Back To Nature

Camping. Getting away from it all.  Like the time sucking-nes of the internet and facebook. Thank Fuck I don’t have a smart phone! I’m scared to get one!

Back to the basics, back to nature. Hearing the wind in the trees, seeing how dark it gets in the forest at night and how still. How wild it gets when the wind gusts blow suddenly through the forest.

Campfires! One of the best things about camping. When I smell the smell of wood fire it always reminds me of camping. It’s awesome. Something useful to teach your kids, how to make a fire. Responsibly of course.

Also great is to cook your dinner over a fire. How cool is that?! We had a frying pan with veggies over the fire, it took a while to heat up, but then it was sizzling away nicely.

Dinner

We got our veggies from the local farmer’s market.

Lunch

We just did a little bit of foraging, which basically just meant picking blackberries from the side of the track and of course, drinking the spring water, from the mineral springs.

They stain!

I like to take my regular bedding when I go camping. I mean this ain’t an arctic expedition nor are we climbing the Himalayas here, so no need for sleeping bags. Sleeping bags are not very romantic. Or very comfortable, otherwise you would probably always sleep in them.

This trip cured me from the idea of using compost toilets in the near future. I used one of them at the camp ground and came out nearly throwing up. THE SMELL!! Now some people say I’m sensitive to smell and I know I am, but that was something else! Now, I don’t know how viable wetland wastewater treatment is for the Australian climate, but I think that would be far more sophisticated.

I would think it would need less maintenance then composting toilets. And is less gross. And less crude. I’d say instead, use the toilet in town or dig yourself a hole!

Here is a picture of a campfire.

Campfires are the best!

Do you like camping and getting back to nature? What do you like best about it?

Not Everything That Is Organic Is Good For You -Produce

I mentioned before that, at the moment, we’re going to the wholefoods shop and the farmer’s market once a week. Compared to other cities in Europe and North America, Melbourne is seriously lacking in organic shops. I’m not quite sure why, if it’s lack of demand or something? We only just started to go to the farmer’s market’s a couple of weeks ago, I find it a bit confusing to keep up with their schedule as they are every weekend at a different location.

I don’t like to buy anything from the regular supermarket anymore, but we still go there every two days to get some fresh fruit. I don’t really like produce from the regular supermarket or green grocers, stuff looks and tastes like plastic, is packaged in plastic, sprayed with all sorts of chemicals and is so modified, you almost don’t recognize it anymore. For example, I used to LOVE tomatoes, but after eating them for a couple of years from the supermarket, I just find them plain gross and hate eating them. Except for cherry tomatoes, which still have a bit of taste left.

Obviously produce from the farmer’s market is better, so I’m trying to go there now regularly, I also find it far more inspiring to cook with the vegetables they have available there, then the plastic crap from the supermarket.

Anyways, I just wanted to show you why I don’t buy my vegetables at some of the organic shops in Melbourne. I took a couple of pictures of the produce I see there every week and I think it just speaks for itself.

Gross Tomatoes

This isn’t an exception, every time we go there it looks like this.

Yummy Nectarines

Obviously some of these products are reduced, but I think they shouldn’t be sold at all.

I assume those are grapes?

I ‘m wondering if I should send some of these pics to the health authorities. I mean that shit is rotten and super mouldy, you know what mould does to your body?

When you have a piece of mouldy fruit or food in general, you are supposed to throw it, coz the mould spores will be all the way through it, even if you can’t see them. Have you ever tried some food, that tasted mouldy but had no visible mould on it? Well that means it’s mouldy, but you can’t see it yet.

Also, the mould spores go all over the other produce and might even contaminate packaged products in the store. IT’S A HEALTH HAZARD!!

It’s fucking disgusting!

Anyone want some nice fruit for dinner?

This is supposed to be a “health food shop” with “ethical trading practices”, in my opinion it is neither. Selling rotten food to people for profit is disgraceful!

And I didn’t even get a picture of the rotten black bananas they were offering for free at the counter. They were already seeping rotten fruit juice!!

Sometimes they have little signs on the rotten fruit, it’s like they are taking the piss, that say something sarcastic like “Great for juicing” or “Perfect for cooking”, I think a bunch of rotten tomatoes is anything but great for cooking. It’s great for throwing in the bin!

Coz I didn’t get my veggies from the Farmer’s Market this weekend and I don’t wanna buy them anywhere else, I decided to just eat fresh fruit for the week. It’s better anyways, because it’s raw.

Today I made myself a melon salad with rock, honeydew and water melon. And it was sooo good! I don’t wanna show you a picture of my nice salad after that horrible disgusting fruit slime straight away, so here is a picture of some tree socks.

So colourful and fluffy!

We saw them in the city yesterday. Pretty cool right, seems to be the craze in and around Melbourne as I have seen quite a couple of them lately.

And here is my fruit salad. It was very juicy and absolutely delicious.

JUICY!!

Where do you get your fruit and veggies from? What do you think of certain wholefood shop trading practices? Have you had any similar experiences?

Children’s Farm and a Lentil

Today we went to the farmer’s market at the Collingwood Children’s Farm in Abbotsford. They had animals in enclosures(which i don’t like, but i like patting the animals), different plants growing everywhere, a cafe and music, all in a really pretty foresty setting. But why is the market only once a month???

Got some very nice produce and then we went to eat at Lentil As Anything, which is a not for profit community restaurant where you can ‘pay as you feel’ for a really nice vegetarian/vegan buffet. It was delicious! I’m thinking of volunteering there, but it’s a bit tricky at the moment with working full-time and at the weekends i just wanna make my own food and go for drives in the country..

After that we went to the wholefoods shop.

When we got back i made a roast with our finds from the market, so inspiring to cook with veggies in all these odd shapes and gorgeous colours.

The roast I made

And i made another bread, which turned out nicer and much less messy then the one from last week. I put heaps of spices in it, that’s why i call it the Pepper Bread..

The Pepper Bread

We also found heaps of rosemary growing in a library car park. Now how cool is that?! That went straight into the roast! It smells so nice! I wish i could eat like this every day.

So yeah, lots of food foraging and cooking today and hopefully some more eating and relaxing with some youtube clips coming up!

Ah yeah, and i watched this.

Watch it! It’s good. It’s about kids and how they get marketed to and turned into mini consumers so they can grow up to be big consumers. Nice, right?! I hate brands and marketing and consumer crap. That shit should be outlawed! Or better, people should stop being so stupid and buy all this shit trying to fill the voids in their lives.. and stop buying this crap for their kids too.

I wish you all a happy weekend!! What are your plans? I might go for a drive in the country tomorrow..