Our recently discovered bamboo forest at the bottom of the 'Spiral Garden' has yielded many joys over the last month, inspiring me amongst other things to build a platform overlooking it.
From here one can relax in a suspended seat and enjoy the view or simply close their eyes and appreciate the sound of the river below, accompanied at all times by a chorus of birds unlike any other i have found here in the South of France.
It was suggested to me by @kaminchan in my last post that we could eat the bamboo so Esteban & i went to the forest and had a look for the desirable young shoots.
Almost immediately we started to discover them.
Deeper and deeper we went into the forest, searching for our lunch.
They were surprisingly hard to see against the dark earth.
Amazing patterns on some of them.
At the end we took around 12 shoots, leaving many more in the forest for next time.
We watched some youtube videos for guidance on how to cut them.
Once the exterior is stripped away this is what you are left with.
Cut up into pieces ready for cooking.
Sabrina has some amazing skills in the kitchen and turned them into this for our lunch, with carrots, chives and a creamy coconut sauce.
As the leader of our jungle expedition Esteban was keen to try the fruits of his labour and declared immediately that he liked it!
Sabrina prepared a bunch of different dishes so that both children and adults would be satisfied.
The meal also included my daily salad from the garden, this time featuring radish pods (which seem to me a much more effective way to eat them as each radish will produce around 30-50 pods).
Here is a piece of bamboo going in his mouth!
And this is what my plate looked like before i ate it all up :)
Sabrina & i have eaten bamboo before in Asia but i can tell you this tasted even better for some reason. Perhaps because it was so fresh or perhaps because this bamboo came from our magical forest? Either way, it tasted amazing and motivated me to write this post.
I also wanted to tell you about a few upgrades which have happened around here during the last week.
The kittens pissed in a box of hazelnuts (probably many times!) and they smelled so bad there was no way we could eat them so i recommissioned them to become art, alongside the acorns. It was in fact the fastest conversion of a bad feeling to a good one, with almost no separation between perceived problem and potential solution.
In this case they have become a step at the entrance of the stone circle.
Here's the one Sabrina created at the back of the bamboo platform.
And this after telling me some years ago she wasn't creative! ALL HUMANS are naturally creative of course and the only thing which cuts us off from it is our unwillingness to give it a go.
Due to some minor instability in the stones the BBQ has been reinforced with a layer of mud and stone art.
And now that it is dry, the throne is functioning perfectly again.
Feels great sitting here surrounded by the art of my family.
Have been able to do a few powerful meditations during the last week and also to fall asleep a few times. In fact, i should probably mention at this point that it feels as if this land is conversing with me during the silent moments of the day, guiding and suggesting in a way i have never experienced before.
Two quick examples before i sign out.
Esteban is reading Rodin Hood at the moment and is keen to re-enact one of the scenes as a film in our bamboo forest, so i did a meditation with this in the back of my mind and came out of it wondering if we might be able to make a bow & arrow using bamboo. I checked on YouTube and it turns out that bamboo is ideal for both!
You can be sure i will make a post letting you know how it is done.
We intend now to make a safe shooting range down in the forest where no one goes except us. As a child i was already shooting rifles at Esteban's age so i have no problem at all teaching him how to shoot a bow & arrow.
The other thing was the rest of the Spiral Garden.
Around half the land is still covered in small ash trees.
While i do still intend to create a large spiral watering feature, the land told me to relax a little for the remainder of this year and rather than grow on it, to use it as an entertainment area, for a sport of some kind.
But what sport could fit here?
Well, i looked at the dimensions of a badminton court and it turns out that a half sized court will fit exactly into the space i am looking at between two trees i don't wan't to remove. A half sized court for half sized people ;)
And so, on this great day it has been decided that Esteban & Luna will learn badminton this summer! Just behind the sweetcorn.
It was a battle making this decision because my logical side knows that war with Russia is inevitable now and will probably be announced later this year, leading to immediate price hikes for food & energy. Here's British MP Andrew Bridgen confirming on a radio show a few days ago "We are actually at war with Russia now... They're not going to tell the people probably until July or August; maybe later."
So we will need to grow more food than ever to counter these expenses, but the forest kept whispering to me "let it go Sam, just let it go". And so i have. This land will be used for having fun. Next year will be another story but for now i am excited to get started removing the trees and buying the relevant bits for badminton.
Love & Light everyone π±
Wow Sam, the bamboo dish looks amazing; compliments to Sabrina! I'm sure it tasted super delicious. I love how Pandas devour bamboo, didn't know we can eat them too.
Gosh, kittens are really smth π Our three rockets have turned the house upside down. Absolutely love them.
Btw, loads of greetings from @mammasitta. We met last week at the Hive Meetup in Vienna. She is such a beautiful soul. Told her we have talked and are keeping in touch. My regards to Sabrina and the kids. I love how you transformed your garden. It looks amazing, Sam β€οΈ
Hey Krisz
I will pass along your compliments to Sabrina as she is very modest in relation to her cooking skills. No problem to acknowledge being great at something when you really are great at something! That's what i say anyway ;)
Well done for making it to the Hive meetup! What a blast that must have been. And so great you met @mammasitta there. We've never had the pleasure of meeting face to face but she & i go back a long way, right to the origins of this platform. Plus we have a friend in common IRL.
My best wishes to both of you amazing women. Now that i have a decent spot for entertaining people do please consider having a mini Hive meetup in the South of France! Our door is always open to you x
Hi Sam, a mini Hive meetup in your paradise sounds amazing. If I come to France, I'll definitely hit you up π
Let's goooo π
It would be so amazing to meet in person one day because you rock it over there in France. So interesting to follow your footsteps since you left the island. How many years ago??? I forgot ....
Big hugs your way via Vienna where I got stuck for a little while π
I nearly forgot to reply but it was great to "find" you awesome woman and I hope we will get the chance for more hangouts when you are back in Vienna again.
Otherwise we do a meet up with Sam in Zanzibar πππ«Άπ½
What you think @samstonehill ???!!
#BaliOhBali
What a big mess over there these days.
So nice to be still connected!
Wow! You were quick! You did pick quite a few bamboo shoots. I must say Sabrina is a wonderful cook, I should take some cooking lessons from her!
The food just looked fantastic, not the usual bamboo dishes we had here.
The garden looks very artistic. You could survive on bamboo shoots, do some bamboo pickle then it will last over a year or two. You could rinse them before cooking them as usual. But if you have bamboo shoots all year round, you wonβt need to pickle them. Here, the bamboo shoots are out of season in dry weather.
Youβre so grounded that you could converse with Mother Earth. I sometimes could hear the voices or vibrations of nature (the earth and trees and all). At first I didnβt know what it was. Later on I realised that they vibrate all the time. The mind has to be βemptyβ and quiet to receive this music in the air.
I think youβll do very well around this bamboo jungle.
After you mentioned it last week we went down there almost immediately and was very surprised to find any at all. In my memory there were none. Am wondering now at what time of year they stop producing shoots? We will see...
And we will unquestionably try pickling them in order that we can keep on enjoying all year round. Thank you so much for this great idea to eat them π
Wonderful you are able to hear the voices & vibrations. I can't really say that i hear them, just that i am guided by them. I do hear different tones in my ears but have not yet been able to understand them.
I can tell when there is an approval of whatever plan i am up to each day because the birds and insects seem to fly closer, while the wind will caress the trees more softly and the light will sparkle more brightly. The project will just click together so easily when i am on the right path, with each required item being presented to me just when i need it. Like the metal piece which went under the bamboo platform. Esteban asked me if he could launch his drone from it and suddenly i realised what i needed it for. This is all part of it. While on other days i can't find the required item, the weather feels heavy and there is less 'life' in the air. On these days i know to stop doing whatever i was hoping to do and return another day with fresh eyes & mind, at which point i will almost always see a better way to get the job done. The strongest sensation of all has been in these last few weeks, telling me to focus not on growing more food (we have a lot already) but on spaces for meditation and having fun.
Forever grateful for the bamboo forest which just keeps on giving!
Inspiring post. There's a bamboo forest, 10 minutes walking from my current place. I plan to go over there, late this afternoon/early evening to ~see if I can~~ forage some baby bamboo.
Looking forward to turning it into dinner and energizing my body and mind ;<)
β¨
Hey buddy! This is great news you also have a local forest. I wish you all the best on your 'hunting' and feel sure you will do something amazing with it in the kitchen. As for energising the body & mind there is no question that eating local food does something very special for us in this department. Especially organic and growing naturally in the wild. Local plants know our local requirements basically. Big love π
Great to see how well this post of yours is doing. People are waking up, it seems β¨
I picked 3 bamboo babies/shoots this morning.
They are way greener than yours though.
I plan to prepare them for dinner, tonight, but first I will be chilling at the nearby river beach, now it's still dry and sunny. Thunder and rainy weather are returning tomorrow, it seems.
Sending energy, love and creative vibes β¨
How was it? Don't think the colour matters too much as this likely just reflects how much light they get.
Yes, most grateful for the high payout on this one and indeed a bit surprised due to the sensitive nature of my closing thoughts. Perhaps like you say, people are waking up and hopefully taking action to make themselves more independent from a system which cannot be relied upon.
Same here with the rainy weather. What a great wet Spring this has been! No need to build any cloud busters yet...
In all honesty, my bamboo tasted toxic or at least so extremely bitter that I had to spit it out, even after an hour and a half of cooking it and after marinating it. It almost made me throw up and I had to burp for a while, so I decided to not risk it after maybe having swallowed two of the tiniest pieces that I had added to my dinner.
Unfortunate but perhaps I am not blessed with the right type of bamboo here.
Ah! Am sorry to hear this and quite surprised. Had no idea there were inedible varieties.
Well, we live and learn! Thank you for reporting back with the info π
I shared a bit more info on my bamboo eating in the comment section to this post: https://peakd.com/hive-151327/@ewkaw/fungifriday-dont-get-fooled#@vincentnijman/re-ewkaw-2024619t153457533z
Wow Sam, the bamboo dish look satisfying π
I have been more hungry than usual recently with all this physical work so i can tell you the dish really was very satisfying. Always better when it is cooked with love and sourced locally. And organic obviously. All the best to you!
Had no clue bamboo can be eaten in general, but having it raw sounds really interesting! Happy to learn something new today through your post :)
In fact we didn't eat them raw. I didn't mention in this post but we boiled them for 8-10 mins to make them more palatable. They tasted reasonable eaten raw but there was a weird aftertaste. Overall, cooked was way better.
I see. Thanks for the clarification :)
Abundance, Love & light to all of you :) ! Great part of story, Think it will make this day better (lighter)for me, didnt thought that bamboo could grow in France.
It was a big surprise for me too when we moved from Bali six years ago. I missed the bamboo forests of Asia at first so felt a whole bunch better when i found bamboo growing here :)
What a beautiful place you live in! Made downright magical by your hands. Love that hazelnut idea!
Thank you for the compliment π
It really comes alive in the Summer and quickly reminds me why we have ended up here.
And the more time i spend in nature the more ideas it gives me as to how we can work together. It's getting harder and harder to leave the garden in fact! The straight lines of our home are not conducive to that deeper connection.
Oh yes! I understand! I love to go out and play in my garden. I make plans of course, but those are often abandoned for the sudden joy some other thought brings me. I like to think that those thoughts are not mine, but rather those of the garden and all its entities as they communicate with me. Child's play. It's wonderful to be back in that head.
And that you can discovered a whole bamboo paradise that you didn't even know was there is dreamlike. Fabulous. You and your family are quite an inspiration for me, and others.
That's so cool, you can just harvest a bamboo shoot in your land. I haven't really see a bamboo shoot, I mean, the look of it outside or how it is when it is newly harvested. I only see and eat the peeled one whoch is already cut. This one's really great in coconut milk. It is delicious paired with fried fish. Anyways the dish prepared here look really delicious.
Me too. Prior to this week i had only ever seen the peeled ones. Well, i had seen them but hadn't given them much thought!
Thanks for dropping by here :)
The bamboo looks very delicious after preparing it. I never knew bamboo was edible, we learn every day.
So sorry about the hazelnut, I'm sure the cat thought he was doing you a favor by watering them lol I'm just kidding.
I love the art you made with them on the ground, it's very lovely.
Almost all plants are edible in fact. Or at least some aspect of them, like their roots, flowers or seeds. And the way in which we prepare them is important too. Some are only good for us if we infuse them in a tea, while others we can just eat the whole thing. Like the radishes i mentioned in this post. There is basically no part of the plant which can't be eaten. Except when the seed pods go brown and become too tough for chewing.
I would personally say that every single plant on Earth has a direct purpose for us humans! Even the ones that can't be eaten likely produce some kind of poison which if taken in small quantities will be beneficial for some condition. It's just that we mostly forgot over the last few centuries what they are all for and how to prepare them! So now it is our job to remember...
Two of the five kittens have gone to their new owners now so the house is a bit less chaotic than before. Plus all boxes of nuts have been put away ;)
Wow! That's really new, we learn everyday.
You're very right,and especially when it comes to culture, you'd be surprised about what plants and veggies others eat, it's just amazing. You'd only get to know about them when you travel.
Thanks for sharing β€οΈ
That means less work for you. That's great
Great post Sam!
The bamboo plate looks delicious π.
Love how you talk to the land/ Mother Earth, or how it talks to you.
Yeah, war isn't good for absolutely nothing,still... gotta stay focused...
1 Love
Hey Luca! Yes, the bamboo plate really was delicious. Plus it was still good the next day!
Am getting there with my Earth communication, learning slowly but surely how to interpret the signs and more subtle feelings into actions.
As for war, who knows really. I don't even follow the news yet somehow that interview was able to slip its way into my consciousness, distracting me for a while.
As you say, gotta stay focused... on remaining unfocused! As an artist the best way to evaluate ones painting is with eyes half closed, blurring the image so that its true form can be seen. And the same is true with life. Don't focus too hard on anything!
Big love right back at you :)
Word! On everything you said, Sam...yes, focus to unfocus...i like that one.π
Bless Up
Very cool about the bamboo shoots and the hazelnut art! She did a lovely job!
It was indeed a most unexpected treat. A very tasty one too :)
And Sabrina really is amazing, at both art & cooking!
How brilliant to see yous harvesting bamboo too, dearest @samstonehill and family! I posted a week or two ago about it - also my first time harvesting them!
https://ecency.com/hive-140635/@clareartista/come-down-the-garden-with
What a small world we live in! Really a wonderful mystical connection there :)
Great idea to pickle them. We will give this a try next time.
Many thanks for the inspiration π
I knew that pickles are made from bamboo but I am seeing it for the first time that its shoots are also eaten like this. This is really amazing and exciting, although I do not have bamboo farming at my place, now I feel like growing it in pots at home. :)
Sending Love and Ecency Vote!
We are growing it in pots outside our house and i can tell you it looks amazing. Even in small pots the bamboo is so very tall, something like 4m. Many thanks for the ecency vote! If i had a mobile phone i would surely use this app.
Wow, Can you share pictures of those pots and some key info about planting bamboo in small pots? This can be very useful for me and all gardening lovers. :)
AND @ecency provides a web platform https://ecency.com as well, which you can also use for blogging, microblogging, conversation (DM feature), fast easy and free swapping, and creating polls to establish an even better connection with your followers, and much more. π
This is the first time seeing bamboo shoots harvested, they look fantastic!
They really were good. And i must admit that prior to last week i had no idea even which part of the plant was edible! Learning learning learning...
Next time we will pickle them and keep till the winter when i am assuming the bamboo stops producing new sprouts.
All the best to you and your family.
Many thanks :)
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