‘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.

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.

I am paying attention today because they are so cracked and sore, and because we made some lovely scrubs and salves yesterday at a workshop I held here in my garden (DIY Natural Health and Beauty Products) – just what my feet are calling for. These things can be made easily and cheaply.

Homemade mint sugar scrub – see below for instructions.

I knew my feet were in need of attention, but I recently bought a new pair of summer season shoes that seem to be ripping up my soles and aggravating the problem.  Back to closed shoes I think and a week of intensive care….

I’m going to take pictures every day and show you at the end of the week how well this has worked.

This is my three step process. It’s easy to do in the evening while I sit here and write, and catch up on emails.

1. Apple Cider Vinegar Soak

The warm vinegar soak softens the skin making it easier to remove the dead skin. I put in half a cup of vinegar into enough warm water to cover my feet and soaked them for 15 minutes.

2. Mint Sugar Scrub

This was the biggest hit of all at the DIY Natural Health and Beauty Products yesterday class I think. It immediately makes your hands and feet feel great, and it’s super easy. Immediately after the vinegar soak, while my heels are soft, I am using this scrub to help remove the dry skin and to soften, revive and nourish too.

• 2 tbsp coconut oil
• 2 tbsp raw sugar
• 6 leaves chopped mint
• zest of half a grapefruit (optional)

Soften the coconut oil if solid (I put the coconut oil in a bowl, then place this bowl in hot water till softened), then mix in the other ingredients. Store the scrub in a sealed jar/tin in the fridge and soften just before use.

NB: Make sure you don’t add the sugar to hot oil otherwise it will melt and not be a scrub, and don’t soften later in hot water either.

Collecting fresh ingredients from my garden for making herb oils for homemade beauty products.

3. Herb Beeswax Salve

• 1/2 cup olive oil infused with comfrey, chickweed and calendula infused oil. (see my previous post on how to make a simple cold infused herbal oil http://our-permaculture-life.blogspot.com.au/2015/11/making-comfrey-oil.html)
• 1/4 cup coconut oil
• 1/4 cup pure beeswax
• 2 tbsp cocoa butter

1. On a double boiler (or with a ceramic bowl over boiling water), gently melt the beeswax, coconut oil and cocoa butter.  
2. When fully blended remove from heat and allow to cool.
3. When still runny, but warm (not hot) add the herb infused oil.
4. Pour into jars or tins and allow to cool and solidify.

I’ll be repeating this every night for the next few days and going to bed with more salve and bed socks.

These are the things we made in the workshop. Everyone went home with a collection of herb oil, healing salve, hand and face cream and lip balm.

At the end our our day together, this was our board of things we covered.

The last two workshops for the year are:

• The Simple and Abundant Garden on 29 October 
• Harvest to Table on Saturday 12 November. 

There are still places on both of the these if you’d like to come and spend a day in my garden with me learning and creating. We have fun, learn a lot from each other and eat deliciously healthy food!

Workshop participants collecting herbs and flowers in my garden yesterday to make the products. The lovely ladies at the DIY Natural Health and Beauty Products workshop yesterday putting their hand and face cream in jars.

The post Three Simple & Natural Cracked Feet Treats appeared first on Our Permaculture Life.

This 9 minute film (click link below to watch) shows how to simply make a super delicious cold remedy from easy-to-grow plants in the garden.  I love that my medicine cabinet is in my kitchen garden surrounding my house and that I can just go outside and pluck fresh herbs and leaves with superb vitality to help sooth a cough and cold when I need it for me and my family.

There are so many great herbs to use in each climatic region.   Here at this time of year, some great ones are:

1. lemon myrtle
2. peppermint
3. menthol mint
4. oregano
5. sacred basil
6. turmeric
7. ginger

Today, I also added organic cinnamon and some raw honey to the blend – mmmm ….delicious and very soothing. Just what I need right now.

I’ve written about the brew I made yesterday and listed a few additional plants – lemon, orange peel, lemon balm, thyme. Each brew I make is slightly different which keeps it interesting.

What is your favourite cold remedy from your garden?

[DISCLAIMER: I am not a doctor or natural therapist. The information in this blog post and the associated film is based on personal research, conversations with lots of knowledgeable people, and years of experimenting. Please make up your own mind about whether you think it is useful.]

The post My Medicinal Garden: 7 Super Plants For A Delicious Common Cold Remedy – Film #13 (9 mins) appeared first on Our Permaculture Life.

I brew up a delicious tea from these things and sip it throughout the day.  I find it helps so much.

Today’s ingredients: Raw Turmeric, Raw Ginger, Lemon Myrtle, Sacred Basil, Lemon and Raw Honey

I put the leaves and roots all in together for a gentle simmer (not the honey).

After about 15 minutes, I strain this into my jar (a coffee filter fits perfectly!!)

I like to use these jars because I can put a lid on it and come back later.

I stir in a spoonful of raw honey when the temperature has cooled little. Heating raw honey destroys many of it’s wonderful properties.

THE FIVE PLANTS IN TODAY’S BREW…

Lemon 

Lemon Myrtle 

Sacred Basil / Tulsi

Ginger

Turmeric 

Raw honey

Tomorrow I will try another brew and add these things too:

Orange peel 

Lemon Balm / Melissa

Peppermint 

Thyme 

Oregano 

The post Home Grown Medicine: 10 Common Medicinal Plants I Use As A Natural Cold Remedy appeared first on Our Permaculture Life.

True Dandelion (Taraxacum officinale) – a familiar plant in our everyday landscapes – typically overlooked as a source of great food and medicine.

Of the dandelion family (also known as False Dandelion) is Cat’s Ear (Hypochoeris radicata). It is a familiar plant in my landscape. It has a blander taste than true dandelion and tends to be less bitter – young leaves are less fibrous. The leaves are also edible – raw or cooked. The root can also be roasted as a coffee substitute. Not good for horses to consume too much.

WHY EAT DANDELION GREENS?

• Dandelion greens are rich in antioxidants which prevent free-radical damage to cells, and are high in:
• Vitamin K (building strong bones, preventing heart disease)
• Vitamin A (healthy teeth, bones, mucus membranes, skin and eyes)
• Iron (essential for producing red blood cells and transferring oxygen from the lungs to your body)
• Fibre (helps body shed waste)
• Potassium (to help regulate heart rate and blood pressure)
• Also vitamins C and B6, thiamin, riboflavin, calcium, folate, magnesium, phosphorus, and copper.

USING OTHER PARTS

The post Three Great Uses For Dandelion Leaves – Wild Harvest this Edible Weed in Springtime appeared first on Our Permaculture Life.

Eat your colours and your greens!

In my latest film: Edible Flowers (11 mins) I take you for a wander through my award-winning permaculture garden to show you what edible flowers are growing this winter including vegetable flowers, herbs flowers, legume flowers, fruit flowers and native flowers.

Flowers add taste, colour and nutrition and many have medicinal qualities too.

Gourmet restaurants offer edible flowers (at quite a price – I heard 30 cents/rocket flower). At home it is easy to grow a garden full of these gourmet ingredients and eat well every day.

Allowing many of your vegetables to go to seed gives you a chance to make the most of each plant – from root to tip, and also to integrate these abundantly flowering plants as a key part of the diversity and pest management strategies of your sustainable garden.

Some of the flowers included in this film are:

• Pick your flowers in the morning when their water content is at its highest.
• Remove the stamens and styles from the flowers before eating. The pollen can detract from the flavor of the flower. In addition, the pollen may cause an allergic reaction in some individuals. 
• Remove the sepals of all flowers like violas and pansies.

• Only the petals of some flowers such as rose, calendula, tulip, chrysanthemum, yucca, and lavender are edible. 
• Flowers such as violet, runner bean and clover can be eaten in their entirety.
• Roses, dianthus, daisies, marigolds and chrysanthemums have a bitter white part at the base of the petal where it was connected to the flower. Cut off the bitter part before using.

Allowing many of your vegetables to go to seed gives you a chance to make the most of each plant – from root to tip, and also to integrate these abundantly flowering plants as a key part of the diversity and pest management strategies of a sustainable garden.

The post Edible Flowers – Eat Your Greens As Well As Your Colours! appeared first on Our Permaculture Life.

I filmed my talk about Incredible Edibles at the Kitchen Garden Stage of the incredibly popular Queensland Garden Expo on July 10. In this talk, I share my passion for and knowledge about some of my favourite plants and strategies. The plants I talk about here are also very helpful for verge gardeners, small-space gardeners, and community gardeners.

Congratulations and thank you to all the volunteers who set up the WONDERFUL edible demonstration gardens at the Expo with the verge garden theme – a huge effort!! It was great to ramble through it with Costa Georgiadis, Jerry Coleby-Williams and chat with old and new friends.

This recording is 42 mins.

FILMING NOTE: This is the first time I have tried to film my own talk (I usually have a helper) and of course, I forgot about the camera. At one stage I moved too close – oops – half a head.  A few minutes later I realise and move back again – please excuse this!

Take a look at my other short films:

In my award-winning garden, Crystal Waters Permaculture Village.

Film #2: Our Permaculture Life: Community Permaculture Garden (9 mins 30 secs)


At the Yandina Community Gardens – I’ll be teaching a Permaculture course there each Friday from 23 September.

In my award-winning garden, Crystal Waters Permaculture Village

The post Film #4: Incredible Edibles Talk with Morag Gamble at the QLD Garden Expo appeared first on Our Permaculture Life.

I had been using the paper roll method for years (and a similar version made of wood), but last weekend I came across another method – the origami pot. I like it too because it creates slightly larger pots that are great for cuttings.

I often run permaculture workshops for children. In one of these I show them how to make the pots, how to collect, plant and care for seeds, and how to take cuttings from herbs and perennial plants – great food-growing skills for us all to have.

These little origami pots were in the kids corner at the Small Farmers tent at the Maleny Show last weekend where I spoke about permaculture design thinking. After packing up, I couldn’t resist stopping and making a few to take home for my kids.

The origami pots I brought home from the Maleny show with lettuce and parsley seedlings.

Here’s how to make both the roll and the origami pot…

METHOD 1: THE PAPER ROLL POT

Chop newspaper sheets in thirds. Place the toilet roll insert or paper towel insert at one end. Make sure the roll hangs over the edge enough to grab hold of it.

Roll the paper up and poke the end into the bottom of the pot firmly – this makes it secure and stable.

Remove the insert and it’s ready to fill with compost and seeds.

METHOD TWO: THE ORIGAMI SEED POT

Use a full page of newspaper.

Fold the bottom half up.

Halve again – folding left side to the right.

Open up the previous fold and take back just one corner to make a little triangle pocket.

Turn the whole thing over and do this on the other side.

Like turning a page, fold over the ‘wing’ to see this shape (do both sides).

Take the left corner and fold into the centre line.

Fold this again into the centre line.

Repeat this double fold for the other side.

Turn it over and repeat the double folds for left and right ‘wings’.

All folded up – smooth the lines.

Fold back the top.

Other side too.

Open out the base and there is your pot.

You can keep the flaps out or fold them in. Fill with potting mix or compost then use as a seed pot or for herb cuttings.

Make a bunch of these origami pots, line them up, fill them with soil and seeds. Grouping them gives them stability.

Keep them on your windowsill or verandah until sprouted and be put in the garden or in larger pots.

It’s a good idea to put them on a tray to avoid seepage on your bench.

They can be kept folded and flat, so it’s a nice idea to have some ready for when a spontaneous planting moment arises and you need some little pots ready to go.

Enjoy!

What other origami or paper pots have you found simple and easy to make?

The post Two Simple Newspaper Seed and Cutting Pots: Make them With Kids appeared first on Our Permaculture Life.