Harvest Bounty

Posted on March 21, 2012 by anthonypickering

So A. has her quilting class each Wednesday night. It is good for her to get out and do a ‘stitch and bitch’ with the girls and get out of the house. It is good for me because I get spend time with the kids. I cook them their dinners play with them and generally have great time together before putting them to bed. I do this when A. is home but I find it nice to have them to myself they can’t go running to mummy when they get bored with me.

On this occasion I promised A. that I would have some dinner for her. When she got home after 9pm. We had a good crop of black fig off our tree this week and I thought to myself that it was this time last year that I did one of her favourite meals. Being Croatian she loves her figs, cheese, olives and smoked salted pork meat.

So why not combine them as below. This meal looks decadent and I am sure you would pay a decent rate in any restaurant to get them. But the truth is it took less time to prepare these than it would take A. drive through Maccas on her way home. It is good to use the produce that is at hand it tastes at it best having travelled less than 20 meters (that is 0.012 food miles by the way) and being picked today. Sometimes you just need to make it up rather than surrender to the supposedly easy option of packaged and supposedly ‘fast food’

In the end I timed it just right and put them in the oven 20 minutes before A. got home and even I had to admit they were pretty damn good as a late supper.

Figs with Feta and Prosciutto.

4 – 5 fresh figs (or as many as you can eat)
Good Feta or a nice bitey soft sheep’s cheese
Finely sliced prosciutto
Good Extra Virgin Olive oil

Halve figs, cut a piece of cheese to cover the cut side of the fig. Drape in prosciutto over both and then drizzle with good olive oil.

Bake in the oven for 10 minutes at 250 degrees then drop it back to 200 degrees and bake for a further 10 -15 minutes until you get a sweet smell off the figs as they caramelise and the prosciutto is nice and crisp.

Simply Server and ENJOY.

One BLT and one BNT… ?

Posted on March 20, 2012 by anthonypickering

Ok so I am sure most of you all know what a BLT is but a BNT ? Well that is slightly more interesting well at least for me it is.

A. Dropped in between sites for lunch today so I looked around the garden and in the fridge and thought hey what about a bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich for her and something a little different for myself.

One of the great joys of building my garden and making a lot of stuff for our selves is sometimes you can put something really nice on the plate that you made.

So rounded up the last of the heritage tomatoes, some fresh cos lettuce growing in my olla beds, bacon I had cured myself and A.’s magnificent fresh sourdough bread baked on Sunday.

You are going to pay a lot for this in a good cafe but for me most of it is free or at least very cheap.

For me I mixed the classic up just a little bit adding fresh nasturtium leaves in place of the cos lettuce. For those who have not nasturtium both leaves and flowers are edible and very nice, they have lovely peppery flavour that spices up salads or in this case a modified BLT.

A. loved her BLT and we cheated just a little bit and added some really nice local ‘king river gold washed rind cheese’. This is such a good cheese rich and full flavoured so ripe it could recite Shakespeare to you while you eat it.

My BNT has awesome the peppery flavour of the nasturtium leaves worked so well with the sweetness of the vine ripened tomatoes and the saltiness of the bacon. Again couldn’t resist that cheese on top.

So if you have never eaten nasturtium leaves before well here is a simple easy and good recipe to try them with. You might even add them regularly to your diet.

BLT

Handful of Fresh Cos Lettuce leaves
Bacon
Tomatoes
2 slices of Sourdough bread
Soft Cheese

BNT

Handful of Fresh Nasturtium leaves
Bacon
Tomatoes
1 slice of Sourdough bread (I prefer an open sandwich)
Soft Cheese

Would you like some bacon with your bacon?

Posted on March 19, 2012 by anthonypickering

So I cut the bacon tonight. It smelled very good for unsmoked bacon, texture was good and it had that nice pink colour that you get with good bacon. The thing I really noticed cutting it was that the firmness of the meat. It is not tough quite the contrary it cuts very easily and smoothly but had a nice denseness to it.

This could have been create by the fact that it was made from pork form a heritage Berkshire pig and the times we have roasted this type of meat it has had a different texture and flavour to it.

The bacon had a nice saltiness without being to salty and the mix of herbs had a nice flavour to.

It fried up a treat nice and did not shrink away like commercial bacon. Nice and crispy but I had to be careful as it seems to have lower burn point than commercial bacon.

Basically this is the bacon that my grandparents would have eaten a hundred years ago and it tastes as with so many items made by hand very different and I believe much better.

For a first attempt I am pretty happy to be honest. So happy in fact that I am going to have another go but next time I am going to get the smoker built first.

Bacon is out of the oven.

Posted on March 18, 2012 by anthonypickering

So the bacon has cured for a week in the bag being flipped every day. Go it out, smelled good.

The next process is to either smoke or cure it in an oven at 100 degree Celsius for two hours. I had hoped to smoke it but time my eternal enemy did not allow so it went in the oven for two hours.

Came out smelling good. Cant wait to hack of a big chunk and fry it up tomorrow.

Short post due to Pedro Ximenez

Posted on March 17, 2012 by anthonypickering

Ok so I have drunk way to much Pedro tonight with the neighbour after eating my wife’s excellent lasagnia so this will be a very short post for my 30 days of posts.

Built a nice garden bed see photo’s below.

Getting a bit stressed in regards to work and life and everything so having to break things down into parts I can manage. With my projects, Cert V, home stuff and most importantly family this is all I can do apart from drink more Pedro. Life gets like that it is odd how the more we do the more we have to do even in such a great society as we have.

At the end of the day sometimes we need to sit back and build something like the garden bed and have something physical to show for efforts. Even managed to get in a dry wall curve in true permaculture style. Breaks some of the stress.

I also had to note that in the fore ground is a water bottle. After years of travel I am still amazed that I can go to the outside tap and get water that is safe and pure. So few other places I travelled you can do this so at the end of the day my family and I are still in the lucky country.

Hope you all have a great day and thanks to the fine folks of Turkey Flats for finishing off our night positively as they often do. http://www.turkeyflat.com.au/wines/?item=PrdctsNVPedro&template=wine_details

Stocking up.

Posted on March 16, 2012 by anthonypickering

So we visit the Italian supermarket about once a month and today was that day.

What a place, full of all the good cheap stuff. We head there to stock up on cheap tomato passata, pasta, big blocks of parmesan cheese, canned tomatoes, dried and tinned beans, anchovies, boxes of Sicilian sweets, gnocchi, amazing small goods and even unusual European seeds and lots, lots more.

We tend to view ourselves frugal rather than cheap and the quality of these items makes them an even better buy. Even by the standards of the Italians, Greeks and other Southern Europeans we are frugal as we buy some of the amazing small goods but we also buy a big bag of the cheap off cuts which is the ends of the small goods dropped in a bowl. It is cheap probably bad for you but ooh so good. Our daughter loves them and I use them up to make pasta sauces for the week and eat with A.’s how made sourdough.

Buying here is a balance, we question the food miles and its effect but at the end of the day we get organic quality items from Europe cheaper than we can any Australian items. It is sad but we can only do what we can. This year we plan to bottle some of our own passata and tomatoes and grow more vegetables we do what we can and in the end we waste as little as possible and that is probably the best thing we can do.

Our larder is full again and this gives us a lot of freedom in the week. We basically buy what we can’t grow or get from other sources from the big supermarkets. Their strangle hold on the Australian economy is pretty awful for all involved and bodes poorly for us all in the long term but that is a topic for another blog.

Basic, cheap, quick homemade food is the go during the week. We eat a lot of pasta or rice with tomato passata or canned tomatoes and beans mixed with a little bacon or small goods and with lots of fresh herbs. It is good for us and tastes great.

In the end it is a little bit of the frugal life that shows it not only saves you money but is good for you and tasty as well.

Faster than home delivery.

Posted on March 15, 2012 by anthonypickering

We like a bit of take away at times. We avoid it as we can but once in a while we just weaken and get it in.

Having said that. Today I proved yet again that it cheaper and easier to make your own.

Made a batch of fried rice, lots of veggies, spring onions, some leftover chicken and a bit of bacon. Add some fish sauce, garlic, ginger, oyster sauce and fresh herbs from the garden and frozen rice from the freezer (works better with frozen rice)

Easy as and took me 30 minutes to cook which is faster than I could dial up takeaway and pick it up and get back with it for the family and lot cheaper. Lots to eat for all and lunch for tomorrow. Our little girl loves it and we know what is in it.

So why do we buy take away rather than make our own. Some of it is laziness/tired at the end of week/just not thinking.

So in future will we do the right thing yes… probably if I am not to tired or lazy

Fried Rice

A bunch of spring onions
Left over chicken from roast
5 bacon rashes
3 cups of rice made up in rice maker
A cup of frozen peas
A cup of frozen corn kernels
½ cup of julienned carrots
Ginger and garlic to taste (I use a lot)
Oyster sauce about 4 tables spoons
Fish sauce to taste
Soya sauce about 4 tablespoons
Chilli to taste
Sesame oil
2 eggs whisked with two tablespoons of water.
Finely chopped tai basil and Vietnamese mint.

Dice spring onions, chicken and bacon pan fry in a little oil in a non stick pan. Microwave the veggies in some water for about 5 minutes till just cooked then drain and add to the mix. Finely chop the ginger and garlic and add.

Put in rice add all sauces except the sesame oil and stir through over a medium heat. Add chilli to taste.

Make a hole in the middle of the rice and add the eggs as they harden to omelette type consistency and then stir through.

Turn off heat and add a little sesame oil. Serve in bowls and add fresh herbs to taste.

Life and Death and Pets.

Posted on March 14, 2012 by anthonypickering

We have cats, not the best thing in Australia as they are like nuclear bomb on the local wildlife (and the neighbours chickens at times) but they have been a part of our life and my wife and kids love them.

However the down side is what happened today when we found one of the cats that had been hit by a car and is now gently buried under our cherry tree.

Etana was ex breeding cat that we got when the option was her being euthanized or coming to us. She has been a good cat if a bit wild and very beautiful and our two and half year old loved her as she would sleep on her bed.

So now I have to explain at some point when she misses her where Etana is.

Do I think that it is worth having animals when this happens. The answer is yes. Even though I am going to have to do the same talk as I did when my grandfather her great grandfather passed away last year and simply say she is heaven with Opa.

Children and adults need the grounding that nature brings and that includes looking after and understanding that we need to care for world animals live in and hopefully this leads to the an understanding that we the humans have a responsibility to look after all aspects of the earth not just those that affect we humans.

Having said that I do not look forward to this talk perhaps two and half is a little young for understanding the lose of a pet.

Nuts. Why do we do this again?

Posted on March 13, 2012 by anthonypickering

So off to work today after a four day weekend. It got me wondering why I do this. Why go to work when I could be at home doing stuff I want to?

If I ever come up with an answer I will let you know.

On the up side one of the girls at work was up in the high country on the weekend and had picked up some nuts from a friends place. Fresh organic hazelnuts and chestnuts picked off the ground yesterday. Due to life and the universe I didn’t get anything done with them tonight but I got idea’s…

Going to start with a hazelnut pesto and some classic French chestnut paste. Pictures and stories to follow.

Maybe at the end of the day that is why I do it.

Grow your own tree’s… maybe…

Posted on March 12, 2012 by anthonypickering

Yesterday I visited a friends place and he mentioned he had an unusual apple tree that no one could identify. I checked both this and his apricot tree and noted that neither was grafted and both grew true. The apple is an early eating apple and the apricot a mid season both gaps, I have in my tree harvest routine.

So rather than try to work it out I grabbed a bucket of cuttings from this and his old apricot tree along with some geraniums in a nice colour he had before I left.

So today while my parents in law visited I got to work and put together some cutting beds and cut up the material I had to propagate. I also setup a quick mini propagation house out of an old stryrophom box and old fridge shelf I had.

This is not the first time I have propagated items with cuttings, some with success some didn’t quite make it. At the end of the day I have some nice grape vines which where my first attempt. Proof that sometimes it is better lucky than smart. Second didn’t go so well … the third was some quinces and hazelnuts and they appear to have struck very well. This will be the fourth attempt.

Each time I have propagated more than I could ever use in my back yard.

So why do this. For one it is cheap and I get species that are not readily available. Don’t get me wrong I spend a lot of money on on the odd and wonderful in trees and plants so getting a tree for free is nice.

It fills a gap in my harvest schedule

Reciprocation is another reason, I have got several figs and other plants from people and it is nice to be able to offer them something in return. Swapping plants saves money and saves species.

The final reason is that for all I know this could be the only apple tree of its type in Melbourne and it is great to get it out there and keep it going as a species.

I also decided that the two ballerina apples down the side that have produced two apples in 4 years can have a second chance as a stock for some of this tree grafted on it. I have never done a graft before and the photo’s are my first attempt. Hey if you never try you can never fail. But you can also never get anything done, and I remember those poor grapes. Better lucky than smart.