Organisation

School holidays always allow me a bit more time to get organised.  I collected these ideas on my Pinterest account and then put them into action this week:

Braided wool for hanging earrings from.

Shower curtain hooks to hang scarves

Folding tshirts in a certain way to make more room

I certainly feel a little bit more organised for starting the Term.

Organisation

Birdseed bars

This recipe I got from Annabel Langbeins "Simple Pleasures" TV show. It makes HEAPS and is frankly "just delicious!"

On a baking tray mix together:
- 2 cups of rolled oats
- 1 cup of sunflower seeds
- 1 cup of pumpkin seeds
- 1 cup of sesame seeds

Toast in an oven at 180deg C for 5 mins. I substituted half of the pumpkin seeds for some linseed. When done add 1 cup of dried fruit. I did half dried cranberries, half sultanas.

In a small pot, melt together:
- 120g butter
- 6 T Golden syrup or honey
- 8 T Raw sugar
- 1/3 C peanut butter or condensed milk

Stir as it heats and simmer for 5 mins on a low heat.

Add the hot caramel to the toasted seed mix. Work fast as it moulds quickly. Transfer the mixture into a lined Swiss roll tin or baking tray and press flat.

Let cool in the refrigerator for 3-4 hours. When cool, cut into bars. Store in an airtight container till all gone!! Haha.

I couldn't believe how much it made!

Birdseed bars

Calendula Balm

Last year I planted Calendula in the garden as a companion plant and for a splash of colour.

In December I harvested some of the petals and steeped them in olive oil in a sunny spot for 6 months.

What evolved was a richly coloured oil concentrated with the medicinal qualities of this pretty flower.

The best use of this oil was to make a balm that could be used for cuts and grazes, nappy rash, chapped lips, dry skin etc.

Recipe:

Calendula oil - 1/4 cup of dried calendula petals steeped in 1/2 cup of extra virgin olive oil. Steep for a minimum of 2 weeks.

Balm - melt 1/8 cup of beeswax in a double boiler. Add the strained calendula oil to the mixture with 10-40 drops of lavender oil. Stir to combine then put into containers. Seal when cool.

Easy? Yes!
Messy? Potentially! Beeswax is like a waterproof casing on your pot so make sure you melt it in something set aside for making non-food items.

Calendula Balm

To Infinity and beyond!!

I spotted a tutorial for infinity scarves on Pinterest awhile back and pinned it with anticipation of one day making one.

With the budget a bit tight and families and friends having birthdays this month I decided that this could be a suitable present. Deciding on which fabric to use is the fun bit!

Bel would you like one??

To Infinity and beyond!!

Brighten up

A little bit of paint on this milo tin has brightened up my kitchen and provided handy storage for my utensils!

Brighten up

T-shirt scarf

I saw this idea awhile ago and then revisited it on Pinterest.

A friend of mine has done me a few favours lately so I thought I would make her one out of an old yellow t-shirt I had. I added some black ribbon, black leather tie and a vintage button to make it a bit more glam.

It actually requires no sewing - just cutting and pulling and then some hot glue gun action. Simple really!

There is a great tutorial for this on this site.

T-shirt scarf

Rainbow beets

The other night I had an absolute craving for Silverbeet.

It may have been my body telling me I needed iron and salt after playing football that day. It could have been  my mind reminiscing about my childhood.

Luckily I have these amazing rainbow coloured "beets" growing in abundance in my garden.

This one reminded me of an Oompa Loompa!

I simply cut off the stalks (even though they are so pretty!) and then roll them up into a bunch and slice them in rounds. Then into a pot they go with a bit of water and some salt to cook.

The best bit however is the water left after cooking them (something my Mum gave me as a child). In this case it was a beautiful warm maroon colour. I simply added a bit of salt and pepper and had the most wonderful nutritious drink with my dinner that more than satisfied my craving!

Rainbow beets

Hey presto - pesto!!

I have recently discovered the delights of home made pesto. Now even though I do have a few healthy basil plants growing in my garage I would much rather use herbs that are in abundance.

I have lots of wild rocket growing which whizzed up made this fantastic pesto.

Rocket pesto

2 cloves garlic
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
4 cups of rocket
1/4 cup olive oil (approx)

Put everything into a blender and blend until smooth. Add oil gradually until pesto is a good texture.

I also like to make this parsley version:

Parsley pesto

2 cloves garlic
1/4 cup grated parmesan
1/4 cup sunflower seeds
2 cups Italian parsley
1 cup of basil mint

So easy and so tasty!

Hey presto - pesto!!

Ear, ear

Apologies for a lack of posts during the month of March. A combination of bad weather, busy work schedules and winter sport starting means that I have been away from the garden, the sewing machine and the house.

Summer has been and gone without warning. The weather changes from hot to mild to freezing cold. Rain, wind, sun - the garden is not sure what is happening to it.

However I managed to pick some of our home sown corn despite the wind making a mockery of the perfect rows. It looked more like a sculpture on the Wellington waterfront than the upright rows in a corn maze.

The corn itself was DELICIOUS! And really this photo does not do it justice. It was sweet and juicy and just so much more satisfying knowing that you had grown it yourself. As my partner said "it's hard to imagine this was grown from one of those tiny bits".

We will be growing corn again in summer, if summer ever arrives again.

Ear, ear

The garden in February

Tomatoes and Violets

Blackberries

The beds are full

Fragrant Basil

Red Kale Jungle

"Gold Rush" Zucchini's bathed in golden light

Skyscraper Corn

Ear that?

 Just some of the treasures from my vegetable garden.

The garden in February

Potatoes

Decided to finally dig up the last of the potatoes tonight. Wasn't expecting this many!!!

The varieties are Cliff's Kidney, Jersey Benne, Purple Passion, Desiree and some special Maori varieties: Tutaikuri and Karuparera. My favourite are the Karuparera.

Me and my 2-pronged fork did a really good job!

Most interesting potato dug up was this one:

Use your imagination!

Potatoes

The evolution of the salad

Salads historically in NZ consisted of some iceberg lettuce, cucumber and tomato. Then some marketing genius came up with the idea of selling bags of salad greens (mesclun) and housewives right round the country started experimenting with greens that were weeds in a former life.

My salads usually consist of lots of peppery rocket, cress and baby beetroot leaves. To liven this up even further I decided to grow some edible violas.

These beautiful delicate flowers come in a variety of colours and are so intricate to look at. They look stunning in a salad.

And yes I was brave enough to eat them. Not a particular strong taste so completely palatable. A good dressing always helps!

Violas are not the only edible flower. I use borage flowers from my garden in salads and freeze them in ice to add to summer drinks.  Nasturtiums are also bright and beautiful to add to salads. Check out this chart of all the different types of flowers you can eat and what they taste like.


I think it's time again to get a little bit more creative with the salad greens (or purples, yellows, blues and reds). Leave your iceberg lettuce for lunch at Grandmas and play around with some edible flowers instead.

The evolution of the salad

Lots and lots of cabbage

On Wellington Anniversary Day I entered my first ever A and P show with some homegrown produce. And wouldn't you know it I got first place! (Please note that even though the competition level wasn't as high as one might have expected my cabbage was still the bomb regardless).

Mega cabbage

But alas what to do with all the cabbage afterwards. After 3 meals of coleslaw there was still  ¾ of a cabbage left. My only other experience of having this much cabbage was in Form 1 when we learnt to make coleslaw in cooking class. The teacher (Mrs Watson) gathered all the leftover cabbage and made sauerkraut with it. Then for the rest of the term we used sauerkraut in other recipes. In particular I remember putting sauerkraut on pizza.

Mrs Watson had some interesting ideas about cooking (she pretty much put lemon pepper on everything) but I like that she didn't want to waste the cabbage and came up with another way to use it. Kiwi ingenuity for you (with a german twist)!

So anyway I don't have a copy of her version of sauerkraut and all the recipes I read involve quite a process of fermentation. I wasn't sure if I wanted to go to such lengths considering I can't even remember what the stuff tastes like!

I wasn't kidding about the amount of cabbage

So I found this straight forward option for pickling cabbage here. It pretty much involves packing shredded cabbage into sterilized jars then putting some honey and salt and then hot water, sealing them and then leaving them in the hot water cupboard for a week.

I added some grated apple and caraway seeds to my mix. Next time I may be a little bit more adventurous.

With a bit of honey and salt on the top awaiting hot water

So apparently I can open and eat the cabbage in a weeks time or wait another 6 but if I open it between weeks 1-6 it will be quite sour. This is all a bit scientific but it has to go through 3 stages of fermentation. Interesting stuff!

Sealed and ready to be banished to the darkness

Will follow up with some notes once it has fermented!

Lots and lots of cabbage

Thrifting in the Hutt

Op shopping (or thrifting) is perhaps one of my favourite pastimes.

I get a huge rush when I find a small "treasure" or two for a small price.

I have to be careful that I only buy things that I need (which can sometimes be hard) but the best thing about this type of shopping is that its ethical and its green. I am buying somebody else's unwanted item therefore I am not contributing to mass consumerism or production. Plus lets face it old stuff is way more cooler.

This particular mission was to find items for the kitchen, namely more Crown Lynn and perhaps some furniture. No luck with the furniture - all a bit too pricey for me to make a decision on by myself.

So here are my finds for this week:

4 beautiful Crown Lynn bowls - $1 each

Crown Lynn dinner plate $2.50

Crown Lynn "Woodglen" dinner plate $2.50

Glass bottles $3.50 each

Recipe book holder - $3

I also got a bunch of chopsticks ($1.50), a small yellow and white striped cake tin ($2.50), a plate stand/stacker ($1.50) and a picture book copy of The Velveteen Rabbit ($1).

Good score!

Thrifting in the Hutt

Giving back to my community

For the past 6 months I have been involved at getting our local community garden up and running.

When we moved to the area I saw an article in the local paper about it, got in touch with the organiser and began growing seedlings for it.

On December 10th 2011 the garden was made and the first lot of plants put in (including some of mine). I had best intentions of being there for this momentous occasion but a bout of food poisoning got the better of me. However I have since continued providing the garden with plants.

Last night we had a planning meeting to set up the infrastructure for the garden for the next 5 years. These included plans around drainage, on-site water, a nursery, windbreaks, a teaching space, bbq area etc. Actually there was a lot of the wish-list!

My ideas towards the garden stem from the reasons why I wanted to be part of it in the first place. I value community and communities looking after each other. There are many socio-cultural benefits from having a community garden. People can learn how to garden, people gain social connections to their neighbours, it brings people together and ultimately it brings us all together and talking!

One of my suggestions was around how to get people interested in being involved. We actually need to tell people what resources we need whether that be wood to build a garden or the skills of someone to draw up a plan.  I think sometimes people want to help but don't know what they can contribute.

For example there was these 2 old ladies at the meeting who basically said that they had turned up to the meeting to be a bit nosy because they couldn't garden to save themselves but they could make scones! Well terrific - welcome on board. There is always the need for someone to make the scones!

The best thing about this community garden project is that it is connected to several other initiatives in the community including a community orchard, a native planting scheme (which will have a nursery on the site) and the local Papa kāinga, who hope to teach courses in traditional Maori medicine, plants and raranga/weaving.

All very exciting. But in the meantime I will enjoy the immediate harvest!

Giving back to my community

Rhubarb Fizz

Having made Rhubarb cordial before (see here) I was most excited when I saw a recipe for Rhubarb Fizz in my favourite Good magazine.

My garden has rhubarb a plenty at the moment. They must enjoy this crazy rain/sun/rain/sun weather. I'm glad somebody does!

So here's the recipe - bloody easy if you ask me!

Rhubarb Fizz (courtesy of Good magazine)

1) Cut into small pieces about 8 stalks of Rhubarb (4 cups).
2) Cut up 1 lemon into small chunks
3) Place into a large bucket and add 1tsp white vinegar, 680g of sugar and 4½ litres of water.
4) Cover and leave for 48hrs
5) Strain and pour into bottles with screw top lids.
6) Leave for at least a week.
7) Refrigerate and then enjoy with ice in a tall glass!

NB: The recipe suggested using a bucket or plastic container with a sealed lid. Do you know how hard it is to find one of these? Anyway I improvised with a food covering/shower cap like thing. Please also note that the longer you leave your fizz the more fizzy it will get. Slowly loosen the cap each day to relieve the pressure in the bottle. Also be careful when opening - you could get a rhubarb shower instead!

A week later:


Wow! Not only is this drink naturally carbonated (definitely got a fizz to it) it tastes amazing! Kind of like a mixture between ginger beer and lemon cordial with a hint of rhubarb. Quite sweet so perhaps add lots of ice cubes to the glass. I tried it with a bit of vodka too - very palatable!

Final verdict: SUPER SIMPLE TO MAKE, TASTES GREAT!

Rhubarb Fizz

Made with love

So its true. Things do taste better if they were made with love.

Researchers found in this study that the person's physical experience of an event is affected by how they perceive the person that is administering the cake/medicine/pain/pleasure.

So if I make you a cake (because I am an endearing friend) then it will most definitely taste better than one bought from the shop (hmm unless its one from the Chocolate Cake Company or the lemon ricotta cake from Floriditas...). Ok maybe it won't be perfect but you will enjoy it more because you will know that I made it for you!


Same goes with things I sew, plants I grow.... I give these to people because I want them to be happy and it makes me happy to do something for them.

So I didn't really need someone to scientifically prove this for me but I'd like to thank them none the less.

Photo courtesy of Aubergine

Made with love

Neighbourly mulch

Mulch. It's pretty much just bits of broken up twigs and leaves but judging from the amount it costs to buy you would think you were laying out a red carpet.

I have been putting off buying this ($80 a trailer load/$160 delivered) gold to put on my native garden that I have created even though the garden is in desperate need of it. But the wait paid off because today while walking in my neighbourhood I came across some people chopping down a tree.

Something compelled me to go ask the guy if he was going to mulch any of the mess he was making. He told me no but how much did I need because he had a pile at the top of his drive. SCORE!

So to cut a boring story (to other people other than myself) short we went back with the car, shovelled some mulch and applied it to the garden. It looks terrific!

So this got me thinking...if we talked to our neighbours more surely we could all be a little bit more self-sufficient?

Neighbourly mulch