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The 100 Mile Trial

Nick & Janet - 100 mile diary


Sunday November 30 - Day 1

Breakfast. It has begun. The big trial for just one week, and the BIG breakfast to start it off with a bang! Met at Nick & Janet's for amazing feast of things. Jonathon's homegrown silverbeet; Kim's raspberry topped dough tops; Louise's spinach and hollandaise sauce; Emma & Alicia's lemon pancakes; Phil's fruit salad; the other Phil (ie. Sarah &..)'s fired duck eggs from Moe; Rita's basil and tomato bits; Janet's sourdough bread (baked at 2am) and hash browns. Can't complain too much at that! Oh, and Nick's peppermint tea.

Lots of conversation about previous day's feasting - Jonathon cramming in 6 pots of tea, knowing he'd be cold-tea-turkey - Nick at 11.45 with peas and gravy on toast. Fed remainder of gravy and custard to the cats... unsuccessfully.

 

 

People left with boxes of food bought in bulk - butter, flour, trout, chicken & rabbit, oil. Thanks to those who supplied - Louise, Janet, Nancy & Max, Jonathon. A real community effort.

Lunch. Janet - tomato, trout, carrot on sourdough sandwich. Nick - roast lamb (Ballarat via Andrews), silverbeet, egg. Talitha - egg, lamb, cheese, tomato, bread.

Dinner. Janet, Nick, Talitha - fried potato mix with trout & tomato (Talitha with ham).

Monday December 1 - Day 2

Breakfast. Spelt toast, poached eggs (ours), ham, spinach (ours), hollandaise sauce (Louise's recipe).

Snacks. Janet made passionfruit & honey biscuits. Not usually in season by passionfruit bottle in summer from Kim's tree. 1/2 cup butter, 3x passionfruit, 2 cups spelt flour, 1 egg, 1/4 cup honey. Honey & butter melted then add rest. Janet thinks they're not very sweet, but I think they're just right.

Lunch. Fry up- potato, zucchini in butter.

Dinner. Roast Chicken, potato, carrot, pumpkin, broccoli, silverbeet, gravy (with spelt flour). Dessert custard, rhubarb, apple pie. base butter & flour, Custard - egg yolks, milk, honey, spoon flour, apple & rhubarb.

Tuesday December 2 - Day 3

Breakfast. Spelt pancakes with honey & yoghurt (yoghurt from NSW - Nick was meant to make up batch from this using our local milk but hasn't yet, so this is a cheat. need to get more milk).

Lunch. Fry-up. last nights roast leftovers, potato, carrot, pumpkin, ham, zucchini, onion

Dinner. chicken & vegetable pasta. handmade pasta (spelt flour, 2eggs - realised no salt for cooking). chicken, asparagus, our spinach, tomato (woc box), our spring onion, our basil, broccoli (woc box). Tasted great.

Chicken stock! - to make or not to make? We had a chicken carcass from last nights dinner. Wanted to cook it up to make stock, but also have 2 other carcases from previous meals in freezer. Decided to cook all together to make it worthwhile. So this stock will be 1/3 100 mile chook (others unknown). Stock may be 5-10% of meal we make with it... so we're thinking it's justified..?

Wednesday December 3 - Day 4

Breakfast. Nick not too well last 2 days so going simple on foods - no bread today. Grapefruit and peppermint tea instead. Spelt pancakes with apple, honey & yoghurt for Janet and Talitha. Yoghurt this time was Nick's homemade - made it last night!

Lunch. asparagus, cheese, ham, tomato, lettuce, & bread (for Janet & Talitha)

Dinner. The best cauliflower and bacon soup i've tasted! Thanks Janet. Had cauliflower, bacon, potato, our thyme, our bay leaf, leek, chicken stock (made last night). I had a workshop in St. Kilda so ate on the train. Had apple and orange too (from neigbour Pearl's tree - used to illustrate 10m food miles!). Hungry on way home. Noticeable restraint in usual buying when hungry. At workshop, given a bottle of Sandy Farm Cabernet Merlot from Daylesford area. Win! Ps. ran out of honey - oh, oh! - Neesh is away so couldn't get from her bulk supply - had to go to Plump grocery in Yarraville for restock.

Thursday December 4 - Day 5

Breakfast. Poached eggs & bacon, bread, asparagus.

Lunch. ham, lettuce, tomato, cheese, cherries, apple, left over cauliflower soup & bread.

Dinner. Wild Rabbit casserole. Rabbit from Bendigo Game, leek, carrot, bacon, butter, olive oil, spelt flour. Fried cabbage and apple cider vinegar. Mashed potato. Nick was trying to go 'no bread' today but broke it because of this amazing gravy. love bread & gravy!). Desert was Janet's special cookies - two lots 1. honey, passionfruit and walnut (+ butter, honey, egg, flour), and 2. spelt, no walnuts.

Comment. Talitha is eating lots of cheese - more than usual because she usually stocks up on bananas. Now we need something to loosen her up!
Seems Spelt may not be suiting both Nick & Talitha's wheat-related allergy. Energy.
Janet is missing day punctuated with cups o tea, and seems to be drinking less because of this.

Friday December 5 - Day 6

Breakfast. Scrambled eggs - eggs, toast, bacon, parsley, silverbeet. Peppermint tea.

Lunch. Nick had trout, cheese, left over cauliflower soup, left over cabbage and vinegar, apple. Talitha & Janet had borsh, made up prior to week with local goodies - butter, beetroot, cabbage.

Dinner. This is a wild one! Broad bean falafel's with beans from our garden, rosemary, onion, lemon zest, parsley, mint, little spelt flour. With amazing yoghurt sauce - yoghurt, mint, lemon. And with sliced lemon & lettuce. Totally great combo!

100 Year Zoopa-Doopa. It was realised & confessed that through the day Talitha and Janet while in the garden in the afternoon heat had a zoopa doopa ice pole. It was a very old one, bought when we were pregnant with Talitha about 4 years ago...

Saturday December 6 - Day 7

The last hoorah!
Breakfast. Nick has 2 fried eggs. Janet & Talitha had pancakes, bottled plums, yoghurt and honey.

Lunch. Nick was running a workshop and was rather proud of his 'cut lunch' of asparagus, eggs, trout, carrots and lettuce. But it could have been any other day that they served catered lunch from 'Lentil as anything'... the most amazing food. I was cool with my full tummy, but it was such a loving reminder that there is abundant 'good food' available out there.
Talitha & Janet - cold roast chicken and salad... in shape of face with curly carrot as hair.

Went to St. Kilda Farmers Market. Got three great finds - asparagus from KooWeeRup, pears and hazelnuts from Yarra Valley,, and great 'Summer Snow' apple & lemon juice from Officer, near Pakenham. Tastes like lemonade.

Dinner. Final feast. Our place. Small turn-up but fun. Jonathon, Jane & Oliver (Jonathon's family) bought lemon chicken spelt pasta (very, very yum! - Janet said it was the nicest thing she's eaten all week - partly because it wasn't cooked by her... and because it was very yum!). Phil brought fruit salad. Louise - asparagus, tomato, carrot, olives, lemon juice salad. Nick - coleslaw with homemade mayonnaise (egg, vinegar, honey, olive oil). Janet - oven-roasted potatoes. Drank wine from other night (Daylesford). Sarah & Phil called in on way through.

Everyone present seemed to have survived the week. A few cheats/ exceptions (ie. birthday party last night for some).. Sound like a great meal for a bunch of people at the 100 Mile Cafe on Thursday night.

So what's next...

For Janet and myself, we learned a great deal. From the practical things like how to make sourdough bread and when oats are harvested in Victoria, to the many inner discoveries like realising there are things we can do without that we previously thought were essentials. (I seemed to get along with no salt without any tantrums. Also have worked off my addition to weekly Wednesday lunch at Hari-Krisna restaurant).

There is much food we'll continue to source from within 160kms (such as True Organic butter) and some things we found out about that were outside the radius that we'll now get (bio dynamic milk from Nathanial).

All in all, we'd like to do it again. Maybe in a different season. There's been a suggestion to do a quarterly (seasonal) meal where we'll gather and bring meals we've specially prepared from within the radius. This will grow our database of suppliers, but also be an opportunity to meet as a group and share what we're up to with the 'bigger' food experiment (called 'life'!).


Epilogue - Monday 8th, afterwards
"buying breakfast cereal this morning feels like a lie": Janet

 

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