Making almond milk

Yesterday I decided to make almond milk. I had been drinking soy milk previously but decided it was making me too blocked up and sinusy so I wanted to give almond milking a try. It was so easy and perfectly delicious. I simply put a rough handful of almonds into my blender with 2 ish cups of water and blended on high for 3 or 4 minutes. Then lined a large jar with a fine cloth and poured the milk + almond meal through the cloth and squeezed until all the milk was extracted from the meal. the fresh almond meal i then dehydrated in the oven on low for a while to use in smoothies and baking. The milk I made into a Latte and saved the rest in the fridge. Perfect for these chilly autumnal mornings and doesn't make me blocked up like milk and soy do. Since I've been playing around with what i eat, what feels good in my body and what I feel right about eating, I've been so much busier in the kitchen. Every day I come home from uni and experiment with whatever is in the fridge and it's really opening up a new world of food-making to me.
At the moment i am loving:
kale and silverbeet from my garden
salads with nuts, seeds and dried fruit on top
soups with nuts and seeds on top (actually anything with nuts and seeds on or in it!)
grated Kohl Rabi (seek it out if you don't already love it!)
cinnamon and honey in warm water
these crisp mornings and all the rugged-up, woollen people at the station
Offspring is on again (i know, i know)
seeing edible weeds everywhere after the rain

speaking of edible weeds, I did a weed walk a few weeks back and it was amazing. the leader, Adam Grubb of VEG (very edible gardens) walked with a group of us along Merri creek to demonstrate which weeds are safe to eat (and which are not!). There is so much good, nutritious food to be foraged in and out of the city area, wild kale, dandelions, plantain, nettle, wild lettuce! my favourite was wild kale or cabbage, a yellow flowering brassica which grows wild, tastes like kale, is more nutritious than the domesticated versions and is completely free! I have already started to try to include some 'weeds' into my diet as some of them are highly nutritious and can be 'shopped for' in your backyard! so nifty
does anyone else forage for weeds? i'd love to learn about mushrooming. we should have a weed feast.
x

††† Twenty †††

I am now 20 years old. fancy that!
As per tradition, we went to the Dandenongs (with dear Callisha and Michelle) after University to sit at Ripe cafe and soak up the gorgeous sun through the Mountain Ash trees. Oh boy I love those trees, they feel like a mother, safe and comforting around me. I'd like to build a house amongst them.
I was given such beautiful presents, it seems as i get older, people begin to know me more and find things i really love. I now have a Swift (!), a handmade wool poncho, a leather punch tool, a new pair of leggings from Blackbirdtees, my own moomintroll mug with Snuffkin painted on it! and a few other knick-knacks to add to my life. joy.

    

           

Then a delicious dinner with friends - black bean noodles, beet/potato sauce, salad graced with my microgreens, lentil loaf, roast vegies and yellow dhal. yum.

Poem.

'Life can be a river' I once read, 

So I leapt silently into the Atlantic, 

My skin akin with the water, 

Breathing the piney, coastal air. 

written by the sea, in the sea, for the sea, with Jake and Elsie after the Maine Country Ground Fair (Jake with his wine and cheese, Else with her ukulele, my with my bare feet and writing tools).
On the Coast of Maine, US. 

x

King Parrot Party

a King Parrot party on our deck, such a lovely, rare surprise. Look at those feathers!

Bread Makin'

The other day I made this delicious bread from MyNewRoots (recipe here). Sarah calls it her Life Changing Loaf of Bread, I definitely agree. yum. so packed with seeds and goodness and so damn easy to make! When I took it to Uni with me, a friend commented that I make so much of what I eat, almost everything. 

It's not a fear of what is in store-bought goods, I thought, it's just that I like to know that the things I eat are made with ingredients that can be home grown or bought at the grocery, that they are honest ingredients. I don't want to get caught up in the whirlwind of fast, easy food, losing the connection to where the ingredients came from. I like to feel into which foods my body responds well to and I like to know where as much of my food as I can, has come from. The more I make an effort to grow food, to buy from local markets and local stores, the more I get excited about cooking, growing and going out to source food. It is a cycle that feeds (pun intended) itself. 

I have had two unusual experiences this week of slight discomfort that relate to the honesty of ingredients. I discovered that i'm allergic to shampoo (and i was using a natural shampoo!). My head developed a rash over a couple of weeks and was beginning to bleed and so I went to the doctor who told me to stop using my shampoo. Not to say that I'd be allergic to all shampoos but I'm taking the chance to try using no shampoo for a while. 

The other thing is, when we went away we gave our chickens to someone to look after and when we brought them home, we also brought the feed they had been eating while we were gone. I knew when I collected the eggs that something was different. The eggs were badly formed and didn't taste as good, and the chickens themselves were lacklustre. I chose to ignore it for a while, assuming it was an adjustment thing, and I tried putting herbs in their cage and garlic in their water but nothing really changed. I was really starting to get worried so a few days ago, I went and looked at the new feed packet which I hadn't thought to do before (silly me!) and it stated quite clearly contains restricted meat. Oh god, I nearly cried. not only had we been (unknowingly, of course) supporting whatever this restricted meat was (probably horse) but we were feeding it to our chickens and to ourselves indirectly! I felt awful for the chickens. Thankfully they hadn't been eating it for all that long. But it was an interesting insight for me. (I went out immediately and bought them some nice, natural grain and organic seed). sigh out. 

x

Jung love

Whenever we touch nature we get clean. Savages are not dirty-only we are dirty. Domesticated animals are dirty, but never wild animals. Matter in the wrong place is dirt. People who have got dirty through too much civilization take a walk in the woods, or a bath in the sea.

-Carl Jung

I love feeling the dirt under my bare feet, in the same love category as sand between my toes or smooth river rocks underfoot. instant calm. they say if you get out of the plane after a long flight and walk to some (non-concreted) earth and stand barefoot on it for five or so minutes, your jet-lag is significantly decreased. piece of trivia for you there. 

p.s. didya get the pun in the title!?

p.p.s. my woollen (handmade) leggings have knee patches! (i can tell you how i made them if you want to know!)

x