Eating for free tonight

Monday is the day I go to the Gumnuts Permaculture group. A group of us dig, plant, harvest and reap the bounty of our hard work. Yes, gardening today was hard work.

We were digging out the last of the potatoes so it was forks apiece and get to it people. A milk crate full from the bed we thought was empty and the temp was in the low 30's. We also harvested the last of the cherry tomatoes, corn and started on the eggplants. I went harvesting in a Portuguese girl's idea of bliss....The Kale bed! Picked about a kilo of the greens and as I am the only one who eats the stuff, the others are quite happy for me to take as much as I want!

So potatoes and kale, where does that lead too;

Caldo Verde! The Portuguese king of soups!

3 tablespoons olive oil
1 large onion, chopped
6 cloves garlic, minced
2 whole dried red chillies
4 large potatoes, diced or sliced
6 cups cold water with vegetarian stock powder to taste
1 large bunch kale, chopped finely
fresh ground black pepper

Heat 2 tablespoons of the olive oil in a large saucepan over medium heat. Toss in the onion, garlic and dried red chillies and stir for 3 minutes. Add the potatoes and stir for another 3 minutes.Pour in the water and turn up the heat to bring to a boil.

Once boiling, reduce the heat again to medium and let the soup boil gently for 20 minutes.Remove the soup from the heat and take out the red chillies temporarily. If a creamier soup is desired, use a hand blender to roughly purée the vegetables, leaving just a few of the potato chunks unblended for taste and texture.

Alternately, use a potato masher to mash some of the potatoes into a coarse blend.Put the soup back on the stove and add the chillies back into the pot. Stir in the kale and resume boiling gently for about 10 minutes or until the kale is soft and wilted. Just before serving, stir in the salt and season with ground black pepper.

In my own garden

Things are looking tired and fed up of weeks of heat and no rain. The weather reports keep saying "chance of thunderstorms" but nothing eventuates. The good news is that all the boxes which I moved last week are thriving under the shade cloth. I really need start making the poly shade frames soon to protect the other areas.

Water

The Husband and I are really working hard at this one. We bucket all our shower and bath water into the washing machine to wash our clothes before it goes out to water my fruit trees. I now keep a bucket in the kitchen to collect all the misc water (washing hands, rinsing a glass, washing fruit etc) and this is used to again water plants. Our water bill for the whole of last year was $65 for a family of six. I am hoping to reduce this amount this year.

There have been a couple of disasters though; The Bogan Neighbours draining our pool (aka our 80 000 lt water storage facility) on NYE and a burst bathroom pipe a couple of weeks ago. It's enough to make a water frugal girl cry.

Dreams

No, no Freudian stuff happening here, just one hippy wannabe putting ink to paper so that the universe knows what she wants.

• A goat
• Chickens (You should see the list of "You must haves" in our Council!)
• More fruit trees; Peaches, plums, apricots, almonds and a walnut tree. What do you think my chances are in this 'blast everything' climate?
• Turn the salt water pool into a swimming pond. I haven't even begun to think of what the council will think of this one!

Well there you go Universe, work with me ok!