A veggie garden thread

Gold Zen........
When you point to them in the tank, their little brown eyes light up and they seem to smile as if all their troubles are over.......

When i was dating my missus i went on a phase trying every weird food i could find in Java, her old man use to take me out looking for these odd foods, probably the two weirdest i ate was dog and snake(cobra)

The dog was petty average was satay style and cold just tasted kind of like dirty cold beef to me.

The Cobra was an experience, brought out alive they played with it for a while teasing me with it, then cut it's head off skinned it and some how kind of filleted it, cut it up into small bits and fried with spices and served with rice.

It wasn't like chicken as i expected it was kind of chewy and quite bland, maybe it was cooked to fast or something.

Fertilised Megzee?, could wait for 14 days or longer (depends how you like your feathers..) and have Balut

Cobra heart Indo, served still beating with a blood and bile shot into rice wine to chase it down..

Yumm frogs Megzee. I've got a picture that I need to dig out of a bucket of frogs collected in the jungles of Issan/Laos/Cambodia border, all very froggy, they didn't know what was coming...

I';m spending a lot of time trying to control the cane toad population to let some frogs come back.

They did offer me the heart and also some blood but passed on that one.

Seaslug, my wife eats the fertilized chicken eggs mate, but I have to leave the kitchen when she spoons them out of the shell.....just F%#&N wrong........the little thing almost looks asleep........
They do the Cobra think here too Indo, and they also tease you with the poor live serpent over the table, and then cut the buggers head off with a pair of scissors, drain his blood into a glass and you're supposed to gulp it down while they fry up the rest....
The old "medicinal value" chestnut...
Missing the old 'T-Bone, vege, chips and a schooner right about.......NOW

I really wanted to try the fertilised chicken egg the couple of times I've been to Vietnam. Couldn't find them anywhere.

Megzee 'Hot vit lonh' or something like that. Is that the name?

Haha Megzee, a favourite in the Phillipines as well, 21 days have a well-developed embryo and the features of the chick/duckling are recognisable with feathers, I'm with you time to leave the kitchen FFS

Go to the Phillipines Zen, you won't have any trouble finding them..

Let me check Zen...
Yep correct mate........Hot vit lonh'
Simply translated.........wrong......

Had a few Balut in the Philippines. My Filipino colleagues usually crack them out a few beers in an see if you’re going to baulk. It’s almost obligatory to do at least one every time you’re there - previous form doesn’t get you off the hook.
They’re an interesting experience - depending on the age.
14 days (ish) is a bit like a hard boiled egg (taste) with an odd crunchy texture.
21 days days is a different experience - usually get a tickle from feathers, crunchy bones and occasionally an unchewable beak.
On the quiet about half of the Filos will tell you that they don’t really like them, it’s more the ‘cultural immersion’ factor when they’ve got Aussies (or other westerners) around.

I had some weird food up in the mountains in the phillos.

didn't know what half of it was. It was vaguely animal, I think.

I’ve traveled a bit and am reasonably open-minded but I’ve gotta say, Filipino food not close to the top of my favourite cuisine list.

And right about here, my Phillipines trip idea hit a brick wall

Phillos is awesome.

I remember we did this big long bus trip from end to end in Luzon, looking for surf.
Crossing the Sierra Madre multiple times.
Part of the bus fare was lunch at these dingy "cafes" in tiny mountain villages.

Like I said, I had no idea what we were eating. Rice was about the only thing I could identify. There were insects, birds I think, small animals floating in gelatinous soups.

Somehow I managed not to get sick but my two pals.

we got a destination by the beach and they both ran to the ocean, they'd both shat themselves, repeatedly I think, and they spent the next few days on hands and knees pouring out from both ends.

Good times...ah the memories...

The cuisine on the inter-island ferries which we caught from one to other of the archipelago was pretty sick too.

scoop of rice with either a scoop of spam or a salted pillie.

I took the stinky pillie on.

I would have to agree with you Etarip and I'm fortunate to have a lovely Filipina wife who's also a great cook. When you look around there are restaurants selling almost every cuisine of the world but how often do you see a Phillipines restaurant outside of the Phillipines. That says it all. Viet has to be one of my favourites. Anyway I've turned it into a food thread rather than a veggie thread. Apologies.

Arvo harvest:

Good one Stu, nothing like fresh produce from your own garden

Geez Stu, you only need to do that a couple of times a week and you are living a very healthy lifestyle.....lovely.......

Good haul.

Coconut harvest time around this neck of the woods
https://hosting.photobucket.com/images/i/MJBmarine/Coconuts.jpg?width=28...
The old women is my wife's 88 year old grandma who still toils in her garden.
These are a type of Zucchini she sells on the roadside for 20c a kilo.......Lovely sweet little buggers when they are baked....
https://hosting.photobucket.com/images/i/MJBmarine/Granny.jpg?width=285&...

Fantastic Megzee, I miss Vietnam

It's great Seaslug, a regular health camp... but I often get pangs for good old Aussie mate....
The bird posts a few back got me a bit homesick...
Not veggie related, but the little ghost bats are showing up again and they head up the river each arvo in their hundreds of thousands and head back each morning.....
Beautiful to watch.......

Good stuff Megzee.

She looks so happy.

Nice Megzee. I spent yesterday morning on a working bee at a mate's market garden shifting mulch and planting some native trees for a screen. Beautiful block of land. From the street it looks bog ordinary, double brick house on a standard width block surrounded by other double brick houses, but walk around the back and the block dips away to a shallow valley, past two smaller buildings (with gardens on their rooves) made mostly from reclaimed materials, an entertaining area and lots of fruit trees for shade, crosses a small creek and then returrns to a gentle incline where there's row upon row of vegetables running for perhaps 50m, and then a stand of large native trees at the back where a sheep used to live.

Makes my kitchen garden look insignificant - but then again I don't have to hire WWOOFFers and whatnot to help pick my cucumbers.

How they got hold of the land is one of my favourite stories. A feelgood tale of stewardship besting developers.

Totally relate to that Megzee, I spent some +20 years living/working OS but then made the move to come back to Aust when Mum got sick. I'm glad I did but still miss certain countries.

Sounds like a hidden gem Stu....cool description...thanks for sharing....love this feel good thread...
Blowin, She is indeed a happy little woman, but she is the unofficial lord mayor of the village mate.....When the young guys get on the rice whiskey and run a muck and you see Granny marching up and down the street with a whippy length of bamboo, you can bet there will be some yelping......Tough with a capital T...

The most apocalyptic of liquors. It makes you scream the things that common courtesy locks in the subconscious creases of your brain. It makes you act on the impulses that legal disincentives and social inhibitions usually curb. It is the devil on your shoulder banishing the angel to the harsh light of sobriety. She is an evil, evil mistress. She is the summation of everything that is tasteless, the total of all that is cruel and unkind. She is cheap, she is easy, and she'll ensure you won't forget her with the promise of an eyeball-pounding hangover. She'll pain you to the point of suicide, and she'll make you wish you were never born.

I have never touched the poison SS, but that very descriptive passage has confirmed my good choice.....Is that written from first hand knowledge mate?
Imagine copping an absolute flogging from an 88 year old bamboo wielding granny to top off the woe....

Regretfully yes mate, woke up under a mango tree in some paddie field near Thai/Cambodian border with a venomous green tree snake keeping me company. Then proceeded to bog the car in the river. Never touch that shite again. Granny knows, she's seen that all her life.

Whoaaaa........
Yep, granny knows best........

maybe you can tell that tale Stu? It sounds worth hearing

The source of FR Philippines mystery meat

https://ibb.co/R3233w7

wouldn't be surprised.

no worries Blowin. Be good to hear how you go if you do eat the nuts.

Native bees spotted on the grass tree flowers FR

Today’s garlic harvest

thats epic GF.

I've never had success growing garlic. how do you do it?

In an old half wine barrel full of sandy soil with lots of compost and horse poo.
In winter just got a bulb of Australian grown garlic and pulled the cloves off and planted each one. So it’s taken about 6 months to grow which is pretty normal I think.

To be honest they were neglected a bit but they have come out pretty good.

cheers. sounds like a good method.

freeride76 a mate of mine said plant your garlic on the shortest day and harvest them on the longest day which ties in with goofyfoot's timeline

Hey fellas
Long time reader but rarely comment
I'm loving this thread and remember reading about bloody snails, the bastards are decimating my chilli and capsicum plants but not touching anything else... tomatoes, strawberry etc
I think I remember reading about night time stealth missions but I don't really have the time or patience for that
Any advice would be much appreciated
Cheers

I have a dog so i cant use pellets and have issues with slugs and snails, the old beer container things works to some degree, basically little container of beer dug into ground, they are attracted to the yeast or something and drown, you can even get special containers on E-Bay that stop a bit of rain or crap falling in.

Hey JD13,
Natural pesticide as follows....
Blend chillis and garlic and lime or lemon in a food processor.....no need to remove stalks, seeds, clove shell or even lemon rind....I throw a bit of Capsicum and pepper in for added bite.

add 1 or 2 liters water to the deadly mix and let it sit for 30 minutes or more if you have time...
Strain into a container through an old teeo....
Decanter into a spray bottle...
Go to battle....Works on Caterpillars, ants, snails, aphids, mealy bugs..........
I even found that Chilli plant " leaf turn" disease can be eradicated...
Works on the neighbours moggy as well...
Beware..... a fine mist spray will make you sneeze like buggery...

Oh yeah, you don't need to spray the gritter, just spraying the leaf and plant will deter them.....
snails here are the size of small dogs....

Thanks Megzee
Much appreciated will give it a crack
Cheers