and Peats Ridge residents say supplies up to 50% of the Central Coast's water supply.

it's amazing how such a small block of land wedged between Mooney Mooney and Brooklyn can potentially have such an enormous impact on the water supply for almost half a million people. in addition, the mine process involves crushing stone to extract sand.

the process is highly water intensive and creates invisible, but highly dangerous silica crystals, not found on beaches, where the sand's silica crystals are rounded, these silica crystals are sharp from the mechanical crushing process and can cause asthma and more significantly, silicosis, not dissimilar to asbestosis, when inhaled - there is no cure for this scarring of the lungs, that will occur from long-term exposure to the tiny silica crystals.

today i helped Scott Levi put some info on the ABC website about the mine and next week Scott will broadcast some of the interviews I've made with Calga residents and former Hawke government environment minister, Barry Cohen, who has a special connection to the area in question.

if you can make the time, simply log onto this website & ask NSW Planning Minister, Tony Kelly to stop the mine.

what a lovely bunch of bananas!

2010-02-02T19:38:00.000-08:00

Misha and Mandy gave us three banana tree suckers november before last - this is our first hand.

back to school

2010-02-01T04:28:00.000-08:00

back to school - to school for River for the first time - spent the day driving between swimming lessons, buying new school shoes for the boys and looking for good yellow things for Gully to use as props for his swimming carnival tomorrow.

he's in Pelis - their house colour is yellow. thankfully his goggles are yellow.

the Peli pennant i have in mind to make for such events will have to wait for the athletics carnival later this year.

just returned from a very long and informative p&c meeting with our new (temporary) principal... the meeting went for over 2 hours and was the most informative and interactive I've been to... have committed to putting 2 options to the next p&c for the purchase of new outdoor picnic benches for the playground.

River hates me calling it the playground... "there's no play equipment there mum! it's not a playground, don't call it that!" he says... maybe I can bring this up at the next p&c meeting.

life's a rollercoaster!

2010-01-30T03:14:00.000-08:00

five stitches in my leg and three broken ribs... not the best way to end a day celebrating Gully's 9th birthday, but there it is.

i had the brilliant idea to take 7 kids to Luna Park for the day to celebrate - i hadn't been to Luna Park since my best friend Martina's 12th birthday in 1984!

leaving home at 8am, we picked up kids along the way, and headed down the North Shore line to Milson's Point. Heidi, the mother of River's new bestest friend, Felix came with us. From the word go, the mood was hyped, kids were loud and boisterous on the train, jumping between seats and generally being excited.

upon arrival at Luna Park (already desperate for a bex, a cuppa and a good lie down), we were very relieved to find the last day of the school holidays was not too hot, a little overcast and not at all crowded at Luna Park - already charged with lollies the kids headed straight into the rotor the kids rolled, into the dodgems, up onto the wild mouse, onto the tango train, into Coney Island, out to the Pirate's revenge, though the hall of mirrors to the spider, rock'n'tug & the carousel for a bout of quiet time before rolling back into the rotor for almost another hour, until we were virtually kicked out of the Park at closing time.

with their 'go wild' all rides and many times as you like wrist bands, the kids were hard to keep track of, queuing up for rides I had no choice, but to join them as there was no way to drag them from the barricades.

for Gully, Luna Park was not entirely his cup of tea. he spent a lot of time watching his friends, choosing no to ride. in retrospect I think he would have preferred a lego construction party at home in peace and quiet. his friends on the other hand took full advantage of parent free time to test the boundaries of their own bravery and enjoy the huge surges of adrenalin.

Gully chose to ride the dodgems and to visit Coney Island, but after that, his guests ruled the show..

Benj and Shelly met us at Luna Park with delicious birthday cake in tow - a great end to fish and chips and beautiful gift.

fantale wrapper reading was my chosen activity for the train ride home, the boys decided they preferred making caves between the train seats and shooting at each other with their imaginary guns and checking communications with their souvenir Luna Park pencils. Generally causing as much havoc as they could.

Alex's quote of the day:

"I would read all the fantale wrappers if I could read!"

he gave it a go, but the long names and small font proved too much of a challenge.

exhausted, Heidi and I returned the kids to their respective homes close to 9pm. After putting my boys straight to bed and downing some delicious dumplings Charlie had waiting, I went to investigate our carpenter's progress on our new extension - only to end the day with the wildest ride yet - a 1 metre fall into the floor joists and onto the ground... the rest is a painful and slowly fading memory.

enough to say I have amazing neighbours, who came to assist in the middle of the night and wonderful friends and family helping me still x

new jasminegreens website

2010-01-25T18:37:00.000-08:00

School starts back this week and so will our collective shopping group.

Join today & email your orders from the website.

levitating

2009-11-24T17:49:00.000-08:00

our house is levitating!

when we bought it

after re-cladding

this week

we're re-piering and have raised it just under a metre from the ground. doesn't sound like much, until you add the height of the house and suddenly it looks quite strange. the base of the kitchen door has gone from one step above ground level to the top of our recycling bin. the new height has certainly added a lift to the street and to our little cottage. it's been stopping traffic as people check it out.

built in 1926, probably as a fisherman's cottage, the original building was one room. since then the living room and verandah have been added, later again, the kitchen and dining room were added. the roof, which originally would have run north/south blew off in a big storm in the 1980's and it's had a funny flat roof ever since.

the main bedroom is what would have been the original house, you can tell by the lovely old floor boards and the front door with the bell on it. you can also tell by the position of the old steps on the north side of the building. the room faces north and i think our house was one of the first to be built in the street, the boy's window is really big and faces due north, which once would have had a beautiful view to the bay, now the room with a view, as i love to refer to it, has a great north facing view to our neighbour's wall. as time has gone on and land has been subdivided, our house has shifted it's frontage west to address the street.

when we bought it we took off plastic cladding and discovered old weatherboard cladding below. charlie had the profile of the cladding copied and we've re-clad the house in the wide weatherboard. we also discovered old doors with coloured glass in them that had been wallpapered shut and we uncovered the closed in verandah to discover the lovely old wooden posts.

we'll be adding a new bedroom and a back deck to the house in the next few weeks. we'll also be reinstating the front door to its original position. more face lifts for an old shack. i'll keep you posted.

first summer harvest

2009-11-23T02:53:00.000-08:00

cos lettuce in flower

My vege patch was looking a little under the weather today, so after over a month of not watering it, I caved in this evening. Yesterday was supremely hot and a few of my plants look dead. Our vege patch has been a very consuming project over the past two years. Charlie has built a huge cage to protect the plants from the alpha male bush (brush) turkey who has made his mound in our neighbour's yard. This is his third nesting season with us and we find ourselves extending garden protection defences every year to guard our precious plants from his obsessive raking of leaves and mulch and digging for sweet roots and worms. I spotted a baby turkey in our garden last week and I hope this means papa turkey will stop this season's raking soon.

The grass is growing high against the chicken wire enclosure and it's going to seed, making the garden look really quite messy. I'm not looking forward to the grass weeding, but I have to get into it soon. The diversity of edible plants, my ad-hoc version of companion planting, is working though and my veges are thriving. Zucchinis, cucumbers, pumpkins, lettuce, cherry tomatoes, parsley, rocket and bok choy have all re-seeded from last year's crops. This spring I harvested my very first purple artichokes, baby carrots and spanish onions! I have corn on the way and my leeks are getting really big! This morning River and I ate about 10 strawberries and the blueberries are starting to fruit too.

french purple artichoke flowering like an edible waratah

the heat has woken our resident diamond python

mother duck and ducklings waiting for their breakfast

bootleg mystic spunk rat

2009-11-19T02:22:00.000-08:00

I've bought a new bicycle at last!!! Of course it's Italian and of course in my eccentric way, it has no gears, it's a 'fixie flip-flop' - so after over 10 years of not having a bike and spending years rowing to my home in a place where there was nowhere to ride a bike, I have bought the toughest bike I could, especially considering I live at the bottom of a HUGE hill and I'm really unfit. That's right, NO gears. Well, perhaps I exaggerate. I can ride with a spanner in tow and change the gear by removing the back wheel and turning it over to use the other sprocket for a lighter gear to head up hill. The likelihood of me doing so is low, but I still love having the option and I harbour a little dream that I will soon be fit enough to ride my 'fixie' sprocket all the time, without the 'freewheel' sprocket I am using now.

BUT it's beautiful to ride! It's smooth and light and inspiring. And it has a blue chain to match its blue handlebars. Sadly I've had a few teething problems with the shop I bought it from, but I'm hoping to sort that out amicably because I want a good, long lasting relationship with them. I brought my 'spunk rat' home today on the train from Central to Woy Woy and then squeezed it into the back of our tiny Fiat Punto - yes, there is an Italo theme going on here.

On the train my bike inspired a friendly conversation with another passenger. I had squeezed the bike into the carriage so I could sit, it was not peak hour, though at Hornsby we picked up a bunch of school kids on their way home. The sweet lad was impressed I had travelled so far to get my bike and told me of his cousin and his cousin's girlfriend who had funky tricked up BMX's. The girlfriend had a pink chain and even pink brake wires... with a black frame... it's apparently such a cool BMX her boyfriend wants it.

My first bike was a clunky fold-up I was given for my 8th birthday. I learnt to ride in Centennial Park and to this day remember the spot where I first rode on the grass without training wheels. River, my 5 year old son graduated from training wheels a few months ago when he was still 4.

Within 3 months of my 8th birthday, I was in Rome with my parents, purchasing my second bike, a Bianchi silver 10 speed! My parents and I proceeded to cycle from Roma, to Firenze, Siena, south to Napoli, Sicilia and then over the Mediterranean by boat to cycle through the Peleponese, the Greek islands ... Rhodos, Cyprus, the birth place of my maternal grandfather, Irsael, Jerusalem, the Gulf of Eilat and back again to Firenze for my 9th birthday.

My last bike was a gift birthday gift from my dearest friends and built by one of them. Sadly it was stolen.

I love Italy and I love to ride and I hope my new toy will bring both loves together. You never know - you might bump into me huffing up Ward's Hill Rd, puffing in Italian some time soon.

inspiration

2009-11-17T01:22:00.000-08:00

inspired by the lovely hazy jane, i have finally taken the plunge and begun this blog - in part it is a legacy to my cafe, jasmine greens, that grew from a dream into a thriving organic eatery with a great following, live jazz on sundays and some of the best coffee and french toast to be found on the coast! i closed jasmine greens in may '08 exhausted and ready for new adventures - emma had suggested I start a blog for the cafe way back in '07, but i just couldn't find the time to understand how to set one up. in retrospect a jasmine greens blog would have been a great way to share recipes and new stock alerts with my customers. emma and jasper came to lunch today and set me up. it is my intention to use this blog to post recipes, thoughts on slow food and even to establish a sustainable community shopping group. i will also use the blog to post memories of the three month adventure through indochina my family and i embarked on in december '08, and more, as life's roller coaster progresses.

jasmine greens sunday lunch, umina, 2007

in the apatu mountains, laos, february '09

2009-11-16T21:45:00.000-08:00

perched near the peak of the mountain, we stopped to take in some fresh air and decide where to eat and sleep. the air was cool and misty. it was about 5 in the evening and girls were washing their long hair on the street, using drums filled by hose with cold water. this house looked grand in a tiny town where the main economic activity seemed to be making grass brooms. the mountains were so steep there seemed to be nowhere to grow food or raise stock. chickens and pigs roamed the street and steep mud tracks led to plantations of pineapples and tea in impossibly hard to reach terraces on the mountain.