Robyn
Home March's challenge is to pack one item each day in a Survival Bag, in order to be prepared for an emergency.
1. my emergency foil blanket, plus silk sheet-bag and a sleeping bag.
2. a mosquito head net and a tube aloe vera
3. my clothing
4. my food and my drink bottles
5. my first aid kit
6. eating and cooking utensils
7. my Tommy Cooker Hexi Stove, fuel tablets and some kindling
8. Windproof and Waterproof Matches (or a fire flint or cigarette lighter)
9. my torches
3. my clothing
4. my food and my drink bottles
5. my first aid kit
6. eating and cooking utensils
7. my Tommy Cooker Hexi Stove, fuel tablets and some kindling
8. Windproof and Waterproof Matches (or a fire flint or cigarette lighter)
9. my torches
A see-through wash bag is a "must" so you can easily find what you want!
I haven't chosen a sealed plastic container because wet articles stored inside such as a washer or a toothbrush can grow bacteria on them. Instead I have a mesh zip-bag which I can see through to some extent.
CONTENTS OF WASHBAG
Shampoo and conditioner
A few years ago, I was at the Adelaide Domestic Airport and suddenly greatly desired a shower, not having had one that morning, having headed for the airport at 4 am!
I haven't chosen a sealed plastic container because wet articles stored inside such as a washer or a toothbrush can grow bacteria on them. Instead I have a mesh zip-bag which I can see through to some extent.
 |
| Contents in a "see-through" bag |
Small thin cotton towel
Toothbrush, toothpaste and floss/picks
Deodorant
Soap
Comb
Perfume
Lipstick
Small pot of foundation
Lip balm
Soap
Comb
Perfume
Lipstick
Small pot of foundation
Lip balm
If I need "Wet Ones" there are some in the First Aid Kit.
A few years ago, I was at the Adelaide Domestic Airport and suddenly greatly desired a shower, not having had one that morning, having headed for the airport at 4 am!
The bonus was that there was no charge for the shower!
But my washbag was not accessible.
However, when in need, one can often find a way!
I took 6 or so paper towels (well, probably a few more),
put some of the liquid soap from near the handbasins on two of the paper towels,
went into the private cubicle and had a lovely hot shower,
drying myself with the remaining paper towels.
Garden Bunya Nut Australian Bush TuckIer
May we watch out for large objects falling from above
One Easter, over 20 years ago we holidayed in the Bunya Mountains, hubby, myself and 5 children, staying in an old house from earlier settler days. These days there are many modern buildings which can be rented for holidays, but we loved the dark little old hut with it's wood stove and poky rooms! Being Easter, we had an Easter Hunt on the Monday morning, and Daughter-Number 3 was absolutely delighted searching for chocolate eggs left by the bunny. Since that day, our family has called the area 'The Bunny Mountains'.
THE bunya nut was a traditional food of the Australian aboriginal people in south-eastern Queensland, especially in part of the Great Dividing Range now known as the Bunya Mountains national park. Aborigines travelled long distances to feast on the nuts. There is renewed interest in bunya nuts among the Austraslian Aboriginal and settler population.
Bunya pines are majestic trees towering above some rainforests in Queensland. The football-sized green bunya pine cones are hidden in the tree canopy. Mature trees at 12-15 years produce cones with crops being exceptionally good every two to three years. The mature cone weighs 5-10 kilograms and contains between 30 and 100 nuts. The cones will fall from the tree when mature and should be harvested and frozen or processed within a week.
Aboriginal people traditionally ate the nuts raw or roasted and they also buried the nuts in mud for some months to improve the flavour. Raw nuts, stored in their shells in the refrigerator in a sealed container for several months, have a much sweeter taste, probably similar to the nuts immersed in mud. European settlers in Australia in the early nineteenth century used to boil the nuts in the shells with their corned beef. Nuts were also kept in their shells in wet bags until sprouts formed in about a week. When the sprouts were about 5-10 cm long the sprouted nuts – still in the shells – were boiled for 20-30 minutes then removed from shells and served hot. Currently the nuts are eaten fresh, boiled or roasted in shell. Boiled nuts – whole, sliced or pureed – can be used in a variety of sweet and savoury dishes. Dry cooking methods harden the flesh and make it inedible. Bunya wood is excellent for smoking meat or fish.
The Bunya Mountains are considered a very sacred place with similar status to Uluru for the Aborigines of south-eastern Queensland. Bunya nuts were highly prized by tribes which travelled up to 300 kilometres to the Bunya Mountains in the bunya season between January to March. Here they participated in ceremonies and feasted on the nuts. Many trees were owned by individual families who cut notches on the tree trunks to climb up to 40 metres to collect the cones in the crown of the tree. The tribes from the mountains shared the nuts with coastal tribes who reciprocated by providing seafood when visited by the mountain tribes. These ceremonies ceased with European settlement. Tom Petrie, the son of a free settler, was the only person of European descent to travel with 100 Aborigines from Brisbane to one of these feasts. This is described in Tom Petrie’s Reminiscences of Early Queensland, published 1904. Currently aboriginal people are keen to restart the bunya festivals.
http://slowfoodaustralia.com.au/our-work/australia/australian-ark/bunya-nut/
This cone was 24cm long, 18cm in diameter, and weighed 3.5kg - a larger and heavier item than your head.
It contained 56 nuts.
Cones can be even larger than this, with up to 80 nuts. Under a bunya tree is not a good place to loiter, in the season. Neither is it a suitable place to park your car!
To gather the nuts, it is most usual, these days, to wait till the cone starts to fall to pieces. Fresh-fallen cones can be jemmied apart, however - and Aborigines used to climb the trees to collect unripe cones, whose tender young nuts are said to be an outstanding delicacy - sweet and creamy.
Aborigines also ate old nuts. They would to bury them (in their shells, in string bags) in the mud of creeks, to preserve them for later eating. They would dig them up again once they had sprouted. As with all sprouting seeds, this increases their vitamin content. Bunya seeds treated this way also developed a very offensive smell, which was passed onto everything that touched them - but were considered to be a gourmet treat. All who enjoy garlic will sympathise with those who considered that the subsequent bad breath was worth the taste sensation.
Modern cooks, however, might prefer to preserve their bunya nuts in the fridge This is said to sweeten the flavour, as also happened with the buried nuts, but presumably doesn’t let them develop their full odour. Lovers of blue-veined cheese might like to try the burying option!
The nuts can also be frozen.
According to Wikipedia, their nutritional content is: 40% water, 40% complex carbohydrates, 9% protein, 2% fat, 0.2% potassium, 0.06% magnesium. They are gluten free. They have a healthy glycaemic index (GI) rating , variously measured at 50 - 75. By contrast, other tree nuts have 50-75% fat and under 20%carbohydrates. Bunya nuts have more in common with cereals than with other nuts.
The traditional “whitefella” way to cook bunya nuts is to boil them for 30 minutes in their shells, in salted water, having first cut or slit the shell, so it won’t explode. Some would add salt to the water - and boiling them with bacon bones is a particularly delicious alternative.
The boiled shells are tough and fibrous. They are easier to peel than raw nuts, but not much. Long-nosed pliers, washed to kitchen-clean standards, are a useful tool.
Modern cooks have since invented may more complex, interesting and exciting ways of opening and cooking them, using such tools as secateurs, microwaves, blenders, bread knives, machetes, wooden blocks and a need for leather gloves. See the internet for a multiplicity of methods.
However, for those (like me) who just want to cook the things and eat them in various delicious ways without making heavy weather of the whole procedure, the old way is still the best.
So, you’ve got hold of a Bunya Cone.
What do you do?
Take care. Those prickly points are sharp!
The easiest way to get the nuts out is to wait until the cone starts to break up of its own accord.
Then you free them from their husks. A sharp knife helps you peel them back from the tip.
While they are still a bit damp from the cone (or have been saved in a plastic bag in the fridge, so they won’t dry out), you hold them with one hand and tap them with a hammer to split the tips open.
This is best done outdoors on bricks or some such, and done rather scientifically so as not to damage the kernel. You’ll notice that the nutshells have a seam down each side, and this is where you should hit. All that’s needed is a gentle tap, to produce a tiny split at the point.
Then roast them for 30 minutes. An oven at 200° Celsius does the trick, but I imagine it would also work well as a campfire activity.
You’ll notice that the splits in the shell increase as the nuts cook.
Give them five minutes to cool. (The now-crisp shell cools fast, the kernel only slowly.) Then hit them gently with a hammer again, concentrating on those side-seams.
Once you have the knack, which doesn’t take long to acquire, you’ll find the shell falls open into its two parts, and the nut can be lifted out whole.
You can eat it at once. It has a mild, slightly nutty flavour and a waxy-floury texture.
You can also subject it to a great variety of culinary processes - marinating, cooking in soup, or serving with a sauce or a dip are my favourites.
Many of our early settlers had a horror of eating anything their European forebears hadn’t brought to Australia with them, so tended to undervalue this useful and tasty food. They even invented the myth that the little green shoot within the nut is poisonous. In reality, it is just as edible as the rest of the nut, and only adds to its nutritional value. http://toowoombaplants2008.blogspot.com.au/2011/02/no-fuss-bunya-nut-cookery.html
http://slowfoodaustralia.com.au/our-work/australia/australian-ark/bunya-nut/
This cone was 24cm long, 18cm in diameter, and weighed 3.5kg - a larger and heavier item than your head.
It contained 56 nuts.
Cones can be even larger than this, with up to 80 nuts. Under a bunya tree is not a good place to loiter, in the season. Neither is it a suitable place to park your car!
To gather the nuts, it is most usual, these days, to wait till the cone starts to fall to pieces. Fresh-fallen cones can be jemmied apart, however - and Aborigines used to climb the trees to collect unripe cones, whose tender young nuts are said to be an outstanding delicacy - sweet and creamy.Aborigines also ate old nuts. They would to bury them (in their shells, in string bags) in the mud of creeks, to preserve them for later eating. They would dig them up again once they had sprouted. As with all sprouting seeds, this increases their vitamin content. Bunya seeds treated this way also developed a very offensive smell, which was passed onto everything that touched them - but were considered to be a gourmet treat. All who enjoy garlic will sympathise with those who considered that the subsequent bad breath was worth the taste sensation.
Modern cooks, however, might prefer to preserve their bunya nuts in the fridge This is said to sweeten the flavour, as also happened with the buried nuts, but presumably doesn’t let them develop their full odour. Lovers of blue-veined cheese might like to try the burying option!
The nuts can also be frozen.
According to Wikipedia, their nutritional content is: 40% water, 40% complex carbohydrates, 9% protein, 2% fat, 0.2% potassium, 0.06% magnesium. They are gluten free. They have a healthy glycaemic index (GI) rating , variously measured at 50 - 75. By contrast, other tree nuts have 50-75% fat and under 20%carbohydrates. Bunya nuts have more in common with cereals than with other nuts.
The traditional “whitefella” way to cook bunya nuts is to boil them for 30 minutes in their shells, in salted water, having first cut or slit the shell, so it won’t explode. Some would add salt to the water - and boiling them with bacon bones is a particularly delicious alternative.
The boiled shells are tough and fibrous. They are easier to peel than raw nuts, but not much. Long-nosed pliers, washed to kitchen-clean standards, are a useful tool.
Modern cooks have since invented may more complex, interesting and exciting ways of opening and cooking them, using such tools as secateurs, microwaves, blenders, bread knives, machetes, wooden blocks and a need for leather gloves. See the internet for a multiplicity of methods.
However, for those (like me) who just want to cook the things and eat them in various delicious ways without making heavy weather of the whole procedure, the old way is still the best.
So, you’ve got hold of a Bunya Cone.
What do you do?
Take care. Those prickly points are sharp!
The easiest way to get the nuts out is to wait until the cone starts to break up of its own accord.
Then you free them from their husks. A sharp knife helps you peel them back from the tip.
While they are still a bit damp from the cone (or have been saved in a plastic bag in the fridge, so they won’t dry out), you hold them with one hand and tap them with a hammer to split the tips open.
This is best done outdoors on bricks or some such, and done rather scientifically so as not to damage the kernel. You’ll notice that the nutshells have a seam down each side, and this is where you should hit. All that’s needed is a gentle tap, to produce a tiny split at the point.Then roast them for 30 minutes. An oven at 200° Celsius does the trick, but I imagine it would also work well as a campfire activity.
You’ll notice that the splits in the shell increase as the nuts cook.
Give them five minutes to cool. (The now-crisp shell cools fast, the kernel only slowly.) Then hit them gently with a hammer again, concentrating on those side-seams.
Once you have the knack, which doesn’t take long to acquire, you’ll find the shell falls open into its two parts, and the nut can be lifted out whole.
You can eat it at once. It has a mild, slightly nutty flavour and a waxy-floury texture.
You can also subject it to a great variety of culinary processes - marinating, cooking in soup, or serving with a sauce or a dip are my favourites.
Many of our early settlers had a horror of eating anything their European forebears hadn’t brought to Australia with them, so tended to undervalue this useful and tasty food. They even invented the myth that the little green shoot within the nut is poisonous. In reality, it is just as edible as the rest of the nut, and only adds to its nutritional value. http://toowoombaplants2008.blogspot.com.au/2011/02/no-fuss-bunya-nut-cookery.html
May we watch out for large objects falling from above
from Robyn
painting of robin by Brenda, my mum.