Lots of Fruit!
My mother was in town last week, and at my request brought up a box of fruit for me -- she lives in Gisborne where you can get bulk amounts of super fresh and tasty fruit for cheap (or free!). In the box was feijoas, apples and pears, and also a bag of walnuts! I haven't had walnuts in their shells for years! And feijoas and pears aren't the type of fruit I'd normally buy even though I love feijoas so it's been great having a whole box of them to snack on. It just seems weird to pay for something that I used to get for free, in such large amounts I'd never be able to eat them all!
So we've been busy smashing open the walnuts and snacking on fruit -- this morning for breakfast I made a fruit salad of apple, pear, banana, orange and some Kingland mango soy yoghurt. So delicious and a refreshing change from the usual peanut butter or marmite or hummus on toast!
I have decided that when I buy a house, it needs to have a backyard big enough for the following:
- Walnut tree
- Avocado tree
- Feijoa tree
- Tamarillo tree
- Lemon tree
- Lime tree
- Passionfruit vines
- Blueberries
- And probably a whole lot more!
It may seem a bit ambitious, but if I buy somewhere that has the space I promise that I will water them and look after them! It has always been a dream of mine to live somewhere with enough space to have a little orchard. It seems so romantic, waking up in the morning and wandering around the trees collecting fruit while my cats run around in the morning sun. And I miss living in Gisborne and in houses that have fruit trees in the backyard and where everyone else you know also does so you end up giving away bags and bags of fruit and also receiving bags of fruit from other people!
I also want to mention I've been to Casa del Gelato a few more times and have tried the lime flavour and passionfruit flavour. So far they've all been really good, but my favourites are cherry and lime. Last night I came home from a late meeting and Fiona said there was a surprise for me in the freezer -- some cherry gelato! It was a struggle to eat it since Fiona and I had been to Renkon on Ponsonby Road for dinner -- I always have the spicy miso vegies and tofu on rice -- so good, and so filling, all of their servings are huge and around $10 so it's great value.
What kind of trees or fruit do you grow or would like to grow? Have you discovered a new cafe or restaurant? Let me know in the comments!
Renkon Express
175 Ponsonby Road
Ponsonby
Auckland
09 376 3090
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Hey is this Katie i met at the wine cellar? i just got to here from the link on fasthearts. its pretty much my dream come true! just lots of writing about food! anyway i just wanted to say that its totally easy to grow tamarillo trees - you can get a baby for about $7. they will fruit after about two years, but i've seen one fully grown and they're not that big so you could totally have one in a large pot. they are pretty much just a thick central stem and big lovely leaves. we have two in our garden, but they have recently been attacked by something so we are trying to revive them! they are planted in well-drained soil and we have fed them with some seaweed mulch from time to time. and they seem to love the sun. i hope we get to stay in our house to see them fruit!
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Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Wed, 07/09/2008 - 02:50.Hey! Yes, this probably is -- was it at the Cherry Bomb party? Who is this? And do you have a website?
Woah, that is awesome to know -- I had seen some in pots at the plant store but didn't realise you could just keep growing them like that. All of my vegies grow in pots at the moment anyway -- I want to be able to move them to different areas if I need to, and I don't have much success when it comes to vegie gardens...
Where do you get the seaweed mulch from? Or do you just collect the seaweed? I really don't know much about gardening, but am totally enthusiastic about it, haha.
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Submitted by Katie on Wed, 08/06/2008 - 00:01.