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.

cleaning out the cupboard

Another way to use up your cupboard: respond to the school gala preparations request in the newsletter and decide to send not just some but ALL of your white sugar. No good for our health anyway.

I had the opportunity to take my son to see a different doctor today who has some ideas on yeast allergy which he freely admits are seen as heresy by many conventional doctors. I've done quite a bit of reading on yeast and candida several years ago but never had I made any connection to my son's skin complaints.

So we are moving to some different food changes now. Still no egg, gluten doesn't matter, but definitely no marmite, wine or beer (ouchie ouch for me) and no bread. I am returning with my daughter tomorrow and will check on sourdough bread then. Just as well I didn't roll ahead and order large amounts of organic bread flour.

Looks like I'll be getting going using the sushi ingredients up anyway.

Most satisfactory events of today

Pay day.

Fish and chips night.

The June issue of NZ Gardener arrived in the post. Under Lynda Hallinan, this magazine has really developed into something fantastic. There are still the profiles of beautiful and expansive ornamental gardens and rare plants, but there is now much much more on growing edible fruits and vegetables. They are even talking about digging for victory. It is a glossy and positive magazine and well placed to appeal to mainstream readers. Lynda herself is pretty and sexy (and clever) and does lots of talks, including on television, which have raised the magazine's profile. It's all welcome in my view.

Went to Alf Harrison's menswear shop. This shop is a small locally owned business in our small town and it is something of a blast from the past. The current window display is of tweed caps. Very nice they are too. Anyway, I was looking for dress trouser socks for Favourite Handyman for use in his other life where he doesn't do jobs around our home and garden. And here in our small local shop I found just the thing, in a merino and possum and nylon blend which is made (most of the raw materials and all of the secondary product) right here in New Zealand. A rare opportunity to make such a satisfyingly ethical purchase.

From the library: the autobiography of Clarissa Dickson Wright (of The Two Fat Ladies fame).

I have started another bread making venture. It uses an overnight yeast liquor method. I did this once before for the High Fibre bread earlier this month and it all got so brothy that the mixture overflowed out of the bowl, the towel and onto the sheets below. Both the sheets and the liquor were in the hot water cupboard. So I have used a bigger bowl this time. I got to use up a bit more oat bran. I'm through nearly all of the Surebake yeast (the expensive kind with added improvers) and now I'm working my way through the ordinary dried yeast container. Once they're all used up, I'll go back to sourdough experiments for the most part, I think.

The food cupboard

I signed off my using up the cupboard project the other day because I'd had enough of it.

But since then I've noticed on several occasions that the exercise is having lasting impact. Though I am loving not trying to think of a use for the amaranth any more. I am much more aware of the full extent of what is in my cupboards and am using the range of ingredients better.

I made focaccia yesterday. What a hit! Favourite Handyman said it was the best foccaccia he had ever eaten and I think it tastes like the focaccia at Carluccio's which I used to eat when we went into London central. Which is a pretty high compliment to myself. The recipe is from Annabel Langbein's Savour Italy, which my parents sent to me for Christmas in 2001, the year we spent Christmas in Bologna, Italy. It seemed very much a kiwi take on Italian food at the time and kind of crazy to have a kiwi recipe book in the middle of Italy, but now I'm back in NZ and the holiday is just a memory, this book is just perfect.

Potato focaccia dough and toppings
250g potatoes, peeled and chopped or 1 packed C Mashed potato
1.5 C warm water
1.5 t dried yeast
0.25 C extra virgin olive oil
4.5-5 C high grade flour, extra to knead
2 t salt
a little olive oil to knead

Boil potatoes in lightly salted water until tender. Drain thoroughly, dry over heat in pan to evaporate any excess water. Mash until fine. Leave to cool for a few minutes.

Place warm water in large mixing bowl and sprinkle yeast over top. Stand for two minutes, mix in mashed potato and oil.

Sir in flour and salt, mixing until the dough just starts to come away from the sides of the bowl. The dough will be quite sticky. Using lightly oiled hands, knead for 10 minutes, adding more flour if the dough is too sticky.

Put dough in a lightly oiled bowl, cover with plastic wrap and leave in a warm place for about 1 hour, un til doubled in bulk. Turn out onto a l,ightly floured board (surely everyone else just uses the benchtop like me though?) and divide into three.

I divided into just two and then, making one half at a time (the other half which had been left to rise much longer was still great but we don't have a big enough oven to do both lots at once), I flattened the dough into a rectangle on an oiled baking tray and rested for 10 minutes. Then I pressed it out to cover most of the tray, covered with a clean cloth and stood in a warm place 30 minutes.

Heat oven to 200 degrees celsius. Dimple the top of the dough with your fingers. The chopped up bits of food which I added (using up some long neglected olives and tomatoes) were:

version 1: green olives, red pepper, sun dried tomatoes, basil, oregano, then drizzled with oil and sprinkled with salt.

version 2: I pre-roasted in the oven some pumpkin, carrots and onion together with rosemary and oregano. Then I put that (cooled) on top of the dough together with olives, sun dried tomatoes and basil. Drizzled with oil and sprinkled with salt.

Bake for 20-25 minutes until golden. Remove from tray and cool on a rack.

Today I have used Hoisin sauce for the first time ever. It's in the slow cooker together with pork strips, kumara, onions, ginger, garlic and pineapple. I have no idea how it will turn out, particularly as I cobbled the recipe out of guidelines from other things. Alison Holst's slow cooker book is always suggesting prebrowning things. Which I never do. The point of the slow cooker is to make life easy, and having frying pans to be washed by 9 o'clock in the morning does not feel 'easy'. So I ignore her. I know she is a kiwi icon (is she on a stamp yet?), but I don't trust her advice too much these days. Bad advice on cooking chickpeas (just 3 hours in the slow cooker?!) and too much inclusion of premixed packet stuff. And merchandise. Brand Holst.

One more food comment today before I deal to the unholy and no doubt growing-unwelcome-bacteria food mess on the dining room floor before the baby wakes up.

Happy blog birthday Joanna. Joanna's blog was one of the first foodie blogs I took a shine to on the internet last year when I started venturing into blogland. I think it is my favourite foodie blog of all the ones I have encountered which aren't by people I already knew outside of blogland. Thank you for all you share with us Joanna. Thanks also for the links to your key posts. I'd never heard of Skordalia before and now I'm keen to try making it. Rich sauces with no egg in them but plenty of superfood garlic are very welcome to my repertoire.

the corn chip - an useful psychological support

The baby has been sick. The baby and I did not sleep much. Not much at all.

So the nutritional and budgeting projects which usually run more or less to time more or less quite a bit round here, went out the window.

Takeaway Indian for dinner last night, bought lunch for everyone well enough to eat. The dishwasher and the washing machine sat idle while the baby and I sat. and sat and sat and sat.

Today things were somewhat improved and a little home activity took place. Nearing dinnertime I knew I wanted us to have some home cooked nutrition and still lacked much energy or time without holding the baby.

I needed some help.

Corn chips. I still chopped a zillion healthy vitamin containing items to go on top to make vegetable-chickpeas-anchovies nachos, but the knowledge that the carbs would come out of a packet gave the essential boost.

I've had enough of the using up the cupboard project. I can't even be bothered checking if I have done four weeks' worth. It was a useful project and I now have several shelves where I can tell what is in them and I have learnt some useful bread and muffin making recipes which are now part of our weekly repertoire. I officially give up on the amaranth. It will be going on to the compost at the next daylight opportunity.

I haven't given up some of my random hoarding habits. I bought some hoisin sauce for the first time ever this week even though it wasn't on my meal planner or shopping list. Joanna used it in a recent recipe on her blog and I have notions that I'll make this sometime. Except now I've gone to find the link to make to Joanna's recipe, I see she used Thai fish sauce. Hoisin must come from something else I read recently. Any suggestions of food you love which uses Hoisin sauce? I'd love to read them.

horse poo

Ten bags of the stuff. On the way home from a lovely picnic at the beach.

Who could ask for a better Mother's Day?

I am also seeing the light at the end of the flour tunnel. I made two loaves of high fibre bread today. They are cooling as I type, but they do strike me as rather brick-like in weight and appearance. I have emptied the wholemeal flour bag, got down to the last approx. two cups' worth of strong white bread flour and started on the ryemeal (which seems rather stale and unappealing) and the oat bran.

Use up the cupboard, men's housework

I'm less only half way through the my four week cupboard challenge and I'm already feeling rather tedious chronicling the cupboards which never give in.

Today: a triple batch of oat bread. I'm still only half way through the treacle jar and half way through the Surebake yeast jar. Blimey. Obviously if we were very poor with no new money coming in each fortnight, these things would appear to be running out scarily quickly. But we're not. I bought three loaf tins off Trademe (NZ equivalent of Ebay) earlier this year when I started to get into bread making again (last phase: 1995). It's no more work making three loaves of bread than making one and if they freeze well, then we might be saying goodbye to spending around $20 on bread each week. My oven would fit one more loaf tin on the rack so if I can get another off Trademe (I want an old one, not a new non-stick surface one), then I'll experiment with making quadruple batches of bread.

Then double chocolate muffins. I didn't even notice the container full of chocolate chips when I did the cupboard audit. Granted it was under my pile of clean resusable kitchen cloths, but still. Fionn asked for something chocolatey and we did indeed find and then make something chocolately.

Separate topic. I'm doing some Favourite Handyman jobs tonight. His turn for the flu so I've brought two basketloads of wood in for tonight's fire. At the history of labourism day I went to at Easter in Blackball, Neville Bennett (retired University of Canterbury history lecturer who introduced me to some very interesting schools of historical thought when I was an undergraduate) spoke about housework as the key means that working class people survived. He mentioned not just the usual female domestic stuff which I've read about forever it seems (valid though it is). He also talked about men catching rabbits, chopping wood, mending things. Today I was reflecting that much discussion about how women's domestic work keeps families going in poor times, particularly in previous generations in NZ, is in a suburban context. Urbanisation has taken many male 'housework' jobs out. Certainly in London when our home was gas heated, Favourite Handyman had no extra burden of work in winter.

Not that I'm suggesting that such roles must be gender prescribed. Just thinking that in times past they have been and I'm sure I'm not the only feminist to find herself at home looking after children, doing washing and cooking meals because they largely have to be done during hours before breadwinner gets home and then opting against also taking on wood chopping and fire lighting. Oh and I pass on the job of emptying the mousetrap. Cos yes we do kill mice in our house. Every single one we can.

herbs

I was weeding the herb patch this afternoon when it occurred to me I could make my own mixed herbs. So I've snipped oregano, rosemary, thyme and sage and they are now in paper bags, pegged to a tiny line in the hot water cupboard.

Then I thought I'd make peppermint tea. I bought peppermint seeds two years ago and today was the first tea day. It wasn't really strong enough before the water got cold, so I think I need to dry some of that so I can fit more potency into one cup.

Using up the cupboard. Popcorn. I found four different bags/containers of the stuff last week. A fairly pleasant project, using up popcorn. I use the pressure cooker saucepan to make it as it has a suitably heavy base.

rice pudding

Is there no end to the number of items resident and ignored in my cupboards? I don't think I even had brown short grain rice in my original list.

So this afternoon I put the ingredients for rice pudding in the slow cooker. I remember my Mum making rice pudding for us when she cooked mince. Both in the oven slowly for several hours. My Mum doesn't have much time for environmental issues but she knew and knows a good bit about budgeting and that includes economical use of the oven. My best memory of rice pudding was when she used to put it + the mince on before she went to work and the oven on 'automatic' and my job after school was to stir them. The milk used to form a skin which I lifted off and got first dibs on eating. It was nicer than the pudding itself I think.

So hopefully we all like rice pudding here tonight and the brown rather than white rice part works okay. At least I haven't been foolish enough to fill the cupboards with tapioca or sago. Mum did them occasionally and I, not generally a fussy eater, used to wonder what misdemeanour we had commited to deserve such horrid food.

Before rice pudding we will be having leftover soup from last night. No special frills, just reheated. I've run out of home made bread and it's bought stuff to go with the soup as

...

I suspect I have chickenpox also. So I have energy for not much. Except feeling sorry for myself. And blowing my nose.

Outside I have put washing on the line. Did you know that that is such a dead practice in some parts of the world that some enviro group had a special day for encouraging people to use the clothesline? I don't know where the link for this is so you can either
a) google
b) trust me and we'll sigh collectively
c) wonder where I'm from 'cos you don't hang washing on the line at your place either
d) not trust me and not care. Or just not care. Iraq burns and Sandra is wittering about clotheslines for goodness sake.

Also outside I have been thinking about where to put next year's tobacco crop. Our tobacco experiment has been very successful. Favourite Handyman has dried the leaves from the rafters of our small shed and then he bought a pipe as the drag on a rollie paper wasn't sufficient. He reports that it tastes better than bought tobacco. So pretty flowers, easy to process and has saved us about $40 already. Of course,`a lack of any need to grow it next year would be nice, cancer risk etc., but if smoking is his demon for a while longer, then home grown is better than bought.

shallots, garlic and raspberries

are the things I planted today. Plus I did some weeding and I buried Bokashi and I planned more of the Summer garden. Where the tobacco and the one Echinacea plant were last season, I will plant early potatoes, more Echinacea and some peas. After harvesting the potatoes, I will replace with winter brassicas. The Echinacea is very pretty at the moment and after three years I can dig up the roots and use medicinally.

I planted the raspberry suckers on the spot where our special sea kelp has being resting. I brought this kelp back from Truman's Track the day of the funeral of our friend Rob in England. After I planted the raspberries, I arranged the kelp in a circle around it, like arms reaching around and hugging.

I pulled out one celery plant and one swiss chard plant to make room for the garlic and then cooked them up with other veg, herbs, split peas and barley for dinner. I made gluten free cheese scones again and still haven't used up the only gf flour I didn't throw out last week. I've got leftover soup as usual, in spite of us adults enjoying firsts and seconds. I am incapable of doing small pots of soup.





I did early potatoes last season in the punga raised bed and then followed up with winter greens.

The photo above is two weeks old and there has been growth since then. There is kale, mizuna, swiss chard, pak choy, one onion and purple sprouting brocolli. I tried the mizuna earlier this week and it didn't taste of much, just kind of green tasting. We've been eating and enjoying the kale, pak choy and swiss chard. When I do my next round of garlic planting (when the now late order from Koanga Gardens arrives), some will go in this bed.

window of sunshine

Nearly two hours without rain yesterday afternoon and I got outside for some of that time. Bliss. I held on to the experience throughout the rest of the day as I cared for my chickenpoxed children.

I tied up some of the falling over broad bean plants. Favourite Handyman has nailed some chickenwire to the fence for supporting the beans. The chickenwire doesn't spread the whole way along yet. Next time I plant broad beans, I must remember to stake with bamboo at the same time as I plant the seed so I get to stake up close without disturbing the root structure.

It was very wet underfoot, too wet to bury the bokashi or do much weeding. I pulled some docks and sent the dill to the compost.

I used up some more cupboard ingredients by making a double recipe of oat bread and a double recipe of orange and date muffins. Most of the muffins are now in the freezer for school lunches. WShat I really want is the satisfaction of some empty packets but I'm still not quite there. Making muffins is helping use up some white sugar, which we seem to have mountains of.

I don't know what I'll use up today. I still have bread and muffins left from yesterday. Too cold for sushi.

The sun is shining outside though and I can see the breeze, meaning the ground could dry out enough to bury some bokashi. The gardening experts would probably still say it is too wet to be digging, but here in wetville in Autumn/Winter/Spring, you've got to take your chances while you can. The soil moisture often doesn't ease up for for months on end.

I bought a great magazine yesterday called Grass Roots. It is an Australian magazine, with the focus on managing in drought which never quite works for me. But it is a very good magazine in ever other way. It seems to be aimed at self sufficiency enthusiasts, both in suburban and in larger contexts. Lots of reader contributions. This issue has an article on how to replace a zip in clothing, which I found really useful. We are trying to fix rather than replace things around our house. We don't have a subscription to the simplesavings website, but we are on the free mailing list and I notice that May is 'fix it' month there also.

Last week Favourite Handyman went to buy us a new cold tap for the kitchen. It had been leaking for ages and the plumber told us when he last looked (he was over for some harder plumbing work) that we'd need to replace the tap next time. Turned out a new tap started at $120 (but mixer taps, which would mean throwing out the perfectly good hot tap started at $80), so FH bought a new washer for $4 and put it on to see if we could keep it going a while longer. Our tap is now working beautifully.

We don't have the ability to make a new grate for the fireplace though, so as ours is eroded away quite a lot, we'll have to shell out the $200+ required for a new one soon.

peak oil - no stashing here just yet

I've been swanning round internet tonight, in preference to cleaning the kitchen or reading a book but in tandem with knitting my upside down cardi and I was struck that many bloggers that I read are storing items for peak oil.

I'm not.

I'm trying to get rid of as much as possible.

Our house is full of stuff. So full of stuff we mostly can't find the useful things we need when we want them. Full of xanthan gum and potato flour in the cupboard and clothes that don't fit and are missing buttons and newspapers from ridiculous amounts of time ago. I could go on.

I don't think I'll be waking up tomorrow and unable to ever buy wool again. Or go to The Warehouse, though that sounds quite attractive, never being able to go to The Warehouse again.

My goal is to use everything in our house and streamline to things we use.

Then, if I ever get there, I might give myself permission to hoard again.

Using up the cupboard day eight

Guess how many odd and previously unloved ingredients I used today?

xanthan gum
buckwheat flour
potato flour
dates
cannelini beans
sage

I made orange and date muffins from theNZ Food Allergy Cookbook. They turned out well and I was pleased to empty one packet of dates. Though in the past it appeared that I was so pleased that I was hardly eating the first packet of dates that I went ahead and bought more. So there are still dates to use up. nI had never used the xanthan gum before, despite paying about NZ$8 for a small packet. All specialty gluten free items atract price increases of about 400% it seems.

1 whole orange, chopped with pips removed (I used 3 mandarins)
3/4 C orange juice
125g dairy free margarine, melted (I used butter as dairy isn't a problem here)
1.5 C plain flour or equal quantities of buckwheat, barley, rice or potato flours (I used 1/2 C each of buckwheat flour, potato flour and wholemeal flour)
1 t baking powder
1 t baking soda
3/4 C sugar
1 t xanthan gum
3/4 C pitted dates, chopped.

Preheat oven to 200 degrees celsius. Lightly grease (I cheat and use paper muffin cups inside the muffin tray) a 12 muffin tin.
Process orange and juice in a food processor until well chopped.
Add margarine/butter and mix.
Sift dry ingredients and add dates.
Combine the liquid ingredients and dry ingredients carefully.
Spoon into muffin tins and bake for about 15 minutes.

Cannelini beans aren't especially unloved in our house, but until now we haven't eaten them much. Tonight I took a can of cannelini beans and heated it up with a leaf of sage (which I virtually never use - we have it in the herb garden), chopped garlic, rosemary, kale and bacon pieces (the ends which I buy in packets at half the per kilo price of sliced bacon). Favourite Handyman and I liked it a lot. The cannelini beans picked up the bacon flavour beautifully and it reminded us of the Fabada stew which we adored when we travelled through the north of Spain. I'll be mucking round with cannelini beans and cured pig products like bacon and black and white puddings again this winter. Perhaps I can make a NZ version of Fabada. The kale worked well with it also.

Kings Seeds sell cannelini bean seeds so that will be on my summer growing list. Won't be getting too ahead of myself on expectations after the tiny borlotti bean harvest this season recently finished though.

Using up the cupboard day 7

Languishing ingredients targeted today: yeast, treacle, flour

I have five days to use up two containers of yeast if I am to keep within the best before dates. Even if I don't keep within them, I think the signs are clear that I need to be making some bread.

I was very pleased with today's effort: oat bread. It comes from the New Zealand Bread Book by Browne, Leach and Tichborne.

1 C rolled oats
1 T treacle
1/2 C boiling milk
1 C boiling water
1 C white flour
1 t salt
1 T Surebake dried yeast
1.5-2 C white flour

Place rolled oats and treacle in a small bowl. Add the boiling milk and water. Stir to mix. Leave to cool for ten minutes.

In a large bowl, combine the fijrst measure of flour with the salt and yeast. Stir to mix. Add the very warm oat mixture and beat until well mixed. Leave to rest for 3 minutes. Add 1.5 C of the second measure of flour and add enough extra flour to make a soft dough. Knead for 7-10 minutes or until dough is elastic. Return to bowl and cover. leave to rest for 15 minutes.

Knead the dough for 1 minute. Shape to fit a round bread pot or loaf tin. Brush the surface of the dough with a little metled butter or cooking oil. Cover loosely with plastic. Leave in a warm place to double in size. Bake in hot oven, 220-230 degrees celsius, for 30-35 minutes.

I am shaving dollars off our shopping bill and using our cupboard ingredients much more efficiently, perhaps even wisely. But I seem to be in the kitchen most of the day. Which is not quite the same zen for me as being in the garden all day. When the rain stops, the cupboards may find themselves resting for a while.

I did escape the kitchen and go buy loads of sausages by our favourite country pub this afternoon. The stopping at the pub part was the best.

This morning I had intended to cook chickpeas in the slow cooker as I've managed to break my pressure cooker. But a discussion with Melanie about this gave me the idea that I should preboil the chickpeas first. I'd never heard this advocated for chickpeas before, only red kidney beans, but thought I'd include it. Only once I'd filled the stock pot and boiled it, I didn't fancy dirtying another pot (the crockpot) and I also realised I'd begun to cook such a very large amount, nearly 1 kg of dried chickpeas, that it wouldn't fit in my otherwise good-sized slow cooker. Now I have eight containers of chickpeas in the freezer. What a good girl I think I am.

Using up the cupboard day 6

Won some, lost some.

Winning: found some couscous and made it into tabbouleh. I'm also trying to eat up the fridge and made progress with that by making butternut squash and feta cheese risotto. Hot for lunch, cold alongside the tabbouleh for dinner

Losing: this afternoon was to be cereal afternoon. I hauled every single item out of the cupboard which houses the cereal and various other items. Found where the mice have been partying finally! I gave up on the old cereals and also on the gf flours. They're all on the compost now. I just could not imagine living long enough to want to eat them. I know it's bad of me when half the world starving is turning into more and more than half every day at the moment. I have to face my badness some time.

Amongst the compost:
puffed millet
puffed rice
rice flakes
apricot and bran cereal
gf cereal
gf cornflakes
more expensive gf flour which doesn't make anything nice when you can't add egg to it either than I wish to quantify

Down the sink went some very old and odd smelling sushi sauces. I kept the four packets of sushi wrappers which I found because we do like sushi and I don't think they will have gone off. We must have had a phase of making it every week, but that was a long time ago now.

At least the cupboard is clean and you can actually see what is in it now.

Not using up the cupboard day 5

Takeaway fish and chips. Chocolate. Cupboards ignored.

Maybe I'll be a good girl tomorrow. Maybe it will stop raining.

Consistency does not live at my home.

Using up the cupboard day 4

Rogan Josh with red rice. Didn't have any plain white rice.

I used the last of the organic beef I bought in Spring, probably six months ago. I organised a coop and made a day trip down to Ross (150km round trip), had a great day out with friends who live there, collected the meat from the organic farmer when she came up to Ross to collect her children off the school bus and came back with lots of meat for five families. Disappointingly, the butcher had not done his job correctly and the meat has been bloody and not up to it's usual high standard. Put that together with my learning about grain to meat conversions for different animals, and I may not order more beef for a long time. For the amount of grain which is required to make a kilo of meat, chickens and pigs are much much better than cattle. There hasn't been mention of sheep in any of my reading on this topic, so I assume they are not the worst and not the best.

The Rogan Josh mix was a pile of spices in a sticky paste which some clever marketer sells in a glossy packet for goodness knows what and which probably languishes on cupboard shelves all over the country. Our good friend Brian probably had them on his shelf for a fair while before he passed them to us when he moved out of town. I have two more to use up yet.

I also used a bit of canola oil to cook the meal, meaning I actually started the bottle which is already just past it's use-by date. Not sure why I bought canola oil, but I won't be again for some time. Now we have moved from gluten free to a low gluten diet, I am hoping I will be much less tempted to buy all sorts of items just because I saw them in the NZ allergy society recipe book. Just egg free is much more straightforward given that we aren't huge fans of pre-prepared foods. I keep a jar of Hellmanns' mayonnaise in the back of the fridge just for me. That never goes past it's use-by date.

The Rogan Josh packet didn't include any vegetables in it's serving suggestion. Blasphemy. I fitted in plenty of cauliflower, butternut squash and swiss chard. Not really a meal without Sandra squeezing in some swiss chard somewhere.

Well tomorrow is the much awaited pay day, much awaited partly because now we refuse to use credit cards, the significance of pay day has increased hugely. I have managed to feed the four of us over the last eight days and only spent NZ$145, which is easily $50 less than usual. That is for every meal, including bought fish and chips one night. Most interestingly to me (yes this is my new or at least current obsession), now I've got into the swing of using up the cupboard and realised quite how full the larder is, I don't feel like we have no food and desperately need to go to the supermarket. I usually would by now.

The garden is supplying all the greens at the moment, plus herbs and celery. Everything else is bought. Given that lentils and beans are cheaper than meat, my treat is that I get organic lentils and beans whenever I can get hold of them (the dried, uncooked versions). I am feeling deserving of an order of Puy lentils and black beans from the organic supplier over the hill, but I need to use up more of my cupboard yet. I also need to find out whether the organic food coop 40 kms south of here might have these items. I haven't supported them as much as I'd planned, though the fact they didn't put me on their mailing list as they had offered to hasn't helped.

Also today, I sewed a nappy. All by myself. I usually think of myself as fairly crunchy. A sandal wearing paid up hippy on a number of fronts. But today at the nappy sewing class, I was just a softy. Not much crunch at all by comparison with my sewing buddies. It was a good project to promote Real Nappy Week. Cos disposables are fake nappies it would seem. I've spent very little money on disposable nappies in my parenting time thanks to some good advice and purchasing when Fionn was a tiny baby. So although we have plenty of washable nappies at our house, thanks to today's class we now have one more. Megan the tutor also showed me things my sewing machine could do that I had no idea about. Three stitch zig zag, nice to meet you.

Out in the garage, our new letterbox is looking increasingly funky. Bright yellow and black, it now has a picture of a racing car painted onto it. Fionn chose the picture and then Favourite Handyman made the stencil and Fionn painted it on. I will have to get the camera out and share that one soon. I bought some cement this afternoon for anchoring the letterbox into the ground. I buy and FH digs. Marriage made in heaven, played out here in earth. Just as well I'm cooking so well of late, especially as the budget has largely precluded beer. Good cooking seems to help diying along nicely.

Using up the cupboard day three

Too cold for sushi.

Made banana muffins which used up the overripe bananas. Used an icecream tub of vegetable and pork bones broth which I made and froze a month or so ago for dinner. I'm also clearing the small freezer as of yesterday (the bottom of a fridge/freezer unit), because I've heard that Rayleen has more roosters for us.

Then the using the ingredients from the dry goods list project: Buckwheat and sunflower bread. The outside was like a brick, but the inner part was reasonable. I didn't notice anyone go back for seconds of the bread, only the soup. So I used some: buckwheat flour, molasses (pungent stuff that!), yeast which I've discovered is only two weeks from it's use by date and sunflower seeds. Didn't manage to empty any packet, but progress nevertheless.

I do feel a bit like I've woken up in a health camp. Not that it is massively different from our usual eating patterns, but the bread did scream health-freak-gone-far, especially the brick hard outer.

Better get moving. Once again I lost my night computer time. Day three of the holidays was more fun though. I need to get my sewing machine sorted because this week is Real Nappy Week and I've opted to learn to sew my own nappies. Brighid has enough nappies but I thought this would be good for my sewing skills and I wanted to support Fi, the fabulous nappy junkie who works very hard here in wetville to promote cloth nappy usage.

Using up the cupboard day 2

Oh the warm glow of success. Both Favourite Handyman and Fionn have loved dinner TWO nights running. I made cheese pastry from the Edmonds Cookbook and placed on top of last night's leftovers (marrow and red lentil concoction. recipe in recent post). I drained some liquid off first and then added chopped kale and swiss chard before topping with pastry.

That was dinner. At lunch I used up the packet of gf buckwheat pancake premix. I made it the egg free method. It was average. We all ate though and another packet leaves the cupboard.

Tomorrow will be sushi day I think. Carrot and avocado and tinned tuna sushi. Yes you read correctly. Tinned tuna. We have it in the cupboard. I am a sinner. What we don't have in stock is sushi ginger, although we do have a big piece of root ginger. I'm off to google land after this post to see if we can make our own sushi ginger, presumanly without the plastic packaging and food colouring.

Using up the cupboard meal 1

It's worse really. I neglected to notice three kinds of expensive premixed gf flour plus some ryemeal during my initial audit. This doesn't count the flours I have been using of late.

So last night's dinner of marrow and lentil concoction in the slow cooker turned out nice. Like a bulky soup. I made far too much of course and so I greased a casserole dish and then scooped the remains of the meal into that to store in the fridge. Tonight I think I'll make a pie crust for the top and reheat it in the oven. Will pile lots of dark green leaves from the garden in first. To go with the soupy concoction (marrow and lentil chowder?), I made gf cheese scones. Which were a hit.

Marrow and lentil chowder.
1 marrow, peeled, split lengthwise into quarters, seeds removed and then sliced
red lentils, I just poured straight from the packet. I'd estimate a cup.
1 kumara (sweet potato), peeled and sliced thinly
1 onion, finely sliced.
3 garlic cloves, chopped.
1cm piece of ginger, chopped.
2 sticks of celery, chopped
curry powder, coriander seeds, whatever gentle curry flavours you have and want to use
thyme and bay leaves
2 tins of tomatoes.
Extra water if it doesn't look enough for the lentils to expand into.

Bung it all into the slow cooker and cook on slow most of the day. I added sultanas afterwards, simply because I found some when I had thought we didn't own any for weeks. Favourite Handyman and Fionn both complimented me on dinner which was too lovely not to mention.

Cheese scones
2 cups Horleys gf baking mix
2 tsps baking powder
75 g grated cheese
1.25 cups milk

sift first 2 ingredients, then mix in cheese. Then mix in milk. Knead for a minute and then shape into a rectangle and cut into 12 small scones. Put on lightly floured tray in oven for 10 minutes at 215 degrees celsius.

Today I want to make some bread, low gluten rather no gluten I expect. I am pretty sure we have sufficient ingredients for several loaves, spinning out the bread until Wednesday. I am trying to get back to shopping for groceries only once a week. Multiple shops make it very difficult to know exactly how much we are spending on food per week.

I have some ambitious (for me) goals for this using up the cupboard project. I want to work out what we really eat, and want to eat, and find useful and make up a meta list of ingredients which I can choose from when I write the shopping list for the week. I presume I am not the only person in the world prone to throwing unusual items into the shopping trolley because they'd be nice for a change and then leaving them to languish and die in the back of the cupboard or fridge.

Being an incorrigible drama queen, I have visions of the global food shortage getting really dire for the wealthy world as well as Haiti and Africa (and and and, sadly), so these skills I am developing should keep us in good stead for coping. I want us to cope well enough that we can donate to the Sallies' food bank or similar organisation cos there are going to be some hungry people in our small town soon, if not already.

Getting some chooks is looking even more of a good idea than last summer (is that possible? I was obsessed!). We need to find the time to make a house for the chooks though. Given that on Friday I managed to break the garage door closed, leaving the car and my wallet inside, chook houses remain a while down the maintenance/building projects list. There is a side door to the garage, and FH had to undo the three rows' deep stack of firewood to get through it in order to open the garage door. It was one way of saving money and zilching petrol use...