Independence Days Challenge Update

It's Monday so it is time for another Independence Days update, although it's been a pretty quiet week (ahem)...

Read more about why I am participating in Sharon's Independence Days Challenge, here.

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Planted something - Nil.


Harvested something - Sweet potatoes, broadleaf celery, mustard greens, a few green tomatoes, three blueberries, lettuce, snow peas, starfruit, mushrooms and rocket.


Preserved something - Juiced and froze yet more lemons; made chicken stock from a roasted chicken carcass, cooked up bulk brown rice and froze in portions for fried rice.


Reduced waste - Made laundry powder; Made yoghurt; Am investigating a local wholesale storage supplier for 30L food-grade storage drums and 4 litre glass screw-top jars, to store my bulk food orders in when they arrive.


Preparation and Storage - Made my first bulk foods orders: #1 = dried pulses, dried fruits, nuts and seeds, #2 = flours and baking goods and #3 a chemical/hormone-free, grass-fed beef hamper; Hubby took everything out of the pantry, sorted through it and repacked it with a vague hope of fitting some of the bulk orders in there; Stocked up on a dozen packets of dried organic pasta when my local stupormarket discontinued them and sold off the remaining packets for 99c each.




Eat the Food - Sweet potato soup is going down well with the family as are lots of baked vegies in the cold weather.


Building Community - Contributed to Miss Five's class 'vegetable discovery table'! They are doing a unit on farms at the moment and as part of it, her teacher wanted each child to bring in a vegetable for everyone to look at and touch. Part of me thinks it's tragic that five-year olds need to 'discover' vegetables at school, but the other part of me was pleased to be able to send in a display of semi-unusual vegetables for them to discover - including Yacon or Peruvian Ground Apple, sweet potatoes which are purple on the inside, Kumara (orange sweet potatoes) and even a green luffa/loofah. Miss Five is incredibly impressed that I can grow a sponge LOL, but I hope I get it back as I only managed to grow three this year!


Learned a New Skill - Nil this week - unless knitting with novelty yarn counts! What a nightmare when you drop a stitch... Sadly, I still haven't had time to play with roasting the coffee beans yet (maybe this week?!), nor have I had time to make any hard cheeses yet (sigh).

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Taste Test: Queensland Arrowroot

As I mentioned last week, when I recently harvested the Yacon, I also dug up a Queensland arrowroot (Canna edulis) tuber to try.

I bought and planted the edible canna last year, and growth-wise it has behaved exactly like my ornamental cannas. It has the typical fleshy leaves, has grown to around 2 metres tall and is slowing spreading sideways via new rhizomes.

New QLD arrowroot plant, a couple of months old.

It is eaten cooked, and is supposed to taste a little like baked potato. I peeled and baked the rhizome I dug up, along with other some other root vegies, with salt and pepper and a little oil.

We did think it was reminiscent of potatoes, although I found it too starchy for my liking - I have since read that Jerry Coleby-Williams slices and soaks his for fours hours before cooking to remove some of that starch, so that's what I'll be doing next time. I wouldn't rave about it first time around, so I'll reserve judgement for my next go.

The advantage of QLD arrowroot over potatoes is that like ornamental cannas, they tolerate both very damp (even wet) soils and hot, dry soils once established. They are relatively pest-free (certainly, mine don't get the pests that my potatoes do!) and as they are perennials, there's no need to plant, harvest, store and replant - you just leave them alone until you need a rhizome when you dig up some of the fresh (old ones can be fibrous) side shoots and cook them.

Arrowroot tuber.

My ornamentals are as tough as old boots; I wrench them out of the ground, whack them back in somewhere else in the garden and they grow faithfully every time. Survival foods expert Isabel Shipard, talks about them on her website here, where she also describes how to make Arrowroot flour from the high-carbohydrate tubers.

Quite a valuable plant.

Lemon Butter

Not exactly a wholefood (ahem), but this is a really yummy way to use up excess lemons. Use as a spread on toast or scones, topping for ice cream or filling for tarts and cakes. Delish.

Lemon Butter



Ingredients

3 eggs, beaten
1 cup of caster sugar
1 tbs grated lemon rind
1/2 cup lemon juice (approx. 2-3 lemons)
60g unsalted butter, chopped

Method

1. Combine all ingredients in a heat proof bowl or top pan of a double boiler.

2. Whisk constantly over simmering water until the mixture thickens and coats the back of a metal spoon. Take care to ensure the mixture does not boil; it should thicken like a custard.

3. Remove from heat and pour into sterilised glass jars.

4. Cool and label. Store in the refrigerator once opened.

Makes 2 cups.

The Nourishing Gourmet :: Pennywise Platters Carnival

Kimi at The Nourishing Gourmet is hosting a "Pennywise Platter" carnival each Thursday, starting tomorrow (i.e. Thursday in the U.S), which promises to be really exciting for those of us trying to feed our families well on a budget. As Kimi explains on her blog:

For many of us, these are not the easiest of times. Budgets are tight, but we still want to eat well. And many of us have children that we want to nourish in these important growing years. So many of the books and blogs and websites out there devoted to eating frugally center on cheap, unhealthy food and buying regular grocery store items on sale. I recently picked up a book with “Five Dollar Meals” in it, hoping to get some ideas for my family. But I quickly realized that I wasn’t going to find anything “usable” for my family because almost every single recipe started with canned and packaged products. I promise you, this isn’t the only way to eat on a budget! There is a better way!

I'm hoping to contribute to the carnival in the near future (not this week - it's been a busy week!), but I encourage you to check it out :-)

Book Review: Real Food by Nina Planck

My grandmother's cholesterol level was a source of much eye-rolling in my family for many years: she cooked all her meat in a frying pan full of lard, she ate heaps of eggs (why wouldn't she, she had free-range hens) and so on and so forth, yet she had a very low blood cholesterol level!

On the other hand, my father did all the "right" things according to the thinking of the day: no eggs, he swapped butter for margarine, the lard container in the back of the fridge disappeared (what ever happened to that Mum?) etc etc, and yet his cholesterol level was consistently higher than was deemed "healthy". I suspect that if he didn't exercise regularly and maintain a healthy weight, his doctor would have put him on cholesterol-reducing medication like millions of others around the world. Needless to say, my grandmother's low cholesterol was a source of much disgust, LOL.

Then finally, upon recently reading Nina Planck's book Real Food, the reasons for this so-called paradox were revealed: despite what the medical profession would currently have us believe, "old" foods and fats are actually good for us & the "new" foods and oils are, in fact, mostly bad!

Nina goes into much detail to explain why this is so, particularly how the many heavily-vested interests of a few U.S. food industries came to influence research results and how pharmaceutical industries rely upon us continuing to eat poorly. Cynicism about multinational companies aside, I must say how refreshing it was to read about how the traditional foods we know and (secretly) love are actually better for us than the low-fat, low-cholesterol, highly processed foods we are supposed to be eating.

I certainly can't come at low fat milk any more after reading this book, and had fortunately ditched the margarine for real butter (and not a "dairy blend") some time ago. We also don't eat much meat any more for ethical and environmental reasons, but this book most definitely made a convincing case for the health benefits of grass-fed meat over industrial meat. Nina also discusses the benefits of traditional fats such as lard and schmaltz over the modern hydrogenated oils masquerading as healthy alternatives - which is exactly why my grandmother's lard had it all over my dad's margarine in the health stakes!

She also briefly mentions the so-called French Paradox - why the French can eat such apparently rich foods and yet maintain a much healthier lifestyle than Americans. Even discounting the U.S. consumption of fast food in the equation and looking at Americans eating supposedly low-fat products, the rate of heart disease in the U.S. had actually risen since the introduction of these industrially-altered and -engineered foods. The French, on the other hand, have known for generations what real food (and fresh food!) is and enjoy it in appropriately-sized portions. Most definitely a case for Quality over Quantity.

Very much a worthy read even if you are already dedicated to whole foods - if for no other reason than it's nice to know why you were right all along :-)

Harvest: Yacon

Last August I decided I needed more room to grow root vegetables, and that meant expanding into the remaining ornamental garden beds. The only space available that would allow me to dig up and harvest root vegetables (without harming the roots of nearby permanent plantings) was the raised garden bed in the front yard, next to our driveway.

That meant turning this:



Into this:



We tore out Yuccas, a pygmy Date Palm and the Purple Heart, and planted out Yacon, Queensland Arrowroot, West Indian Arrowroot (which rotted in the ground after prolonged wet weather), three types of sweet potato (one of which also rotted) and some potatoes.

Not surprisingly, the neighbours were a bit nonplussed, especially when self-seeded cherry tomatoes came up in their dozens in the compost, but it wasn't long before the tomatoes were finished, the sweet potato vines took over and the bed looked like this:


The sweet potato vines are taking over the driveway LOL. That's the QLD Arrowroot in the middle back and the Yacon next to it on the far right with most of the leaves having fallen off, ready for harvesting.

Last year I had a pretty good Yacon harvest from just the one plant - in fact I think I got more from the one plant last year than I did from three plants this year! That's them below, with some bonus red Desiree potatoes on top.



Yacon are delicious vegetables - the kids love them raw - peeled and sliced. Raw they taste like super-juicy carrots to me, although much of the literature describes them as tasting a bit like watermelon. I also love to bake them, they stay quite juicy and a little crisp. Leave them out in the sun for a week or so after harvest, to concentrate the sugars and make them even sweeter.

Sadly, for whatever reason, the plants out the front never did as well as the one I had the previous year in the back yard. They never grew as big and were never as lush looking. Again, like the water chestnuts, I wonder if the long, hot summer affected them? When I dug them up the soil was quite sandy, despite heavy applications of compost and manure when we planted them out last year. Hmmm.

Anyway I ended up with about 4.3kg of edible tubers, and probably twice that amount of rhizomes for replanting. Yacon grow two types of roots - the edible brown tubers you can see above, and small, purple-red rhizomes from which new plants will grow. These will be packed in damp sand to prevent them from drying out, for replanting next Spring.




It's been a funny old season this year! Ah well, that's the life of a gardener isn't it; you have to take the good with the bad, then cross your fingers and hope for the best next time :-)

Independence Days Challenge Update

It's Monday so it is time for another Independence Days update, although I barely have anything to report (blush). It's been so utterly wet and dismal around here this week, I've barely done anything in the garden except read the rain gauge!

Read more about why I am participating in Sharon's Independence Days Challenge, here.

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Planted something - Telephone pea seeds.


Harvested something - Mustard greens, rocket, thyme, snow peas, sweet potatoes (orange and purple - see below), mushrooms, starfruit, lemons, a couple of tomatoes, a handful of potatoes, yacon and arrowroot.




Preserved something - Juiced and froze some lemon juice to deal with later.


Reduced waste - I finally found and joined a local-ish (mostly organic) bulk-buying food co-operative, yay! I have to drive an hour round trip to pick up the goods, but I still feel that that's a better deal than lots of little trips to pick up small amounts of goods from my usual shops. I place my first order this week, for bulk organic dried goods such as legumes, flour and dried fruit. My initial order after totting up is about $550 worth! I have no idea how long that will last me, as I've not been keeping accurate records of the volume of these foods we go through, but I am guessing it would be 6 months worth for some items and at least a year's worth for others. It's a lot to spend in one go, but then I get it back both in monetary savings and the saving of time in my regular grocery shops (and anything that makes my shopping faster gets a big thumbs up).

I also finally won a vintage safety razor and leather strop set on eBay for a reasonable price (they are collector's items and always seem to sell for a fortune to someone who just wants to look at it), so now I can ditch my (and hopefully the hubby's) ridiculously expensive disposable razor blades. I have no idea how to use a strop to sharpen the blades, but that's the magic of the internet - I'm sure I'll find an instructional video on YouTube LOL.


Preparation and Storage - Yer, well. Nothing much in the past couple of weeks as such, despite a long list of Things To Do, but with a bulk order of goods arriving in a couple of weeks, food storage will reach borderline-crisis proportions around here! I not only don't have anywhere appropriate to store 5 kilo bags of chickpeas for instance, I don't have any vermin-proof containers large enough to keep them. Ah well, necessity is the mother of invention, as they say.


Eat the Food - Our favourite roasted vegetable salad with feta dealt with some of the yacon, sweet potatoes and potatoes (and some rocket) - the kids loved the look of the purple sweet potato in it; sweet potato & celery soup went down a treat; and there's been lots of mushrooms in butter sauce on toast for lunches.


Building Community - I really struggle with this one, as it's not in my nature to be outspoken about living more simply and sustainably. I find that - particularly with Aussies - most people actively dislike talking about conservation or sustainability if I bring them up apropos of nothing, but will be much more amenable to discussion if I mention something in passing during a relevant conversation. Then hope I sow the seeds of an idea. The problem is sitting back and waiting for appropriate timing, and then hoping that they come back to me with questions or enquiries. I also find it's a fine line between appearing progressive and appearing "hippy-like", in which case my ideas are dismissed as too alternative, without serious consideration.


Learned a New Skill - Nil. Tsk, tsk.

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So, a very quiet fortnight as far as the Challenge is concerned, although of course it wasn't quiet at all in every other household department!

1 Million Women

The 1 Million Women campaign is an Australian initiative to inspire 1 million Aussie women to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions by 1 tonne each - or a collective total of 1 million tonnes.

I joined when it was launched in May and I have only just realised I haven't mentioned it on my blog yet. The idea is that once you have joined, you commit to a series of activities to reduce your CO2 emissions, and log back in periodically over the next year to update your progress.

I am already doing most of the suggested activities, but I have pledged to reduce my emissions by by reducing our electricity use by 5%, reducing my diary intake by the equivalent of two glasses of milk a week, cut our fuel use by 10% or more and buy and manage our food more strategically (for me, this means bulk-buying and buying more local produce).

The site includes a discussion forum, so if you an Aussie woman, join up and use it as an aid to your journey towards living more simply and sustainably.

Wood stove lust.

I'm loathe to whinge about the constant rain we've had lately, lest I bring a drought upon myself (Miss Seven asked me yesterday "Why does it always rain in winter?". It doesn't darling, it just feels that way...), but the cold, miserable weather has had me shivering in front of the computer, looking at various alternative heating options for our house that don't involve turning on the air-conditioner and watching our electricity bill sky-rocket.

I have very fond memories of sitting around my Mum's slow combustion stove but we've not had a reasonably-priced, local supply of suitable burning timber... until recently! Just up the road from my daughter's school is a landscaping supplies place which has just started selling wood - and serendipitously, we've just had a tow bar fitted to our car. No trailer as yet, but several neighbours own one, and one might be agreeable to renting theirs out to us on the cheap.

So, imagine my delight when I stumbled across this little beauty on the 'net:




How cute is that? It's the Nectre Baker's Oven Wood Stove, manufactured - wait for it - in Australia, and I can get one locally. It can heat up around 8 squares or around 75m² (which would comfortably cover our living/dining/kitchen area) and can even take a water jacket fitting to provide hot water. Unlike most wood heater's however, it is also an oven (most modern wood stoves are not designed to double as heaters). It's also tiny enough to fit in our modest house without dominating the whole family room - it won't fit in the kitchen - and still be accessible to cook on.

Sadly, it would cost us around $3000, fully installed (including the flue and floor protector plate, but not the water jacket).

Bummer.

I might have to start a secret "wood stove fund" and start selling off household goods on eBay to raise the money. What's that kids? Where's the sofa? Dunno, haven't seen it ;-)


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Incidentally, if you have a wood heater or stove, do you know about Australian-designed SmartBurn? It is a device added to woodfires; it lasts up to three months and reduces smoke and emissions by around 50% (around 15 kg of smoke emissions over the life of it), as well as making your fire burn up to 17% hotter and cleaning ash and sap residues from the inside of your flue, reducing the risk of fire.

Good stuff.

Kev's Patch

Image stolen shamelessly from the Kev's Patch website.

In all likelihood, you've probably all heard by now about the Obama's veggie patch on the lawns of the Whitehouse, and that the Queen is now growing vegetables at Buckingham Palace.

Earlier this year, famous Aussie organic gardener Peter Cundall suggested Mr Rudd start up his own organic veggie patch, and recently equally famous kitchen gardener and cook, Stephanie Alexander, challenged the PM to start his own at the Lodge!

Now bloggers Gavin, Darren and Julie have thrown down the gauntlet and started the Kev's Patch website, with the aim of spurring Aussie bloggers to get behind the movement.

I think it's terrific - so go and visit their site to find out what you can do to help the cause ;-)

Buckwheat pancakes

These are one of our favourite weekend breakfast foods, Buckwheat flour pancakes. Very light and tangy with a nice texture, we love them served with natural yoghurt and fresh, in season, fruit. You can substitute whey or kefir for the buttermilk, and I normally double the recipe for the five of us, which gives us enough batter leftover to make a few pikelets (mini pancakes) for afternoon tea.



Ingredients

1/2 cup buckwheat flour
1/2 cup plain flour
1/2 tsp bicarbonate soda
1 tsp baking powder
pinch salt
1 cup buttermilk (I use kefir or whey)
1 egg, lightly beaten
30g butter, melted

Method

1. Sift dry ingredients.

2. Combine wet ingredients and whisk into dry.

3. Heat a small saucepan over low heat, add a dollop of butter and a small ladle of pancake batter. Cook until bubbles appear in the surface (2-3 minutes), then flip and cook for another minute. Serve hot.

Green coffee beans

Regular readers might remember that I planted out seven dwarf coffee trees last year, after removing an ornamental Murraya hedge along our back fence. It will be some time before they bear any decent quantity of coffee berries (although I have a few ripening on one bush this year, just enough for a taste test), but I thought there's no time like the present to start learning how to roast my own coffee!

Hence, when I recently bought our usual batch of freshly roasted espresso beans, I also bought two small packs (500g/1pd each) of green beans to try roasting at home. I have read that it's relatively easy to roast your own beans, and in fact, a popular method is to use a popcorn popper (one of which I happen to have stashed in the back of my kitchen cupboards).

So, guess what is on the cards for this weekend? The vendor was also kind enough to provide me with a sample of each bean variety in an espresso roast, so that I have something to compare mine with, which is good!

Anyone roast theirs at home? I gather using the popper outside is a good idea as it can smoke a bit, any other tips for me?

Wish me luck :-)

Harvest: Chinese Water Chestnuts & Arrowhead

The first thing I did in my gardening day on Sunday was to deal with the Chinese Water Chestnuts (Eleocharis dulcis) and Arrowhead (aka Duck potato - Sagittaria sagittifolia) which I planted out into my small water bowl last August. As you can see, the foliage of both had all but died off and although I was supposed to be keeping the soil dry(ish) while the foliage died off, the recent rain meant the bowl kept filling up again with water and I was worried that they were rotting.

That's the arrowhead at the front of the bowl and the water chestnuts at the back.

I tipped out the bowl into the garden (upside down) and squelched through the mud with my fingers, feeling for corms. Firstly I started finding the water chestnuts. I was hoping for a much better harvest than last year, when all I managed was 280 grams worth of chestnuts (or about two meals worth). With some advice from Naturewitch, I decided that I hadn't fertilised them enough, so this time I planted out six of the largest corms from my previous harvest, into heavily manured soil, and fertilised them regularly throughout the growing season with a complete liquid fertiliser.

The Chinese Water Chestnuts after rinsing in the outdoor sink: all 285g of them.

So, I was quite disappointed to find that while I seemed to have more water chestnuts overall this year, they are all very small. In fact, I think I ended up with 285 grams - the same as last year!

Each corm is supposedly able to produce up to 100 corms in a growing season, under ideal conditions of course. Perhaps they didn't like the small space in the bowl? The weather? We had several very hot, dry spells when the bowl dried out during the day before I had a chance to top it up... Hmmmm.

I'll definitely plant them again next spring, primarily because I have the water bowl which I'm not using for anything else, but perhaps I'll only plant one or two corms this time?

Next up was the Arrowhead, or Duck Potatoes. This the first time I've grown them, but they never seemed to do very well. They can grow up to 45cm tall I gather, but mine always stayed very small. Again, I wonder if the very hot spells didn't do them any favours?

Anyway, I wasn't surprised to find that the bulbs I could find, were all very small and stunted - certainly not worth eating! Or even saving to replant in spring? I think they might shrivel up too much before then and may not be viable.

Each bulblet is only a few mm across; mature duck potatoes are several cm across.

So! Not such a successful harvest, but then, it is all good gardening experience :-) Next spring I'll try fewer corms, more solid fertiliser, and more water!

Garden Update

I spent a goodly proportion of the weekend just passed in the garden, which badly needed my attention (oops). I haven't reported on the garden for a while because nothing much has been happening - I'm still waiting for most of my winter crop seedlings to grow big enough to eat. I guess that's a difficulty around here with growing plants by seed; if I sow the seed too early they won't germinate because it's too hot, but the time it is getting cool enough, I end up with a lag time between crops. Ah well, I'll work that conundrum out one day - perhaps next year I'll refrigerate the seeds for a while before sowing to try and trick them into germinating.

Anyway, since I seem to have uploaded a stack of photos - and I'll probably focus more on some of them in future posts - I might just do some quickie labels.

The turmeric is dying off, ready for harvesting as soon as I get the time.

I still can't convince any lettuces to germinate *in* the garden beds.

Once again, the dwarf peaches are weeping gum from the ends of their branches after the recent rains. Normally this would be a sign on bacterial gummosis, but I've since read that it's not unusual for immature dwarf peaches to do this (they struggle to cope with extra moisture when it's very wet so weep from the ends of the branches) but I think I will dig them up now that they have lost most of their leaves and plant them in three of the wine barrels I received for Mother's Day, to improve their drainage - I'm hoping to get a crop from them next year (they'll be three years old then).

The strawberry runners are getting away from me into the gravel paths. The whole bed needs digging up and replacing with new runners, as the old plants are three years old now. They would look great planted under the peaches in the wine barrels, don't you think?

The Camellia sinensis (green tea plants) are flowering. I'm still waiting for the grass to die off underneath the black plastic I got hubby to lay down where they will be planted out to form a low hedge. They are all bursting out of their pots!

I managed to harvest a second Amish Paste tomato (and later, a third), although I threw out another four. Sigh. I'm not sure it's worth devoting the garden space to them - I'd rather have more kale in I think.

We picked out first snow pea of the season. Hoping there are many more to come.

And we are patiently waiting for the two Imperial mandarins to ripen on my two year old tree.

I picked the three loofahs I managed to grow on my vines. They should be yellower than these, but the vines are dying off in the cold weather and I didn't want them to rot. As you can see, they aren't the greatest looking specimens anyway LOL. Next year I will plant them somewhere with far more heat and exposure.

I got busy in the front yard, where last spring I replaced ornamentals with root vegetables. It was time to dig up the yacon, and while I was at it, I also dug up some sweet potatoes and arrowroot.

Yacon (Smallanthus sonchifolius) tuber.

Queensland Arrowroot (Canna edulis) rhizome.

Orange sweet potatoes (kumara).

White sweet potatoes - which are a stunning vivid purple inside (photos to come).

I also harvested the Chinese Water Chestnuts (Eleocharis dulcis) and Arrowhead (Sagittaria sagittifola). More to come on that in another post.

Finally - does anyone want to come and help me clean up the aftermath of pruning the ornamental cannas back? I discovered when I finished that all the compost bins are full. Sigh.

There's no chance of scurvy at my house...

Yup, that sucker weighs 451 grams - or 1 pound in the old speak.

...And yes, it's definitely a (Meyer) lemon, not a grapefruit ;-)

At the Co-Op again today...

I'm over at the Co-Op again today, posting on how to make labneh, or yoghurt cheese.

Click on the banner to visit us. See you there!

We're back!

One of the great things about living where we do is that even in the middle of winter we can still go to the beach and have fun. Although it would have been nicer if it wasn't so windy ;-)

Anyway, we had a lovely "stay-cation", bayside with my extended family, about 45 minutes from here. I'm now feeling rather refreshed, so look forward to a resumption of normal scheduling!

Vegetarian Potato Kugel

This is another great freezer dish, I always cook at least two and freeze one for later. Excellent hot or cold with salad in summer or vegetables in winter, as a main dish or a side dish for BBQs and the like. Also very versatile; mix up the vegies as you see fit, although I generally keep the potato and change the carrot for other vegies in season, and add other fresh herbs, depending on what I have to hand. Sliced tomato on top and fresh basil mixed in is a regular favourite variation in summer.

Vegetarian Potato Kugel




Ingredients

3 medium potatoes
2 small carrots
1 small onion
1 clove garlic, crushed
1 egg
1 tbs oil
2 tbs chopped parsely
2 tbs wholemeal breadcrumbs
1/2 cup milk powder
15g butter, cubed
1/2 cup grated cheese


Method

1. Grate potatoes, onion and carrots, and combine with the crushed garlic.

2. Lightly beat the egg with the oil, and pour over the grated vegetables. Stir in the parsley, breadcrumbs and milk powder.

3. Spread into a greased 20cm pie dish and dot with the butter.

4. Bake in a moderate oven (180'C) for 30 minutes. Sprinkle with the cheese and bake for a further 15 minutes.

Serve hot or cold. Freeze for up to 4 months.

Happy birthday to me...

I've been making fresh cheeses for some time now. I started with labneh, which is essentially fresh yoghurt drained in cheesecloth for a day or so to remove the whey. From there I moved onto lemon cheese, 30-minute mozzarella and ricotta, all delish.

We also love hard cheeses however (oh haloumi, how I love thee) so they were always on my "learn-to-make" list; I bought Ricki Carroll's Home Cheese Making and (Aussie) Neil and Carole Willman's Home Cheesemaking and drooled extensively over their recipes.

But lately, Gavin's adventures in cheese making (Mmmm, Wensleydale) has reinvigorated that desire. So, what's a girl to do but ask for a hard cheese kit and a cheese press for her birthday?


Oh, and the girls gave me some books too! Non-cheese related, but long on my 'wanted' list.


Now we're off on a holiday with my extended family for a week, so I'll 'see' you all later :-)

P.S. If you want to learn some more about cheeses while I'm away - and I know you do - my sister put me onto the Cheesematters website. Yum ;-)

Honey Toasted Muesli

My girls love toasted muesli and it's hard to find a commercially produced one that isn't full of things I'd rather not have my girls eating. This recipe is incredibly easy to make and they love it. The original recipe had more honey in it, so add more if you prefer it sweeter.

It's not by any means a low-fat recipe, but unlike commercial products, it doesn't contain any hydrogenated or trans-fats. The fats that come from the seeds contain essential fatty acids, vitamin E and other nutrients. Rice bran oil also contains vitamin E and is believed to lower harmful LDL cholesterol levels without lowering the good HDL levels, because it contains several anti-oxidants.

This recipe can be altered to suit whatever you have on hand - the muesli in the photo contains pumpkin seeds instead of sunflower seeds and dried figs, peaches and pineapple - and you can add spices such as nutmeg or cinnamon to the honey mix if desired; it is divine served with fresh plain yoghurt :-)




Ingredients

5 cups rolled oats
1 cup All-bran type cereal
1 cup shredded coconut
1 cup sunflower seeds
1 cup slivered almonds
2 tbsp sesame seeds
½ cup honey or agave nectar
¼ cup Rice Bran oil
1 cup finely chopped dried fruit (e.g. apricots, sultanas, pears)



Method

1. Preheat oven to 150'C/ 300'F.

2. Combine oats, bran, coconut, and seeds in a large bowl.

3. Heat honey and oil in a saucepan over low heat, and pour over the dry ingredients. Stir to combine thoroughly and spread over a large baking tray. Place in the oven for around 15-20 minutes, stirring occaisonally, until golden in colour.

4. Allow to cool, and stir through dried fruit. Store in airtight container.


Adapted from this recipe.

(Almost) admitting defeat.

OK, so I knew it was going to be a risk trying to over-winter tomatoes this far south. I did it successfully with a cherry tomato last year with the radiant heat from a rock retaining wall, my Amish Pastes and a Pink Brandywine have been flowering and setting fruit.

With lots of green 'maters on the vines, I've been carefully mulching and fertilising and hand-picking pests off them. Then it rained. And rained. And sprinkled some more, just to keep everything nice and boggy.

And now my 'maters look like this.




Splitting and rotting on the vines.

Dammit!

Typical.

I bought one of these solar-powered battery chargers with a voucher recently.




And ever since then, it's been like this...

So all you locals can blame me for the bad weather.

The kids will be happy...

Spotted this morning: the first flower on the Snow Pea vines.


I've been growing snow peas for two years now and I don't think I've had one make it into the kitchen yet! The kids eat them straight off the vines - infinitely better snacks than bikkies ;-)

Independence Days Update

It's Monday so it must be time for an Independence Days update.

Read more about why I am participating in Sharon's Independence Days Challenge, here.

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Planted something - Cabbages, cauliflowers, and picked up another two mushroom compost trays from Tricia.


Harvested something - Sprouts, mustard greens, rocket, thyme, lettuce, parsley, sweet potatoes, mushrooms, starfruit, lemons, two oranges and the first sugar snap peas of the season.


Preserved something - Three jars of lemon butter and three bottles of lemon cordial; made Ghee (clarified butter).

Reduced waste - Made chicken stock from the carcass of Sunday's roast (free range) chicken and the leafy tops off a bunch of celery; Made dog food using up all the limp vegies in the bottom of the crisper and some out-of-date quinoa; Made ghee instead of buying it; Made more laundry powder, playdough and honey facial cleanser.


Preparation and Storage - Op-shopping produced another glass preserving jar to replace one more plastic container in the kitchen, and a sheer white curtain to cover the cabbage and cauliflower seedlings with to protect them from white cabbage moths; Did a big stockpile grocery shop to replace goods going out of date.


Eat the Food - Made chicken stock from a roasted chicken carcass; Trialled a new bread recipe with burghul wheat in it to use up the almost-out-of-date burghul (very nice); Substituted red mustard leaves for spinach in a curry which worked out well.


Building Community - Featured in a gardening column in a local newspaper on Saturday.


Learned a New Skill - Made ghee (clarified butter) for the first time.

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So much to do, so little time! I need to get more organised so I might start a little notebook divided into sections to jot down all my aims for each division, that way I may actually get some of them done LOL.