More Bulk Purchases

 

The local Halal butcher sells 3kg tins of tomato paste, how could I not buy one? I originally thought it'd be enough to last us forever but I've started making our own lacto-fermented tomato sauce so it may not last as long as I originally thought!

I froze one big batch for sauce making and the rest went in ice cube trays ready to be popped into soups, pasta sauces, chilli, casseroles, wherever tomato paste is needed!

An Easy Weekday Dinner

This
+
this
+
buckwheat pasta
=
quick, yummy dinner after a busy day out and about.

Rocket Pesto

We got a massive bunch of rocket in our F&V box recently and I knew the boys wouldn't like it as salad leaves too spicy Mummy! so I turned it into the yummiest pesto! With brazil nuts instead of pine nuts it wasn't exactly traditional, but what does that matter!

1 bunch (2 firmly packed cups) rocket
1/2 cupbrazil nuts
1 cup olive oil
120g parmesan cheese
4 cloves garlic, finely chopped
salt and pepper to taste

Whiz everything up in a blender of food processor until it reaches your desired chunkiness!

Enjoy as dip, salad dressing, a sandwich spread, stirred through pasta. Your imagination is the limit!

Organic Homemade Ricotta

The day before its 'sell by' date the organic milk at our local grocery gets reduced to a ridiculously cheap price. Being the food hoarder that I am I buy every bottle that is reduced (sometimes three or four 2l bottles) and use it straight away for cooking or freeze it to use later.

Making ricotta is a great way to use up a large quantity of milk to give a different product that is so versatile. A sweet dip for fruit when mixed with honey, a topping on pizza, a filling in filo pastries, the uses are endless!

Here's my recipe using just milk and vinegar. Too easy!

2l organic, non-homogenised milk
3 tbls white vinegar or lemon juice

Heat milk slowly to 97C or just below boiling point if you don't have a jam thermometer.
Remover from heat and stir through vinegar or lemon juice.
Sit, without stirring for 15 minutes
Strain through a muslin cloth for 30 minutes or until it's as firm as you desire.

I don't salt my ricotta as I like to have the option to use it for sweet or savoury.

A Pitiful Garden Update

Since we made the decision to put the house on the market and move the garden has been neglected to say the least. Actually neglected doesn't even describe what has happened to the huge area we once had planted with heaps of edibles, some successful, some not.

We planted out two gardens using the chickens to prepare the soil for us and then our moving news came. We have kept tending those two areas (one with a mixed planting, one with potatoes) and the rest of the area has been mown and is regressing back to lawn.

I can't begin to explain how sad I feel when I look out and realise that all that potential is gone. I look through the seed box and wonder if there is any point starting a new planting when we could be gone soon. But what if we're not? But what if we are? Argh!!! The unknowns are killing me, so I'm being lazy and not bothering.

In the meantime, we're trying to save the last of the tomatoes from some pesky nocturnal animal that picks them just as they are starting to ripen, then nibbles them and leaves them around the yard for the dogs to play with.

Green tomato chutney anyone?

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!

Basil Pesto

100g basil leaves

2 cloves garlic

75g pine nuts

75g finely grated parmesan cheese

200ml olive oil

Process basil, garlic and nuts until finely chopped.
Add cheese and with motor running add oil through liquid spout.

Homegrown basil and homegrown garlic. So easy and so yummy with pasta!

This made a thick, dip-like pesto. To make it more saucey simple add more olive oil. This quantity made plenty for our dinner and lots more for the freezer.

Cucumber Pickle

A friend recently told me about a fruit and veg wholesalers in town that also sell a little bit of retail to the public. Their regular prices are more expensive than most fruit and veg shops and definitely more than the markets. They do however do 'throw out' boxes of produce that is getting close to being unsellable, bruised or just doesn't look quite right. These boxes are really cheap and earlier this week I picked up two, one was $3 and the other was $4! They were full of lovely produce and it's really forced me to think of some different ways to use it all up so it doesn't go to waste. At the moment we've got a crisper drawer full of apples! Apple crumble anyone?

In one of the boxes were three cucumbers and we're not big salad eaters. The boys would much rather have a plate of vegies than a plate of salad! I just knew we wouldn't eat three cucumbers so instead of them going squishy in the bottom of the fridge I thought I'd have a go at making cucumber pickle! It turned out to be really easy, just a bit dangerous with kids around cause there is hot liquids and hot bottles involved, but the boys were playing happily on the verandah for that bit thank goodness! I was getting the DVD player all warmed up!

Cucumber Pickle

3-4 large green cucumbers, unpeeled, thinly sliced

3 large onion, thinly sliced

3/4 cup salt

1 cup water

3 cups vinegar

2 1/2 cups sugar

sprinkle of pickling spices

Layer the sliced cucumber and onion in a bowl, sprinkling the layers with salt.

Leave to stand for 3 hours.

Bring remaining ingredients to the boil, stirring to dissolve sugar. Boil for three minutes .

Drain cucumbers and onions and add to pickling liquid. Bring near to boil but do not boil.

Bottle into hot, sterilised jars and seal.

Recipe from NMAA Cookbook, one of my favourite recipe books!

Bananarama

Cooler Weather, Warmer Lunches and 30 cobs of Corn!

I've been thinking a lot lately about our lunches at home and have come to the conclusion that they could be a lot more exciting! Normally it's just a sandwich on our homemade wholemeal bread. Elliot is going through a ham, cheese, lettuce and avocado phase while Archie is addicted to cheese in any form! With the weather cooling down I'm going to try and be organised enough to have a hot lunch at least a couple of days through the week. Elliot loves helping in the kitchen and as most recipes I cook can freeze well I'm hoping to not have to cook everyday, but maybe just reheat something I've prepared earlier or defrost something from the freezer. I'm hoping as well that Matt will be inspired to take lunch to work instead of buying something everyday. Something that I'm sure our budget will be thankful for!

Right about the corn in the title! When I did our grocery shop this week I picked up a packet of three cobs of corn without really looking at it. We normally get a pack or two a week so I didn't take much notice until El told me that the pack had an extra sticker on it. When I looked I saw that it had been marked down to 59c! So I went back to the fruit and veg section and got all the rest of the marked down packets, 10 in total! I'm sure the checkout boy thought I was a bit crazy!

So what will we do with all this corn? Freeze it of course! I've previously blanched and frozen our home grown corn and it steamed from frozen really well. I'm doing a bit of an experiment and have cut the kernels off a few cobs and frozen them without blanching and will see if there is any difference. If there's no difference in the end product between blanching and not-blanching before freezing I'm sure you can guess which one I'll be doing!

For our lunch today I thought we'd use some of our corn to make some Polenta and Corn Fritters from this great book. I substituted the canned corn for the same weight of fresh (unfortunately it was only one cob, I was hoping to use more!) and also added some homemade ricotta cheese. They turned out really well, the boys ate a few each and there are enough for lunch tomorrow too!

Elliot learning how to grate cheese, he did a really good job apart from eating a fair bit!

I thought Archie was just sitting on El's step while I was at the stove with the fritters but then I turned around and saw this! Cheeky little man reaching for a banana!

Fritters on to cook, I think next time we'll add some grated onion and zucchini for a bit more zing. The polenta added a really crunchy texture, very yummy!