Light at the End of the Locavore Tunnel

Beautiful Freshly-dug Jerusalem Artichokes

Day 25

Breakfast:
Smoothie, consisting of  feijoa, apple, frozen peach and blackberry and guava.
Warmed up rice pikelets (not as nice as freshly made!!) with home-made jam

Guavas; Abundance of Autumn

Lunch:
Rice cakes with locally made (Mount Eliza) chees, tomato, avo and home-made olives.

Snacks:
rice crackers and cheese

Dinner:
Baked butternut and cauliflower and green garden salad
Feijoa and apple baked dessert with rice flour crust (same rice flour pikelet recipe) and Tip Top ice-cream

Challenges:
I miss bread!!  And toast!  And wheat flour, with which to make a host of muffins, cakes and pies!!!

Highs:
I used the day to work in the garden during the morning, and the afternoon to work in the kitchen, preparing much of the harvest into dishes or preserves.  I made Daikon radish pickle with some radishes the birds have planted on our behalf (we feed them with wild bird seed, they in turn, feed us by dropping seed and they grow to feed us!!)  It takes 3 days to cure (during which time, whenever you open the fridge, everyone in the room comments on the whiff!).

Made-in-a-Bag Daikon Pickle

All things Rice

Ceres Rice Product to supplement our Rice Diet!

Day 26

Breakfast:
Smoothie  consisting of avo, feijoa, frozen peach, apple and yoghurt.  Very creamy, smooth consistency, subtle flavour but very filling.

Lunch:
Crackers with butternut bake from last night, local cheese and avocado (thank goodness, Katikati is Avo growing territory).
We had warmed up apple/feijoa with rice flour crust pie and ice-cream


Dinner:
As I had been out in the garden, harvesting artichokes, it was time to do something with the newly dug fartichokes, so I googled a recipe for Artichoke soup - it apparently reduced the gaseous consequences of ingesting the little knobbly roots.  We had artichoke soup and salad.  Very, very delicious, but we found it a little light on the tummy-filling side, so we finished off with a bowl each of Ricies in milk!!  For goodness sake!!  Shows the desperate measures we will go to when we can't eat all that we are used to or what we take for granted!!  I am beginning to get all Rice-d out!  

Artichokes, washed and scrubbed

During our movie, we ate ice-cream with guava sauce (having just made that today).

Challenges:
I miss all the foods I reach out for, without having to think of where it comes from!

3 different chillies from our garden

Little Bell Chillies

Highs:
I made 2 bottles of Sweet Thai Chilli Sauce , along with 5 bottles of Sweet Guava Sauce for topping Tip Top ice-cream!  We normally would eat 3 cartons of ice-cream a year, but during this challenge, we have already been through one and a half cartons, only because it's In The Zone!!  Not terribly healthy!!  But nice!  Something to look forward to in the evenings!!
And there is indeed a light at the end of this Locavore Tunnel - 4 days till we can say; "We did our best!!" This Eat Local 200km Challenge has showed us resilience and discipline we never knew we had!  As vegetarians, our diet is limited, but this just added another dimension to our planning.

No, not a smoothie - blending apple, chillies, garlic, sugar and ACV for sauce

GreeNZ own Guava Sauce Recipe:
I cut off the tails and tops of all the red cherry guavas - about a kilo and a half.  Popped them in a saucepan along with 4 chopped green apples.  Covered the fruit with water and boiled till the fruit was soft.  Then I strained the fruit pulp through a sieve (tiring), discarding seeds and skins and added 1 cup of sugar to each cup and a half of juicy pulp.  Boiled until a setting point was reached, I then bottled the sauce in hot, clean jars and sealed.