In the Kitchen : Okonomiyaki

It was Saturday afternoon, it was a quiet, rainy day at home. Husband was industriously playing away on his Xbox, and we were getting a little peckish, so I decided to make Okonomiyaki. The great thing about Okonomiyaki is that you can add whatever you like to them. Even the name reflects this: okonomi means "what you like". So as long as you have flour, you can make them with whatever is to hand. This is what I managed to find in the fridge:

Fresh and frozen vegetables, herbs and some chorizo. Chorizo and other specialty sausages are very expensive here, but occasionally the supermarket has the 2-kilo bag half-price, so we always snap up a bag whenever we see it. We're into cooking, buying in bulk and preserving food, so we have a big freezer:

Doesn't look too dirty, phew! On the right-hand side of the crisper drawer, you can see the acorns I'm hibernating from my last post. Next, I cut up all the fresh vegetables and the chorizo. It turns out that I didn't need too much of the frozen veggies after all -- I just added a little for variety.

Mixing up the batter. I just used plain flour, milk and water for the batter. We were out of garlic, so I added some horseradish paste instead.

The first batch was a bit of a failure unfortunately. They stuck to the pan!

For the second batch, I turned the heat down and used rice bran oil instead of olive oil in the pan.

Much better!

And of course, what is Okonomiyaki without toppings! I collected together all the ones I thought would taste good: mayonnaise, sweet chilli sauce, Japanese barbeque sauce, parsley, squeezy sour cream (it's a new product meant for topping Mexican dishes, but who cares?), seaweed flakes and some leftover chutney from last week's Indian takeaway.

Well, the result might not look so appetising, but we both at it very fast!

All About Acorns

I placed my first order with 4 Seasons Seeds recently. There are a large range of seeds on offer, from interesting vegetable varieties to ornamentals, but I was most interested in the 'Trees and Shrubs' section. I spent such a long time perusing the website that in the end I ran out of time and made my order in a hurry. I accidentally ordered Pin Oak instead of Trident Maple. I was saving Pin Oak for a later time as the process of sowing them involves stratification, which sounded a bit too advanced for a noob like me. When the parcel arrived and I saw acorns in it, I didn't know what to think! But I'm embracing it as a chance to learn.

I have to apologise in advance because the photos in this post aren't very aesthetically pleasing (though pictures of peat moss might appeal to some!).

The parcel from 4 Seasons Seeds arrived very fast and was well-packed. The other seeds I ordered were Japanese Birch and False Spirea (also accidental!). The owners had kindly added a free packet of Hungarian Lilac. I also ordered some peat moss pellets and small plastic pots for my propagation operation.

So what is stratification? Thankfully there was a cheatsheet included that explains everything. Because oaks grow in cold climates, they are used to a period of snow and freezing every year. In autumn, the acorns drop to the ground and lie under the snow until spring. In fact, the acorns will not sprout unless they go through this period of cold first. To make the acorns sprout in warmer climates, or out of the proper season, the grower needs to put them in the fridge for at least 30 days, and anywhere up to 90 days. I envisaged our whole fridge filled with little pots of dirt! Thankfully though, the cheatsheet said that all I needed to do was put them in ziplock bags with some moistened peat and put them in the crisper section.

I started out by soaking the peat moss cocoons in water until they were nice and moist and plump. Then I 'planted' an acorn in each one, pushed it down inside and squeezed the top shut.

I put 6 cocoons in each plastic bag. Halfway through, it occurred to me that treating them this way might make it very difficult to check if the acorns were germinating or not. So I switched to a different method. I peeled the mesh covering off about 5 peat moss discs and put them in a plastic bag with some water. Then I worked at them with my hands until they were wet all the way through. I put 6 acorns in each bag and squished away until they were well covered with peat moss. It occurred to me at some point that with this method it might be just as difficult to tell if the acorns have germinated, but experimenting is always fun.

Once I'd done 4 bags that way, I realised that all-up, there were 55 acorns in the 20-acorn bag that I'd purchased. Even assuming that one in two acorns won't germinate, that's a generous amount. After peating up 48 though, I was a bit over it and decided to save the rest for craft supplies.

Then into the fridge the baggies went. Now it's just an (im)patient wait to see what happens!


The desired result:

A Visit to Cat Café Melbourne

The first time I heard about cat cafés was when I was in Japan in 2008. Wandering around the Tokyu Hands department store, we just happened to come across the Neko Bukuro ('Cat's House') on the top floor. A place in the city where people can go and relax by playing with adorable cats - surely it's a dream come true! Having a love for all things cute and furry as well as all things Japanese, I was itching to go inside, but Husband in his sage wisdom didn't let me. I'm highly allergic to cats and at the time I had not yet had my allergy injections, nor did I have any hayfever tablets on me. So we passed it by and I vowed to return one day.


▼ Winter and Ruby asleep on the much-loved sheepskin rug.

Unfortunately I haven't been able to travel back to that part of the world yet, but I was heartened when I started to hear about Cat Cafés opening up in other parts of the world - China, France, U.S.A., Canada - surely Australia would be next?? When Husband told me last week that a cat café was opening in Melbourne very soon, I became embarrassingly excited and made a booking as quickly as humanly possible! Then it was a very long week until finally the café opened and the day of my booking came.


▼ Something distracts Winter from grooming Ruby.

▼ One of the many play towers stands in an alcove.

Through pouring rain, Husband and I battled our way to the café, located on the fringe of the CBD near Queen Victoria Markets. The café is in a two-storey building, a beautiful heritage building which by the looks of it used to be a pub and small hotel. Due to Australia's Food Handling Laws, which are stricter than in other countries, the cats must be kept separate from food serving areas. Therefore the café proper is downstairs, and the rooms where the cats live are upstairs. However, patrons are allowed to take their food and drinks upstairs if they wish, and staff are available to take orders so that patrons don't have to leave the cats to refill their drinks, etc. The downstairs café area is minimalist, with pre-packaged foods and a vending machine serving about 20 different types of coffees, teas and soup. There is an extensive range of cat-themed items on sale, including handicrafts made by locals, which I thought was a lovely touch. The brightly-coloured cat beds, scarves and other items on sale gave the café a fun, inviting look.


▼ Sherlock is fast asleep in the hidey-tube with just one ear poking out!

Husband and I arrived a bit early, and we vended ourselves a coffee while we waited with anticipation to be allowed upstairs. A maximum of 15 patrons are admitted into the cats' area at a time, for the safety of the cats and a more relaxed experience, and we were required to wash our hands before entering. (The hand-washing facilities are also available on leaving if patrons wish to use them.) The cats' area covers the whole top floor of the building. Four rooms provide plenty of space for the cats to roam around and the patrons to relax. For the humans there are comfy couches and café-style chairs and tables, as well as several bookcases filled with books and magazines (many cat-related, but not all!). For the cats, there are plenty of play towers, sleeping beds, cushy rugs and hidey-tubes, with toys scattered throughout. The decor includes cat-themed posters, and shelves covered with grass-like green shag carpet for the cats to perch on. Soon we forgot about the cold and wet outside as we settled in and watched the cats peacefully napping.


▼ One of the smaller rooms with welcoming decor.

▼ Lottie observes the other kittens playing.

Cat Café Melbourne has a total of 13 cats at the moment (the maximum allowed by license is 15). All the cats are sourced from shelters, so it’s likely they're having a much better life than they might have otherwise. We saw 8 cats on the day; a few were sequestered in the private area due to having colds. When we arrived, most of the cats were asleep. Only Lynx, one of the oldest and biggest cats, was awake, sitting in the middle of the hallway where all were forced to step over him. He was definitely king of the castle! A little while later, pretty Lottie woke and was playing catch-a-mouse with a couple in the far room, but Husband and I sat near sleeping Ruby and Winter, snuggled up together on the sheepskin rug.


▼ Lynx hogging the walkway.

▼ Braveheart asleep in the hidey-tube.

▼ Waldo wakes up.

I had a special moment with Ruby as one of the staff told me she doesn't mind being picked up and held while she naps. She purred as she snuggled up against me, and let me know when she wanted to get down with a quiet 'mew'.


▼ Me and Ruby (sorry for the bad pic!)

There was a sense of camaraderie amongst the patrons that really impressed me. Everyone seemed relaxed and happy. Some chatted quietly, others just sat and admired the napping cats from afar. After a while, most of the cats woke and started either wandering around or playing, and the sense of excitement among the patrons was contagious. Crawling around on the floor or lying on one of the shag rugs was perfectly acceptable behaviour, and cries of 'awww!' and 'oh he's so cute!' could be faintly heard throughout the rooms. Just before we were due to leave, Sherlock crawled out of the hidey-tube and started living up to his name by investigating a couple of nearby cat lovers.


▼ Lynx near the entrance to the cat's private room; Lexi emerges from under the couch.

▼ Ruby, Lottie and Braveheart playing with one of the many toys.

All too soon our hour was up, and we had to say goodbye to the cats - for now! I was smiling all the way home, and couldn't help giggling when I thought about the playful cats and how they made us and our fellow patrons so happy. The day we visited, the café had been open for only 2 days, and I was impressed with how smoothly everything ran, and how much thought had been put into the whole operation. I will certainly visit the cats at Cat Café Melbourne again.


Entry Cost: $10 per person for 1 hour with the cats
Opening hours: 10am - 9pm, every day of the week
Bookings: Cat Café Melbourne


▼ Shy Lexi starts to become curious.

▼ Winter grooms Ruby while she plays with a mouse toy.

Autumn Garden Update

It's been a while since I felt like blogging. For a long time I didn't feel like doing anything much, but that's starting to change now. I've been doing some craft and even some art, but I'll start with a garden update. It's late autumn now here in Australia, and the stress of extreme heat is definitely behind us. The two larger ferns are recovering, though sadly the small one didn't make it:

I love the way the branches unfurl, like a dancer's hand reaching out. Even plants that I thought were goners for sure have started flowering, like the Begonia:

I didn't even know this was a Begonia until I happened to come across a very similar-looking photo on the internet. Apparently this is the time of year to prune shrubs like the fuchsia, once they stop flowering. But it still keeps on flowering and flowering!:

I'm not complaining though: fuchsias are one of my favourites. I gave it my special attention during the heat, and it pulled through, so I'm very happy. Nearby, the nectarine is starting to lose its leaves:

This is something I'm still getting used to. Most native Australian plants are evergreen, so I have to keep reminding myself ... not Dying: Deciduous! Meanwhile, some of the roses are continuing to delight me:

I'd read that some roses are repeat-flowering, but this is just getting ridiculous! I think it'll be pruning time soon, though. And check out what else is growing ... soybeans!:

I'll post some photos of the whole veggie patch soon. As well as soybeans, we have tomatoes, capsicums, sweet potatoes and hopefully onions, all in different stages of growth. I can't tell you how exciting it is to put things in the ground and see them getting bigger and thriving. I can draw, I can crochet, but there's no more satisfying way of capturing simplicity than this for me right now.

From the simple to the infinitely complicated, to my bonsai:

It's grown a lot since I re-wired it. Unfortunately one evening I found it had blown over with some strong winds that we had a few weeks ago. This had bent the wire out of the shape that I'd set it in, but I managed to re-bend it to something resembling the original. Who knows, I might even blow that branch away in future and work on another one. In that way, bonsai is the same as any other art.

Lastly, here's a shot of our brick paving, lit by the late afternoon sun. I love how the new growth peeking out from the cracks forms a green grid amongst the weeds, giving them a wabisabi type of beauty.

Much of my garden isn't very photogenic, but things like this make it so!

Bonsai Update: My Second Go at Wiring

I'm glad that I've been monitoring my bonsai regularly, because the wire on my Callistemon Salignus sapling has been cutting in after only 2 months on. I'm hesitant to label any of my plants 'bonsai', but there are plenty of other terms out there that I can use: 'pre-bonsai', 'potensai', even 'tachiagari' ('starting-out'). In some ways, this plant is a tachiagari, as it's only a few years old, barely past sapling stage, and very much looks like a young plant. But it could also be classified as a 'pre-bonsai', as it's already in training. I like to categorise things, if you haven't noticed already!

I was actually pleased that the wire on my Callistemon was starting to cut in already, because I'd done such a newb job with it (my first ever wiring), that I was relieved to get rid of it!

Noob Lessons Learned:
1. Use the right type of wire!
2. Try to avoid creating an Alphabet tree!

Several weeks after wiring my tree the first time, I read a post on styling which said to try and avoid making regular 'S' shapes with the branches. Mine wasn't quite that, but it did have a disctinctive and embarrassingly unnatural-looking 'C' shape. (Hence the 'Alphabet tree'.)

This was my chance to make amends, much sooner than I thought I'd be able to. Having used the wrong type of wire (steel: much stiffer than aluminium), it was very difficult to get off. I nicked the trunk in a few places. Oops. That's possibly inevitable if the wire has cut in. That's what I'd like to think, anyway. (Red arrows point to where the wire has cut in.)

Installing the new wire was comparatively easy, even fun (correct wire, did I mention that?). I only lost one leaf, and I didn't poke myself in the face/eye with the wire even once. I feel quite proud of myself.
Next it was time for styling!

I have to admit, I really felt like I had no idea what I was doing from that point on. It's one thing to read blog posts or watch videos on styling, and nod sagely and say, "ah, I see what you did there." It's an entirely different thing to sit in front of a blank canvas and try to create a work of art from it. Especially when that work of art has a mind of its own and could turn out completely different from what you see in your mind's eye. Or won't bend the way you want it to without damaging it. And especially when that work of art is something you'll be working on for the rest of your life, and the decisions you make now could drastically affect what you have to work with in the future. (No pressure at all, then!)

Pushing all of that aside, I bravely dove in and did this:

I listened carefully for cracking noises, just like the blogs say, but having no real plan in mind, I kept fiddling with it and had to stop myself from re-positioning it too many times. I'm not completely happy with the outcome, but I didn't want to do any more in case I damaged the tree too much. I gave the trunk a sharper bend (red arrow above) instead of the gentle curve it had before, to give it a more dramatic story. I angled the rest of the trunk downwards, with some 3-dimensional movement both back-and-forwards, and up-and-down. I should have bought some finer wire as well so I could have styled the smaller branches at the same time. Never mind. It's okay.

Noob Lessons Learned:
3. Have a sketch or at least an idea in mind before you start fiddling with the branches!

---

FYI - this specimen has had no pruning and no root work done on it yet, so on second thoughts I'm wavering on calling it even anything as prestigious as a 'pre-bonsai'. Perhaps I'll come up with my own terms so I can neatly categorise everything.

Sweet Potato Growing Experiment

Today is just a quick update to tell you about my sweet potato. A few months ago, I saw in Gardening magazine that you can grow your own sweet potatoes from the tuber. So I decided to give it a go. I wish I'd taken photos right from the start, but that's life. One half of the potato didn't take (it went all shrivelly), but the larger half is going spectacularly well.

It's been on the kitchen windowsill, where it lapped up the sun, even on the 40oC-plus days. The magazine says that when the shoots reach 20cm, I should snap them off and place them in some water to grow roots. So that I did.

The shoots are different lengths, so hopefully that means we'll have a small but steady supply of sweet potatoes instead of a glut. According to the magazine, I should plant the shoots out when they have well-developed roots and each one should grow 5-6 sweet potatoes. Nature is so cool like that! I'm not sure yet if I'll put them in the veggie garden or pots. Husband and I prepared the bed quite shallow, as we were only planning on growing non-tuberous plants (cucumber, capsicum, etc). We have some pots that may be deep enough, but I'm not sure. I could always try both. That's why it's called an experiment!

My First Saikei

First, I should probably explain what a saikei is: begin the lesson!

A saikei is a miniature landscape in a tray, consisting of living plants, with rocks and sometimes water. Bonsai-like trees are incorporated in the display - though they are usually less mature than true bonsai - as well as ground cover and other types of plants.
Kawamoto Toshio, who invented the art form in the 1950s, set out various 'rules' that saikei should conform to, but being a new artform, they're not as rigid as with bonsai. Some designers contend that the landscapes should never include man-made elements such as human/animal figures, buildings, etc., but most of the photos I've seen include these.
Saikei is seen as a good introduction or 'easier' alternative to bonsai, as a pleasing display can be achieved almost immediately. As a more naturalistic effect is desired, the fine pruning and shaping required of bonsai isn't necessary. Saikei are also very versatile: as the plants grow, the display can be taken apart and re-designed. Potential bonsai can be grown in a saikei display until mature enough to be potted separately.
[For more information, see the Wikipedia.]

Now on to my first creation (and yet another photospammy post, I just can't seem to help myself lately) -

I had these three rocks that I'd found when we were inspecting my best friend's currently-being-built house a couple of months ago:

They're pretty cool. I'd been wanting to incorporate one of them into a saikei for a while. On New Year's Eve, I suddenly decided to do it! On the way back from picking up our party supplies, Husband and I decided to swing into Bunnings on impulse. I can get a bit giddy in these situations and sometimes don't make the best choices, but time will tell.

I didn't have time to do anything with my purchases on the day, what with preparing the party foods and all, so I left it til the next day. Can I just mention how it poured rain on New Year's Day here? It's meant to be the middle of summer, for pete's sake! I remember past New Year's Days when it's been so swelteringly hot we dared not leave the house! This summer has been so cool and wet so far, it's very unusual.
Anyway, back to the saikei. Here are the victims candidates:

Here we have a Buxus Microphylla 'Faulkner' (AKA Box, popular for hedges) and a Delosperma Echinatum 'Happy Days'. I didn't use the commonly-held principles when selecting the plants, like naturalism or similar hardiness, no, not me! I chose the Box because it had an interesting trunk which might make a good bonsai one day and it just seemed perkier than its fellows. I chose the Delosperma because it looked kinda cool and had a cute yellow flower on it.
Here's the pot:

I would have preferred a large, shallow tray, but the selection at Bunnings was limited. (The first time I visited, I was pleasantly surprised to find they had a bonsai section there at all.) I chose this as it was the flattest and widest they had, with the most unobtrusive coloured glaze.
One of the many fun parts is cutting the mesh to size and attaching it to the pot with wire loops:

The rock sat too low in the pot for my liking, so I used some smaller rocks that I'd found in the veggie patch to sit it on (don't worry, I washed them with disinfectant first). Yeah, for some reason the previous owners had at some point brought in a large amount of medium-sized gravel rocks and scattered them throughout the whole garden, even the veggie patch. It makes for interesting times! But at least the rocks are coming in handy. I put a couple of the more interesting ones aside in case I wanted to use them to decorate the finished saikei.

Now for some potting mix. I made sure to stuff plenty of it under the rock to stabilise it:

Then I pretty much just made it up as I went along. First, the Delosperma:

Apparently it's also known as the Pickle Plant. I like it. Now, the Buxus. Here's a close-up of the trunk showing the hopefully potentially interesting multiple trunks:

The poor thing had become a bit pot-bound during its time at Bunnings. It was a good job I rescued it!

There was no way it was going to fit into the saikei as is, so I cut about a third of the root ball off.
(The sky had become so dark now that the flash started going off!)

Roots tickled and arranged in the pot:

I tried to keep the weeds passenger plants intact to add a bit of interest and naturalism to the finished product. I had a bit of trouble making sure all of the roots were covered in potting mix, but I got there in the end. I created a nice little valley in between the plants.:

And yet it still seemed too sparse. It needed more! Many saikei I'd seen had moss as a ground cover, but even with the shocking weather here at the moment, moss in your average Australian garden in Summer is very difficult to come by. So I did what any half-crazy gardener would do - I went out into the rain and started digging around between the cracks in the concrete with an old bread knife!

This nice groundcover, well, I have no idea what it is, but it's going in!:

back view.
Later it occurred to me that, if it was growing on the shadiest side of the house under the eaves, then it might not like to live in the same pot as a sun-loving succulent and a piece of hedge, but I guess we'll see how it goes.

I added the two reserved small rocks, and some gravel to create the look of a dry riverbed. I put the white rock at the back to look like it was in the distance. The final touch was a panda figurine that my best friends gave me for Christmas. It stopped raining just as I finished it. I'm not joking.

I suppose it's hardly a naturalistic landscape, really. Why would a panda be doing the Happy Baby in a not-that-Chinese landscape under a monstrously large privet?? But it was fun to make, and fun to look at.

Oh yeah, I nearly forgot! Happy New Year!