Category: Kitchen

Here we are… Christmas Eve!
Jeff got called in to do an afternoon shift and I just pottered about working through a little list.
We plan to head down to Ruby’s for Christmas lunch.
Ruby is in charge of baking the turkey & pudding, Margie is doing the vegetables and I am on pavlova and custard duties.
So I did the pav this afternoon

6 eggwhites! (I love my egg separator!)

I will make the custard fresh from the yolks tomorrow morning

A lot of sugar and mixing later… and I have my pav ready for the oven.

Tomorrow morning I will whip some cream for the middle and top it off with lots of raspberries.

Figured I should go and pick said raspberries…

Half my patch is rocking along… the other half deadish. Think I might have to dig the bad ones up.

It took over an hour to pick today… got nearly 2kgs (4lb)

As always I have chook-lurkers when I pick raspberries. I wish you could hear them when I poke raspberries through to them (the dodgy ones) Its like a higher pitched ‘chook chook’ noise which is so funny. I think its their happy voice when they get something especially tasty.
I did have two naughty girls sneak into the netted area. Of course Screecher was one of them. She went out not fazed at all by me catching her (or unrepentant) but oh my! The other one, one of the ring necked girls?? What a fuss!! There was screeching and flapping and a general carrying on that got her tangled in the netting. Finally got her under control and out. And heavy!!! She is one solid bird!!

First bean makes an appearance!

The corn is patchy. I still have high hopes tho…

The outside tomatoes are growing in size quite quickly

Random celery popped up in the hothouse! Must relocate this one.

Capsicums are getting nice and big too

Then to top the day off I made the first half of the plum jam up from frozen pulp. I have been running low lately. Even though I love raspberry jam, I now confess my favourite to be the plum!
I need to make more room in the freezers so its time to get onto the cooking.

Hope you enjoyed your day with the last preparations for tomorrows get togethers or whatever you are up to!

Merry Christmas
xxx

Hello! I have to have a little brag – my first tomato of the season. Sure its a bit small, but Jeff and I shared it in a salad tonight and it was beautiful!! I am quite fond of the Black Russian tomatoes… lots of flavour! I spotted a couple of others that have started to colour up so pretty excited about that!

I did a fair bit of catching up with people around town to say hi and Merry Christmas and all of that. So nothing amazing has changed in the garden.

I did put together a tray of strawberries and one of cucumber to put into the dehydrator. Together. I figure the flavours are unlikely to mix… will soon see!!
I sprinkled a bit of sea salt onto the cucumber chips… hmmmm. I might have overdone that. I tried one thats half ready and I bet my face was pretty funny! I’m ok though. I washed it down with a slice of chocolate cake (the one I decided to bake at 11pm last night) (as one does)

I hope once these are crispy dry the saltiness won’t be quite as eye-widening.
Anyway, I have a good number of cucumbers coming along that I can experiment with if this tray goes south. (Can always powder it for other things right??)

Hope everyone is in for a relaxing weekend before Christmas
Cheers!

PS – current resident possum who seems big enough to throw a saddle on!

Hello! Not a bad day out there today, but I did spend most of it in the kitchen cleaning up my clutter & making strawberry ice cream!

I just make an old fashioned vanilla ice cream then swirl the whizzed up cooked strawberries through it! Roll on dessert tomorrow night!

I was out of potatoes in the pantry – so off to the shed to seek my backup stock.

Of course at this time of year they are all desperately trying to grow. So I knocked off the shoots and brought a box full inside. Hoping my next potato harvest will be more of the bigger potatoes compared to this titchy lot!

And – calamity – I ran out of pickled beetroot. Time to go foraging.

That will be a tomorrow job.

Three eggs… Looking forward to stocking up on a few more chickens when we return from Japan! (Squirt had a slow day. Just when I think she has about had it, she starts making chook-noises that I interpreted to “Feed me” – so I did. A lot.)

Close to my last tomatoes. This is sad. I mean, I am rapt that I have actual fresh picked tomatoes in August, but sad that soon I have a long wait until I get to taste tomatoes again.

Spent some time watering in the hot house. Seeds (of course) have not done anything yet. On Ruby’s advice I usually leave a watering can in the hothouse so I am not watering seeds or seedlings with ice cold water.

And the plum trees have started showing their first blossoms! That makes me so happy!

Cheers!

Hello!
We are definitely back in winter. So glad I took the opportunity to get outside when I did.
I have a small list of things to drag out of the freezer and cook.
Today it was to make a batch of sweet chilli sauce.
In fact, I decided on a double batch

Even though my chillies were already cut and deseeded, the prep time took me a couple of hours!
It takes an eon to peel all that garlic (about 200gms)

Or maybe I am just slow!
Finally got all the garlic peeled, ginger also peeled and whizzed up the lot so I could get it into the pot to start cooking.

It eventually became hard to spend any time in the kitchen! Even though it smells good, it is literally eye-watering! (I must admit my sinuses are super clear this evening!!! haha)

It probably took a couple of hours simmering. I will know tomorrow if I did it too long or not long enough!
If you are interested in the recipe, click here.

I took some warm mash down to the girls, who were pretty pleased about it.

Squirt still not doing great… but she did eat a bit today and I let her wander about the shed while I cleaned out her cat box. She seemed keen on the bread scraps I gave her, but she tires out quickly.
She is sleeping in by the fire (no – not too close!!)

I noticed my ‘afterthought’ garlic is looking sturdy!

And three weeks ago I put some laterals on the kitchen window sill –

I think today they are looking quite good, although no sign of roots forming yet. Perhaps I should give them a drop of kelp juice! (Maybe after their day with the sweet chilli sauce fumes I might be greeted at breakfast with some ready to pick tomatoes…. who knows!)

Tomorrow I might do nothing…
Hope your day was great too!

Cheers!

I felt the banana-raspberry loaf had been missing from my life for a while. So baked one this morning.

I have had a couple of slices so far… trying to not guts it all in one day.

Pip acted as resident Snoopervisor – switching between keeping an eye on me and an eye out my grotty window for birds.

While the cake was finishing baking I went out back to my dwindling grocery store and picked a few things to make dinner with

I think that is about the last of my carrots

I wanted to make a slow cooked stew – we still have plenty of beef in the freezer.

So glad I took time to cook up several containers of tomatoes over the summer season. They have been fabulous to chuck in stews and spaghetti meals etc.

I think the only non home grown ingredient in my stew tonight was the onion (ok, and the chicken stock)
I also found a bag of frozen corn kernels that I threw in as well which made a really nice addition.

Sadly I ate alone – Jeff just couldn’t keep his eyes open when he got up this afternoon and headed back to bed. Night shift does weird things to you.  But – by the time he gets his share the flavour will be even better, and (if I do say so myself) it was pretty good to begin with!

Nothing like a hearty stew of home grown ingredients in winter while you sit by the fire!

Hope your midweek is excellent!

Cheers