No wonder it’s stayed in cultures around the world for thousands of years, it’s delicious. And what a beautiful golden colour!

I don’t know about you, but when I’m not drinking coffee I do love a good turmeric latte! This plastic-free July, I decided to experiment with making my own from the garden.

Especially in winter for subtropical Australia, now is the time to be digging up your turmeric in the garden. You’ll know it’s ready when the leaves are starting to die off.

Without further ado, here’s how to make your own homegrown turmeric latte:

Ingredients:

• A root of turmeric
• A bit of ginger
• Milk/mylk of your choice (homemade or bought)
• Honey/stevia/maple syrup/preferred sweetener
• Cinnamon/any other spices you like

(As you can see, I’m a big lazy with the quantities. I just go with what looks & smells right.)

Method:

1. Grate turmeric and ginger into a mug
2. Heat up your milk/mylk and pour it in
3. Add a dash of something sweet
4. Sprinkle a bit of cinnamon – yum!

It’s that easy! This way, there’s no need for packaged turmeric mixes.

I find that the fresh ingredients are so much stronger – and are much healthy microbiotically.

What’s your favourite DIY recipe for a hot drink in winter?

To learn more about growing a permaculture gardening simply and easily, check out our course The Incredible Edible Garden and learn how to design your own permaculture landscape in our Permaculture Design Course.

Hi! Welcome back to my garden, it’s Morag Gamble from Our Permaculture Life and the Permaculture Education Institute. And it’s almost the end of plastic free July.

 And every day, we’ve been talking about a different way that we can

actually get rid of single-use plastics in our life. And one of the things that often comes into our home are packages and even packages of healthy foods and beverages.

So I wanted to talk about Turmeric, because Turmeric is something that I absolutely love to have in so many dishes. But also I’ve been really enjoying it, particularly at this time. Well, it’s winter here, Turmeric Lattes. So I spoke earlier in one of the previous sessions, and I’ll put a link below about how to make your own milk from either sort of nuts or seeds. And you can blend that with your own Turmeric that you get from your garden. So it’s the best time to be digging up Turmeric as well. You can come out and get sections of Turmeric, wash that off and just grate that or pound it into your drink and you can get some ginger as well. Some just fresh ginger, so ginger Turmeric some kind of seed, or nut milk that you make yourself.

Maybe a little sloop of honey, and if you’ve got a sprinkle of cinnamon it’s absolutely delicious. So you know, lots of things we can grow in our own garden, and make ourselves and just simply by shifting a little bit about what we’re doing. Get rid of so many single-use plastics.

So join me tomorrow for the last plastic free July tip in this whole series, and don’t forget though you can always check them out. I’ve got all of them put up onto youtube. You can go and check out all of the different ones there. So I’ll put the recipe below for my Turmeric Chai Latte, and if you’ve got another recipe too that you use for making beautiful wintry drinks out of fresh Turmeric. Pop them down below and share them as well. That would be fantastic! All right, I’ll catch you tomorrow for the last day of plastic free July, bye!

The post Make your own Turmeric Latte appeared first on Our Permaculture Life.

We got this robust second-hand heavy-duty juicer and we can now make whatever kind of nut butter mixes we want, and puree whatever surplus fruits we’ve frozen from our garden as ‘ice-cream’. Yumm!

Feel free to share and add your suggestions too.

To learn more about growing a permaculture gardening simply and easily, check out our course The Incredible Edible Garden and learn how to design your own permaculture landscape in our Permaculture Design Course.

Hi! Welcome back, it’s Morag Gamble from Our Permaculture Life and the Permaculture Education Institute. And this series of lives is all about plastic free July and ways that we can simply within our home and our daily life. Actually think about ways that we can get rid of the single-use plastic but not just about the plastic, it’s about how those things then kind of ripple into other parts of our lives. Or how that influences the type of foods we eat or that we share with our family. Or the types of appliances that we use, and how we fix and make things. And so, it’s kind of like a portal to talk about a whole lot of different things, which are a lot of the values. Which are kind of embedded within the whole Permaculture way of thinking, the Permaculture way of life and Permaculture designing for our garden as well. 

So what I wanted to talk about today, was actually some of the things that we make at home. Things that the kids really like. So one of our most popular things is a cut, it’s some kind of nut butter to put on the beautiful bread that gets baked here within the eco village. And so, our kids really like peanut butter but I really don’t like buying the plastic peanut butter with the sugar and the oil, and all those sorts of things. I actually really like just plain straight peanut butter, that comes straight from peanuts, nothing else. So there, our local coop does do the peanut crushing on spot. But we also decided to invest in a champion juicer and not a brand new one, a second-hand one. So we looked on gumtree and then we actually even found someone here in our local neighborhood who was wanting to get rid of one. So this thing is so heavy it’s really substantial and you can make all sorts of things with this. So these have really powerful motors and can chomp through you know fantastic things and make paste. So anything to do with nut butters, these are great. So you just feed the nuts through the bottom and out they come out the other side. You just put them through, so you can make a mix. You could do your own almond macadamia, sunflower chia hemp seed peanuts, whatever you want to put in it. Whatever diversity or combination which I think is just brilliant! So it does that another thing. So that kind of deals with ours and then we can use our own jars and whatever nuts we can find the most localized sources and be in control of that. Which is another thing that I really like about this approach, is you can kind of determine what it is.

What are the ingredients you can make those ethical choices yourself, and find ways to do it cheaply as well. 

So ice cream is something that our kids like, and you know most kids do. But I really don’t like one, buying the plastic contained tubs of ice cream as well as the what’s in the ice cream inside as well. So we have some bananas growing, and whenever you get banana season there’s always a surplus. So we freeze them, and then simply by putting the bananas through this makes the most beautiful ice cream you can ever imagine. It’s not cream, it’s just fruit pulp. So if you’ve got some dried mango or whatever fruit it is you’ve got, you can pop it through at the same time. And it comes out beautiful, and so you can just put it straight into a bowl with a spoon. So there’s no waste at all. So you can pick up one of these ones second hand, and an old one is absolutely fine because they last forever. I think we got this for a hundred dollars, which is way cheaper than some of the rubbish plastic things that break within 12 months. So it’s actually that idea too, of picking appliances that you know going to last and that can be repaired. So this thing must be 20 years old at least and it’s still going strong. And I know that if something happens with it, I can take it up to our local fix-it cafe. And the people who are there will be absolutely fine, to be able to do some work on this. And so, there’s lots of things embedded within this whole conversation that I’m sharing with you around is sort of the plastic free July. And I really encourage you to think about what are some of the things that you just commonly use in and around your daily life that you could just tweak a little bit. And so many things could ripple out from that.

So join me again tomorrow for another live, either here in my deck or somewhere in the house or garden. Talking about a simple tip to try and get rid of some of those plastics, that kind of litter our lives and litter our world.

The post DIY Nut butter and ice-cream with Morag Gamble appeared first on Our Permaculture Life.

Many supermarkets do take soft plastics now and recycle them, but most plastics never reach these collection points, and like I’ve said before – refusing first, and reusing is a better option than recycling. Best is choosing naked bread – homemade or from a bakery.

Take your own bag and enjoy gorgeous ‘real’ bread.

To learn more about growing a permaculture garden simply and easily, check out our course The Incredible Edible Garden and learn how to design your own permaculture landscape in our Permaculture Design Course.

Transcript:

Hi! Welcome back it’s Morag Gamble from Permaculture Life and the Permaculture Education Institute and every day live at a four o’clock. Talking about some other way that you can get rid of single-use plastics in your life. 

And we’ve talked every day since the 1st of July about some different kind of tip, and one of the things that I find often brings single-use plastic into our homes. It’s things like bread packaging. So every single loaf of bread is now covered in plastic packaging and has those dreadful little clips on them. So you may find ways that you can reuse those which are great. But if there’s a way that you could actually bypass having that plastic bag in the first place, that’s even better. So I’ve always source out well, there’s obviously two ways that you could do that. One is to start baking your own bread or sauce bread from a bakery that you can actually take your own packaging from. So I’m living in a place called Crystal Waters Eco Village, which is a Permaculture Village in Southeast

Queensland. And one of the wonderful things about this place is that there’s a village green. And every Saturday morning the Baker has beautiful bread. So they would find sourdough organic breads, and they have things like five seeds and olive Infanta breads. And so all I need to do is take down a little bag, and I can get all the breads I want and bring them back. And then I just wash it out and use it again, or actually just store the breads in these all week, it’s fantastic! 

So I’m sure there’s a bakery not far from you that you could maybe do something similar with. Or even some of those standard bakeries that are around and just if you choose not to have it a sliced bread. You can quite possibly just take the loaf and stick it in your basket or a bag that you take along, and then you can come home. And as long as you’ve got a good quality bread knife,it’s really easy to either get sort of thin slices or thick slices. And that way, you can really get away from having all of those plastic bags that come with your breads. And the quality of the bread is often much better you know. So for my kids, for example, they would only need to say one slice of this to maybe two or three of the other really soft breads. So you also get into making your own, I know there’s everything from bread makers too. But you know, this whole idea of actually cooking up sourdough bread is just a wonderful thing. It’s getting back into that culture of food because it is a cultured food. And it’s about really embracing slow foods and cooking from scratch in so many different ways. Whether it be from bread to your cheese, to your pestos, to your tomato sauces. For your pastures whatever it might be then, cooking from scratch really helps you not only to get really great food but often sourcing local food. Either from your garden or from your local farmers’ market. And then doing it in a way that requires you do not have to engage in the whole plastic world. So join me again tomorrow, we’ll explore another plastic-free tip. Either inside my home or out in my garden. And check out the links below too, of some of the things that I’ve got there. About what is permaculture and ways you could learn more about actually embracing a permaculture life.

The post Package-free Bread! appeared first on Our Permaculture Life.

Knowing how to do this is pretty liberating – especially knowing that you can use any dried legume on your shelf. Enjoy and please share freely.

To learn more about growing a permaculture garden simply and easily, check out our course The Incredible Edible Garden and learn how to design your own permaculture landscape in our Permaculture Design Course.

Transcript:

Hi! Welcome back to another live about ways that we can reduce plastic. It’s plastic free July. Hi! I’m Morag Gamble, from our Permaculture Life and the Permaculture Education Institute. 

Now every day in my garden or in my home, I’m talking about some simple way that we can actually really get rid of some of those single-use plastics that enter in our lives, and some of the things that we find challenging. So today I’m responding to a question that someone sent in, about what do you do about vegetarian proteins? They rely on things like tempeh and tofu they were saying, and just find it really hard to get rid of those plastic wrapped tofu blocks. Now what else can you do? Well, there’s a whole lot of things you can do and it’s surprisingly easy to make tofu at home. And particularly tofu that you know, not a serious soy-based one as well. So I’ve got one here that I wanted to tell you about how to make it. I can’t really do that in five minutes, not make it and show you. I might make a separate film about it, but I’ll describe it and I’ll show you what it looks like. So this is chickpea tofu, and it was the most simplest thing whatsoever. Now, believe it or not, you can actually use many of the beans that you would have in your own pantry. You can use any sort of cannellini bean, you can use even some of those darker beans as well. But they make a tofu look quite different that way. So anyway what did I do, I soaked the chickpeas overnight.  Then, in the morning I cook them up for just 20 minutes until they’re worse off. And then I put them into a blender with some water and made a milk a little bit like when I made that, then that milk. So I just made it into a slurry and then poured that slurry into a cheesecloth or a cheese bag. Now, normally I have this beautiful organic cheesecloth that I put everything through. But I’ve hardly been out in this pandemic time and most of my cheesecloth is kind of finished. So I went outside, and I found one of those bags that you put around fruits to stop fruit fly coming, you know. And I thought, well that looks pretty good. So I’ve used one of those, I poured the jug of blended up chickpeas and water through this. And collected the liquid below and squeezed, and squeezed and squeezed. Until all the liquid was out, and I was left with this pulp here. Which is basically just the chickpea pulp and then the liquid that came out. Is what I then put into a saucepan, and just boiled that up for about 15 minutes. Stirring every now and then, until it became kind of like a custard consistency. Now you don’t have to throw this away, although because it’s a raw product. 

So it’s really just soaked and ground-up chickpeas you really need to cook this before you can eat it. So you can add it into a stir fry, you could mix it in with something, like a chickpea patty. A veggie burger type of thing. You can add it into baking cakes, or muffins or biscuits. So this is a really valuable product, a high-protein product. So don’t chuck it. You know, I’ve actually seen a number of recipes for these sorts of things. Where you say, you know just throw this part away. No, this is really useful and valuable food as well. So it’s going to put that aside now because that’s not the bit that we’re talking about. So the liquid that I drained off through the bag went into the bowl. I put that into a saucepan, boiled it up for about 15 minutes. Until it became kind of goopy and you may need to do it a little bit longer depending on how much liquid you put in. But it just kind of starts to come together like I said, a custard consistency and then well it’s like that. So when you put your spoon in and it comes up and just sort of sticks a bit, peaks a bit on it then I pour it into a mold. Now you don’t need any special mold, this was just a kind of a glass jar I had in the cupboard. You could put it into a bowl, whatever you can find nothing fancy required for this. And you might have noticed there was nothing else I added that was just chickpeas and water. Nothing else that’s it, and then you also might have noticed that I had a bit of a nibble beforehand so excuse the haggard look on that. So I’m just gonna see if I can put the plate on that. And release it, beautiful! And there it is chickpea tofu. There must be a name for that I’m sure there is anyway. And then you can slice it like you would a tofu, and you can use it for all sorts of things that you would like. Look at that, that’s wonderful! So you can eat it just like that, or you can cook it up or you can mix it with all sorts of things. And so like most tofus, it doesn’t really have much of a flavor in and of itself. But once you add it to cooking, then it certainly does. Now you could also get quite fancy with this and start to add other things in with your mix. 

Like I said, it was just chickpeas and water. You might like to add different sorts of spices in with this as well. And maybe, even a blend of different sorts of beans and peas and all sorts of things. There’s no limit to your creativity and what this means it’s you never have to buy one of those little packages of tofu again. Which you know, if you’re looking for the organic ones they can be quite expensive as well. And this literally took me, you know soak the beans, cook them up. You know, like soaking it, it doesn’t take any effort. You just put the water in a jar with the beans in it and leave it overnight. In the morning, stick it on the stove and it can do its thing until they’re cooked. And then all it requires is just to watch a little bit during 15 minutes, that’s it. So it’s super easy, these things aren’t really that fussy at all. So I hope you’ve enjoyed that, and maybe see as much as I do that this is a liberating thing when you discovered this. When I first discovered this, I just couldn’t believe it. So I hope you give it a try, I will make a full film showing the whole process at some point. But I’m sure if you google chickpea tofu, you’ll find other ways to do it to other films. I mean, that will show you the process – you need a bit more help, all right? Well down below I’ve got a couple of links to my youtube channel and my blog. There’s over 400 articles there recipes all sorts of things to help you in a simple life as well. Well over 150 films and also some links there too to my online permaculture course. The introduction went to permaculture gardening, one the incredible edible garden and the permaculture educators program. If you’re looking for something that’s actually going to give you an opportunity to take, permaculture maybe, make it not only in life but your livelihood too. 

So it includes the permaculture design course, permaculture teachers course. As well as some business modules, and put a link to my four part series, about permaculture, that’s a free series that you’re very welcome to watch. And make sure that you share this link, because I really want everyone to know about how easy it is to make your own homemade tofu. With any kind of beans that you’ve got in your cupboard. All right, take care, stay safe and I’ll catch you tomorrow. Bye!

The post How To Make Your Own Tofu with Chickpeas appeared first on Our Permaculture Life.

The post Three easy winter greens to grow in your garden appeared first on Our Permaculture Life.

‘Eggy bake’ is a common meal in our house and one of our all-time favorites – named by the kids.

Eggy bake – this version with grated cheese on top from local cheesery. Typically we eat it plain. Rarely we have leftovers.

 

Another household favourite is pumpkin soup (veggie soup really) using all freshly harvested vegetables – pumpkin, Choko, potato, herbs, turmeric, ginger, garlic chives, mustard spinach, and many other veggies and greens we find.

 

I think our 4yo will discover one day that usually pumpkin soup is orange, not green, but both these meals are great ways to get him to enjoy lots of freshly-plucked organic greens.

 

Weeping rosemary hanging over the terrace wall gets plucked for most meals.

Anyway, I started typing up a recipe for the book I am working on, The Good Life Guide and realized that this meal was far more than the recipe could communicate. A simplicity of just listing the recipe ingredients and steps seemed somehow to diminish the inherent qualities of the food.

 

Tulsi leaves and seeds also end up in most salads, soups, curries, and bakes.

 

 For me it is the rich tapestry of connections that are cultivated through this food that brings it’s true quality to light – the connections with the seasons, with our local environment, with the soil, with neighbors, with friends, with each other in our family, with our play, with our home education, and our workplace.

 

Garlic chives and their flowers have an amazingly powerful garlic flavour.

Here is my first attempt to describe the eggy-bake process…

 

1. Send the kids up to collect the eggs from the chook house we built using timber our neighbour harvested in his woodlot and a gift of reclaimed iron sheeting. We have an eclectic mix of rare breed chickens that the children look after. The eggs are all different shapes and sizes – but all have superbly orange yolks because they free-range often.

 

2. Wander around the garden with a handmade basket collecting a wonderful array of herbs, flowers, and leafy greens (and purples). I take a leaf from this and a leaf from that so I don’t harm the plant and can come back again day after day for more. It’s a peaceful way to garden and harvest.
   
   I collect things like soft pumpkin leaves and shoots, sweet potato leaves and shoots, mustard spinach, any brassica flowers, and soft flower stalks, many varieties of kale, welsh onion leaves, the bolting shoots from coriander/cilantro, tulsi leaves, garlic chives and garlic chive flowers, Brazilian spinach … there are so many things to collect, even pea leaves, bean leaves, beetroot leaves, young chia leaves, young amaranth leaves, weeds – chickweed, dandelion leaves. The more diverse the selection, the more diverse the nutrients in the food.

   The magnificent red mustard spinach is making its way into every meal in these cooler months.

   I love this time in the garden, watching the birds, noticing things – new shoots on trees, self-seeding veggies, subtle changes, and simple beauty. I think about what I can add to the garden to increase diversity or adapt to the changing season.

   Brassica flowers are a wonderful treat. I often snack on them in the garden.

   
   I notice where I need to add some more compost or mulch. The compost is made from the chicken bedding, and the Azolla we harvested by hand from the lake. The mulch is often chopped and drop materials, but we do also go and pick up some local bales of grass straw that another neighbour orders in bulk for us all to use. The kids love to ride in the trailer with the bales slowly back along the little internal road within the ecovillage with the wind in their hair, singing in the breeze,  watching for hawks and kangaroos.
   
   I could ask the kids to harvest the greens too because they know where all the great greens are at any moment – the garden is their playground – and sometimes I do, but I just love this time in the garden pottering for a few minutes.

 

There’s always a surprise somewhere in the garden.

 

3. Ask my children to whiz it all together in the food processor with a bit of fresh milk from the neighbour and handmade ricotta from another neighbour.

 

4. Cook it in a solar cooker (for a lunchtime meal) or a solar-powered electric oven (for dinner).

 

5. Duck out to the garden again just before the eggy bake is ready and collect some salad greens. I like to wrap little bits of eggy bake in a leaf.

   Fresh mixed salad with self-seeding tomatoes and lots of perennial greens, edible weeds and edible flowers.

    
6. Sometimes I go the extra bit and drizzle a salad with homemade dressing – shaking together a little organic olive oil made just down the valley (sourced from the local organic food store), with some homemade kombucha vinegar (using a SKOBY dropped off by a neighbour, a chopped up garlic clove hand-delivered from a friend in Tasmania (traded for limes), and some herbs and spices from the garden like rosemary, oregano, thyme, or chilli, ginger and lemongrass. Even simpler, I grab a lime, lemon, or grapefruit and squeeze it over the salad. Delicious just like that!

    

   Fresh greens, snowpeas. tomatoes, citrus and garlic

    

7. Ask the children to set the table. Often they gather a little posy of edible flowers and lemon myrtle leaves and make a beautiful arrangement.
8. Sit down together and enjoy, discussing the particular flavours and textures that we like in today’s version. You see, they are always different – and that’s the beauty of it too. 

 

It sounds quite complicated, but really it’s ultimately simple. All the ingredients are all just here around us, it’s seasonal, it connects us with our neighbours and friends, and our local environment,  we all help to make it happen, we all enjoy it immensely because of the heart and soul that we know has gone into every part.  And, from start to finish, cooking from scratch, it usually takes us around 30 minutes to prepare and cook as long as we keep it thin in the glass cooking trays.

 

Brazilian Spinach has leaves all year round for harvest.

This is slow food, but it’s not slow, quite rapid actually. With three children – two of them boys with huge appetites – preparing good food quickly seems to be the best approach, as well as getting them involved in the process.

 

Keep in mind too that I typically garden for about 10 minutes a day to maintain this garden – not a huge commitment, but an enormous benefit to our health and to the education of my children.

 

Some other reasons I love this way of cooking:

• this is community food
• it’s package free – the natural packaging of the eggs goes back to the soil. The milk comes in re-used bottles.
• it’s part of nutrient cycles in the garden and is waste-free
• it is so satisfying and just makes me smile so deeply when I sit down to share this meal

What’s a simple meal you cook from scratch?  What does it mean to you?

The post Good Food: Good Life: My recipe for simple eggy bake straight from the garden. appeared first on Our Permaculture Life.

I just discovered a neighbour of mine in this ecovillage has started making organic tempeh – free of GMOs.  I love tempeh and I have been meaning to make some for ages, but unfortunately it has only stayed on my wish list so far. I fell in love with it in Indonesia when I was teaching permaculture over there in 1999 (and the many times I returned), particularly the fresh local village made tempeh.

Tempeh is a good way to eat beans and grains because they usually lose a lot of their lectin and phytate contents in the fermentation process. I really enjoy it added to a big cook up of our homegrown veggies and spices.

The texture and taste of my neighbour’s tofu was amazing – not like the hard and sometimes slimy tempeh in supermarkets. I had thought that was OK (because really I wanted to like it), but now I know where to get the ‘real’ stuff, I’ll be putting in a standing order! Luckily I have lots of plants and food in my permaculture garden to trade with them.

What is tempeh?

Tempeh is typically made out of fermented soya beans but can also be made out of other things such as things such as mung beans and chickpeas, but also grains. Partially cooked whole soybeans are aged overnight in an incubator at a tropical temperature with a starter culture. During that time a thick, white mat of mycelia, a kind of fungus, covers the tempeh and this binds the beans together as a ‘cake’. 

A local fresh source …

Every Monday the tempeh maker and his family invite people over to their place for a falafel and baclava feast – a lovely opportunity for people in this community to get together informally and chat.

It was there a few days ago, that on the table I saw the tempeh they had prepared as a taste test.  My three year old son absolutely loved it and asked if I could get some for his kindy lunchbox. How could I resist such an earnest request?

I picked up a couple of blocks up today – it was still warm. Fresh tempeh! 

This is how I prepared it.

How to make simple and delicious tempeh – for meal protein, or a snack.

Ingredients: 

• Tempeh
• Cononut Oil
• Chilli
• Fresh Ginger Root
• Garlic

Method:

1. Slice tempeh into 4mm slices
2. Heat fry pan and add the following – 2 tablespoons of coconut oil, a sliced chilli, 5 mm ginger root – grated finely, a crushed and chopped clove of garlic, a sprinkle of himalayan salt.
3. When oil hot add the tempeh to the pan. 
4. When brown on one side, turn over and brown the other side

The freshly fermented tempeh.

Chopped and cooked with a 2 tablespoons of coconut oil, grated ginger, sliced chilli, crushed garlic, and a sprinkling of himalayan salt.

After a couple of minutes, they were brown on one side, so I gently turned them over for another minute or two before moving them to a towel to absorb the excess oil.

I laid it out ready for my family to come back home from their outing.

Then I realised that it didn’t quite looked enough, so I cooked up the other half.

… and in the few moments after they walked in the door, it was gone! Even my picky food critic son loved it – so it must be really good. Now I have to make some more at 6:30am so that little Monty can have some in his kindy lunchbox.

A goal of mine is to grow some grains and more legumes in my permaculture garden to make my own tempeh!!! I’ll let you know how I go when I get to this point, and I’d love to hear your experienced of making various sorts of tempeh.

The post My neighbour’s tempeh & a simple vegan recipe for delicious tempeh slices appeared first on Our Permaculture Life.

Pesto – more than basil
Pesto is usually associated with basil, and yes I agree, it’s a wonderful flavour, but you can also make pesto from all kinds of garden greens or better still, a wondrous blend.

Today in my foraging, I harvested three types of basil, parsley, rocket, welsh onions, society garlic, cranberry hibiscus and sorrel. I blended these together with some toasted ground sunflower seeds, the juice of a lime and some olive oil and created an amazingly simple, but superbly flavoured pesto that can be used for all kinds of things, such as:

• pasta (veggie spirals are great with this)
• bruschetta (it’s great on the organic wood-fired local sourdough bread)
• soup
• salad
• dip

Extend the harvest
Often when the basil is on, it’s on! Making pesto is a great way to appreciate this abundance. I typically make up a big batch, then freeze in an ice cube tray. It’s a great way to extend the basil harvest.

Super greens for the kids
Also, because you can include any number of leafy greens, it is actually a great way to get your kids to eat an enormous dose of very nourishing greens.

MY GARDEN PESTO RECIPE

Here’s what I use for a really lovely texture of smooth pesto. As you can see, it’s more of a ratio I am suggesting here rather than exact ingredients. There is huge flexibility in the types of greens. It varies soo widely between seasons and regions!

Ingredients

• 2 cups leaves from your garden (basil or mixed greens – garlic chives, welsh onion, rocket, parlsey, mizuna, kale, spinach, silverbeet, pumpkin, sorrel, cranberry hibiscus, Brazilian spinach, nasturtium, and ‘weeds’ too like chickweed … )

• 1 lime/lemon, juiced

• 1/4 cup raw or toasted ground seeds/nuts (I use a coffee grinder)

• 1/2 cup olive oil

• 1/3 cup parmesan

NB: The leaves and flowers of the garlic chives replace the garlic in typical pesto recipes. It tastes great!

Method

Basically I just toss all the ingredients into a food processor and buzz until smooth, then spatula it all into a mason jar. It’s important to tap it down to ensure there are no air bubbles in the mix (will oxidise/go brown where there are bubbles) and I top it off with a little oil to keep it fresh. I store this in the fridge for about a week or two, but it doesn’t usually last that long though.  If you want to store it longer, it’s a good idea to freeze it.

The post Morag Gamble’s super pesto recipe using simple garden greens (8 mins) appeared first on Our Permaculture Life.

Thank you and Merry Christmas to everyone who’s responded so positively to the writings and films I’ve been posting on Our Permaculture Life – on this Blog, on Youtube and Facebook,

After decades of ‘just doing it’, I was encouraged a year ago to start writing about our permaculture way of life and have received such amazing feedback both in person and online. It is so uplifting to know so many people are interested in living a simple &natural way of life.

I so enjoy receiving the comments you write, and participating in discussions about the various topics. I’d love your suggestions too (please fill in the v.quick survey below).

The ripple effect of our actions, our words, our thoughts – our work and the way we choose to live – is profound. It’s so important to be thinking about change – exploring the possibilities and taking positive, practical steps.

16 POPULAR POSTS FROM ‘OUR PERMACULTURE LIFE’

1. My Permaculture Garden – a 30 minute tour of my award-winning garden, plus list of species.
2. Morag’s Simple and Successful No Dig Garden Method – a step by step guide (film coming soon)
3. How to Make Comfrey Tea – a super easy natural homemade fertiliser
4. Worm Towers – a quick and easy way to turn food waste into garden fertiliser – without digging or turning. and Worm Tower Film Clip – a superbly simple way to put your foodsraps back in the soil
5. 7 Ways to Use All of Your Pumpkin Plant – simple abundance
6. City as Farm: City Dwellers Love to Grow Food – weaving food growing into the cities
7. Ingeniously Simple Idea to Harvest Compost Worms By 8 Year Old Boy – innovative thinking from my young home educated son.
8. Temporary permaculture for renters – 11 ideas for growing abundant food without owning land
9. Live simply: 14 Ways to Save Money and Avoid Debt – practical and common-sense advice
10. Save over $23,000 a Year and De-stress with a Few Simple Living Strategies
11. Five Easy Steps to Make Cheap Beeswax Wraps & Reduce Cling Wrap Use – make your own beeswax cloths in minutes for less than a dollar.
12. Five Simple Ways to Improve Your Soil – having great soil is the basis of healthy plants and food.
13. Did you know our clothes are poisoning us? More Reasons to Choose Simple Natural Fashion for Earth Care and People Care – it’s good to know the backstory to where many of our ‘things’ come from
14. 27,000 Trees A Day to Wipe Bottoms – What’s Your Wipe of Choice? – taking a closer look at a  very common household consumable
15. Why I Let My Young Children Leave School To Learn At Home… an introduction to the way I home educate my children
16. 9 Ways to Simply Use Chia: an easy ‘superfood’ to grow at home – great ways to grow and use chia, and some yummy recipes too.

PLEASE SEND YOUR SUGGESTIONS AND FEEDBACK

I’d love to get your feedback and suggestions about the topics you enjoy most and those you’d like me to write and film more about. Either leave a comment at the bottom of this post or click on this survey monkey link – it should take less than a minute to complete.

The post 16 Best Posts on Our Permaculture Life : Practical Simplicity for Everyday Life appeared first on Our Permaculture Life.

Amaranth is an amazing food – quite overlooked as a powerhouse. It’s simple to grow, simple to cook and super delicious.

Here’s seven good reasons to add it to your diet:

1. HIGH IRON: Did you know that one cup of cooked Amaranth grain (actually a seed*) can provide you with much of your daily iron needs? I was amazed when I read this.  Having been a vegetarian since early childhood, finding new ways to keep my iron levels up is always interesting news to me.
2. HIGH CALCIUM and Magnesium – also high in manganese, vitamins B and E, zinc and potassium.
3. HIGH PROTEIN: Amaranth is one of the most protein rich plant based foods. Its seed has 20% protein. 
4. HIGH LYSINE: Amaranth offers the highest source of vegetarian Lysine. Lysine, an amino acid, is a building block for protein, and it helps with calcium absorption and collagen production.
5. GLUTEN FREE: Amaranth is gluten free. It can be ground as a flour or cooked as a psuedograin.
6. HIGH FIBRE:  A diet high in fibre keeps the digestive system healthy
7. EASY AND FAST TO GROW: Did you know you can get up to 100,000 seeds from one plant!  Amaranth is super easy and fast to grow. It takes less than 30 days before harvesting small leaves and just 50 days to maturity. It can cope with heat and dry conditions a lot better than any other leafy green. It grows easily in many contexts and self-seeds readily. You can eat the young leaves, but older ones are best cooked and used like spinach. I add amaranth leaves to all sorts of meals – stir fries, soups, quiches, omelettes, frittata, curries etc. (Typically people have cooked amaranth leaves to reduce their oxalic acid content.

I love the look of amaranth in the garden – it’s flowers are amazing.

The post 7 Reasons to Grow and Eat Amaranth – A Simple Ancient Superfood appeared first on Our Permaculture Life.