The Chickens are Laying!!!

Well, at least one is, maybe two.

We returned from a day or two in Brisbane last Saturday to find an egg in the chicken coop! We've had one egg each day since then, with two the other day! One of the two though had a very thin, papery shell so we're thinking it was the first egg from another layer.

The boys are very excited to check the coop each morning even though we seem to have early-afternoon layers. Every time they check they return very disheartened with the response from Archie being "nothing cep a golf ball" (Matt put a golf ball in their nesting box thinking it'd inspire them.)

Then, when that elusive egg finally arrives he runs back to the house yelling "Chickens grewd an eeeegggggg!!!" at top note.

After waiting since Christmas, we're never been so thankful to see an egg! Now we just need the rest of the chooks to follow suit so we can stop buying eggs!

My Creative Space

I've not sewn or created anything crafty since finished Mia's apron. In fact, the other apron gift for our little friend is still sitting in the sewing room on the dining table along with a half packed up sewing machine. Life seems to have gotten in the way at the moment. I'm involved in starting up a Transition Town in our town (more info to come) and the kindy committee meetings have begun and the boys just seem to be going through a phase of being more demanding of my time.

Anway, it's a bit of a stretch but I still wanted to participate in My Creative Space this week so we've been creating a new flavour (for us) of ice cream .... HONEY!

This little man was so excited to make some ice cream!!!

Look at this amazingly thick cream! When I went to the dairy I spoke to the lady who makes the butter and cream and she said the thick cream (instead of the thin I usually get) makes much better ice cream and she is soooooo right!

When we went to the dairy to get milk yesterday Archie announced from the back seat that he'd like to make ice cream. Alas we don't have any vanilla so I bought some cream and tried to come up with something different to do, we're out of peppermint essence too so choc-mint was off the list. Then it hit me - honey!

I just omitted the sugar and vanilla and added 1/2 cup of honey. I used Iron Bark honey, it is really strongly flavoured so I thought it would go well with the richness of the cream but I think it's too much. Matt (not at all and ice cream person, odd man that he is) and the boys really liked it though. Plus I just wanted to use up a good chunk of the Iron Bark cause it is way too strong for me, I prefer a Macadamia or Brushbox but anyway, that is another post!

So the recipe looked like this:

Honey Ice Cream

1.5 cups milk

3 cups cream

1/2 cup honey

Warm the honey slightly to make it easier to mix with other ingredients

Mix together all ingredients and churn 25 - 30 minutes or until frozen like soft serve

Transfer to container and freeze until hard

 

Of course two boys wanted to help do the dishes!

Passionfruit Ice Cream

It's an exciting time in our house when the passionfruit lady is back at the markets! Hurrah! Unfortunately do to all the rain and flooding the only crop they've got at the moment is passionfruit, she told me last week that they lost over 15 acres of tomatoes and cucumbers in the recent flooding and three lots of earlier crops over the past 6 or so months.

This is why I love going to the farmers markets. I get to talk to and get to know the people who are producing our food. They know the boys, give them a free bit of this or that every now and then. Yes, we could get all our fruit and veg from the grocery but then we'd be giving our money to big corporations and the farmers that supplied them would be getting a pittance for all their hard work. I know that when we give the passionfruit lady $2.50 for a bag of passionfruit that all of that $2.50 is going to her, her hard working husband and their children that help them on the farm.

I now have two helpers in the kitchen!

These passionfruit were the first of their harvest and oh so delicious. We decided to add to that deliciousness by making passionfruit ice cream! It's just our basic ice cream recipe with the pulp from a few passionfruit stirred through and the vanilla omitted. I can't remember how many passionfruit and even if I could it wouldn't be accurate because it was a case of 'one spoon for the ice cream, one spoon for the boy helping'!

Don't you just love chubby toddler hands?

Our Basic Ice Cream Recipe

Makes 2 litres

1 cup white sugar

1.5 cups milk

3 cups cream

2tbls vanilla essence

Whisk together the sugar and milk to dissolve the milk.

Whisk in the cream and vanilla until combine.

Churn in the ice cream machine for about 30 minutes or frozen like soft serve. 

Transfer to a 2L container and freeze.

Lick the paddle and scoop out the super frozen remnants with a plastic spatula!

Sourdough Bread

My first ever attempt!

I'm not sure if it turned out right but it is yummy! It is really holey and spongey, dense and moist. And sour. I'm not sure if it's too sour. I may have used too much starter or it may have been left too long before baking. Either way, it's yummy (I think) although Elliot did tell me after a while that it hurt his mouth!

Archie devoured four slices with local jam from the markets for morning tea, so it can't be that bad!

Reducing the Waste

After reading this post about how little rubbish we had in our wheelie bin a friend sent me a text message asking me to share some tips on reducing the amount of rubbish.

So over the past few days I've been making a list lof what we do. Here goes!!

We:

# make as much food from scratch as possible. I make all our stock, bread, bread rolls, pasta, pastry, pizza dough, pasta and pizza sauce, cakes, muffins, desserts, sweet biscuits, ice cream, grated cheese, dried apple, dried banana, hommus etc

# buy in bulk. Every couple of months I go to a bulk whole foods store in the next town and get big lots of nuts, seeds, rolled oats (5kg at a time), and I order in 20kg bags of organic wholemeal flour. I then store this (except flour) in our chest freezer. I put the bag of flour into the freezer for a couple of days but then decant it into a big storage container to save room in the freezer. I also buy 1kg blocks of cheese, 1kg tubs of yoghurt, the biggest packets of sugar etc from the grocery store.

# don't buy prepacked, individual or convenience foods. My one regular exception to this is a treat for the boys, the individual Babybell cheeses. They absolutely love them and are fairly healthy too. We go through 1-2 packs every fortnightly shop depending on how much we go out. They are only for snacks when we go out, not at home.

# try and buy foods with as little packaging as possible. I hate that some foods come in a package within a package (the rice cakes I buy from Aldi do and it drives me bananas) or like cereal in a bag in a box!

# try and avoid putting fruit and veg in those plastic bags they have for you to use. It probably drives the checkout people crazy when I put my big pile of bananas or 5 loose avocados on the belt, but it saves a bag! The bags I do get I reuse later.

# buy meat in bulk from the butcher. They use the same bag for 500g of mince as 1-2kgs so I get more and then freeze it, generally in a reused fruit or veg bag. If we don't have any of them I use a reuseable plastic container.

# shop for fruit and veg at the farmers markets. I take our reuseable bags and just load up the pram. It's not unusual for Elliot to be holding a pumpkin or two or a watermelon in season! He refuses to hold pineapples though, they're too spikey!! I also don't get things indiviually bagged unless they're fragile or I'm buying a lot of something ie 2-3kg of apples. I'm also mindful that many people I buy from are farmers local to the area and that every bag I use, they have to pay for it. It saves me rubbish and them money if I don't get a bag!

# buy things in reuseable packaging ie glass. Then we wash it well and put it in a box in the laundry to be reused to store something (cable ties, loose screws etc) or bottle something (jam, chutney etc). Moccona coffee jars are great for storing food in the kitchen (sugar, dried fruit, nuts etc) because they seal so well! It is an expensive brand of coffee, but whenever it's on sale I get a couple of bottles. Also an op shop in town quite often has the jars for sale for a dollar or two.

# reuse other packaging eg storing homemade washing liquid and spray & wipe in old vinegar bottles

# make some of our cleaning products, or use general household/kitchen items for cleaning eg vinegar, bi-carb. Then I just top up spray bottles or shakers in the bathroom, kitchen and laundry.

# compost all of our fruit and veg scraps

# feed most of our food scraps that can't be composted to our dog. She is very tiny and doesn't eat a lot though so we do chuck some out, especially bread crusts!

# give our egg cartons to friends with chickens. We are often gifted yummy free range eggs too! Yum!

# use boxes for craft activities

# collect newspapers to use as weed control in the garden or tear them up into the compost

# use paper on both sides for shopping lists etc

# recycle envelopes (mostly for when we go to the dairy and leave money in the box)

# use cloth nappies and cloth wipes. We do use some disposables too, very few through the day 2-3 a week and one every night.

# use face washers to wipe the boys hands and faces after meals

# put leftovers or things to store in the fridge in a container with a lid instead of glad wrap or alfoil

Most of our rubbish is tins from tomatoes, chickpeas, beans etc and milk and cream bottles that I don't like to reuse. It doesn't matter how much I wash them they still smell like sour milk! We also get junk mail delivered. My days of devouring the catalogues for bargains is over but I still haven't gotten around to putting up a "No Junk Mail" sign. We'll have to wait and see if the junk mail gets delivered to our new house out of town. Lots of my friends that live out of town don't get junk mail, and I'm sure it is one thing we won't miss!!!

I hope this list helps give people one or two new ideas on how to reduce their rubbish. If we all do a little (or big) bit, it can only help our precious planet Earth.

If you do other things to reduce your rubbish, please let me know in a comment below. I'd love to get a few new ideas!!

Cows ahead!!!

One of the first things that made me feel really 'comfy' after our move was finding a wonderful family owned and run dairy just outside of town. And really, it's not that far out of town. Less than 10 minutes drive and we can have farm fresh milk, cream and butter. I was so surprised to find a local dairy as the country around here is all about the sugar cane. We get cane trains rattling up and down the streets during harvesting season, kids look out windows and see cane harvesters driving down the roads. It's not known to be good dairy country here, but the dairy is nestled along the scenic Mary River surrounded by cane farms. They sell this particular brand of milk in a few of the smaller shops in town but it is much cheaper and a lot more fun to go for a drive out to the dairy once a week and stock up on really yummy milk. In terms of the almighty dollar, the milk we get from the dairy costs a little more than regular supermarket milk, but I'd rather pay a bit more to farmers within the local area than buy cheap, mass produced milk from who-knows-where. I know that this is a small operation, the cows are well looked after and the people running the show are honest and hard-working.

If you drive out to the dairy you buy the milk with the good old honesty system. A large cold room is left unlocked with a little container that you put your money in. We can get fresh milk any time we need, which is especially handy after returning home on Sunday night after a weekend away visiting family! More often than not there is no one there when we go, but once I've run into the lady that runs the dairy. She is absolutely lovely and we had a good old chat about the boys, her grandkids and family, who helps out around the place, all the important things. It really is such a family affair!

A sign warning drivers to watch out for cows! The dairy grazes the cows on both sides of the road so the cows regularly cross to get to greener pastures!

We choose to get the non-homogenised type so it's had a lot less 'fiddling' than normal supermarket milk and it is so much nicer. Really creamy and it tastes like real milk. It's nice too to see the change in the milk depending on the season and what they are eating. As it is illegal to sell raw milk in Australia it has been pasteurised, but it is the closest we'll get to real milk, unless we get a cow. But that is a whole other post! ;) We also get their cream, which comes in 1litre bottles for only $2, bargain! It makes the yummiest home-made ice cream. I have to limit our ice cream making to 2 litres a week though. Actually, I shouldn't say 'our'. I should say I have to limity 'my' ice cream intake to 2 litres a week. I may be slightly addicted to home-made ice cream! I haven't made butter yet, but it's on my list of things to do.

Some of the lovely cows that give us their milk. It is very much appreciated ladies!

I love knowing where our food has come from. I love that Elliot and Archie can get out of the car and say hello to the cows that give us their milk. I love that we're directly supporting a small, family, local business. I love that we're cutting our food miles and having fun doing it!