Kitchen – Page 8 – Head in the Clouds

Garden & Kitchen

I started off this morning (lets call it morning, shall we? Because technically it was) popping down to the markets to deliver Maureen her calendar and collect some $$ from another friend for purchasing three more!! I managed to find Jeff the perfect Christmas Present, but I can’t tell you because he wanders through my blog every now and again!
I also bought these lovely little thyme plants from Maureen’s stall – fifty cents each!!!! She sells lots of seedlings at crazy prices – pretty much because she wants people to get into growing their own food and as she says, 50 cents isn’t much of a risk if it doesn’t work! How fantastic is that?

(Talking of $$ I have now tipped over into the $800 area for my savings to get to Texas next year!!!)

It was a lovely day today – as equally nice as it was terribly yesterday! Even though I had indoor tasks to do, I figured I could get onto those when the sun went down (which may explain why I am baking a banana raspberry loaf at 11pm)

Aaaanyway.
Got onto my kelp-juice project. I collected a feed bag of kelp the other day. Today I washed off a bit of the sand, then dumped it all in one of the big garbage bins and topped it up with water

Once topped up with water, I put the lid on – job done.
Now I have to wait for a couple of weeks for it to break down into the water a bit, then will decanter into bottles to be then used on the garden.

The hothouse is going really well. The tomatoes are not turning red as yet, but I would be surprised if they did before Christmas. The heirloom capsicums and the chillies that I grew from seed are growing steadily and happily.

The self seeded beetroot is a monster!

Russian Black tomato – thriving in its corner!

Last seasons chillies coming back to life

Fantastic basil with a bunch of self seeding tomatoes!!

Fabulous sized leaves! These were chopped up and added to the salad tonight at dinner

I went back into the raspberry patch to finish laying the last of the seaweed down that I had. I think I over estimated the size of the bowl I needed to harvest my 20 raspberries!! 😀

Not many but I was so happy to eat these!

I have also decided that to save on multiple swear words I need to take my pants off to go picking raspberries!!! How many times did I have to stop to unhook my backside from the netting?????
OK – to be fair to passing traffic it makes sense to take a pair of scissors to every button on my gardening pants rather than prancing about in my undies!

Unplanned garlic – took them out of the herb garden – at least one is a decent size but they all will taste fine!

We have visitors coming for the day tomorrow, so I pre made up some rissoles (hamburger patties) I am pleased to have some things from the garden to put into the mince… like the beautiful fresh garlic –

Fresh herbs too –

Home made bread, breadcrumbs, home made plum worstershire sauce and a lovely fresh laid egg!

It will be easy tomorrow to cook up the patties since the mix is all ready to go. Just add some buns, home made sauces, fresh lettuce, mayo (and of course pineapple!!) and people can make their own.
I’ll even share my home made strawberry ice cream!

Anyway – bedtime for me! Hope your weekends are going along splendidly!

Cheers!

I think the escaping chook broke the stem of this one… so it gets to live inside.

Fabulous Friday!

Hello! End of another week!!

I had quite the productive day.

There was a small calamity in the house as we ran out of plum jam (A staple at breakfast!) I took a container of frozen plums out to thaw so I could fix the situation. Happily I process (cook, de-pip & mooley (squish to pulp) ) the plums before freezing so I dont have a lot of extra work to do when I am ready to make something.

So six pounds of plum pulp became several jars of jam

We picked up our friend Rachel tonight at the airport… she took quite the liking to my banana/raspberry loaf, so as a good host, I made one up.

Then I thought I might as well make a cake for the chickens, as I hadn’t done that for a while…

Will give the chooks a few slices tomorrow!

(Spoiled chickens much??)

On a roll… so I baked some bread too – have to do something with all that plum jam I guess

Somewhere in all that I premade a tomato/vegetable sauce mix so when Rachel got in, we just had to cook the pasta to complete dinner. Glad I did as her plane was a bit late. I think we were eating dinner at about 10pm, then chit chatted forever which is why I am now blogging at nearly 2am!

Of course there was some garden stuff to do – mostly watering today.

Love the little increases in size each day!!

Lots of self seeded tomatoes popping up in the hothouse. Will re home soon

Zucchini and basil… second wave. Also need new homes

Hothouse cucumbers – pleased with their progress

Ok – better get a wriggle on towards bed! Going to be hard to get up mildly early tomorrow!!

What’s happening on the weekend around the world?? I am hoping for some beach time!

Cheers!

Netting working… strawberry still whole! Yay !!

More Jam, More Wood & More Rain

Lucky me! My cousin, Leonie, dropped in today to catch up. I had some photos of her daughter to give her and she gave me a box of mince, some lemons and a huge bag of kiwi fruit!! Going to have to look up a scrumptious recipe for those – Kiwi/pineapple Jam! mmmm

Cousin Jeff had dropped in some more wood on Sunday – then before I had a chance to do anything more about it, he was back today with the second load today

I am going to have to get my skates on and get this stacked, as the third load could possibly arrive Friday!!

Right now its half out in the elements getting severely rained upon!

The yard gets pretty churned up by the heavily loaded ute, but that’s not saying much as I practically bog the wheelbarrow on my way up to the house these days!

I am trying to work my way through the containers of produce in the freezer. I thawed out a 4 litre container of Ruby’s plums with the plan to make more jam.

new plum — Ruby’s beautiful plum tree in spring

It took an eon to get the pips out and mooley it into pulp!!

House smelled rather nice during the process

I only cooked half – three pounds worth – I find if I try to cook bigger batches it takes 5 times as long and wont set properly! This lot was fairly speedy – I’ll do the rest tomorrow.

I had some on toast and am pretty happy with it!

The chickens are still laying well – although I wouldn’t blame them if they went on strike! Trying to keep them happy with warm meals every other day.

They way they run in and snatch you would think they hadn’t been fed for a week!

Hope everybody else’s day was slightly drier than ours!!

Cheers!

Raspberry Jam on a Rainy Day

So glad I got out yesterday and did a bit while I could (especially stocking up on wood by the back door!) – today was a no-go for any sensible outside work!

The rain came down steadily all day – and even now at midnight it still hasn’t let up!

I dragged some raspberries out of the freezer and proceeded to make the house smell fabulous by baking a banana & raspberry loaf and making up a batch of raspberry jam.

I just scoffed some of the final baked product as a midnight feast and am now hiccoughing banana bread! 🙂

Jam – pound for pound fruit and sugar & throw a bit of lemon juice in! Easy.

I got 6 and a half jars out of that lot!

I was pretty happy with the way it set and tested it out on some fresh bread – have to give it the thumbs up!

Had a bit of a game with Pip this afternoon – he had ants in his pants, so a rousing game of ‘chase the string around the house’ worked out some of the springs in his feet!

I know these are stationary shots, but the ‘action’ photos are just a Siamese Blur

I managed to tucker him out properly, then promptly lost my Nanna-Knee-Rug as he thinks it is now his. At least he was quiet for a while! 🙂

Kitty rest time – fire is on, life is good!

Cheers!

Plum Liqueur!

Been sitting in the pantry since summer!

Hello!

Well, that’s Sunday been and done for us! The rain has started in earnest now – the wind is blowing it in from both sides and there is only a small space on the veranda (happily by the back door) that isn’t soggy.

I eventually stirred myself and got into a few kitchen projects.

First up, I figured 6 months or however long it was, was enough time for my plum liqueur to be ready, so after finally having remembered to pick up some material (muslin) I got to and strained the pulp

The smell that wafted up from this was a bit good! 😀

Trying to get the light behind to show the colour

Three and a half bottles – well slightly less now as I just had a small tipple. 😀

Spelling and grammar may take a nose dive from this point!

There is something quite nice about sipping a liqueur in front of a fire in winter!

My brother in law has suggested using the pulp in a baked cheesecake! I am a bit tempted I can tell you!! I need to find something to do with it – too good to give to the chickens, not to mention might make them a bit wobbly! 😀

I also baked a cake (recipe here if you are keen)(Scroll to bottom of that post)

This has now been iced and taste tested. Nice to have some comfort food on a rainy day

Oh yes, also popped in a loaf of bread to bake

I’ll add the plum liqueur recipe soon in case some of you are interested in trying it. Its not hard – just a little expensive when it comes to adding in the vodka!

I would like to try something similar with my strawberries next season to see what happens!!

Off to bed early tonight to read and listen to the rain!

Enjoy what’s left of your weekend!

Cheers!