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Archive for September, 2010

Garden Update

Posted in Food & Friends, Frugal Living, tagged , , , , , on September 30, 2010| 66 Comments »

Congratulations, Soy!  Linda’s book will be on its way to you soon!

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I can’t believe how fast our garden is growing!

Here’s what the first bed looked like in late August…

…and here it is today.  Over the past five weeks, we’ve harvested broccoli, a dozen lettuces, kale and several beetroots from this bed.

The cabbages haven’t been a great success – we planted them too close together, and possibly a little late.  As a result, they’ve been making lots of leaves, but not forming a tight ball.  They haven’t been going to waste though – the chickens absolutely adore them…

The broadbeans seem to be growing before our eyes at the moment!  We can’t decide whether to eat them young as Linda suggests, or to wait until they’re a bit bigger and shell them..

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Bed number two was newly planted when these photos were taken just over a month ago…

…and it’s grown prolifically! In amongst the jungle of pea shoots, you can see kale, cabbage, broccoli, as well as carrots and lettuce.  We’re following Linda Woodrow’s plan from her book, The Permaculture Home Garden, which very cleverly allocates part of the space in each bed to growing feed for the chickens…

The baby pea pods are forming.  I’m very new to gardening, so I didn’t realise that each flower would turn into a pod.  Now I’m excitedly counting the flowers to see how many peas and broadbeans we’re going to get…

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The dwarf peach and nectarine trees seem to be making lots of fruit, although it’s unlikely they’ll all develop…

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Garden bed number three has potatoes, capsicums, eggplants and tomatoes – this single cherry tomato plant has grown like a weed and is threatening to take over the whole bed…

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We have a blueberry plant growing in a pot, waiting for a permanent home, and somewhat surprisingly, given our temperate climate, it seems to be  fruiting!  Maybe it has something to do with all the bees who visit our backyard now…

In a patch of soil where the chicken dome was originally situated, a small crop of wheat is growing from the uneaten grain mix we were feeding to the girls…

Today’s harvest of sprouting broccoli will be eaten at dinner tonight, simply dunked in boiling water and dressed with a little butter and salt..

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I thought you might also enjoy seeing how the chickens are travelling..here’s Rosemary glaring at me for spying on her while she was laying…

…and Queenie, being very vocal and reminding the others that she’s the boss!

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If you live in Australia and would like to undertake a garden project like ours, we have one copy of Linda Woodrow’s book, The Permaculture Home Garden, to g!ve @way (the funny characters are an attempt to avoid the search bots – I want to g!ve the book to someone who actually reads our blog!).

I was buying a copy for our friend Ian the Chicken Whisperer, and couldn’t resist picking up an extra copy for you.  Linda’s book is tailored for Australian gardens, and is full of brilliant and inspired ideas – you can dip into it for suggestions, or go all out and follow her plan completely as we have.

To εnter, please leave a comment (before 14th October) and tell us  which state you live in and what your favourite vegetable is. And apologies to our international visitors, but we can only ship to Australian addresses this time!

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Swings and Roundabouts

Posted in Frugal Living, Musings on September 28, 2010| 32 Comments »

Tonight, we had dinner at home.

We’ve been carefully growing a prize head of broccoli (well, it’s a prize to us!) – an errant seedling from our punnet of sprouting broccoli which grew into a large, old-fashioned cluster. After carefully removing the five cabbage moth caterpillars, we broke the head into florets and cooked it with anchovies and a clove of garlic, and then served it with our homemade pasta.

As we sat down together for dinner, I commented to Small Man that life is all about swings and roundabouts. The meal tonight cost us almost nothing – the broccoli came from the garden; the pasta was homemade using eggs from our lovely ladies. All up dinner for the four of us would have been about $3.

I tried to explain to the boys (and they politely refrained from rolling their eyes) that it’s all about finding a balance – we had the most wonderful dinner at La Casa last week, but eating out isn’t something we do all the time. That certainly doesn’t mean we deprive ourselves – furthermore, not dining at restaurants every night makes the occasions when we do go out special!

For us, frugal living isn’t about penny-pinching; rather it’s about  making conscious choices about how we spend our money, reducing waste, and most importantly, appreciating what we have and being content with the lifestyle we can afford.

Our philosophy is this: no matter what our circumstances in life, everyone of us has finite resources, and wanting…lusting…for more than we can afford is a sure path to misery.   So we’ve always worked to keep the bar low – we try to find excitement and joy in simple things, rather than lamenting the expensive luxuries we can’t afford.  And as I pointed out to the boys tonight, we were having a meal that we just couldn’t  buy at a restaurant – where else could you dine on broccoli less than an hour after it’s picked, or pasta made with eggs that were laid that morning?

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For I have learned, in whatever state I am, to be content.

Philippians 4:11b

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Homemade Marshmallows

Posted in Recipes, tagged , , , , on September 26, 2010| 44 Comments »

I watched the gorgeous Annabel Langbein making marshmallows on her new show, The Free Range Cook, and couldn’t resist trying them out!  We adapted her recipe and this one by Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall to come up with our own version.

These moreish morsels only have four ingredients – sugar, gelatine, vanilla extract and egg white. The texture is reminiscent of a firm meringue pie topping – quite different from the commercial versions which are bouncy and rubbery (and made in a very different way).  These have a lovely old world charm to them.

Make sure you allow plenty of time for the mix to set before cutting – the marshmallows will continue to firm up over the next day or so.  Instead of greasing and dusting the pan, we lined it with a sheet of parchment, which was then lightly sprayed with oil.  The  finished sweets then only needed a light dusting of cornflour (cornstarch) and icing sugar to keep them from sticking together.

  • 2 large free range egg whites (as fresh as possible)
  • 500g (2¼ cups) white sugar
  • 250ml (1 cup) water
  • 25g (0.88 oz) leaf gelatine (see Hugh’s recipe if you’re using powdered gelatine)
  • ½ teaspoon of vanilla extract (we used homemade)
  • mixture of cornflour (cornstarch) and icing sugar, for dusting

1.Line a rectangular baking tray with parchment paper, and lightly spray the top of the paper.  I used a 33cm x 22cm (13″ x 9″) roasting tray.

2. In a medium saucepan with a long handle, stir the sugar and water over a low heat until the sugar dissolves, then raise the heat and bring to a rapid boil.  Clip on a candy thermometer and boil the syrup until it reaches hard ball stage (122C/252F).  This will take approximately 10 – 15 minutes.

3. Soak the gelatine leaves in a bowl of cold water for about 10 minutes.

4. Before the syrup reaches temperature, place the egg whites in the bowl of a sturdy stand mixer and beat until stiff peaks form.  Timing is quite important, and the sugar syrup, egg whites and gelatine need to be ready at the same time.  It helps, but isn’t essential, to have two people on the job – one to watch the syrup thermometer and the other to prepare the other ingredients.

5. Once the syrup is at the right temperature, remove the saucepan from the heat.  Turn the mixer on to low, and gently trickle the hot syrup into the stiff egg whites, beating constantly as the mixture turns creamy. Please be very careful – the sugar syrup is blindingly hot!

6. As soon as all the syrup is added, quickly remove the gelatine from the water and squeeze out the excess water from the softened leaves, then add the gelatine to the mixing bowl while the mixture is still hot, and beat until combined.  Add the vanilla extract and continue beating.

7. Turn the speed up and beat the mixture until it thickens – Annabel suggests beating until the mixing bowl feels just warm – this can take up to 10 minutes.  The finished mix will be very thick but still pourable (even thicker than photo below).

8. Scrape the marshmallow into the prepared pan and smooth out the top.  Leave to set for at least four hours or overnight.  When firm, lift the slab out using the parchment paper, cut with a warm, dry, sharp knife into squares, and dust each with a fine coating of cornflour (cornstarch) and icing sugar mixture.

Of course, once we had homemade marshmallows, we had to make dark chocolate rocky road!  We used 500g  of tempered dark Belgian chocolate, 125g slivered almonds and 200g of homemade marshmallows, chopped into cubes.  It’s wickedly good!

Click here for a printable version of this recipe

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Winston Knot Tutorial

Posted in Recipes, tagged , , , , , on September 24, 2010| 39 Comments »

My last post about bread braiding for a while…promise!

A few people asked about the Winston knot design that I made in the previous post, so I tried the pattern again, taking photos this time.  The original instructions for this shape are in Jeffrey Hamelman’s Bread.

Each of the loaves was made with a full batch of the braided bread dough recipe – approximately 850g each.  The dough was divided into six balls of approximately 140g each, and then rolled into long logs.

Note that the logs need to be looong, or you’ll run out of dough before the end.  Mine were about 60cm/24 inches each.  After rolling, very lightly dust the logs in a little flour to help improve definition in the finished loaf.

Step 1: Lay the dough out as shown below.  From now on, each group of three adjacent logs will be treated as a single unit. Note that when each group is woven, the rolls should not be turned over but simply rotated, so that the part that is face up continues to be face up for the whole process.  Please also note that I stuffed this up in step 2 (but it wasn’t too bad, as that bit ended up at the bottom of the loaf).

Step 2: Rotate group 1 down to lie adjacent to group 4.

Step 3: Rotate, without turning over, group 2 under group 4 and over group 1.  It should end up next to group 3.

Step 4: Rotate group 3 over group 2 and lie it next to group 1.

Step 5: Weave group 4 under group 1 and over group 3.  Nearly there!

Step 6: Bring what you have left of group 2 over group 4, then squelch all the bits together at the bottom.  Don’t worry too much about neatness, as this ends up on the underside of the loaf.

Step 7: Fold the bottom of the dough (the bit you’ve just squelched together) upwards to the middle of the dough.

Step 8: Now repeat with the top of the dough.  Squish the two bits you’ve folded in together, but be careful not to squash the dough down, or you’ll flatten out the design.

Step 9: Now turn the loaf over and admire your handiwork!  Place the dough on a parchment lined tray, then cover it with oiled clingfilm and leave it in a warm place to rise.  Preheat the oven to 200C (400F) with fan.

Step 10: To finish, brush the risen dough with a little melted butter, and bake for about 30 – 35 minutes, or until dark brown and hollow sounding.  Reduce the heat near the end if it starts to brown too much for your liking.  Remove from the oven and immediately brush the hot bread with extra melted butter, before allowing to cool on a wire rack.  Enjoy!

Click here for a printable version of this recipe

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Dinner at La Casa

Posted in Food & Friends, tagged , , on September 22, 2010| 40 Comments »

This is Tony.  We love him.  He was the maître d’ at our favourite Italian restaurant until a couple of years ago.  Over the time that we’ve known him, he’s watched our boys grow up from little kids to young adults, and marveled with us at their voracious appetites for pizza and pasta.

Completely by chance, I discovered a few days ago that he and his sister Carm have just opened their own place in the nearby suburb of Russell Lea.  We couldn’t resist heading out last night for a meal at their new La Casa Ristorante.

The restaurant has a wonderful, welcoming ambience – gently lit, adorned with photos of Italy, with comfortable seating and earthy, rough-hewn tables.  It’s a very elegant yet easy room to settle into.

My main meal, which I had no chance of eating on my own, was a full rack of sticky pork ribs, oven roasted for eight hours and served with a side of chunky fries.   Big Boy and I agreed that these were, without doubt, the best ribs we’d ever eaten; they were unbelievably tender – literally falling off the bone – and perfectly accentuated by the sweet, sticky sauce. There were plenty of grill options available – half or full racks of pork or beef ribs, and a variety of different cuts and weights of steak.

Small Man demolished a bowl of fries and an entire pizza – this one had a thin, crispy base, and was topped with all of his favourite ingredients – olives, anchovies, tomato, cheese and oregano.  I told him Tony had created that pizza just for him…

Pete’s main was a simple pasta of eggplant and olives, topped with fresh ricotta.  The flavours were fresh and sweet…

Big Boy had the handmade pappardelle with pancetta and mushrooms in a white wine and cream sauce, before eating half of my ribs…

The boys and I chose gelato and sorbet for dessert, while Pete opted for the ricotta cannoli (of course!)…

We had a wonderful night – the boys in particular enjoyed themselves enormously, and were really happy to see Tony again. We’ll definitely be back there again soon!

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La Casa Ristorante
271 Lyons Road
Russell Lea  NSW
Open Tuesday – Sunday, from 5pm
Tel 9712 3882
www.lacasaristorante.com.au

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