Passion

I recently went to see Maggie Beer, our great South Australian icon, talk about good food for all, about everyone having access to fresh, home cooked, nutritious food.  Maggie's focus was on providing food that not only looks good, but tastes good, is fresh and nutritious for people in elderly or dementia care homes or receiving meals on wheels.  It was her passion for this that infected her audience and I'm sure inspired most to go home and research a little more on this topic, because let's face it, if we haven't got family or friends needing care, we may one day need it ourselves and the thought of spending my last years eating grey, tasteless mush doesn't fill me with much joy!
It was Maggie's passion for her subject that was so inspiring.  It got me thinking about my passions and what drives me.  In the description of my blog above I used the word passion to describe how I feel about gardening for my own culinary purposes and baking for my family.

Then my train of thought progressed to where this passion came from.  It probably amuses most of my family that I would describe myself as having a passion for any part of the kitchen, except for eating!  You see, I used to despise cooking.  Cooking and baking is something that chose me rather than I chose it as a focus for my current life.  It is my passion to put good, nutritious food into our bodies.  Food that has been grown in my garden without chemicals and cooked from scratch. 

I know what is in my food.  Again we had food withdrawn from our supermarket shelves this weekend due to a risk of contamination.  This isn't our first scare of contaminated food and I'm sure it won't be our last.  So it gives me satisfaction that I have been able to provide my family with some of our own fruit & veg from our garden.  It's passion in life that can drive what we do and bring us so much satisfaction.  It's not only the end result, a healthy home grown meal, but its the process in learning, trying, our thirst for knowledge that inspires us to continue to learn, keeps our drive and satisfies us.  Having a passion in life is so important, it gives us a sense of purpose and hopefully a little happiness that we are achieving something personal to us.  It delights me when I harvest from my garden,

but sometimes things don't grow as I had expected (I have no corn on my corn for a second year in a row!).  And once I have eaten a delicious meal cooked in my kitchen, from scratch with family and friends I couldn't be happier.
Love
Emma
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Pears

Growing and harvesting your own fruit and veg means living in harmony with the seasons.  It means that right now it is pear season at our place and we have been overwhelmed with hundreds of pears.

It's raining pears, well that's what you would think as you stepped outside and saw the carpet of pears that lay ahead of you.  With this gift of many pears comes some hard work.  I have spent many hours harvesting, peeling, cooking, sterilising jars, reading and researching recipes to make the most of this bumper crop. 

 

The pears were jarred in a light syrup and delicious.  In fact, my husband came down with a sore throat and this morning took the remedy of a gently cooked, perfectly soft but still firm, chilled pear to cool the infection roaring in his throat.  The smoothness of the chilled pear giving temporary relief.

Many pears have been frozen (I ran out of jars!).  There has been pears packed into lunch boxes with exclamations from the children 'not more pears'.  Recess was a slice of homemade pear and almond cake, delicious beyond words and there were many pears shared amongst friends.  The sheep were lucky to receive barrow loads of pears not deemed suitable for human consumption. 

Our free ranging chooks also got in on the feast as pears fall from heights I can't even reach on our tall ladder.  The worms in the worm farm are enjoying the pile of peel coming from our kitchen and the compost heap did not miss out.  I like to think of our glorious pear tree (yes, this abundance comes from one tree mainly) giving to us through the winter each time we open a new jar of pears in the light syrup, or take them from the freezer, when I shovel compost into the earth of our veggie garden in preparation for the next crop, as I pour the worm tea onto my tomato plants in the near future.  This cycle of the pear from fruit, to food, to fertiliser, to a new crop keeps me grounded in the cycle of life.  It's why we are here, to experience the seasons, to be part of this planet and give back to the earth, so that the earth can continue to give back to us.  We need to care for our families, our food, our soils and all these things will care for us.  How lucky we are to have such things to delight in . Let's not forget this cycle of life and maybe we can live more harmoniously on the earth.  All this philosophy from just one pear tree!
Emma
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Hello!

This is a blog about my home and garden.  I am a mum.  A mother of three young children and I have a passion for all of our futures.  I care about what we put in our mouths and where our food comes from.  Therefore this is a blog of passion about my garden, turning what I grow into delicious, healthful meals, about cooking and baking from scratch.  My blog is about slowing life down, about tending to our home grown fruit and veg, learning about what works and what doesn't, outside and in the kitchen.  I want to share with you some of my life, things that work for me and things that don't so we can learn together.

I have been growing vegetables for a few years, sometimes more successfully than others and I have found that sharing information has been my best support.  I hope to share with you the things that I learn and photographs from my home.

In my world it is currently summer, albeit a very mixed sort of summer with rain, cold evenings, interspersed with very hot days.  Its a summer where I have harvested pears before tomato's, where an unexpected few days of heavy rain caused squash end rot (squishy at the end) zucchini.  But with these surprises there has also been bountiful supplies of large juicy grapes, copious amounts of pears raining down from our pear tree and finally zucchinis that fill the children's bellies with zucchini slice at school for days on end.

I hope you enjoy sharing the exploits of my home, kitchen and garden.