Category Archives: Food

Home grown quinoa patties

A long way from home, I composed these Malvik grown quinoa patties tonight and they were pretty damned good! I boiled the quinoa, mixed with fried leek, garlic, chili, Angelica seed spice, salt and pepper and then added some egg so that the mix could be formed into patties, fried over the wood stove and decorated with some colourful greens from the cellar: parsley, a wild celery from New Zealand, Apium nodiflorum (fool’s watercress), unfool’s watercress and chicory “Rossa de Treviso”…

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First load of wood dried apples

My first (of many) loads of apples drying over the wood stove!

I’m 100% self-sufficient in fruit and never buy bananas, oranges etc. and don’t use a freezer. When the apples are properly dried, they can be stored for several years (so if there’s a bad apple year next year I also have fruit next year…it’s a good year this year so I dry as much as possible). When fresh fruit isn’t available (typically from February to June), I use only dried fruit. Dried apples are fantastic to eat as they are and are popular with guests as snacks and also a perfect present for family and friends. I eat a home made muesli for breakfast every morning – large organic oat flakes that I buy in large sacks and I mix with various nuts. I soak a mix of dried fruit (apple, cherry, bilberry, plums, saskatoons etc.) and use them on the muesli.

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24 hour oat bread…

You maybe remember I posted about the real Danish rye bread I made a couple of weeks back? See here
http://www.edimentals.com/blog/?p=835

I wondered what the bread would be like using other grains, so I tried 100% wholegrain oat! Even I though I made it damper than the rye bread (that was a bit crumbly) the oat bread wasn’t such a success and was quite crumbly after 24 hours at about 75C….

Perfectly edible and quite tasty but there will be a lot of crumbs in the next two weeks (the time it will take me to eat these 3 loaves)

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Lily-chufa-parsley stir fry

Tonight’s dinner was a lily – chufa – parsley stir-fry (chinese style) with buckwheat noodles…

Lily = bulbs of Lilium martagon (Martagon lily), an important forest garden source of carbohydrate, liking the shady conditions of deciduous woodlands

Chufa – the delicious tubers of the grass Cyperus esculentus

Curry on the stove

I like to cook on the wood burning stove in winter…here’s a scene from the preparation of last night’s home grown veggie curry with Basella, Swiss chard, the two leeks I managed to dig up from the frozen ground, onion, garlic, dried chantarelles and winter chantarelles, apple, chili, coriander, golpar (Heracleum persicum spice) served with onion bhaji and rye (svedjerug) “rice”…it doesn’t get much better  

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Invasive Moonglow Quiche

As I suggested earlier today, veggie quiche would be tonight’s dinner (as two years ago on this day) now that I’m back here in Malvik :)
With cold weather getting colder and the forecast insulating snow not happening, I spent the day harvesting before it’s impossible to dig the soil!
The quiche turned into an invasive (svartelistet) quiche as it contains giant hogweed (Tromsøpalme) seed spice (golpar) and this year it is topped with dried Himalayan Balsam (kjempespringfrø) seed, two of the “worst” invasive species here in Norway and other parts of Europe :)  Other veg includes leek, parsley, garlic and chili.
The pie crust was made of whole grain fine naked barley flour (Hordeum vulgare var. nudum).
The tomato is a variety called “Moonglow”!P1680238P1680239 
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3 Basellaceae for Xmas dinner

For Xmas dinner 2007, I made nut roast with roast vegetables including two members of the Basellaceae family (known as the Madeira vine family).  It contains the following genus:  Anredera, Basella, Ullucus and plantlist.org also assigns Tournonia hookeriana (previously Basella) to the same family.

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Roast green Ulluco with Madeira vine (at the back) and potatoes and Basella greens!

I also cooked some Basella alba (malabar or ceylon spinach) greens to serve with the dinner.

Is this the only time all 3 main members of the Basellaceae have been served together? ;)

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