Sourdough Starter Pasta and User up Pasta Sauce

Posted on January 21, 2014 by anthonypickering

It is a busy time of year we harvested, honey and have been madly preserving and drying fruit from the back yard. Getting vegies in and keeping stuff alive in the heat (a break down on how that went soon)

But no matter how busy it is we are always up for a visit by a friend. It has been a long while since we caught up with this particular friend and it was great to see her. Time flew in her company and a bottle of wine and good food was had.

The kids had a great time number one son was enamoured and spent the whole time showing off ‘for the lady’ and number one daughter was still talking about her well into the next day. She makes a great aunt for our kids such a wealth of experiences in her life to share with them in the future.

Opportunities like this are great and you want to make good food to go with it but not be completely tied up and spend all your time in the kitchen so for me a good slow cooked pasta sauce over some homemade pasta is the deal. It started with a simple starter of onigiri with blanched green shiso and toasted sesame seed (recipe later in the week) and as it is that time of year simple fresh Satsuma plums for desert. Yep life is hard.

The pasta is something I have made before it is a great user up of excess sourdough starter which happens when our busy life doesn’t always allow us to get bread made but the starter needs a feed.(the other option is the chooks love it 🙂 )

The pasta dries beautifully and is really filling and yet strangely light. It is not good pasta to fold through ingredients as it tends to break up this is a drop of good pasta sauce on the top and cheese pasta. As you would expect it is little sour which adds a lovely extra level to the food.

The pasta sauce I started around lunch time and cooked long and slow it is a user up sauce. I had a end of salami I froze when we went away and some keep the ham skin both where added with fresh herbs and good wine and cooked for 2 -3 hours. The extra ingredients again add a depth of flavour to the sauce.

While this may seem complex it is simple to make with lots of down time to get on with what else needs to be done.

To me nothing epitomises what I want from life more than good time spent with family and friends and well cooked food to go with this. If everyone did this just a little it would make a hell of difference to us all 🙂

Enjoy the week ahead everyone.:)

Sourdough Pasta

1 Cup of sourdough starter
3 cups of flour
6 egg yolks
A little water as required

So add the flour to the sourdough start and eggs and mix through and roll into a ball (you may need to add a little water to get it to bind). Once in a ball put the covered bowl in a warm spot for 8 to 24 hours to rise.

Once the rising time is over roll flat and as thin as you like and cut into strips (as you like). Add to boiling salted water and when it rises to the top check to see if it is cooked. Drain and try not to stir to much as it breaks it up.

User up Pasta Sauce

One bottle of passata (750 ml or so)
2 cups of red wine
Onion finely sliced
4-5 cloves of garlic crushed
500 grams of ground organic beef or pork
3 small carrots
3 sticks of celery
4 -5 bay leaves
Parsley
Oregano
2 table spoons of molasses or sugar if you have no molasses
Salt and pepper to taste
Piece of Salami or cured sausage
Ham skin or bacon rind or some bacon bon or some ham anything really

Fry the onion till translucent then add beef/pork then garlic and herbs. Drop in the carrot and celery and herbs for a minute or two to sweat. Add in the passata sauce, wine, salt, pepper and molasses, ham bits and cured sausage.

Cook at a low heat for an hour or two or so. I serve only the ground beef and sauce but you can server it all if you want. I top with fresh grated Italian parmesan of course. This well worth the money and food miles 🙂

Woops

Posted on January 19, 2014 by anthonypickering

I said a while ago I would post those things i do get wrong.

A couple of beauties. Yesterday we got our first harvest of honey and being in a rush I though a my old pants with socks tucked in will be fine. Nope should have made sure I had the ones with the drawstring in them … 5 stings to my shins later…

Then decided to call a friend with a question when I got out of the suite must have been some wax and honey on my iPhone cause some bees decided to target my head or more accurately my nose … Yep stung on the inside of the nose. Que. the elephant man till the antihistamines kicked in.

This morning while pruning my 2 year old peach cut a branch with 1/2 a dozen peaches on it. About a third of the crop.

Think I will make haste slowly for the rest of the day.

Have a great Sunday all 🙂

The heat is still on …

Posted on January 15, 2014 by anthonypickering

Well day 3 of the heat wave is almost over. It should cool down at about 2am with the way things are going 🙂

Garden has done ok. A few sections have taken a hiding but the one thing that surprisingly so far has taken a real beating was the banana tree I had been gifted. I am surprised as this I though in a good container of water would have loved the heat. Clearly wrong on this one. It will recover but it interesting to see how things operate in these conditions. In many ways we are in uncharted territory with so many once in a life time heat waves in in 5 years.

I covered the bees with some shade in the form of a trellis but after A. got an email from the Victorian apiarist association we did a bit more work. They suggested a sheet or box of polystyrene on top of the hive to help insulate. Seems to have worked as the last two days the back hive had none and there where bees outside cooling it but yesterday and today in even warmer temperatures they seemed fine.

We really need to get quilt boxes for them all and some Warre style tops as well. Warre hives maybe not in our plans at present in what we are doing but parts of the design I can see working with our langstroth hives.

The water bowls are checked each morning and it is nice to see the stone carving I did 18 months ago working so well as a reservoir for our bees 🙂 It is really important that you have stones or gravel in the bowl. Bees drown easily and this or floating rafts in the water supply help them to stay out of the water.

Ducks and chickens are really feeling it the shaded pond seems to be helping and they are just staying in the shade.

The water from them is keeping some of the trees happy and it is being swapped out regularly for them.

Shade and water is all they really need.

The kiddie pool idea worked out well even my wasabi so far has stood up well (touch wood) the other plants seem fine and the wicking beds are doing their thing and the fruit trees are ripening well and even that mint seems to standing up to the heat. If a small section of food forest works like this interested in seeing how half the backyard will work.

One area we are struggling with is the house. We really need the insulation in the house. Being uninsulated it is just not staying cool and locking it up has had minimal effect. The shade sail is working well though and the back half of the house really makes a huge difference to the heat in that section it has been cooler than the back half. This sort of passive design is a winner.

When the kids come home they ask for a cool bath and this seems to make a huge difference along with a couple of small fans.

Other than we are just ensuring we keep our fluids up.

It is interesting but I think people have forgotten how to deal with this in their lives. Lots of people have lost pets by not setting them up correctly (not even enough water) and people look broken limping between air conditioned buildings and onto the train.

If this is the future people are going to need to adapt to it in regards to them and their properties. I was discussing with A. with the way that power grid is simply not standing up to the load I am wary of relying on this technology. Our house is better than most and we have the capacity to improve it to be less reliant on systems that can fail so we will.

Two days to go so hope all the Melbourne people are doing as well as me. Interesting times ahead and we will see more of these heat waves I believe.

On the upside it is not to bad to come home and go out into the backyard and be hit by the smell of warm honey and fennel 🙂 not to bad at all.

Here comes the heat !

Posted on January 12, 2014 by anthonypickering

We have some heat on the way. Our summer has been quite mild and I have not had any requirement to water the tree’s or really do more than basic management of the plants.

Tomorrow our summer starts in earnest. We are expecting a hot week with a 2 or 3 days over 40 degrees Celsius which is not unexpected in our summers but after such a mild summer such a jump will be hard on everything.

So this afternoon after some friends left I did some preparation.

The most important thing was to get the potted plants into the shade and some water to allow them to wick up moisture. I had some kiddie pools and an old bath so I put these under the shade cloth and filled them up to a level then put the pots in. I will monitor these.

The wicking beds have handled the few hot days well but with no rain for a while they were getting down so I checked and filled all of the reservoirs till they overflowed. These will be fine now.

I also did a deep water of all of the tree’s and any potted plants that I couldn’t move such as the bay tree. It is quite amazing how many tree’s we have onsite here now. My friend visiting today thinks I have the correct number of tree’s but I am missing an acre or so of land to go with them 🙂

So far I have 34 trees on the block and space and plans for more.

As you can imagine it takes time to do that many deep waters. Each tree received about to 10 to 15 minutes of water which adds up to around 4 hours in total for each of the two hoses we have. There is little point in just doing a short water on trees as you end up causing the tree to develop shallow rooting and make them susceptible to any dry spells. Better a good water once every 1 – 2 weeks if required than a short water every second day.

I have noticed I am water the trees less these days and the area up the back that is food forest is quite moist even with no extra watering and it being a bit dry, water loving plants such as mint are thriving. The plums and the nectaries are plump and doing well. The plan is to keep building on the food forest and see how much food this low maintenance gardening can produce.

Even Gibby’s toy barrow got a use for A.’s angelica plant 🙂

I didn’t forget the animals of the urban hippie household either the ducks and bee’s both got some relief from the overhead sun with the back hives getting a piece of some gifted trellising to caste dappled shadow and the ducks pool getting the same.

So now on for the rest of the week. This amount of work will hopefully mean that I wont be under so much pump to keep an eye on it during the week. But I probably will anyway.

Have a good week all 🙂

Half a pig and quick salad

Posted on January 5, 2014 by anthonypickering

So I was lucky enough to be offered a half share in a ‘pig in a box’. This is from a local farmer and you get a pig. All cuts nose to tail no picking the cuts you want the whole hog (pun intended).

From the famers point of view they get to sell the whole pig nothing wasted nothing to worry about no suddenly finding the selves with 402 trotters not selling 🙂

For the buyer the cost is lower and it forces you to realise that this is how we used to eat the whole pig and you have to learn to use the whole thing cuts you have never used before. Some of which for most will be the best cuts.

So I picked it up today and the lady I got it from sells bread to us at a market as well. So she gave me some beautiful heritage carrots a pale yellow colour and some bread the kids liked from a market she ran yesterday.

So the meal was pretty easy when you think about it J

Fried up some chops in the fry pan and then put them in the oven to finish off while I made a simple sauce of mushrooms (from the local farmers market), onion (same market), some organic flour we buy for our sourdough and some good Smokey paprika from a small shop in Ballarat I found on a trip up there.

The carrot served simply cut up skin on and lightly boiled.

I also picked up some zucchini at the farmers market from a lovely older Italian couple we meet there.

These where finely sliced (I used the slicer on my grater) and then tossed with some macadamia oil, vinegar and salt and pepper and a few peppered cashews thrown on top (you guessed it famers market)

So a complete meal in about 35 minutes local and ethical and not that expensive to be honest. The meat was very filling a chop each for the adults and a half for each of the kids. The carrots had an amazing texture and flavour and the gravy made in the pan the chops had been fired in was perfect for the bread to dip into. The salad cut the fattiness beautifully.

Yep our local life is hard 🙂

The salad is a great favourite and once my zucchini come on line we will be making it as often as we can. We have made it with olive oil rather than macadamia (both are good) and have used walnuts, flaked almonds and hazelnuts in it before. Whatever we have been given by family, foraged, bought or happen to have around.

I am not trying to show off here this is just how we aim to eat and I intend to try to keep it this way as the year moves on. It is actually much easier than we realise to serve our families with nutrient dense local foods and the more of us who do this the better for us and the rest of the environment.

Cut the food miles is one thing but in the process you improve the food you are feeding your family as well!

And yes there was some left of for lunch 🙂

2014 a plan … well maybe

Posted on January 5, 2014 by anthonypickering

So another year has rolled by. Which is good because we have a whole new year to work on 🙂

And true to last year the year is already swinging by SO Fast.

I missed posting so far, working out how to clear out a rodent infestation (more on that later) and just life in general.

I don’t really have resolutions for 2014. Just a general sense that I want to improve how things are moving our lives. Improve my impact on the planet and just generally feel better about things.

Now for those trying to avoid a rant you can skip to the bottom for a very nice recipe for Thai Salad 🙂

While this is general a couple of things clarified in my mind for this year.

Drop our energy usage below the 50% for Australians (a Paul Wheaton definition of being green)
Improve the back yard as far as it carrying capacity goes (permaculture Principle 3: Obtain a yield – you cannot work on an empty stomach)
Eat more locally, sustainably and ethically and importantly buy a LOT less from the duopoly in Australia
Feel generally better about our position in life.

The first three are measurable and I will be measuring them over the year.

Our renovation on the house will make it significantly more energy efficient so that will help with the drop. Bike gets serviced on the weekend so that will help some more. We decided to drive rather than fly to QLD for a number of reasons one being the environmental effect. The other being you get see the country and experience it.

On the trip we made the effort to shop local. We took local whole foods, cherries from my parents local apples and local ham and sandwich bread on the first day. When we did buy we avoided the fast food joints heading into small towns and hitting local bakeries and IGA. Fruit stalls along the way. We gave the friend looking after our place a local ham, cherries and emptied out our fridge of perishable items.

When I got back I kept this moving. Avoiding the supermarkets. Cheese and yogurt from the local factory, greengrocer fruit and veg. Small family business for as much as I could and only when I had run out of options did I hit the big guys. We will keep this going and it is measurable as we keep a budget of all costs one of the things we spend on I want to decrease the amount of money spent in the big 2 by 50% this year.

The back yard is a work in progress, with the kids around time gets eaten up but this year I want to double the food coming out of the back yard. The wicking beds and forest garden stood up to the heat in our absence really well. Other garden beds did not and are going to need some love. This is going to be the year of the back yard for me. Once the reno are under way the single biggest item I need to look at is the location of the shed and this scheduled to be moved by April until then it will be working in the area’s not impacted by this move. Getting production up and the beds healthy. Runs up for manure from my parents another load of wood chips from the tree surgeon we got the last load are in order.

The last item is not measurable but is by far the most important. It means walking the walk and getting things done or not done. But also means getting the money in order. I don’t want to be riddled with the doubts that come with the financial and social issues around us. This is going to be ongoing. It will mean that I have to do a few more things as there are things that I have learned that I cannot unlearn and the issues I have with plastic bags are not the only ones I have when I look at the disparity in the world and the way I as much as any interact with this. And it is going to require me to continue to remember that enforcing my way on those around me and nearest and dearest to me is not going to lead to the good places. Acceptance of the view and life styles of others is absolutely necessary to fulfil this.

So it is hopefully going to be a blast 🙂 hope you can all come along for the ride.

**************************************

On the first night of the year we started on 2,3 and 4.

We had Thai beef salad as below. Local beans, vegies from the local famers market and our garden. Local organic beef. I even roasted the peanuts from raw so that I could guarantee no palm oil in them.

At the end we feed 3 adults (our neighbour came across) and two kids and each of the adults including the neighbour got lunch as well so good value and tasted good.

Sauce

Juice of two limes
1 tablespoon of coconut sugar (I avoid palm sugar which is recommended as even the certified organic stuff is leading to the deforestation and destruction of tropical forests and the animals in them)
1.5 table spoon of fish sauce
2 Teaspoon of sesame oil
Chilli
2 cloves of garlic crushed
2 tablespoon or so of fresh grated ginger.

Wisk together and then pour half over around 600grams of strips of good organic beef and let it sit for 20 minutes to 2 hours. If you get good grass feed organic beef then this will be enough for 3 adults and two kids as unlike the cheap option at supermarkets it is not pumped with water so you get 600 grams of beef.

Roast a 100 grams of raw peanuts coated in sunflower oil in a 200 degree oven till brown (be careful they burn easily)

Cook a packet of your favourite noodles as per the packets instructions (I used hokkien noodles) and set aside

Blanch 750 grams of green beans and chill to stop them cooking they should be crisp
Finely slice a red onion
Use a vegetable peeler to thinly slice 3 carrots
Finely slice 2 cucumbers (I used Lebanese ones)
Goof bunch of mint
Good mix of coriander, Thai basil, Vietnamese mint etc (whatever I have in my garden)
Kaffir lime leaves finely sliced

After the marinade time fry the beef to your desired level of cooking in a hot pan and set aside for 10 minutes to rest then slice finely.

Mix all of the above including the noodles and the peanuts with the remainder of the sauce add the sliced beef at the end and give another mix.

Serve.

Tastes great as lunch the next day.

2013 in review

Posted on December 31, 2013 by anthonypickering

It has been a busy and generally good year.

Admittedly a few more posts would have been good on the blog but we do what we can do.

Tomorrow is a new day and the start of new volume of life called 2014. 365 blank pages. Make of them the best you can and enjoy.

A safe and happy new year to you all.

I am cheating and using the wordpress blog 😉 today

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2013 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 4,500 times in 2013. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 4 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

Of Lemons and Lemonade

Posted on December 1, 2013 by anthonypickering

As I sit here with the sweet smell of dill and peppermint tea with honey I am even more philosophical than normal at present. I write this post with the backdrop of a friend whose son is very ill and anytime that anything comes up I am off course drawn to the conclusion that my worst day has little comparison to this little boy’s parent’s days. Little can compare to a children’s health so it is easier for me to be philosophical of the bumps in the road that life throws up.

So with more of hippie view than a not urban hippie I look on a day that may have looked like it would give me lemons but in fact gave me lemonade.

On Thursday morning as we charged around in the morning (as parents with children in crèche and full time jobs tend to do) I asked the innocent question.

‘Honey where did the bike trailer go …’

The previous evening I had run home the kids in the trailer from crèche as A. had something on and had parked it under our car port as I had done for the last 12 month and herded the kids inside. A. saw it at 9:30 when she got home and the next morning all gone…

We did a quick search of the neighborhood but no bike trailer our neighbors had some vandalism on their front lawn but other than that all quiet …

Now for us apart from being worth over $400 it is essentially our second car so we need this with the kids in case we have to do a pickup and the other person has the car. What a PIA …

So I had a couple of choices get annoyed (insurance with the excess and no claim means we would be out of pocket claiming). Instead I decided to just get on, ring my friend who runs a bike store in the city I originally came from and get another (making sure I store the next one in my back yard 🙂 ). So today I did the run up to grab this.

It was a lovely day sun shining kids had a snooze in the car on the way up. Picked up some local fruit and veg, honey and even homemade salami from a stall on the side of the road chatted to the man running it for a while then headed on my way.

Caught up with my friend who runs the bike store and had a long chat with him. This is a family run store and it was good to catch up with my friend we get to chat too little over time as life gets busier.

From there we headed to my god parents who are in there late 80’s and it is ALLWAYS good to catch up with them and the kids to interact with them. We visit them less often than we should but as often as we can. I have been blessed by these people they have seen the worst and best of life and as god parents where an amazing example to me.

Then we headed to my parents via a little place I noted on the way that sold spices.

In place like Ballarart having somewhere that sells spices of this quality was amazing to me but a good sign that the redneck city I grew up in changing for the better. Bike stores and a culture of riding, good food stores, local food well it is a start of change for the better.

The time spent with my parents on their place is always good the kids run around with Pa and Nana we visited my old primary school up the road. It sadly is having the life sucked out of it and will be closed in 3 weeks’ time (a story on that another time).

I commented as I helped pick a half 20 liter a bucket of peas of a row of peas about 20 feet long that my poor little tub of peas was not really in the race. My father pointed out that he has amongst the best soil in the world to grow stuff and 40 plus years of working with it not against it and my own garden would in time would be far more productive than it is now.

We had a simple meal with them bathed the kids and headed back. It took me about an hour to sort out the stuff I had from parents, chutney’s, plants, herbs, broad beans and a ton of peas to be podded.

So from a day where I had no plans to head up least of all to replace an item I would prefer not to replace (or have stolen) we had a great day. A really good day.

Don’t get me wrong I am far from impressed that the trailer was stolen we could do with that cash for work we are doing on making our house more sustainable but getting down in the dumps will not help.

Battening down the hatches looking askance at my neighbors will not help. Letting the system get to me and running back to a second car and locking out the world will not help.

The very likely scenario of the person who took this is that the system is at much at fault as they are, whether it be the needs the money for drugs or just because he needs to keep up with the joneses it is the same the lack of community that allows it and leads to it. Hiding back in the system as the system would like is not the answer. What the answer is I have some ideas but not all.

I can at least be in charge of my own mind and make sure I am in charge of it and try not to allow the system to screw around with it too much.

Hope I can put up a few posts on things I have done and there are a lot rather than this soap box stuff.

Let see how that goes 🙂

Sleeeeeep…

Posted on November 2, 2013 by anthonypickering

So there I am. Finished a good meal i cooked of pulled Mexican beef, salad and nectarine pie. Off to bed me thinks then I spot the two large packets of strawberries A. picked up cheap… Damn needs to be processed already getting a bit soft, and by morning there will be major losses.

Out comes the drier and they are processed in 20 minutes. Things are only a bargain if they are not wasted,only green if you don’t waste them.

This is the lesson and the step people are going to make moving forward. Times of harvest are not just in Autumn but through out the year and like these strawberries will not wait for my schedule.

After all cant be be accused of the old retreat that permaculture is the realm of the middle class 🙂

Time to sleep

Nature Provides

Posted on October 20, 2013 by anthonypickering

We are well into an odd spring this year. Bush fires rage in the state to our north while we are hammered with hail. The temperature fluctuates from 12 degrees Celsius to 27 then back to 20 with heavy rain then 25 again with full sun. All in 4 days.

It places great strain on the body and you see the zombie sheepeople on the trains all looking as though they are being even more broken by this than even their normal daily grind.

Historically spring has led to colds and influenza the variability of the weather (although not this extreme) has meant that people’s bodies cannot quite get the rhythm to build up their immunity. It is not helped by the modern diet.

In the past spring was a time of lots of greens, few starches, any meat was lean after the winter. Our diet essentially detoxified itself through availability.

Now we just keep pouring in carbs and fat as with the winter or summer or autumn (another post on this one day)

After avoiding flu throughout the winter I have been hit with a cold in this spring, just a mild one and I have cooked up a batch of elderberry syrup as I used in winter.

Luckily on top of my stock of elderberry it is elderflower season and these make a great tea that has the antiviral properties of the berries and makes a very nice tea with a teaspoon of honey that also helps to get up your hydration levels another good way to get the bugs out of your system.

To a greater degree we have lost our connection to the fact that for centuries such natural events such as elderflowers blooming or elderberry ripening coincided with times we need them. Our bodies are biological and linked to the natural world and the natural rhythms. The knowledge is also lost people barely know what the tree that I grab the flowers is for or how to use it until pointed out.

I am not perfect, my background is western european so elder is something in my tradition. I am sure there is an equivalent of this in indigenous Australian lore that could be found but there is simply no excuse for not learning about such things as this digitally connected age.

Elderflower Tea

1 Large or 2 small elderflowers
A teaspoon of honey

Put everything in a cup, cover with boiled water and let it steep for 5 or so minutes.

Drink

(Elderflower also dries very well and you should dry some for teas as the flowering time is short in Australia)

I am NOT an urban hippie

The rampant ramblings of someone trying to live a greenish life while seeing the world. From Melbourne Australia to the United Kingdom to the Netherlands this is a look at life as lived.