Food at work - round 2

Cycling to work not long before midday when it was 40.5^C (wearing a wet shirt for evaporative cooling) makes one feel tough. It most certainly would have justified a chocolate of some sort. But alas, I still can't hassle the vending machine for any of my favourite derivations of South America's best export. But, today I have a varied meal selection to entertain my taste buds.

I'm glad I spent an extra 2 minutes getting things out of the freezer for reheating at work. Included on today's menu was leftover vegie shepphards pie (for morning tea at 1430... gotta love shift work terminology!), homemade bread for cheese and tomato toastie followed by plums from my mum's tree and a peach from friend Fiona's tree, and apricots from Central Markets' Le Fruit (lunch at 1630). For "afternoon tea" (at 1845) I'm having leftover nut loaf with honey mushroom and onion sauce followed by more of the fruit I had with lunch. 3 varieties of coleslaw today would have caused me to stray I fear.

That's the thing with a challenge like this; when you've slaved your guts out in the kitchen for a week, hopefully you get some leftovers. I can imagine that if you are only eating local food then you'll have to "preserve the surplus" for leaner times or when you feel like something that's out of season. Stone fruit trees only have edible fruit on them for a couple weeks a year so you have to get the fruit off in a hurry before the birdies get them. They will then only last for a week before starting to shrivel up. I used to love stewed peaches in winter on my rice cream. I guess as rice isn't very sustainable I'll have to choose some other staple carb we grow to substitute. I know oats are local and creamy. I don't know how much cooking freekah would take to get this soft, but I'll give them a go.

I've just done a bit of a search on the feasibility of growing cacao locally and it looks like we'd need a greenhouse as they don't like frost. Apparently the flesh of the pods can be made into a drink, but as long as I can have the beans (or most importantly, fermented, then dried, then de-hulled, then crushed and ground, then processed remnants) I'll be happy. Any one interested in creating a cooperative that grows local chocolate for the masses of Adelaide? We may require several hundred thousand dollars in capital, but they fruit in 3-4 years. I'm sure we can sway some of the market, although we need to have more children to do the work on the cheap for us.