a change of pace

The long languid days of summer have turned into hot sticky days of school and work. I didn't even go to work today, just organised everyone else, and that alone wore me out. I'll get my stamina back some time this month I guess.

Kept my sunglasses on as I watched Fionn (6) in his new class and then watched the whole school assembly...

I even started proper mother activities like swimming lessons. I was the taxi and financial provider for them, not the actual lesson provider.

Tonight I have made lunches for everyone for tomorrow as we all hit the term time world then. I have put all the ingredients bar the hot water for spicey lamb shanks in the slow cooker. I figure the shanks can thaw out overnight and at breakfast time I will add the hot water and turn the slow cooker on. So that's tomorrow's dinner sorted. I have two loads of washing on the line ready to dry tomorrow and the nappy wash is on as I type. I've got the oats soaking in whey and water overnight (a la Sally Fallon) for tomorrow's porridge. I've got that going as a routine finally and hope that indeed the children do absorb more nutrients from the porridge with the phytates neutralised. Fionn has stopped asking me suspiciously if I've been putting kefir in the porridge because it tastes different. My children seem to be able to sniff out and reject products with kefir in them from a distance of metres.

I buried the bones from my most recent batch of chicken stock in the garden this afternoon. A friend who visited a few months ago recommended this as a way of returning nutrients to the soil and this is the first time I have made it happen. I don't know if this means that my whole garden will eventually be a graveyard or not. Maybe chicken bones rot down soonishly, but I suspect large beef bones would take longer.

Back to the subject of kefir. I got sick of the dishes and milk outlay involved in changing the kefir milk every day. So instead of several jars of kefir (old Hellmanns mayo jars of just over 800gm capacity) with the plastic lids on loosely, I put the kefir in a 2 litre jar with cling film over the top and put it in the ingredients cupboard instead of the hot water cupboard. I also got slack about the proportions and often only put as much milk in as there were grains. I only drained the kefir every second day and found this less of a hassle and less of an expense. I was using huge amounts of expensive organic milk every week on the old system. Except that today when I drained the milk off and sat down to have a kefir drink and check my email, the stuff tasted disgusting, really acidic.

So back to the drawing board, or to the hot water cupboard anyway. I've read that kefir can almost always be resurrected, except if it has turned pink or brown and my kefir has done neither of those things. I've split the grains into two old mayo jars and topped up with milk on a roughly 1:5 ratio and put the jars in the hot water cupboard. I'll be draining and adding fresh milk every day and we'll see what shape the kefir is in in a week's time.

My order of freshly milled organic flour from Terrace Farms arrived this morning. So I have rye and purple wheat and otane wheat - 20kgs in total. I can report that although brown paper bags have that enviro-aware aura, they also tear very easily. I'll have to rebag two of the four bags into plastic already. Come Wednesday and hopefully some time not at work, I'll get a rye sourdough starter going. Although I have tentatively booked in to clean my friend's chook house out then and nothing as unimportant as a food project will be allowed to get in the way of a compost project...

Not to freeze

To freeze or not to freeze is a discussion we seem to have at least every year at my place. Do we need a chest freezer? No. Would a chest freezer be very useful? Yes. Can we afford one right now. No. So I guess we'll shelve that one until next year.

I bought mushroom compost to build up the garden underneath the study window. Brighid considers it her new playground. If I can get up before her tomorrow, then I will plant the chicory there and sow some rocket and coriander and peas (and hope she forgets about the area). Chicory looks very pretty so far. As far whether I will like the taste, I'll report on that later in the year.

I found the right parts for the food processor liquidiser attachment. I made a blueberry, kefir and maple syrup smoothie. I liked it. The children did not. Ah well, at least my intestinal flora is getting the good treatment.

I have started Brighid's knitted dress again. This time I cast on by knitting into the front of the previous stitch, just as my mother taught me years ago. It made a neater and tighter edge and was much easier to prevent twisting given that I'm doing the circular needles lark again. Last attempt I cast on by making loops with my finger and sliding them on. Won't be doing that for circular knitting again. So I have 40 grams of this gorgeous wool from the Granity craft shop and then I'll have to switch to something else when that runs out. I do have some leftover bobbly black alpaca wool of the same thickness from when I knitted my posh cardi last year. When I get to the bodice part, I think I'll switch to 8 ply. I have some plain black 8 ply left from knitting Fionn's sleeveless hoodie. It's quite fun making it all up. The skirt part is surely not difficult and I'll use the size 2 version of the sleeveless hoodie pattern to guide me for the bodice. When I read Heather Nicholson's book on the history of knitting in New Zealand, she observed that in parts of Europe they rarely bother with a pattern. So I'm feeling rather European and I will feel rather more European if I pull it off and the dress is pretty and easy to wear.

My chillis are coming along nicely. I have a renewed interest in chillies as Paul Pitchford says that they are strengthening to the lungs. There was a doctor in California who found surprisingly low rates of respiratory problems amongst Hispanic smokers in Los Angeles and attributes it to chilli intake (presumably more than guesswork - the book I read doesn't elaborate much). So given Favourite Handyman is still scaring me with his lung burning habits and given that he likes chillies and hot foods, I might make up some harissa (or surely I could buy some decent harissa though maybe not locally) for him to add to whatever he likes.

sourdough and kefir

Yup, in the kitchen again. Favourite Handyman has been painting the window frames and sills in the kitchen. To celebrate this, I have performed no less than extreme sport cleaning. I have cleaned the oven, even although I am not pregnant and we are not about to move out. Well well well.

On a more pleasant, subdued and comforting note, I have been playing round with my sourdough starter. It isn't a 'proper' one because I started it off with commercial yeast instead of using just flour and water. But this is the second loaf and whereas the first (entirely with white flour) was rather fluffy and not as good as the non-sourdough no knead loaves I'd been making last month, this second one was mostly rye flour and tasted good and had quite a good texture.

Tonight I went to drain the kefir and add more milk. The smallest jars were all set but the larger ones were still quite milky. Maybe I did it this morning and didn't remember. On my shakey memory front, many things are possible. So I cut a piece of my sourdough rye bread and spread it with some thick, unstrained kefir and it was nice. And I felt extremely clever and virtuous. Something to hold on to. I added a bit more milk to those little jars so the kefir grains had more food and left the draining until the morning.

Buoyed by my sourdough success and the yummy kefir spread, I thought I'd play round with the drained kefir I already have in the fridge. I like drinking the runny thin stuff, closest to whey but as I make kefir with full fat unhomogenised milk, it ain't all runny. Since I've been using my plastic colander thing for draining, I've also got more thick bits in as well. Thick bits are good on bread and thin bits in drinks. Why not separate them?

Using the idea taught to me by my Indian flatmate and talented cook Roopali in the 1990s in Dunedin, I put the kefir in muslin and went to permanently suspend it above a bowl in the fridge for the night. No bowls worked because they were too shallow. But a very large ex-mustard seeds catering size plastic jar which the lovely Nell from the best late night venue in smallwettown gave me when I asked for her castoff empty food supplies containers has turned out to be perfect. I'll report on the taste test tomorrow.

Thank you to all the lovely people who wished me a happy New Year. I hope you all have a fabulous 2009 as well. Another year, another growing season. What's there not to like?

Has anyone grown globe artichokes? They sound like they might suit my soil and climate from the descriptions I've read recently.

Tonight

Favourite Handyman put the children to bed and I spent the lovely Summer evening in the garden. During the day my daughter and I had come to blows yet again as I was rash enough to try and garden without thinking that she would go wherever I went and copy me. So some tiny kale seedlings which I had sown myself were lost this afternoon.

This evening I weeded in the old chook run, added blood and bone, lime and home made compost and then planted six kale seedlings, bought from the nursery in the weekend. I watered the entirety of this garden, the tomatoes in the other garden beds and the potato and zucchinis out the front. It is the first time I have found it dry enough to need to water more than the tomatoes. Summer has arrived.

Inside, my kefir is growing well and I have a local friend who would like some. (Gillybean, I also have some for you, just waiting on a postal address so I can send it). I let the kefir grow for two days and the drink from it was nice, so maybe I could get away with every second day not every day after all. I bought a plastic colander thing from The Warehouse this morning as I was finding the bridal veil material wasn't really working how I wanted it to now I have so much kefir. So far, a good purchase. My candida symptoms have been much reduced since I've been drinking kefir most days, so the kefir project has definitely been worthwhile to date.

I made a sourdough starter yesterday. I started one last week and it flopped and I got the hump with it and threw it out. Last week's one was all about purity and wild yeasts and this week I thought I'd flag purity. I started off last night with 2 C flour, 2 C water and 1/4 t dried yeast. It was bubbling nicely by the next morning. So tonight I separated half of the starter into a jar for the fridge and added 4 C flour, 1.5 C water and 1 t salt to a bowl with the rest of the starter in it. That is spending the night in the hot water cupboard. I would advise against copying anything I do generally, but particularly this until I have got a loaf to actually taste good from my current method.

I haven't done anything about the summer gingerbeer plans. I have been festived out and there seems to be fizzy in the fridge anyway. I have now successfully lived through Christmas and Fionn's birthday. You may not think I was at serious risk of keeling over from the pressure, but I didn't have the same faith some days.

I've just realised tonight that in only one month's time, I am supposed to be hosting a book group evening where I have to bake/cook nibbles and read a book to review and clean the entire blardy house because if they are there that long then they will need to go to the toilet which is at the other end of the house from the lounge. I think I shall quit book group. Will this join the list of things I have quit in smallwettown? Sandra-who-quits-things again? It is true that a group of fine ladies of a certain age will find my calibre and backbone rather wanting that the thought of cleaning my house and hostessing just one night in the entire year is too much for me. But it is.

the madness of sandra

Or is it of Sally Fallon? One of today's projects was to use up the kefir in the fridge. I drank some of the freshest kefir this morning. This afternoon I decided to make kefir scones. I found a scone recipe in the Edmonds recipe book which used yoghurt and subsituted kefir for the yoghurt. They tasted good.

Then.

Not satisfied with the kefir project, it occurred to me that whipping up scones in about four minutes was probably quite sinful in Fallon's fermented everything, sprouted, rested, take an age to make everything world. So I go and get my copy of Fallon's Nourishing Traditions and find a recipe for buttermilk biscuits. Biscuits in the USA are scones in the NZ. Obviously there isn't an international body ruling on consistency of floury foods labels. Yet.

So now I have kefir and flour mixed up and resting in the hot water cupboard ready to turn into an advanced (or loonier) version of kefir scones tomorrow.

We are running out of room in the hot water cupboard. I've shifted the brewing kefir into a kitchen cupboard. The sourdough is back in the hot water cupboard though, as it looked funny and not very bubbly this morning after a night in the kitchen. I steamed on this morning and made up a sourdough dough batch to rest in the cupboard anyway. Who knows.

In case you think I have managed to forget that we are two days out from the great culinary, consumerist edifice of Christmas, well I have not managed anything so sensible. I have been cleaning until my very soul hurts. I paid Kathy-the-wonderful to clean for me as well. We are now up to three rooms being properly clean and tidy. Four if you count the toilet. I fancy three more yet. Which would just leave the wash-house and the study until after Jesus has had a few feeds and some kip.

The chooks are currently in paradise, because we let them into the raised bed garden which used to have silverbeet, borage, celery and strawberries in it for the day. I want them to root around the grass by this raised bed as well but would you eat your veges if pudding came at the same time? This is part of another project to get rid of more lawn. I'll report more when I have photographs to accompany my text.

Which could be a while. On last count, my computer still doesn't recognise the camera. Favourite Handyman's computer, erratic for a while now, has started turning on again but the internet connection is dodgy. Which is another way of saying the internet never works on his computer at the moment, but we don't know why.

You want more Christmas? You really oughta spend time with good people, not here on the lousy cleaner's vent space. But if you must, then I have just taken delivery of a lovely box full of stone fruit and berries for the occasion. None of it grown on the West Coast because everything is late here. All NZ grown though. And I've bought Lemon Z. The idea is that I'll use it to make a lemon trifle tomorrow, but the option remains of just quaffing the lot. There is icecream in the freezer for hungry sweet-toothed people after all.

Feeding time

Favourite Handyman puts our children to bed while I feed the rest of the tribe I have acquired. Chooks, sourdough starter and kefir. I started the sourdough two nights ago. It is bubbling already. Obviously the hot water cupboard is a fertile place. I am going to feed this one each night for a week and then have a go at a loaf from it. I have found a recipe which seems to meld sourdough techniques/ingredients with the no knead recipe I have been using for the past few weeks. Although as I have no intention in the short and medium term future (maybe ever) of grinding my own flour, so this recipe is probably better again for my purposes.

I can report with mixed pleasure that I have not killed the kefir and indeed it has flourished. I have more than I need. I would love to know of anyone who has used the kefir milk in scones or other baked goods. Also, if anyone would like some and they live in New Zealand, let me know.
sustainable dot living dot wc at gmail dot com

In other small events which I am prone to passing off as news, we live in a bog. Thank goodness Mariella was joking when she asked me not to talk so much about all the rain. Because if I was going to blog about gardening and not mention the rain, I may as well give up now. I didn't garden today because it was raining, and there were big puddles all over the lawn and the garden. And also because I am on a cleaning mission.

Today, in a massive fit of cleaning frenzy, I cleaned our bedroom. There are now no extraneous objects in our bedroom apart from the beds, the chest of drawers and the dresser. None whatsoever. I evicted countless spiders, bagged up at least 85 bags of dust, removed 2013 pieces of tissue paper, moved pens, parts of toys, books, hundreds more books, cuddlies, junk mail, clothes, mould from the furthest corner which doesn't get decent air circulation. I dusted and swept and wiped and generally pursued my mission vigorously.

The lounge of course is now home to extraordinary mess. That job is tomorrow, because none of it is allowed back in the bedroom. I'd been considering a dehumidifier for winter and I've now decided that getting one is a priority and I'll be watching the January sales for store wide reductions on electrics.

I had been meaning to do all this for ages, but after our son had a terrible time with his first full blown asthma attack yesterday, getting the sleeping room (and, I hope, the rest of the house over the next few days) into a really healthy state seemed the least I could do for his health and indeed for the health of us all.

ways to grow peas

Buy peastraw which is full of peas and mulch your garlic and then watch the sea of pea plants appear. Peas and garlic (or legumes of any kind and alliums of any kind) aren't great companions because the alliums have antibiotic properties which interfere with the nitrogen fixing bacteria of the legumes. But it is all looking green in my patch. I must let the shop know. Peastraw is not supposed to grow! I am going to leave it all there and see what happens. Better than a sea of dock weeds.

My kefir is still alive after a fortnight and indeed has grown a lot. I've been drinking it myself so far but I'm going to try it out on the children today. I have some friends interested in some but with the Christmas break, they don't want it until they get back from holiday. I have found a solution to my niggles with using baby muslin cloths to strain it (heaps of kefir gets stuck on the muslin and it is finer than I need).

A bridal solution.

I bought some bridal veil netting from the fabric shop yesterday and that works much better.

Yesterday I made a flash chocolate cake which called for six large eggs, some sugar and some chocolate and some butter. That's all. No flour. So I used eight of our smaller eggs and beat it all up and put it in the oven as required and then noticed the yolks still on the bench so pulled it out of the oven and poured it back into the bowl, added the yolks and back into the tin for the final effort. It tasted good. I made it for our lovely childminder Robyn but got to have some at her house when we took it round.

I also made sushi. I've been playing round with alternative therapies again in an effort to get rid of some boring things like constant neck tension and frequent headaches. So I'm now under instructions to (amogst other things) have lots of seaweed and ginger, most easily available as sushi. I'm learning to like wasabi as well, which I used to leave off my plate.

I can do it

I can do it and I will do it. It is true that our very high rainfall and short season summer make gardening challenging at times. Sometimes challenging equates to many things dying, or failing to thrive. My plans for eating our own fruit have been thwarted somewhat. The first lemon tree died and the second one has had a hard life but I do see a couple of new leaves, so still alive. The blueberries lost their berries and one of the two bushes looks very unwell. The blackcurrants are alive and have a few currants on them. They are up the best drained end of the section. The feijoas seem fine but no flowers. At least I have two this year.

So all the fruit needs to be moved to the highest end of the section. And nourished a lot. The glasshouse when we build it needs to go where the old chook run garden currently as. It needs to be raised off the ground quite a lot and have well drained (deepish shingle or bark or sawdust) paths all around it.

The garden along the back of the house grew us some lovely tomatoes last year. The part of it where I mixed in some blood and bone, lime and seaweed is growing quite well - I have a broccoli forming a head there. A head! First time in years. But the poor raspberry, even though I encircled it in seaweed, is definitely not happy. The onions are doing okay there but not fabulously. Though of course at least they are alive which is more than I could say for my onion attempts last year.

So last night I weeded and pulled out the flower bulbs which were still in the ground. I now have a blank patch of over a metre long (and perhaps 6ocm deep back to the house) with nothing in it except one tiny maori potato which has just peeked through. That could push it's way up through more soilish items though. It is time for intensive help. I think the biggest probelm over and above the wet is that the very large tree which is not far away from this garden bed has roots extending down into this garden. Deepish roots for the most part and if I raise the bed up with lots of nutrient-intensive material, I should get noticeable improvement. My fingers aren't crossed because then I can't type, but in my mind I have many things crossed.

I've got sheep poo, sheep dags ground into a soil conditioner, seaweed, blood and bone and pea straw all on hand. I'll have to check the state of the last batch of compost because it would be great if that was ready to use as well. I want to raise the soil by 10 cm and then put pea straw on top of that.

My kefir is still alive. I'm hoping that if I leave it in a coolish place (i.e not the hot water cupboard like I have been), then it will be okay to leave unstrained and unrefreshed by more milk for 2-3 days.

Why? Because we are going on holiday this weekend. Holiday. Holiday! To Karamea for two nights. I am so excited. Karamea is still on the West Coast and it still could rain but it is a very beautiful place that I have wanted to go back to (last went as a child) ever since we moved to smallwettown almost three years ago.

kefir learning

An update on my growing things inside menagerie. I have been googling and have found some information on kefir from a very enthusiastic man called Dom. I've joined a yahoo group of making kefir as well. Now I need to read at least some of the messages.

Today I drank some of the kefir drink which you strain off the grains and I liked it. A very pleasant way to substitute for expensive probiotics from the health food shop. My grains seem to be growing and I've transferred them to a larger jar and added more milk. That's three days I've kept them alive for now.

I used the chicken stock to make risotto for dinner. When we were a gluten free, egg free household, we had risotto every week. I still like it, but I love having more options on the dinner front. I used the first zucchinis of this season in the risotto. From my own garden of course. This year I have an heirloom kind called costata romanesco which has a ribbed outer. I do apologise that that sounds like a description of the fancier kind of condoms. My zucchinis were very nice and I look forward to many more this season. From my one plant. The others died.

I've just finished making up the baked beans recipe and have put it in the slow cooker to cook overnight. I had to adapt it a bit for the slow cooker and for the unhelpful measures in the recipe. It is the first time I have cooked from my Sally Fallon book, Nourishing Traditions and I have a couple of niggles. A "small can of tomato paste" is not a helpful measure in an internationally marketed book. Not that it mattered too much as we had no tomato paste of any kind in the house and I snaffled a jar of pasta sauce from the charity Christmas giving bag to use instead. I used some apple cider vinegar and presumed rather hopefully that it would not matter that it is three years old. My other niggle is that a cup is not the easiest way to measure sticky liquids like maple syrup and molasses. By standing on chairs and searching behind the old kitchen chippy chimney, I managed to find our maple syrup and molasses. I hope this recipe is yummy, as it could be the answer to using up more things which have collected in my cupboard. The odd ingredients retirement home needs an overhaul.

I bought a gingerbread man cutter because I have this probably overblown, optimistic idea that Fionn and I will make gingerbread men and send up to his whanau (extended family) up north for that day.

I sneaked a bit of weeding in before it started to rain this morning. Christy I am sorry that your garden is dry. I am feeling like we can't possibly live in the same country - there has been absolutely no need to water here and our garden produce is a long way behind yours. My raspberry plant is still only ten centimetres high. But I did find an actual fruit as differentiated from merely some flowers on one tomato plant this morning. So there is hope.

projects

It's like a menagerie, all the slow cooked, from scratch cooked, fermented, fermenting, soaking foods in this house.

Today I made bread which I had risen yesterday.

I strained the whey off the kefir which I am now growing indefinitely. Is 'growing' the correct term? Maybe culturing, maybe just looking after. Then I added more milk. I have a pile of things to learn about kefir, unhelped by the fact that never ever ever have I had a face to face conversation with anyone who has 'grown' kefir.

I put navy beans (which are white not blue) on to soak so that I can have a crack at making baked beans from scratch tomorrow.

I made ginger bread loaf which didn't involve any fancy waiting and soaking. It comes from the Edmonds Cookbook which is a salve for any kiwi in need of certainties in mad times of growing grains in milk and watching the world economy disintegrate. Tasted good.

I roasted a free range chicken which was on special. The level of ridiculous guilt and guilty ideas I had around this blasted chicken is so huge that some time I shall devote a special post to exactly how the greenies have taken over Catholicism's special hold on guilt. Now the chicken bones are in the slow cooker together with onions, carrots, bay leaves and parsley. And water. Making stock.

I made yoghurt. Or I put yoghurt starter in the easiyo machine. I haven't got a proper make the yoghurt from old yoghurt thing going but using the sachets is cheaper and more home made and creates less packaging waste than relying on bought, ready made yoghurt.

I bought some ingredients to make biscuits and to make ginger beer and I considered making radish and alfalfa sprouts but really enough is enough. I have two children, one husband and three chooks to care for without all this moving grooving food stuff as well.

Other useful things which I did today include planting out six celery seedlings, weeding and trimming the edges of lawn beside logs which are in turn edging and raising the garden beds. I also kept the children alive which was quite an accomplishment.

Kefir

Every now and then I do things which definitely put me in the nuts camp. I suspect that paying $17.50 for someone to post me a tiny jar of smelly milk with bits in it, which leaked in transit, may be yet another of those events.

The lovely Sharon offered to send me some of hers when she has a surplus and I forgot in my enthusiasm because one night when we had visitors and I showed my friend the Organics NZ magazine article on kefir, we both got quite interested and I got online and found Linda of the Whangaparoa Peninsula at the other end of New Zealand and offered her money which perhaps I should have spent on grog instead. Sharon, I could yet be pining and hoping for some of your kefir grains. I'm not sure that leaking in transit was a most desirable part of the kefir making process.

In other not-really-news today, the sun shone and I faffed around being a mother almost all day instead of gardening. Ridiculous really. I am trying not to get too jealous of people in other parts of New Zealand who are harvesting all sorts of fruits and veges. Wet can be beautiful... just not particularly productive in terms of edible things.

The pea straw which I bought about six weeks ago is sprouting peas all over the place. Maybe they are laced with terrible terrible persticides, or are genetically mutated, or are bad in some other way which my imagination has yet to conjure. But maybe they will grow peas which we will eat and enjoy without falling over. Out of the packet of zillions I planted ages ago, only one plant survived the rain and the blackbirds and it has produced three pods so far of which I have eaten two without telling anyone else. Now I think about it, I may as well go eat the third as well. I could just destroy the evidence of there ever having been pea pods there.

My borage is beginning to flower and is every bit as beautiful as the photos in the seed catalogue promised. There4 are no new plant-deaths-from-drowning to report from the garden. Which is progress of a kind.

The rocket is getting quite peppery as the air warms up. Some of my basil nearly died because I forgot to water it and it was in the porch. I gathered the peppery rocket and the faded basil and whizzed up in this evening's hummous. I like the results.