Letting the days go by

These are strange days – living a life similar to our teen years where we were restricted by the complexities of travel, limited by funds and holding tight to the belief that better times were ahead.

In order to save my head space and minimise my grandma rants on Facebook I have to keep myself amused and in doing so share some rather inane information with all of you. This keeps me in a good space and saves your braincells by not having to listen to negative rants.

Parsley is the topic of choice and I have become rather fixated as you will see.

Enjoy, and I hope you are enlightened by the benefits, uses, and ambrosial nature of the little bombshell – parsley.

My neighbourhood has most things I need. Most things I need I have – so there is not a lot they need to provide me with.

One of my favourite places is the nursery. This is because we have embraced the home vegetable patch, self-sufficiency and are working on having a fully edible garden. https://terranora-wholesale-nursery.business.site/?utm_source=gmb&utm_medium=referral

On my last visit I was seeking coriander. Have you ever looked at young coriander and flat leaf parsley together? If you do you will notice that they are very similar – really you can’t see it! I am renowned for not paying attention. If there is a 50/50 question – I will make the wrong choice – even if it is about which way to turn walking out of a shop. (Don’t cry – it is a lifelong thing and I accept it as part of me).

Needless to say I came home with about a dozen flat leaf parsley plants and no coriander. Now they are in beautiful thick bunches taking over my planter box. So after trimming them back, you guessed it – to plant coriander – I have to decide what I am going to do with it all. I cannot stand the idea of throwing it into the compost. Thank goodness I am not in Europe as there is a similar plant called fools parsley which is related to hemlock.

While I was trimming them back some neighbours were passing and I asked if they would like some parsley and they were very dubious. I did have a bit of a chuckle about the young days when we used to package up different substances and hide them in the spice cupboard as parsley. I wondered if they thought it was code or we were just weird neighbours.

My sister confirmed that in high schools the students are still so self assured that older people have never lived that they still attempt this today taking substances to school in plastic bags and calling it parsley. Oh the joys of youth and the belief that you are the first person here, I have no idea where this comes from. An interesting topic for another day.

Let the cooking begin… first recipe Vegan Parsley Pesto. I used almonds and nutritional yeast and it is very tasty, but didn’t really put a dent in the parsley bunches.

https://willamettetransplant.com/parsley-pesto/

Next we were having fish for tea. I managed to get to the fish shop before lockdown and had snapper. So I headed to Gourmet Traveller (one of my favourite cooking website) and found a recipe for Baked Snapper. I did not bake it per se, I wrapped it in baking paper and alfoil and placed it on our coal BBQ. I did find that 30 minutes was a little too long as I dried it out. However, on a bed of mashed sweet potato it was delectable. The potato compensated for the dryness of the fish very well. I made the pistou to the recipe and had enough to cover another piece of fish and froze that portion to get the timing right another time.

https://www.gourmettraveller.com.au/recipes/chefs-recipes/baked-snapper-pistou-16605

What shall I have…

Breakfast time.

Just decided to use the pesto as a filling for an omelette and that worked a treat the pesto was scrumptious warm.

There is a small roadside stall had cheap ripe avocados, homegrown tomatoes and bush lemons. I toasted Turkish bread, used the pesto as a spread, add a soft poached, avocado and topped with a fresh sprig of curled leaf parsley for decoration. As I can’t eat avocado I swapped it out with tomato.

• Note to self when doing poached eggs in glad wrap, put the egg over the toast – soft egg on the bench top is not very appealing.

All set to spend the day potting more plants in the patch for the next instalment of I’ve got too much…. in my garden!

On to lunch – hmm what should it be given that I spent the morning making Tabouleh! Lucky I had some Lamb pies in the freezer that I had prepared earlier during a pie making phase. Lamb is the perfect accompaniment to Tabouleh. Only 3 tubs left to go and must be used in the next two days. One to the neighbour as my sister is out of my current 5k radius.

https://mayihavethatrecipe.com/tabouleh-salad/

Now all of this talk of parsley makes me wonder about the health benefits. I have a very sensitive gut so need to consider the FODMAP side of things and see what else I can find out.

Parsley is great for FODMAP diets. The Tabouleh is also fine but the bulgur is a wheat product so can be replaced by quinoa. Garlic and spring onion, not so good, but I usually only use the green part of the shallot and Garlic infused oil. With the pesto the issue is the almond, restricted amounts – so a substitute could be found.

Eating the pesto as a spread eliminates the almond upsets. I get my information from The Two-Step Low-FODMAP Diet and Recipe Book by Dr Sue Shepherd. I use this when I am finding my gut is dictating my moods or tolerance levels (to food not people – but they could be interlinked).

Onward on this total obsession with parsley!

Healthy – OMG it is a superfood. Awesome levels of Vitamin A, B, C and K and all in high levels of the recommended daily doses. (More than enough actually)

It’s all becoming too much so have a look here http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?dbid=100&tname=foodspice

It does everything from reduce tumour cells, neutralise the effects of smoke from charred food (this is good as the jaffles were burnt and contained no parsley). The Vitamin K is good as it is a blood thinning agent and Graham just had his AZ vaccine. There are also high levels of Vitamin B and Folate which helps with the effects of the wine while sitting beside the aforementioned fire for jaffles.

Love any nutritionalists to chime in and add some cred to Dr Google.

Song credit for this one Talking Heads – Once in a Lifetime. I just felt that this was apt for the times, facing change and looking at what we are doing and where we are going. Maybe down a parsley highway.

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In looking for a quote on parsley I have apparently found the queen of pesto and a very interesting woman to boot. That parsley highway gets more interesting with each page.

The very last green dish before I turn green and you turn off is Pesto Spaghetti. Simple and very green.

Pounding fragrant things – particularly garlic, basil, parsley – is a tremendous antidote to depression. But it applies also to juniper berries, coriander seeds and the grilled fruits of the chilli pepper. Pounding these things produces an alteration in one’s being – from sighing with fatigue to inhaling with pleasure. The cheering effects of herbs and alliums cannot be too often reiterated. Virgil’s appetite was probably improved equally by pounding garlic as by eating it

Patience Gray