Join me in this cooking class as I take you into my garden, harvest permaculture perennials, bushfood, fruits and self-seeding annuals and shows you how I makes a quick and easy, yet beautiful lunch.

Home grown food is everyday gourmet!

This is so simple my teenage sons can do it and love eating it – even with an aversion to greens!

If you enjoyed this video you might also like to watch No Dig Garden to see how to set up the garden to grow such abundance.

This free online permaculture class is supported by the Permaculture Education Institute

Learn more about permaculture in my online permaculture courses.

The post Free online permaculture cooking class with Morag Gamble appeared first on Our Permaculture Life.

Making your own milk from home can help to reduce the pile-up of non-recyclable packaging. Usually, non-milk milks such as soy milk, oat milk, almond milk (the list is endless, and growing all the time) come in packaging that is a mix of cardboard and plastic and can’t be recycled. Hemp “milk” isn’t as common as other, but it’s a great-tasting alternative. Plus it’s made even better by the fact that you can easily make it yourself, at home!

My family and I are actually part of a “dairy collective”, which means that once a week my family and I go out and we milk the cows shared by a few families in my village. This puts us in a unique position to be able to have plastic-free milk, and enough left over to make cheese, yogurt and other dairy products. BUT I realise that not everyone has this option available so here is the recipe to one of my favourite milk alternatives. 

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.

How to make hemp mylk

Here’s what you need:

1. 2 tbsp of hemp seeds (about enough to cover the bottom of a smoothie mixer)
2. 1 or 2 dates (without seeds)
3. 1/2 tsp Vanilla Essence
4. 500ml Water (approx)

Pour the ingredients into the mixer or a food processor, in the above order. Close the lid and mix them together for a few minutes. The good thing about this recipe is that you don’t need to strain it like you do with other Mylks.

If it’s not to your liking after the first mix, you can simply add another date, or some honey, or maple syrup. Or even a little bit of cinnamon or nutmeg. 

I find this recipe to be super creamy and just the right balance of sweetness. And, as you can see, it is so quick and easy! It’s also a very cheap, low price recipe and you can source a big bulk bag of hemp in a bulk foods store.

Something like this Mylk will last up to a week in the fridge if you keep it in a nice sealed container. I’ve got some nice glass jars that I put it in and then it just goes into the fridge as soon as I finish it. Hemp milk in a Supermarket is easily over $6 AUD in Australia. This is almost triple the price of other milks in the same isle, so having this recipe will easily save you some money. 

What milk alternatives are your favourites?

Thanks for reading! Enjoy the milk and please let me know if the recipe works for you. 

– Morag

The post How to make Hemp Milk at home appeared first on Our Permaculture Life.

Making simple, natural dips and other snacks from scratch is a cheap, plastic-free and healthy way to feed my family. So, on that note, here is my basic recipe to make hummus.

My goal for this recipe was to use as many ingredients from my garden as possible. For anyone with a thriving edible garden, making dips with your own ingredients is super inexpensive.

If your edible garden isn’t thriving as much as you would like, I recommend checking out my online course The Incredible Edible Garden. it’s a great short course that is guaranteed to help you create an abundant edible garden.

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.

Ingredients:

• Chickpeas (choose the amount based on how much you would like to make)
• Blender/food processor
• Water
• 2 tbsp Tahini
• Salt
• 1 x Clove of Garlic
• Half a lime or lemon
• Approx 2 tbsp Organic Olive Oil

The process: (yes, it’s that simple)

1. Firstly, you will need to soak dried chickpeas overnight.
2. Cook the soaked chickpeas for about 20 to 30minutes until they are soft.
3. Put the cooked chickpeas into your blender.
4. Add enough water just to pass the level of chickpeas (you can add more later if the consistency isn’t right)
5. Pour in the Tahini and Olive oil
6. Sprinkle in a pinch of salt
7. Cut the end of the clove of garlic and dispose of the end.
8. Squash the garlic body with the flat side of a knife, peel the skin off and discard, then add the garlic to the blender.
9. Cut the lime or lemon in half and squeeze the juice of one half into the blender (save the other half for the end in case you have to add extra liquid)
10. Blend this all together until nicely combined
11. Have a taste test and see if it might need anything added. Also note the consistency and add more liquid (either more lemon/lime juice or water depending on flavour) if you would like.
12. If this is too runny for you, then I recommend adding less liquid next time. You can also add more chickpeas at this stage to thicken the texture if you would like.

And that’s it. Happy dipping!! 🙂

What’s your favourite dip recipe, or hummus variation?

The post How To Make Your Own Simple, Easy Hummus with Morag Gamble 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.

Teff – healthy, nutritious, gluten-free, resistant starch

Why teff is healthy…

Flatbread ingredients – simply flour, water, salt, soil and seeds

Flatbread recipe

Ingredients

• 250gms plain flour (I used teff today – but you could use any flour)
• 1 tsp fine sea salt
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 150 mls warm water
• 2 tbsp seeds (chia, sesame)

Method

• mix flour, seeds, salt then add the oil and water mix together to form a dough
• turn out onto a floured board and kneed for 5 mins
• cover the ball with a bowl and rest for 15 mins
• when ready to cook and eat – cut into 8, roll until 2-3mm thick
• use a heavy pan or griddle – cook until it looks ‘set’ on top, then flip and cook for another 45 seconds
• wrap cooked flatbreads in tea towel to keep warm (I just cooked one now, and will roll and cook the rest tonight for the family)
• if you cook too many, renew the next day by brushing on a little oil, putting in the oven and using them as dippers.

Make a dough and turn onto floured board.

After 5 minutes of kneading, cover with bowl and let sit for 15 mins.

Roll to 2-3mm thickness.

Cook on griddle or heavy-based pan.

Serve with salads and soup.

The post Homemade & Homegrown: DIY Flatbreads with Teff – a Healthy & Satisfying Lunch 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.

The types of plants growing in there now in this winter garden are: many types of lettuce, rocket/arugula, coriander/cilantro, green mustard spinach, red mustard spinach, frilly mustard spinach, sacred basil, sorrel, cherry tomato, parsley, snow peas, garlic chives, fennel, carrots, Brazilian spinach, English Spinach, Welsh onions, ruby chard, curly kale, Mexican tarragon and broccoli – and more….

I plant more lettuces every couple of weeks so that I always have young tender leaves. I like them the best.

Mix of open hearted lettuces – just a leaf or two off each every day.

My instinct is that a diet of diverse plants, which all accumulate different vitamins and minerals in their leaves, has got to be a good thing. I just walk around picking a leaf of this and a leaf of that – and the salad tastes AMAZING!  I toss in a few legumes, and possibly some olives or fetta cheese , or tahini, sunflower seeds, cubed tofu and toasted sesame seeds…mmmm! Oh, and a slurp of apple cider vinegar.

I use the leaves and flowers of the garlic chives (Society Garlic)

Even in a series of small pots, you can grow so much salad –  using those self-watering milk bottle pots I mentioned last time is a super simple way to get started. There are just so many places we can grow things, even if we don’t have our own gardens – community garden … on the verge… at school …. at work … balcony … rooftop … courtyard …. windowbox ….?

Where do you grow your salad garden?
What is your favourite salad mix?

Brazilian spinach is an abundant perennial

Sacred basil – not only food and flavour, but habitat too.

If you live in the region, come and explore my garden with me during my Permaculture Life series of practical workshops – particularly The Simple and Abundant Garden session if you’re into the gardening side of things.

Registration and More Information

The post Grow Your Own Healthy Salad Garden – Simple, Diverse, Abundant appeared first on Our Permaculture Life.