Well, last night I ended up making a roasted pumpkin, egg, sweet leaf, chilli and garlic chive basil dish with snake beans seasoned with the Nightcliff sea salt- a savoir- I love salty, how could we live without it, especially with all this sweat!. It was pretty good, but I have to admit I already made a compromise. The small amount of coconut oil we made at Muni’s, I left there, and I can’t live without oil, and have not had chance to make more, so I had to choose to use some non local oil. The toss up- Aussie organic sunflower oil (South Australia), Aussie organic olive oil (Victoria) or organic coconut oil from Thailand. Now Thailand is (marginally) further from us, but I think this coconut oil has had a longer trip- via elsewhere in oz, but hey we could be making (more) coconut oil, so potentially could be local, but we would never be able to grow olives! I think the sunflower oil may have won the test until I scrape and squeeze and boil some more coconut oil!

So this is what we had for dinner and I had this bowl of leftovers  for brunch. Jon was asleep as he is on night duty! I was pretty hungry and also ate a lot of bananas, mandarins and passion fruits and half a pineapple. Not sure if this is fructose overload, but it felt good! I looked longingly at a caramel chocolate bar in the downstairs fridge and really fancied a cup of black tea with milk (not coconut milk though!)

I have been trying to work, but am absorbed in thinking of what to cook next and how to flavour it! I started to make dinner, but had left my phone in a shade house at uni (when measuring plants) so I went off to get that and walk the dog. On return, less thought went into dinner and I had to make it before Jon started work…

A cassava, bread fruit, plantain curry style dish was concocted. I attempted curry paste with chillies, turmeric, sea salt, garden ginger and then wacked in lots of herbs, including thai corriander, garlic chives and vietnamese mint..

I fried up the paste and added cut snake gourd,

then the pre boiled bulkies and all the herbs, including drum stick leaf- high in protein and vitamins!

Then added the home made coconut milk and some first grade coconut shred and lime juice and zest for a little zing, I am missing the onions and garlic. Garlic chives will have to do! It is just like boil up we used to eat in Utila (Caribbean island in Honduras) minus the fish…

It wasn’t bad. I went a bit overboard on the bulkies, so the flavours were not as powerful as I hoped, in leu of all the other potential non local spices and flavour additions I need heaps of chilli, herbs and salt and probably should have made more paste. Maybe it will taste better tomorrow after it sits a while, it is going to be lunch!

Oh I am getting hungry already. Tomorrow involves coconut milk making and I went to see my neighbour to see if he could catch a Queen fish while out- for Namas!!! Yummo, if that doesn’t happen I have some local frozen fish and fish cakes are on the cards- thai style but without fish sauce damit!!!!

Over at Kate’s house things are looking yummy!…