Another month goes by...

 Wow, nearly a whole month since I last posted!  School holidays have come and gone, and we're in the depths of winter.  One of our original 3 Isa brown chickens died a few weeks ago, so we decided to add another 2 chickens, to bring the flock back up to 8.  This is Moss and Sage, our 2 new Australorp hybrids (crossed with Isa Browns), purchased at the Newtown Farmer's market.  They've been treated pretty badly by the others so far, and are currently hiding.

 Our citrus trees are bringing some colour and flavour to our garden, the above picture is of our mandarin tree, which has small, but very tasty fruit.

 This is our orange tree, which we'll leave a while longer before we pick them, they should grown a bit bigger.

 The lemon tree never fails, even after we gave it a big haircut last year.

 Interesting fungus in the woodpile next to the wood oven

 A bit of winter cheer- paperwhite jonquils

 And in the kitchen- freshly made mozzarella, and chicken stock

Cooking adventures with a Sun Oven

 I bought a Sun Oven a little while ago, and there have been a few clear sunny days to try it out lately.  Today I blind baked a quiche pastry in it, as well as cooking chicken and vegetable curry with rice.

 The finished curry- 3 hours later

 and the rice

 I couldn't fit the quiche itself in with the curry, so I cheated and cooked it inside (I can see why people buy 2 Solar Ovens).  It is made with homemade spelt pastry (with homemade butter), and the filling has backyard eggs, buttermilk from this morning's butter making session, spinach, chives and parsley from our garden, and Otway free range bacon (local).

And some gorgeous lilac to finish- I get up very early and get some from an empty house in the next street ;)

Homemade Icecream

It's been a long and tiring week, so I'm posting about ice cream.  The long and tiring part involves Liv having gastro while on a road trip up to NSW to visit in laws, 2 trips to the emergency department, and 2 trips to doctors.  She's having a hard time getting over it, but seems it will just take time.

Anyway, I bought and ice cream maker a few weeks ago, and this is the latest, dare I say it, healthy batch of ice cream.  The recipe is from Nourishing Traditions, and our version is gingerbread cookies and cream.

3 Cups of cream (from grass fed cows).  You can substitute a bit of milk if you don't have enough cream.
3 egg yolks (from the backyard is best!)
1 tbsp arrowroot (real arrowroot, not tapioca if possible)
1 tbsp vanilla extract (homemade by us!)
1/2 cup maple syrup

You just beat up the egg yolks, mix in the rest of the ingredients and pour into the machine.  I added homemade gingerbread biscuits broken up for the cookies part.  They were made with spelt and teff flours, homemade butter, and rapadura sugar, so they are a healthier version too.  With a fussy eater in the house, it's important to create nutrient dense foods that you know will get eaten!

How satisfying

To bake what my girls call "sultana bread", with eggs from our chooks, buttermilk left over from making butter, and very local honey bought at a sustainable house day location around the corner from us yesterday.  Now it can be spread with some home made butter.  The girls have been requesting sultana bread, and with the school holidays coming up, a bit of baking in advance was due.  Most of this will go in the freezer.  I'll get to eat some of this as I have to eat gluten for a month so I can have the Coeliac test.  It's made of spelt, so hopefully it won't make me feel too bad.
The Araucana chickens started to lay again, as soon as the first whiff of spring arrived, so we have gorgeous blue eggs again.  This time of year seems so busy, with lots of gardening jobs to do, on top of all the other things that need to be done, and so many birthdays!  Blogging is a bit sporadic, I'm hoping I'll be a bit better at it next year when both my girls are at school.

Making Vanilla Extract

A couple of moths ago I bought a bottle of vodka and 50g of vanilla beans from here, split the beans lengthwise with a knife (but not all the way), and put them in the bottle of vodka.  I had to tip out some of the vodka so the beans would fit in.  Then put the lid back on the vodka, and shake it a little, put it in the pantry where you ideally shake it a little everyday for 2 months.  If you remember.  Today I bottled it into old maple syrup bottles to make it easier to pour.  Vanilla extract- too easy!

Making butter

 On Saturday we went to Magic Meadow Farm in Lovely Banks to check out what they have and what they do, as our veggie box delivery lady (Kirsten from Casuarina Biodynamic Farm) is having a month off to recharge the batteries.  My good friend Bec has been making butter in her mum's Thermomix with Jonesy's 5 litre bottle of cream.  She'd set the idea percolating in my head until last week when SouleMama mentioned she makes butter in her food processor.  I don't have a Thermomix, but I do have a food processor, so I thought I'd give it a go.  Magic Meadow sells these big 5 litre bottles of cream, I've never seen such a big bottle of cream!

 Here it is with the buttermilk separated, needing to be washed in cold water.  You have to wash out as much of the buttermilk as possible so it stays fresh.

 Washed butter

 Ready to be kneaded on the board for a bit to get the last of the moisture out of it.

Pressed into moulds ready to be frozen.  Then it can be taken out of the freezer a bit at a time, as needed.  This is how much buttermilk I got out of 2 batches, I'm making it in batches of about 1 litre at a time.  We should have enough butter to last quite a while, and it works out at half the price of the organic butter I was buying.  I'll be making a batch per day, until all the cream is used up.  2 down, 3 to go!

Making almond butter

After buying some loose dry roasted almonds from the local wholefoods co-operative yesterday, I made some package free almond butter.  I've been using a bit of nut butter lately, after adopting a bit of a non strict grain free/paleo type diet.  The choc chip cookies that I mentioned earlier this week use almond butter, and the stuff is not cheap, so why not make my own?  I have a food processor, add almonds, whizz up for a few minutes, and you have delicious smelling almond butter.  I used the method from here.

Food

Tania did a great post yesterday on her blog Ivy Nest about food.  Her food journey is similar to mine, trying to figure out just what is good for you, and will truly nourish your body.  You can read it here.

Roast tomato sauce

 Tomatoes ready for the oven with chopped garlic, thyme sprigs, olive oil and salt & pepper.  The tomatoes, garlic and thyme are all from our garden.

 After 1 hour of roasting

 After being pushed through a mouli- 900mls!  The recipe (River Cottage Veg) said I'd get about 500mls.

Ready to be frozen in 200ml (ish) portions.  Now I can try out the Roasted Tomato Risotto.

Wood fired lamb roast

 We went to the Bannockburn Farmer's Market on Saturday morning, always a good day out.  I picked up 3 new raspberry plants ($3 each!) to replace those that I drowned when I moved them into half wine barrels.  We also bought some honey, a huge punnet of organic strawberries, and a butterflied leg of lamb from Barwon Lamb.  I don't really eat meat other than chicken or fish, but I will make allowances occasionally when Andrew wants to roast something, on the proviso that it is local, and ethically sourced (and I really don't like beef).  Andrew wanted to try out a roast in the wood oven, so that's what we did last night.  With the addition of a couple of large potatoes I bandicooted from the potato patch, some of our fresh garlic harvested last week, and some organic pumpkin, it made for a very satisfying meal.  We also realised that I was drinking my homemade lemon cordial, and he was drinking his homemade ginger beer with our fantastic meal.

Andrew wanted to make the most of the left over heat in the wood oven, so he and the girls whipped up a chocolate cake, and baked a few potatoes that we'll have with dinner tonight.  What a life!

Front garden- October

Everything's looking quite lush at the moment, with corn, beans, carrots, spring onions and daikon radish that have all come up from seed.  The early garlic will be ready to pick soon, and need their scapes cut off.  The tomatoes have some flowers on them already, and the lettuce is doing pretty well too.  It's looking more like a proper kitchen garden now!

Wood oven...almost done

 A few weeks ago- brick dome with no insulation

 Yesterday- with a new insulating box built around it, half filled with vermiculite to help keep the heat in.  It needs two more bags of vermiculite, and a roof on top, and a few more finishing touches to be complete.

Man make fire.

Livinia has been asking everyday if we can make pizza for the wood oven, but this is reserved for Sunday nights.  I've been making the dough in the morning, leaving it to rise for a couple of hours, then putting it in the fridge.  The soaking of the flour seems to make it more digestible for me.  And I use half spelt flour.  The recipe is the magic bread dough from River Cottage Veg Everyday, and it's the best pizza dough recipe I've found.

Almost Spring

 Potatoes, back after frost damage

 Broccoli sprouts after the main crop has been harvested

 Buds are bursting (nectarine and grape vine)

 Raspberry canes- I lifted them this year and replanted them in two half wine barrels to contain them.

 Betty is laying her beautiful blue eggs again, we only had one from her about a week or two after she arrived at the start of May.  There was a traffic jam in the nesting box (lawn mower catcher) this morning.  For some reason they only lay in one of the two lawn mower catchers in the chook run, but after one of the plymouth rock's went broody, I thought it was time to persuade them to use the other one too.  Some fresh straw and a couple of wooden eggs from the kids toys, and voila, suddenly more enticing to lay eggs in.

 One cheeky chicken who always escapes

 One of two kiwi fruit vines from Ceres environment park's nursery.  We got two for the price of one as all bare rooted trees were 50% off.  You need a male and a female kiwi to get fruit.

The beginnings of Andrew's spring time project, a wood oven.  The concrete slab will be poured tomorrow, all going to plan.  Stay tuned...