It’s raining, it’s pouring, this old girl is…..

I have been waiting for a rainy day, for weeks, so that I can stay inside and deal with the autumn abundance. As much as I love being in the garden, there’s nothing that makes me happier than a day in the kitchen but I cannot bear to be inside if the weather is fine!

The morning was misty, with clouds hanging on the hills, as we rowed and chatted and enjoyed the simple pleasure of being on the water in a beautiful rowing boat we helped to build. I never cease to be thankful for the day I found my home and moved to Cygnet, literally at the bottom of the world.

The minute we finished our rowing, it started to pour with rain. As usual we headed to The Lotus Eaters’ Cafe for coffee after which we all headed back to our various homes. I skipped in through the door singing with joy at finally having nothing better to do than cook and preserve and steep and brew and ferment.

Not a bad effort for one afternoon…. but I have lots of apples to box up for storage and plums to stew yet! I hope it rains solidly again soon!

Carrot and ginger pickle begins its fermenting after a kg of carrots, a large knob of ginger and a tablespoon of salt (collected at a salt pan near the Coorong) have been pounded to release the juices.	I add a bit of the liquid from a previous batch of fermented radishes, to the carrots.
Then I start hand grinding 1/2 kg sprouted spelt, to make bread	I think of it as upper body exercise as I use right arm, then left, then stand one way then another! Periodic rests are important so that the stones don’t overheat the grains.
Meanwhile I make a marinade for some pork (from a friend) I have decided to roast for dinner on this chilly afternoon. I LOVE Tommy German mustard…. so flavoursome.	I love the view from my kitchen window. The milk from these cows can be bought at the local butcher, who lives just out of view of this photo.
Next it is time to start dealing with some of the quinces. These first, barely ripe ones, with plenty of pectin, are destined to be quince paste.	A box of radishes on my doorstep, from a neighbour,  means I need to do more pickling!
Half a kg of blackcurrants from the community garden and 10 blackcurrant leaves + a bit of sugar, covered in a bottle of Brandy will make cassis for sipping by the fire over winter.	I bought a huge, organic celery from the market, removed some babies from the sides, put them in water for a couple of weeks and now they are ready to plant out.

Hughsli again…. well why not? He is my son!

He works on the preserves and bars and cereals for days, weeks even, then as the weekend draws closer he launches into fresh dips, salads and chocolates. Then he gets up at 3am every Saturday and Sunday (market days) and finishes baking the most amazing cakes, tarts, croissants and breads.

He was so kind; asking me to spend a day in kitchen with him, knowing how much I would love that. Evidently I talked too much (what mother who misses her son, doesn’t talk too much when with him?) and once I made a mistake with resetting the scales but, for my first go at being very accurate AND doing what I am told, I thought I did alright. But get up at 3am the next morning, I did not!

I arrived at the Farmers’ Market much later and saw the joy on his face, heard the jokes with his customers and thought of my many wonderful visits to similar markets in France…..

France….. a cheese man….

Adelaide….. Hugh, his own man…..

Just take a wander through some of the range he took to the market that day, for The House of Hughsli stall….

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Check out Hughsli on Facebook.

Always read the fine print….

from Organic Bytes

Boycott the Organic and 'Natural' Traitor Brands Whose Parent Companies Oppose Your Right to Know

In recent weeks, several public interest groups, including the Organic Consumers Association, Cornucopia Institute, Mercola.com, and Natural News, have pointed out the gross hypocrisy and greed of large food and beverage corporations selling billions of dollars of organic and natural food, while meanwhile bankrolling the industry opposition to GMO labelling. These organic and “natural” traitor companies and brands include: Kellogg’s (Kashi, Bear Naked, Morningstar Farms); General Mills (Muir Glen, Cascadian Farm, Larabar); Dean Foods (Horizon, Silk, White Wave); Smucker’s (R.W. Knudsen, Santa Cruz Organic); Coca-Cola (Honest Tea, Odwalla); Safeway (“O” Organics); Kraft (Boca Burgers and Back to Nature); Con-Agra (Orville Redenbacher’s Organic, Hunt’s Organic, Lightlife); and PepsiCo (Naked Juice, Tostito’s Organic, Tropicana Organic). All of these companies are profiting from the sale of billions of dollars of their proprietary organic and “natural” food brands while at the same time funnelling large sums of money to the Monsanto-led campaign to defeat the November 6th GMO labelling ballot initiative (Proposition 37) in California.

We need to send a clear message to these traitor brands, in the only language they understand: lost profits and lower sales. Today, the Organic Consumers Association and Mercola.com are formally calling for a boycott of 7 organic and “natural” brands.

Better still, in my opinion, is to not buy processed food at all or only Australian grown as we don’t have GMO’s…. yet and, even then, only processed foods that consist of one ingredient eg individual dried fruits without added oil or preservatives / rolled oats, not pre-packaged cereals (or roll your own oats with a mill).

I see no need to buy any other processed foods than a few, single ingredients and find it incredibly refreshing and simple! Eat local and seasonal. Shake the farmer’s or grower’s hand. Ignore the rest.

Vari’s is closing

To the people of eastern Adelaide, those few words will bring sadness and many happy memories. Frank’s wonderful little Italian grocery shop is packed from floor to the rafters with home made and imported everyday Italian ingredients and foods, all at reasonable prices. Frank arrived in Australia in 1955 and started working in his (late) sister’s shop in 1960 and has worked there ever since, taking it over some years ago.

I started going there in the 1980’s when I lived nearby. It was through Frank that I tasted many Italian things for the first time and every time I went I would buy something I’d never heard of before. He would scoop them out of enormous jars or climb on a wooden ladder and unhook a ribbon tying a bag or bundle of something from the rafters. No space was unused and all the smells of Italy wafted in and out the door….. and now it will all end as rents rise …..and instead, glitzy girls will probably sell plastic ice cream or waifs’ clothing or ipods and earphones.

"I'd just like to thank all the past and present customers and Norwood traders for their support," Mr Vari, 75, says.

"Everybody's been good to me and have made us last so long.

"Everyone from 53 years ago to now, I'd like to thank you with all my heart."

Thanks Frank. Live long and happy, with your family. We won’t forget you.

You can read more here.

Alcoholic fruit drinks I make

I went to a Church of England Girls Grammar School …. most of which I loved, but the day I left I decided I’d had enough Christianity for several life times and believed not a word of it. In fact, from that moment on I believed in no gods at all.

However, from time to time, hymns or bits of the bible, especially the old school chapter, come into my head, to be thrust at anyone who is nearby.

And so it was a few moments ago, as I surveyed my dwindling supplies of cassis and raspberry ratafia, and my happily brewing limoncello, that I burst forth with “….these 3 (referring, in the original piece, to faith, hope and charity!) and the greatest of these is….”

Which exactly is the greatest of cassis, raspberry ratafia and limoncello is a question which remains unanswered through millennia, I suspect. I make all of them with local fruit at different times of the year.

Cassis is one I love to drink on cold winters nights, by the fire. Mine is thicker than usual, with the black currants whizzed up in a neighbour’s Vitamix and unable to be strained completely but which I have become rather partial to. Another neighbour suggested brewing in brandy, which I did and it is much richer than when done with vodka.

 

Raspberry ratafia I made with less sugar, as the recipe suggested adding more sugar later, to taste, when the brewing was finished. I decided not to add any more as the aroma and pungency of the raspberries was very special…. one reason being that I let them stew in vodka for 6 months, instead of one! This is a pre-dinner drink which I usually sip slowly whilst getting dinner…. and the raspberries were delicious with ice cream!

 

 

Limoncello is definitely a drink for a hot summer’s night. Being made of lemon peel, it lends itself nicely into being made in winter, to drink in summer. We used to always have it at the shack, sitting outside watching the sunset, after a blisteringly hot day. Poured over ice it is perfect…. I am still waiting for such a day, here in southern Tasmania and am having to adjust my opinion of when is a good time to drink limoncello as there is still some of last year’s left, while this year’s is brewing!

Some people mix them with various things like mineral water, white wine etc but I sip them all neat, in shot glasses or tiny, crystal, stem glasses. I think that they lose some of their alcohol when left to brew, even if the lid is good, which is fine by me; I just want the flavour.

You can find my recipes here.

Enjoy!

Preserving garlic

It happens every year; your garlic sprouts and you face somewhere between 1 and 6 months without fresh garlic (unless you buy chemically treated stuff from another country...and I don't) or you can do it like my friend Deb.

Last year I put all my eggs in one basket and relied on our 1,000 garlic cloves planted at the community garden. They grew big and fat and were close to being ready to dig (and making us some money for some jobs we needed to do), when along came more rain than anyone expected and, yes, the garlic patch was flooded and most of the garlic rotted off before we could rescue it.

Ever since, I have had to buy it at the Cygnet market or beg it from friends. Now some of  that is starting to sprout because, of course, most people I know had that same rain as did the community garden so most of the local garlic heads split open prematurely, making them likely to sprout early.

This means I am going to have a seriously long stretch without fresh garlic this year (we are planting our community garden garlic on higher ground this time AND I have planted some in my own garden!). Since I have paid for what I do have, I am not going to waste a single clove!

Funny how things come along.... on Tuesday I went to a friend's house for a Chinese cooking lesson and there in her lounge room was a bowl full of bulbs with long, green shoots and looking so beautiful I thought it was a lovely piece of living art. She is Chinese and explained that in China this is what you do with sprouting garlic; you let it sprout and all winter you cut the shoots for your cooking. Soooo simple, soooo sensible; soooo beautiful.

Somehow mine does not look as perfect as hers, and of course the shoots on mine have hardly started growing, compared to hers. I am hopeless at art! But you get the idea. You only have to keep a tiny bit of water in the bowl, for the roots to grow into. The food for the growth is all in the bulb.

It never rains but it pours.... and I happened across a pickled garlic recipe recently too. I loved pickled garlic when I was in France, where it was available everywhere but I had not been able to find a recipe quite like the French one until now. It also is so simple....

Drop all the unpeeled cloves into boiling water for no more than a minute, to loosen the skins. Drain and cool enough to handle, then peel. Heat 1 cup of apple cider vinegar in a pan with a good pinch of saffron and a tablespoon of sugar. Boil for a couple of minutes. Put the garlic cloves into jars with some fennel seeds, peppercorns and a bay leaf. Pour over the hot vinegar to cover the garlic and seal. That's it..... Bon appetit!

So now we can all have garlic all year round, thanks to the Chinese and the French..... Why did it take me 53 years to find this out??

..... and talk about floods and raining,.... today my tiny, trickling creek turned into a white water river and was literally about 5cms away from flooding my driveway and foot bridge.....