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Welcome

Welcome! I'm Aby, a vegetarian homecook who has had over twenty years experience tending to organic food forests on the West Coast of NZ, with my partner Brett. Our latest venture is an edible paradise that we have carved out of a subtropical pocket of rain forest.
W
e aspire to grow as much of our produce as we can, allowing us to enjoy seasonal organic kai straight from the garden all year round.​

I am passionate about people growing, cooking and feeding themselves and their families wholesome good food, and I began this blog as a means to share my knowledge so you can do just that.

As this blog has progressed so has the content, so I also look forward to using this space to share wellbeing tips and practices I find helpful, as well as explore new ideas we can tend to ourselves in this hectic world.

So take a breather, grab a nice hot drink, and have a good look around. I think you might just find something that sparks your interest.
Abylene Chalmers

Background 

In the early 2000's we moved from the hustle and bustle of inner city Wellington, where I was a busy barista, and Brett was a gardener,  to one of New Zealand's most isolated places. Situated as far north as you can drive on the South Islands West Coast, Karamea is a small village with around 850 permanent residents. It is a beautiful place that has a unique growing climate, and boasts sunshine hours more comparable to Nelson than the rest of the Coast. Bordered by the Kahurangi National Park and with the Heaphy Track at its doorstep, Karamea is encircled by ancient rainforest, helping to give it an (almost) subtropical climate.

 

In Wellington's vibrant cafe scene I had not only learnt how to make a damn good cup of coffee, but was also able to expand on my love of sharing good, wholesome food. However once in Karamea, my occupation took an unexpected turn when I tried my hand at working in a commercial tomato farm. Here I learned the ins and outs of growing tender edibles from seed all the way to harvest. At the same time we were converting a hectare of farmland into organic gardens and orchards, while renovating an extremely run down bungalow. This new  property, providing the perfect conditions for a sizeable gardening bug to grow even bigger.

 

Twenty something years and two children later we now live seven kilometers up the road, where we have built an off grid house, complete with solar panels, and we have converted a hillside of scrub into an abundant food forest.

Aby in her tiny kitchen

When I'm not out in my garden I feel most at home in the kitchen, stirring a sauce or chopping up some freshly harvested vegetables, wondering which herbs I should pick to compliment the meal. For me, just like the garden, my kitchen is a peaceful reassuring space that I can always come back to, no matter how mad the world gets, and calmly create something delicious and nourishing to feed my family.  

Here you can see a picture of me in what felt like the smallest kitchen ever in the bach we lived in while we were designing our house. Even though this tiny space was jam packed with jars, tins, kitchen utensils and everything and anything including the kitchen sink, it was still my haven. When the house build was becoming overwhelming, or the kids were fighting, I had somewhere to retreat to and manifest a comforting homecooked meal for everyone. Times have changed and we now have a much larger, fancier space to create meals and enjoy food in, although it still serves the same purpose of a calm and productive space.

Cuisines & Influences

​The food I cook for my family is shaped by the seasons and the harvests from our garden, so that I can feed my family the most nourishing and local produce possible while also knowing it is fresh and organic. We go fishing occasionally in the summertime and sometimes eat the fish we have caught, but for now the recipes on this site are purely vegetarian, as that is where my expertise lies, and it is how we eat most of the time.  

My cooking style is to create healthy yet indulgent wholefood in a rustic seasonal manner. A typical meal at our house is a spread of bread or flatbreads, a main dish or small dishes of tapas style food all stemming from that days garden harvest, and finally a selection of condiments.

Because a lot of my recipes are influenced by ethnic cuisines you may need to invest in a few specialised ingredients to add to your pantry, such as pomegranate molasses, nigella seeds, or star anise, but once you have bought them you will find they last a long time, and it is these small pops of flavour that will bring your meals to the next level.

 

My maternal Grandmother was a beautiful cook, and even though she was a farmer's wife she always had a spread of exotic vegetarian food on offer, which was lucky for me because I discovered very early on that meat was not something I wanted to consume thank you very much! Whenever we visited, I would head straight to Granny’s kitchen, get the red stool out of the corner and ask her if she needed help. From a very young age she had me slicing vegetables, mixing cake batters, peeling garlic and chopping peanuts. I never bored of this time in the kitchen with her and gained so much knowledge which is inherent in me now.  

While Granny got me interested in the intricacies and practical knowledge of cooking, my mother passed on her insatiable passion for all things delicious and decadent from around the world, and she was always introducing us to wonderful and obscure meals and desserts. Mum also had many cookbooks I would pore over, one of the most influential being Mollie Katzen's classic vegetarian cookbook “The Enchanted Broccoli Forest.”

Over the years I have made cheese, tempered chocolate, tended to sourdough and ginger beer bugs, stretched beetroot and silver beet pasta through my mother's Italian pasta maker, and delved into making my own pickles, sauces and ferments. My latest joy is inventing probiotic drinks and juices, some of which I look forward to sharing on this site. I am always experimenting and finetuning my recipes and enjoy fusing foreign cuisines into my food, especially Middle Eastern, Indian, Mexican and Italian, so you will notice these influences within this blog.

"In this time of fast foods and instant gratification, when even some health foods are highly processed, we could all benefit from taking the time to bridge the gap between the kitchen and the garden, so we can better nourish ourselves and our families."~ Aby  

Recipes & Garden Tips
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  • musings on what I have been up to in my garden, and suggestions of some jobs you could do in yours if you are that way inclined

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  • all subscribers also get a downloadable link to my eBook “Growing from Seed” to get you started on your Kitchen Garden journey

 Features & Contributions

NZ Gardener Magazine
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