Kitchen Garden by late November

curly endives with red endives

My kitchen garden looks fabulous at this time of the year. I can say that all the vegetables are at their optimum health condition. My romaine lettuce, endives, puntarelle....broccoli are simply looking great. The weather is warm too! You could never ask for more for this temperate weather at this time of the year. This is the best autumn weather! The colors of the trees are changing every minute and they are losing faster too. The colors are so intense like red, gold,brown, russet etc... with all earth tones, you have to feel the abundance whenever you see all of them through out the day.The beauty is so 'revealing', you can actually feel joy deep inside you.

OLIVE PICKING

The time has come to picking olives. It is the time for therapeutic adventure..... having quiet time to yourself, 'melurut dengan tangan' all the olives from the branches could give opportunity to reflect on our lives. The process is very slow and takes time. Therefore, the actual price that we pay for a bottle of olive oil at the supermarket is never the real price because this industry is heavily subsidised by the European union. This is one of the heritage industries for the Mediteranean countries.This tree already existed since ancient time and they are very resistant to weather and never lose leaves in winter.

The weather is absolutely warm to pick olives now. It is really a blessing because a couple of years ago, we had to brave ourselves in almost freezing weather to pick all the olives around our house. Usually olive picking is almost a 'family or national affair'. Almost everywhere, we could see and hear people gathering together to pick olives. The whole family and extended family will spend a few days together for this activity and this could be fun.... picnic under the olive trees with warm tea and a few slices of chocolate cake or having warm lunch too!

The olives will then be taken to the 'frantoio' where they will be pressed. The quality of oil depends on various factors, like weather, location of the tress etc. The quantity of olives this year is much less than the previous year but the quality of oil is superb and we have almost 20 litres of 'olio olive extra vergine'.

Olive oil is like tea, it tastes better not by the process of 'aging'. They are best consumed as soon as possible, like other oils too. If the oil is kept for too long, it will lose its taste. The Italians like to consume new oil on the bruschetta. The taste of olive oil differs from region to region too. The oil that comes from the Southern Regions and certain places from Central Regions are very strong and sometimes can be quite 'kelat' and others can be very mildly strong and delicate.

The rain does not seem to stop. It is really autumn and the weather is rather variable. I could not do much in my kitchen garden or flower garden. Before the rainy season started last week, i managed to prepare the beds for the spring bulbs. Clearing all the weeds was not an easy task but i managed to work the soil too. By the time I want to plant the new bulbs of tulips and daffodils, the rain came and it looks like I have to wait until the soil becomes dry.

I normally plant all the bulbs gradually so that by the spring time, I will have the succession of colors in 4 weeks. I will try to plant all the bulbs from now until right before Christmas.

My kitchen garden looks very well, eventhough the weeds are growing like feeding them with high dose of minerals and vitamins. One of the weeds that is very useful is nettle. Nettle stings, but it contains a lot of iron and very useful for detoxification. Making frittata (omellete)using nettle is divine and simple. This year, I am allowing a lot of space for the nettles and i will have loads of them for my detoxification process!