Mythology and our gardens – the Pomegranate

This morning as we came into work we spotted something we hadn’t seen before in the garden – a Pomegranate bush. We were quite excited about this! Many plants have their place in myths and legends from all sorts of cultures, but pomegranates are at the heart of one of our favourites from ancient Greek mythology – the story of Persephone.

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Recipe – flavoured ice cubes

Melbourne is going to be a little hot tomorrow. Did you see the weather? 38 degrees! Phew! So here at Heritage Hill we’re brainstorming different ways to keep cool. One of the favourite ways takes a little preparation time, so we figured we’d tell you today so it’ll be ready for tomorrow.

Flavoured ice cubes! They’re super simple to do and healthy too, which is something we always love.

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Make your own compost and No Dig Gardens – School Holiday Workshops

How amazing is this spring weather! Are you out and about in it too? We just want to drag our computers out of the office and live in the garden all week. We can’t, but luckily our school holiday workshops are letting local kids loose in our gardens…

Yesterday we had a Make Your Own Compost workshop, teaching kids (and their parents!) all about compost and how easy it is to make and use. We had a tour of the garden first, spotting some rare and interesting plants that all benefit from our use of compost, then onto the getting-your-hands-dirty bit, which some kids thought was the best bit of all!

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Red Lentil Dhal with homemade Garam Masala recipe

The weather is still cold and rainy, so we thought we’d warm up inside, and warm up our insides, making some delicious dahl. This is an old family recipe, but you can add whatever veggies you have around. Cubed potato works well, as do cauliflower, spinach and mushrooms too. experiment and try different combinations to make this recipe truly your own.

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Citrus frenzy! Recipe – Lemon and Orange Poppyseed Cake

The lemons are coming back out on our lemon trees, and our orange tree is fruiting beautifully, so today we thought we’d combine them together for an old favourite…

Lemon and Orange Poppyseed cake

Ingredients
50g unsalted butter, melted
1 tablespoon finely grated orange rind
2 tablespoons freshly grated lemon rind
2 tablespoons lemon juice
3 tablespoons orange juice
1 cup caster sugar
2 eggs
1 cup self-raising flour
2 tablespoons poppyseeds
1/4 cup reduced-fat milk

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Guacamole recipe

We haven’t done anything with lemons for a while, and our lemon trees are still lemoning for all they are worth. The lemons as yet are still unripe, but the green skin recalls to mind one of the tastiest things in the world, the avocado.

Although the avocado has been in Australia since the late 19th century, it first become popular in the 70s. One of the recipe books from this time in a private collection we know of refers to them as “avocado pears” and “alligator pears” due to their skin texture. This recipe book says the very latest way to serve them is halve the avocado pear, destone it, pour some vegetable oil in the hole, garnish with salt and pepper and serve.

We’re not sure if that recipe really captures the beauty and tastiness of the avocado, and we’re also fairly sure that eating an avocado stone amount of oil is not really very healthy.

So instead, we wanted to share our favourite way to eat avocados, guacamole. Plus, it another use for lemons, so everybody wins.

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Dips dips dips

As the final word on picnic food (for now anyway) a reader has emailed us a couple of favourite dip recipes that he likes to take on picnics (thanks Ned!). They all look delicious and pretty healthy, so that’s two wins in one! Plus, all three include some lemon juice, which means they’re all instant Heritage Hill favourites. You can eat them with all sorts of things – toasted turkish bread, water crackers, rice crackers, on sandwiches or toast, on slices of raw veggies (carrot and hummus are particularly great together), on fresh bread or anything else you have handy…

Hummus
juice from 1 squeezed lemon
1/2 cup of tahini
2 cloves garlic—roughly chopped
14 oz (400g) canned chickpeas, rinsed and drained

Put everything together in a blender and whizz.
Stop whizzing, taste. Adjust ingredients to taste. (Some people like a little salt in it too)
Eat.

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What makes good picnic food?

So, as you know, we’re gearing up for our very first Sundays in the Sun event, which will be filled with musical guests, fun events and BYO picnic, and so that got us thinking, what makes good picnic food?

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Russel’s favourite summer drink

We just had a visit from a recently retired gentlemannamed Russel who has lived just down the road from us for years. Today, he decided, was the day we would finally come visit us. He wandered around our current exhibition showing a selection from our collection and chose a favourite from the paintings and then he visited the Maid’s Quarters, which bought him back fond memories of living in London in the 50s.

As Russel was leaving, he hesitated and said “Can I ask you a favour? Can I have a lemon from your tree?”

He then went on to tell us his favourite summer drink which, due to this heat, he has been craving all day. He didn’t give me quantities, but I would think that the quanitity of all drink ingrediants are subject to personal taste!

Russel said what he does is boil up some water the night before and while it’s still hot, add in honey, ginger and lemon. Then he lets it cool down and puts it in the fridge. He said that it’s the most delicious thing for a hot summers day, with a few ice cubes tinkling in the glass.

It sounds wonderful and we’re very tempted to try it soon! If only the Heritage Hill kitchen had honey and ginger laying around. But we were very pleased to find another thing to do with our old friends, lemons!

Image is not of Russel’s favourite summer drink and instead comes from http://www.flickr.com/photos/smohundro/2838779568/

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Safeguarding ‘granny skills’ for the next generation

Today we came across a fantastic project that we wanted to share with you, called Dirty Girl Kitchen. Dirty Girl Kitchen was started by Rebecca Sullivan to ensure that skills, talents and recipes from previous generations would not be forgotten and instead are continued to be passed on to young people around Melbourne.

This great paragraph comes straight from their website:
Dirty Girl Kitchen aims to bring those communities of women from our multi-cultural Australia together and share worshipful skills (in which Rebecca has called ‘granny skills’). You know, all the ones that involve getting ‘dirty’.

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