• broccoli soup
• potatoes, carrots and celeriac roasted in Gänseschmalz (goosefat) and olive oil with rosemary
• ruby chard cooked down with onions and garlic and then baked with egg, sourcream, feta and blue cheese
• hummus (soaked chickpeas, and lots of parsley and cayenne pepper added)
• lots and lots of peppermint tea with the odd addition of jasmine green tea and mellisa (lemon balm).

and beyond food it must be autumn. I didn’t arrive in Berlin until mid-November last year so I was shocked by how punctual and quick the change was from late summer to autumn.

sure, it might just be autumn, but for a girl originally from Adelaide it feels COLD.

even though i’m layering my clothes and wearing socks and uggboots while working at the computer i had to turn the heating on to low or else my fingers were freezing up.

over the next week i start a new job doing some teaching and geeking a couple of days a week. actual jobs aren’t that easy to come by in Berlin so i’m incredibly grateful and enthused about the opportunity. also i turn 30 which feels just right.

i still need to decide what cakes to bake. i wish that friends from the rest of the world could come celebrate with me. oh well, a small berlin posse (with a ring-in from upper austria) will have to suffice.

As part of the greater DIY Masters / self-organised learning project I’m attending LIWOLI 09 in Linz, Austria.

LIWOLI is an event exploring the crossovers between art and the FLOSS community.  I’ll be recording a series of interviews with participants about self-organised education and how DIY / autodidactism intersects with university education. As many people in both fields have self taught skills I’m looking forward to the responses.

I’ll be asking my interviewees to explore ideas like these:

• Does one have to attend a formal institution to become an Artist or Technologist?
• How important is a sense of community (mentors, teachers and peers) to a learning experience?
• How important is it for learners to hack and remix their knowledge?
• How can “free” learning work alongside formal institutions such as art schools and universities?
• What elements of the FLOSS movement are most relevant to the idea of DIY / self-organised / “free” learning communities?
• What are the most valuable experiences we take from formal learning?
• Can we create similar experiences outside of formal institutions?
• How can we enable more people to have valuable learning experiences using readily available resources?
• How can people share their experience of learning as well as the knowledge that they are acquiring?
• Autodidacts and self-learning have always existed, but how can society make this learning journey easier?

Get in touch if you’re heading along to LIWOLI or if you have any suggestions of what I should check out in Linz.

In honour of Australia Day I figured I’d make something tasty and Australian to share with my housemates and to take to German class tomorrow.

If I’d thought ahead, I’d have protected my clothing with the lovely apron that Sarah M gave me, but I forgot. Instead, here’s a photo from when I baked pavlova at D’s place for Weihnachten (Christmas).

There was one major problem – I couldn’t actually bake anything since the oven in my current flat has no temperature control. Actually, most things in the flat have some fault that one needs to overcome.

For example, the washing machine:

Everytime you put a load of laundry on, you have to wedge the door in place with a piece of wood and strap it all down.

It’s not really the weather to barbecue and while I’d love to whip up some proper meat pies^, or to bake Anzac biscuits or a pavlova, they all required baking.

So, in the end I chose to make lamingtons, as I could buy a premade vanilla cake and then do the messy bits of chocolate coating and coconut shaking.  Even though lamingtons are fairly traditional Australian fare, I can’t remember ever making them as a kid, so this entire process was new to me.

(more…)

I finally bought a package of jasmine tea today. Along with the recent purchase of a proper hairdryer, it’s a sign that I’m letting myself feel more comfortable in Berlin. It might not properly feel like home, but I’m beginning to feel normal and myself. It’s a little silly, but access to (jasmine) tea and dry hair are some of the things which make me feel more together.

Jasmine tea has always been important to me when living overseas. My odd penchant for cold and wet places means that I keep on missing out on important stuff like sun and flowers. One of the ways I’ve got over that is by drinking jasmine tea, closing my eyes and thinking about Adelaide.

I think that one of the reasons why I’ve begun to focus on friendship is that it actively draws my mind back to people I care about. I have a strong academic and creative interest in the theory of friendship which is very important in motivating me to explore the area. But there is also the payback of regularly acknowledging the presence of the people I know, whether they are my most intimate friends or people I used to serve beer to.

Since I’ve returned to Adelaide I’ve had opportunity to host a few guests as part of CouchSurfing, the program that introduced me to Sid, Ninnu, Ronja and a whole bunch of other lovely people. Regularly, conversation with my international visitors comes down to eating: favourite foods, traditional foods from their homelands and the difficulty of finding good bread while on the road. Just as it was when I was travelling overseas, I’m faced with the difficulty of defining what typical Australian food is.

There are the usual “Aussie Tucker” suspects of Vegemite, meat pies, pavlova, lamingtons, spag bog and Anzac biscuits. But in comparison to people who’ve come from most other countries (Canada and USA are probably the other exceptions) we can’t really identify distinct food cultures and rely instead on a few recipes and a salty, yeasty brand name. Our national identity is defined by events taking place during a little over two centuries of (primarily European) migration, and doesn’t really reflect a cohesive culture.

So I’ve thought and I’ve thought about this concept of food and national identity. Historically the French, the Italians, the Finns, the Spanish, the Germans, the Chinese, the Indians were not nations of people, they were many smaller regional and cultural groups who just happened to live within more recent borders. Migration, globalisation, the media, supermarkets, freezers and microwaves didn’t exist for thousands of years and so regional food cultures evolved out of eating seasonal, local foods.

Where people seem to have gone wrong in identifying Australian food culture is by looking for one food culture to rule them all rather than letting many smaller, localised food cultures emerge. Even the true food cultures of the Indigenous Australians seem to have been reduced down to a “bush tucker” of witchetty grubs and wattle seed, quandong, honey ants, lemon myrtle and kangaroo, ignoring the full spectrum of groups living on foods specific to the coast, rainforest, arid grasslands and bush.

Other people have probably come around to this idea before, but I’ve only just articulated this thought: As Australians we should be looking to our immediate bioregions as a way of identifying the seasonal foods which will then shape a plurality of culinary cultures. We should be taking pride in our local brands, environment and farmers, recognising the layers of food cultures, both indigenous and immigrated and working out what grows best where and when. Once we know what plants and animals are best suited to our local regions we can learn how to cook and eat the foods that make up our food culture.

Currently I can identify only one type of edible wild mushroom and teeny tiny native cherries, but part of my longer term garden plan is to plant a couple of areas with indigenous plants including those suitable for food. In the meantime I’ll be feeding my summer guests Vietnamese cold rolls with seasonal vegetables (some coming from my garden), suggesting they drink Coopers’ beers, Bickford cordials and local wines to be be followed by Haighs’ chocolates and local fruits.

Maybe in two hundred years my descendants will be able to say with more certainty what dishes make up the contemporary Tandanya bioregional food culture, but right now I’ll just have to play it by taste.

I had a feeling today that it would be snowing in Helsinki, and it turns out my intuition is right!

Hopefully the reflections off the snow help keep my friends happier through the scary dark month of November. And the fact that it’s November already means that in less than 3 months I’ll be getting on a plane to head back over to the other side of the world. I can’t wait to go back to Finland and visit other parts of the world, but at the same time I really don’t want to leave my lovely hometown.

i know. i miss you! by Fighting Tiger.

A few months ago I tried to articulate to a friend who’s spent some time living in Japan the feeling that you get when you’ve really fallen for another culture and group of friends. It’s not that you don’t love your origins anymore, but that your heart just stretches and gets bigger to fit all the new people and experiences in. It is a frustrating experience, because you know that if you spend a significant amount of time in either place you’ll always end up missing what you don’t have.

Lately I’ve been desiring specific experiences that were easily come by in Finland – as I can still talk to my friends and listen to the music, the experiences I was looking for were mainly culinary. Last week I tried to find cheese equivalent to the rather bland Finnish juusto and a rye bread similar to the amazing black bread splits I lived off – but to no avail. I’ve also been regularly stocking up on Dutch salt liquorice in a desperate attempt to capture the ever so slightly different taste of salmiakki. On a trip to Ikea I stocked up on gloggi (mulled wine) mix, lingonberry jam and was over the moon to find a carton of blueberry soup. The lingonberry jam will be dolloped on spinach pancakes (pinaattiohukainen), and breakfasts for the next week will be porridge with cinammon (canelli) and blueberry soup stirred in. Pure comfort food.

Finnish Christmas Food by Fighting Tiger.

As Christmas rushes towards us, I’m planning on making piparkakut (gingerbreads) to eat while sipping on vodka spiked gloggi, and maybe I’ll even attempt to make some of the traditional casseroles. Carrot and rice casseroles will be easy to recreate – but my favourite casserole was made of lantuu (rutabaga or swedes) which is a winter vegetable, so that will have to wait for another time.

Despite the possibility to recreate the culinary experiences of Finland, the consumption will not be entirely satisfactory, as the food may be real, but the experience will be a simulacra of something I remembered. I’ll pick nettles to dry for tea and sit down to my porridge and blueberry soup for breakfast, but I won’t be eating it in the company of Ninnu, Sid and Ronja. In February, when I’m sitting down with the people that I miss in kitchens on the other side of the world, it’s almost guaranteed that I’ll pull out my tube of Vegemite and be plotting the creation of pie floaters in an attempt to taste the memories of this side of the world.

pie floater prototype by Fighting Tiger.

Slice up fruit. It has the familiarity of a lover on Saturday mornings.

Add the muesli that you made by hand, roasted, toasted, made the most of: oats, triticale, pepita, sunflower, sesame, coconut, almond and cinnamon (call it kaneli, Suomi style). You’d stirred in melted honey, oil and grapefruit juice before crunching it in the oven. And finally mixed in chopped up dried apple, pear, apricot and peach bought at the farmers market.

Now pour the milk, from foreign sounding Alexandrina Jersey cows.

Chew your breakfast and think about plane tickets you’ve already bought, waiting to be booked and used.

Possibly the most fantastic and unexpected thing that happened at Aliese’s yesterday was that I discovered that her backyard is full of stinging nettles. Most people would balk at the idea of picking nettles for fun, but what I saw in front of me was not a painful plant, but wild produce ready to be gathered.

Earlier this winter I’d hopefully planted seeds primarily so I could use the nettles as a nitrogen rich green compost, but they didn’t grow very well, so I’ve been looking out for some wild plants to harvest from. I’d seen some nettle-like plants by the side of the road earlier in the week, but my tentative stroke of the leaves didn’t result in any stings – so yesterday I took a braver approach and put my hand flat onto the leaves which did confirm my suspicion that the plants were indeed nettles.

It’s not that painful. I figure that nettle stings are the discomfort equivalent of eating warhead lollies – some people are braver or have a higher tolerance than others – luckily for me the sting is bearable.

So I borrowed some rubber gloves (I’m not yet brave enough to enter a nettle patch with bare hands) and scissors and picked a bag full of prickly leaves, ready to be dried and made into tea.

What did seem really weird that it was just over a year ago, in Finland’s early summer that I helped Ninnu prepare nettles for tea. But temperature wise I figure that there’s not much difference between July in Australia and early June in Finland.

Now of course I’ve remembered that nettles can be added to soup (fresh and dried), risottos, pancakes and used as a hair tonic as well as being a tea for people and gardens.

Aliese, it looks like I’ll have to come over this weekend and do some “weeding” for you!

Back in the day my father was working on the extension to his house in the hills, Mum would usually make a batch of scones as morning tea for anyone helping out with the building. And so, when Dad and brother Alex came to teach me about the basics of plumbing (washer changing, tap reseating etc) I figured I should make them scones as a thankyou feed.

Alex is notorious for acting just like the 18 year old boy he is – this involves grunting, demanding food, grunting some more and leaving the table. So it was only when Mum reported back how much he’d like the scones that I knew I’d had a success – Alex ate 7 of the 16 or so that made up the batch.

I love cheese, but sometimes I’ll rashly buy too much normal cheese which gets ignored while I use fresh parmesan for pasta, or fetta for salads. Because of this impulse buy I had some very strong cheddar cheese hanging around in the fridge which worked perfectly. A stronger cheese, or a combination of tasty cheese and parmesan would work well to compliment the flavour of the onion in these scones.

:::…

Preheat oven to 200°c.

In a large bowl mix 1 cup of Self Raising Flour, a pinch of salt and 1 teaspoon of baking powder.

Rub 60 grams of butter or margarine into the flour mixture. The mix should feel a little like damp breadcrumbs.

Add in one finely chopped small onion, and 60 grams of grated cheese and a teaspoon of mixed herbs (basil, parsley, oregano, thyme).

Mix 125 ml of milk with 1 teaspoon of mustard or a pinch of chilli powder. Add into flour mix.

Using your hands, combine until the mixture is soft and sticky – you may need to add a little more self raising flour.

Don’t overmix the scones batter – this will make the scones very heavy.

On a floured board flatten out the scone mix and cut out into circles or squares.

Place on a floured baking tray and brush the tops of the scones with beaten egg.

Bake in the oven for about 10-15 minutes.

Serve the scones wrapped up in a teatowel and provide cups of tea to drink and proper butter to spread on the scones.

Some days can just become awesome with a little foresight. After recent discussions about garden plans and manure, Joel, Sophie and I organised a gardening play date which became glorious reality today.

We met up at the Farmers’ Market, bought coffee, watched a cooking demonstration, invested in plants and seed catalogues and then rode back to my place to talk about the massive garden I’m now guardian to. Long term plans such as where to put chook runs, fruit trees and water features were discussed over tea and snacks.

And then, I made soup.

Until recently, I’ve often stuck with recipes that I know off by heart, but years of eating the same old things are taking their toll. So I decided to branch out with a recipe for an Aubergine, Cannellini Bean and Ricotta Soup from a Jamie Oliver cookbook that I’d earmarked a week or two ago.

Initially, I thought the soup was going to be too bland, but the key is to use a lot of pepper and to add a squeeze of lemon juice when serving the soup. It turned out to be delicious and was ready just as Ianto Ware* rode up.

After eating we all looked at zines, drank more tea and planned where to plant my garden booty: rhubarb and gooseberry plants, strawberries (bargain: $2 for about 12 plants), rainbow chard, red cabbage and red orache (mountain spinach). My current favourite book is Joy Larkcom’s Creative Vegetable Gardening, so I’ll be trying to use what I’ve learnt from that book by combining the red colours of the cabbage and orache amongst the flower beds.

Anyway, an outing for rock and roll calls, so click through for the recipe as requested by Joel, Sophie, Ianto and Maggie.

* Bruised from manly behaviour and exceedingly humble
(more…)