Comfort food for hungry farmers

The orange season is here

For the past year I wasn't a very dedicated farmer and I've let my little organic garden wither. I don't even have a proper excuse but I've neglected my planters that once were thriving with tomatoes and eggplants. With the change of seasons I had a change of hearts, I decided I need to rehabilitate my garden and plant new herbs and vegetables that suit the coming winter. I've recruited the whole family for a joint effort. Our main task was to uproot the withered old plants and clean the terrace where the planters stand. My kids were not surprisingly very excited about playing with mud. My youngest son used his little red shovel to dig fiercely whether it was necessary or not. We've planted both flowers and vegetables. I look forward to see how the spinach, broccoli and radishes will turn out. The pansies are blooming beautifully.   

my pretty pansies

After spending most of the morning outdoors making an attempt to be good agriculturalists, come lunch time we were all ravenous. The best food to warm us cold hungry workers was our favorite orange soup of course. It's not made of oranges but from a variety of orange vegetables usually carrots, squash, and sweet potatoes. Each time we get a different soup depending on the ratios between the different vegetables. The secret to a wonderfully tasting soup is roasting the orange ingredients in the oven prior to cooking them. This process is caramelizing the sugar in the vegetables, than we add them to some sautéed onion, add water or stock and let the whole thing simmer for about half an hour. The final stage is mashing with a hand blender the whole mixture till we get creamy, velvety bisque. We love to upgrade the taste with a bit of whole cream and to sprinkle peeled sunflower seeds, the gluten-free option to croutons.

Now I look after my planters on daily basis, I even saw some small shoots already popping from the ground. We had a wonderful weather this week, it rained for days. So the rain started early this year; let's hope it will keep raining. 

Happy Earth Day Everybody.

We celebrated Earth Day in Israel mostly in the dark, but I'll begin in the beginning. As a family we're trying to make our little efforts in help keeping this planet a pretty and hospitable place to us humans. Are efforts in green living are completely non-heroic and not dramatic I'm afraid, but we think that these are reasonable things that we can do. We recycle our plastics containers, glass bottles and paper. We changed many lamps in our house to fluorescent lights that are more economical, we planted trees in our back yard and on all our porches, and we try to sustain our back yard with the minimum possible amount of water and without chemicals. I'm afraid that I still use regular detergents when I wash the kids clothes, the environmental friendly washing powder is no match to the stains children under the age of 12 inflict on their clothes.
On the last week of April it was announced that Israel will celebrate Earth Hour, and some 15 cities will ask their citizens to turn off the lights for an hour, between 8 to 9PM, in order to reduce the amount of fossil fuel based energy consumed. We decided that we will make a nice family event of the occasion. At 8 PM of that evening, we turned off all the electricity in the house, including all the appliances that are usually in Stand-By mode. We lighted candles and the kids ate dinner by candle light.

When they finished eating, we sat on the sofa in the living room, with a head flash-light and read stories. It was very funny. The ambiance actually was very peaceful and quiet, as if turning off the power reduced the background noise, although we left the fridge turned on and humming the whole Earth hour. In our neighbourhood there were several other houses who turned off the lights but the majority of the people couldn't care less.

Of course we know that the effect of cutting our power for only an hour is ridiculous. We still use huge amounts of fossil fuel based energy every day. But it was fun to spend an hour with the kids in the magical light of candles and show them that once people lived like that, with no electricity. To me this hour demonstrated how very dependant we are in technology. After an hour and a half by candle light and a LED flash-light, I was happy to turn on the lights and computer.

Back to blogging: My little organic garden

suprisingly i got busy. once i got back home from the course in Vienna, suddenly work begun piling up and there i was once again working, being a mom and going to sleep at 22:00 every night. so not much time was left for blogging. this left all my thousands of fans in tears, but now I'm back with this little post. i have much to say about the Jewish holiday of Passover (Pesach) and the Seder night that is a fertile ground for family drama or comedy (depends on your view of life). But since i have so much to say its totally incoherent, so i gave it up for now.
i want to write about my little project. My vegetable garden. this was part of our holiday activities since during the Pesach holidays we don't get out of the house. during this holiday every piece of national park, sea side or shopping mall in Israel is packed with families on vacation. since standing in lines and sitting in traffic jams with 3 impatient kids is not my cup of tea, Pesach is time for the indoors or rather for the backyard. this holiday we recruited the kids to work in the backyard and recover the lawn from the winter damages. The kids helped us to uproot weeds, scatter compost and plant  flowers beds. we have a very small backyard but we try to keep it nurtured. in our attempt to turn our home to an autarkic farm in the future we grow vines, olives and pomegranates. we try to make it our haven with lots of hammocks and rocking chairs and little places to hide and be surrounded by vegetation.

our house has also a huge porch that is connected to our bedroom. i know, it sounds great, and we had great plans for the place but somehow they always dissolved to neglect. the only thing that survived a year of not opening the door to the porch were our pear trees.

but i decided that this holiday we'll turn this unused plot to my own organic (no pesticides or herbicides) vegetable garden. working with mud and soil is great fun, (my two year old adores it) and i found that physical work in uprooting weeds and grooming trees is more relaxing then Yoga. the establishing of the "bedroom porch organic vegetable garden" was lots of fun to kids as well, we planted in 4 planters tomatoes, pumpkin, coriander, and eggplant.

 i think it's good to show the kids that food grows and comes from soil and mud and not from sterile supermarkets. the inspiration to my little project came from a book i recommend: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver

Now I'll need to be dedicated and hope that in a few months I'll eat my own grown tomatoes in the sandwich I'm taking to work.