She has forgotten the name of the book or the author but Meenal was a character in the book.

Bob and Peggy started gardening together in Watson, then had a vegetable garden in Hawker. After a move to Narrabundah, Bob built three wicking beds for growing garlic, tomatoes, herbs and salad greens but they wanted more space so joined the local community garden. Both of Robert’s parents grew up on farms in North Carolina as he did, alongside vegetable gardening and broadscale mixed farming.

He has grown ginseng and a stevia plant from seed that he kept alive through four Canberra winters. He says garlic is a favourite plant which has few demands but punches way above its weight in terms of payback. Peggy’s home garden is a sea of blue aquilegias and borage with its edible, bee-attracting flowers, there is a yuzu tree and a fig and Bob’s bed of soft neck garlic which has just been harvested.

Pialligo Garden Lots was the solution to the couple’s yearning for more space. Owner and farmer Roy Priest irrigates the plots three times a week and an annual fee includes Pialligo-grown lucerne mulch and a shed. They started with a 25 sqm plot and now garden 75 sqm on two plots with friends. Peggy calls the soil ‘luscious’.

When we met on site, Bob and Song Chen were pulling the first row of garlic. The second, third and fourth rows came from Wynlen House in Braidwood and include Turban, Monaro Purple, Italian and Spanish Roja which supply a mix of early and late harvest for storage.

When they started at Pialligo last December, Bob and Peggy weeded and popped seeds of heirloom French Breakfast radishes into little hills and they were picking and eating them within four weeks. Other leaves appeared as ‘volunteers’ and turned out to be daikon.

Tomatoes, including saved seeds of a 1940s ox-heart variety from friends, were harvested and preserved to a recipe from an Italian fellow gardener - chop the tomatoes, drizzle with olive oil, thyme, salt and pepper and roast in a slow oven for an hour, cool then freeze. Cucumbers came for free, hiding in a punnet of beans, and one cucumber was half a metre long when discovered.

Peggy made cucumber pickles using Stephanie Alexander’s sister’s pickling recipe. The latest fave dish at home is a prawn and asparagus stir fry with Korean sweet potato-based glass noodles. They consult vegetarian books from Moosewood Kitchen to River Cottage, use Ottolenghi recipes, and from Peggy’s Asian roots are stir fries and lightly cooked fresh vegies and, from family, Bob’s mother’s Dixie beans.

Here is the stolen curry recipe. Peggy makes the curry and Bob cooks the rice and makes the
kachumber.

Marinade:

Aromatics: