bread and Maori potatoes day

It's been a hectic week, made more intense by waking up with flea bites on Wednesday morning. That would be the return of fleas after treatment which was guaranteed for two months then. I turned into a laundry zealot and washed all the sheets, the wool underlay, the duvet covers and the duvets themselves. I got my super-sucker Dyson out and vacuumed the mattress and the pillows and put the dehumidifer on in the early evening to help be sure that the duvets were properly dry.

I also rang Piner the Pest Man who arranged to visit the next morning. That night, in our super clean bed and bedroom, I slept well and woke with no new flea bites. But I was too freaked and itchy to be leaving it to chance. On Thursday Mr Piner nuked the bedroom with even stronger chemicals than last time and goodness what things I could find on google to freak me out about the gas he put on.

But I haven't been bitten since.

Tonight I dug the first of our Maori potatoes. They look beautiful and tasted lovely, cooked up with my home grown zucchinis, cauliflower, thyme, garlic, chives, parsley and eggs. Only the onion came from elsewhere.

This afternoon I made some rye bread. I missed a few beats on the cooking temperature front, due mostly to the rather unsuccessful combination of tired Sandra, tired two year old and tired six year old. I guess most of you know that motherhood isn't always easy to recommend. So it is in plastic bags now because I am not supposed to cut it until tomorrow. Whereas earlier attempts were too dry, this one is possibly too wet, based on Whitley's troubleshooting guide and the sunken top.

I've also started some pumpernickel bread. The kibbled rye (finally getting used) is soaking overnight, as is the sourdough fermenting. I notice the pumpernickel should be cooked very slowly and gently and I'm wandering about using the slow cooker. No luck finding this option on google so far, but I'd appreciate hearing from any other pumpernickel makers.

On my baking plans for the next few days: crispbreads (now that I own semolina flour) and hot cross buns. Should be able to fit that in around planning for May Day. I'm not in the garden much because my garden murderer is possibly at the peak of her powers.

Scottish morning rolls

This recipe is taken from Andrew Whitley's Bread Matters. It is absolutely the best bread book I've encountered (though I've not encountered them all) and I am very glad to own it. Ask your library to buy it!

Overnight sponge
2.5g dried yeast
130g warm water
50g wholemeal flour
100g white flour

Dissolve yeast in water, then add everything else and mix. Put in large bowl, cover with plastic and leave on the bench for 12-18 hours.

Final dough
285g overnight sponge
350g white flour
100g wholemeal flour
5g salt
270g water
15g butter/lard/olive oil

Mix everything into a soft dough. Knead 6-10 minutes. Leave to rise for 1 hour. Divide into 12 pieces. Roll each one into a ball and then dip it into a bowl of flour. Then put each one on a baking tray (12 to a tray). I greased and added lunch paper (cheaper than labelled baking paper and seems to do the same job) but next time I'll see what happens or doesn't happen if I skip the paper.

Cook at 230 celsius for 5 minutes, then 210 for another 10 or so.

bread + cred

This week, being pay day week, I finally purchased some electronic scales. My Mum bought some for me as a present about six years ago and my then baby son got hold of them, threw them across the room and killed them. A while later I found some lovely old balance scales with the weights in imperial measures. That has been mostly quite useful, but hasn't cut the mustard since I started working with Andrew Whitley's Bread Matters book. He puts absolutely everything into gram measures, including liquids, and I was floundering in my seemingly limited kitchen.

So yesterday I started a Whitley recipe for Scottish Morning Rolls, using my new scales. I guarded them carefully against my offspring. Cooked tonight, they have turned out very nice. I first thought not especially flavoursome but as I've scoffed almost half of them, I think that has to be revised. They are quite a lightweight bread after my rye sourdoughs though. Tomorrow I think I'll start another sourdough starter as I ditched the other one. Well the last three actually.

The scales are very wonderful, it turns out. Lots less use of bowls/cups/spoons as I can reset the scales to take the existing weight off and measure the new ingredient straight in. Without doing fancy maths as I go along. They weren't cheap though. I was tempted to go to The Warehouse where they definitely were available and much cheaper. But I gave myself a big talking to (several) about keeping local businesses afloat in hard times. I bought it from our specialist kitchen shop here in smallwettown where I know that they will deal with any warranty issues promptly and cordially. And I saw the mugs I want, finally. Intense bright red with large white dots. They had them in egg cups as well. At $7 each, I didn't think they were flabbergastingly out of reach pricewise.

Coconut oil. Supposed to be extremely good for all of us and the goodness does not disappear when it is heated. I forget what caprylic acid does, but coconut oil (processed the right way) has lots of it and it is good. From my admittedly holey memory. So the local health food shop, where I routinely hand over a shapely percentage of our pay packets, or so it seems, now has virgin coconut oil in stock. I bought some this week and tonight I rolled partly boiled potatoes in some before roasting them in the oven with the chicken. Then when the chicken was resting out of the oven, I cranked the heat up and crisped the edges of the spuds. Yum yum yum. Favourite Handyman was(is) at the pub and the children ignored them but I liked it all. I'll be telling FH how yummy it all was and what an adoring and kind wife I was making roast dinner on a rainy Friday night all to no husband. When he has a sore head in the morning I will be telling him all of this.

Important for cranking up a sense of needing to make amends. I have the amends project lined up, one I seriously do not want to do. I heard scurrying in the roof above the study this morning. Which almost definitely means rodents. Which means someone needs to get up into the roof and investigate and either lay traps or bait. I'll go buy the death means. It's a wonderful thing, marriage.

I've been thinking about budgeting skills a lot. Well you do when you buy KFC for lunch after spending $489 on three new car tyres don't you? I see we've missed the boat for the cheapest 3-4-5 year fixed rate mortgage rates - should have gone in last week and fixed. Talk of huge inflation in the medium term seems to be growing. I could always do better on my budgeting skills. But at least I know what goes in and must come out and how to at least keep spending within what we actually earn. I appreciate so much that my impulse buy of KFC this afternoon when it was after 1pm and I'd had breakfast before 7am was a luxury that on many budgets would just blow the week to smithereens. I also know about the nutritional badness of KFC. I know I'm bad. I'm a lapsed Catholic, remember?

I had a look through the National Qualifications Framework online yesterday, curious to see if there were any units on budgeting which our young people (and adults) could study for and gain. Not that I could find. This really has to change. The fallout for families of not having budgeting skills, the despair and loneliness and danger, is so serious. How come we have all these healthy eating and growing and sexual health and exercise and so on lessons, all of which do have value in my eyes, but nothing on financial management? That seems a gaping yawning cavernous hole to me.

Long rise oat bread

The long soak and ferment oat bread is a fantastic success, the best bread I have made in a long long time. This is what I did:

Long rise oat bread
soak 1 C rolled oats in 1 C water and a splash of whey or lemon juice or yoghurt (this is to neutralise the phytates) overnight.

Next day, dissolve 1 T treacle in 1/2 C milk (I did this in a small saucepan over the stove). Then put the oat mixture, the milk mixture, 3 C flour (I used some white and some fineground wholemeal), 1 t salt and 1/4 dried yeast together in a large bowl. Mix everything together and then cover the bowl with a plate or plastic film and put somewhere warm overnight.

Next day, grease a loaf tin (standard issue NZ small baking loaf tin will be fine) and pour/scrape the mixture in. It will be quite wet. Cover with plastic and leave on the bench for two hours.

Cook for 30-35 minutes at 230 degrees celsius.

The oat bread is adapted from a recipe in Browne, Leach and Titchborne, The New Zealand Bread Book. Next up I am going to adapt their wholemeal baps recipe to a long rise method. Instead of 4 t surebake yeast, I'll be using 1/4 t dried yeast. This next recipe has no milk in it. I was a little unsure about leaving dough with milk in it overnight in the warm, although it has all turned out beautifully.

garden redesign

Despite knowing upside down and inside out that I should be sowing lettuce seeds every few weeks for a constant supply, I don't, which is why I had heaps go to seed in the hot weather recently and now have none. Could do better.

I am going to dig out some of my roses at the front of the lounge. If a rose can grow from a tiny cutting, then surely one could re-establish itself if I dug most of it's roots out with it? I want to remove the most vigorous white (palest pink actually) rose and re-home it. That should leave room for the others to live in better balance.

The area out the front of the garage is an odd shape and is currently home to potatoes, a globe artichoke, a zucchini, lawn, large and small size flaxes, some almost hidden sunflowers, blackberry and pumpkin, one rose, lots of weeds and a pile of diy materials to be recycled. The new lean-to has diminished this pile nicely. Oh and a huge tree which I don't know the name of which is good for climbing. Also a falling down fence held up by the stump of a formerly invasive tree and around another side some shadecloth rigged up on recycled stakes. I don't want to get a designer in to sort it out, and not because it would be expensive. I really feel that it is our home, my baby garden project and that I want to work it out. Even if it does take a long time. So I have worked out that the flowers need to be to the front and that where I first planted pumpkins actually needs to be a path to get to the climbing tree. I'd like roses there and in the raised bed where the pumpkins are, I'm thinking of garlic and a rose this coming winter. I need to post some photos, take measurements and get my thinking cap on for success.

I am now the very proud and excited owner of Andrew Whitley's book on bread. I made some rye starter and the beginning of a loaf the day before the book arrived. I managed to burn the outside of the loaves but the inside tasted nice. The 100% rye taste is very nice and I plan to make more, next time with a pleasant outside as well as inside.

More firewood today. $345. Better go be a mother again.

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...

food finds

We had a family day out in Hoki today, beginning with lots of swimming. I thought I'd share my food finds. Hokitika has a delicatessen now, with nothing less than a proper temperature controlled cheese room. I still remember the first time I went into a cheese room, with the beautiful French name 'fromagerie', in London. This one had everything under glass within the room, so lacked that intense yeast waft. I didn't buy any cheese - I was saving my cheese money for a later treat.

But I did buy some Clement Fougier chestnuts all the way from France. I have been trying to buy chestnuts (I even got given some from my aunt but they were mouldy - hoping to send her a courier box this Autumn, or get up to see her at the right time) that are grown in New Zealand but so far to no avail. I loved Nigella Lawson's recipe for chestnuts and red lentil soup in London and have pined for it periodically for the last three years. Now we can have it. I'll save the chestnuts for an Autumn soup.

I also bought some preserved lemons. They weren't quite so extravagant in terms of food miles - made at Ludbrook House, Northland, New Zealand. If I've cooked with preserved lemons before, then I don't remember and I do fancy trying it. I have a spud recipe which uses them which I will make soon.

Now we can't buy fish in our smallwettown, Hokitika is our only option for locally caught fish and so I bought some Hoki and Lemonfish.

I went into the bakery to get some bread to go with the food I'd brought from home for lunch. I bought some foccaccia which was very average. I also bought some rye bread which the label explains is made from sourdough starter with no other added yeast and that the starter has been going since 1999. I spent $6.60 on that loaf and I'm keen to try it and compare to my own experiments. It also gives me a benchmark for assessing how much money I am saving once I'm up and running making our own rye sourdough on a regular basis. I did feed my starter this morning and made up some dough tonight for baking tomorrow. But I'm down to white and wholemeal flour at the moment and waiting excitedly for my order of freshly milled organic flours (Rye, Otane, Purple Wheat) from Terrace Farms towards the end of this month.

The last find was the best one. We now have a local cheesemakers based only 15 km from us!!!!!!! Gaalburn cheese is a farm raising it's own goats for milk and turning that milk into cheese on site. I stopped in and bought some feta and some halloumi. We are particularly excited about halloumi which we used to buy cheaply and often at the Turkish corner shop in London. The price of Halloumi when we returned to New Zealand, and I wanted some to make vegetarian kebabs for a barbecue, was horrific. Steak kebabs would have been cheaper. But I thought the price at Gaalburn was okay and anyway I'd rather support local cheese which is dear-ish than cheese from anywhere else. I have since wondered if I could persuade them to sell me raw goats milk. It is legal up to 5 litres per day.

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.

digging

I am going to have to dig. The old chook run is not ready for the no dig method. I spent a chunk of yesterday weeding the watercress out. I may try watercress in the compost but I am not putting it in the chook run ever again. It is all going to have to come out as I can see that the root structure lends itself to world domination.

Once the watercress is all out, I am going to dig some of the old chook run over. The zucchini is looking quite sick and I suspect it has caught something fungal. I recall from somewhere (Linda the Goddess probably) that zucchinis are prone to fungal things which often make them die. The beans all rotted in the ground instead of germinating, doubtless due to the rainfall sufficient to build a large lake with that we've had over the last fortnight. The marigolds are doing fine but the alyssum has succumbed to the elements and will be compost sooner rather than later.

The problem which I want to dig away is that although the chooks ate and killed the grass beneath the mulch, that was not long enough ago for the roots to have turned back into soil. Add to that the high rainfall and there is an almost impenetrable layer just less than ten centimetres down which is thick tangled muddy dead grass roots. I figure if I turn that over, the aeration and the mixing in of the straw will be helpful.

And if that doesn't quite work, then surely I'll learn some more things in the process.

In other news, we've been gadding about our community enjoying the company of good friends and celebrating the late but hopefully here-to-stay arrival of summer here in smallwettown.

I've been making the no knead bread at least once a week and often more. 3 cups of plain flour, 1/4 t yeast, 1 and 1/4 t salt, 300ml warm water. Mix and cover with a plate and leave in hot water cupboard for 15+ hours. Then put on floured bench and fold over three times and put the bowl on top of it for 15 minutes. Then sprinkle a clean tea towel with polenta and put the dough on one side and cover with the other. Leave for two hours. Oven to 230 degrees celsius. and casserole dish and lid in - this 1.5 hours into the 2 hour resting part. After 30 minutes, the dough can go in the very hot casserole dish. Cook with lid on 30 minutes and then another 5-10 minutes with lid off.

This bread has a thick crust but is very yummy and keeps well into the next day. It is also very cheap to make. I have yet to work out the cost of cooking so I can be confident of exactly how cheap. But given it takes almost no baking-work time, I think it is a great choice for cash strapped families to make their own bread even when they are short of time.

Today I am either going to hide and read all day or hide and garden in the rain all day or I am going to make gingerbread cake and more bread (resting now) and soak and cook lots of beans. I can't do anything about the many tins of tomatoes we use until January when I'll be cooking up a storm on the days I'm not drinking instead. But I can do something about the many cans of beans we use by cooking lots of beans from scratch and then freezing them. Surely I can?

I've got some good books though...

a whole barrowload

We went for a walk allong the beach after dinner this evening. Sin ce our fireworks evening on the beach in the weekend Fionn, who is usually not at all keen on the beach, is now enthusiastic.

We collected lots of fireworks packaging and broken beer bottle glass for the rubbish bin. The most wonderful find was a huge piece of kelp. About two metres long and big branches 40cm wide. I went back home for the wheelbarrow and it just fitted in. We walked back with the barrow piled high with nutritional bounty for the garden.

I tried the same no knead recipe with kibbled rye which I found in the cupboard. 1 C plain flour, 1 C high grade flour, 1 C kibbled rye, mixed with 1/4 t yeast, 1 + 1/4 t salt and 300ml warm water. Leave in warm place about 20 hours. Then fold over 3 times and leave to stand with bowl on top for 15 minutes. Then sprinkle a clean teatowel with polenta and put dough on one side in ball shape and cover with rest of teatowel. Leave to rise for 2 hours. 1.5 hours into last rising, heat lidded casserole in oven at 230 celsius. Cook for 30 minutes with lid on and 5-10 further minutes with lid off.

The kibbled rye experiment was successful. My next experiment will be doubling the recipe to make a larger loaf.

I transplanted six Great Lakes lettuces tonight. I bought these from our garden centre once I realised we suddenly had space to fill after the big wind. They are traditional crunchy heading lettuces which is what we missed last summer.

A Perfect Day

Sunshine all day. All four of us together all day. Poached eggs for breakfast. Home made bread, barbequed-outside-over the wee open fire-sausages, pea and silverbeet pasta, home made pesto for dinner. Sausage sizzle lunch at the Totara Flat garden extravaganza. Ice creams on the way home. Children riding bikes, playing in tents and helping to gather grass clippings. We all fell asleep before eight after reading parts of a children's encyclopedia which belonged to Fionn's grandad many years ago - old planes are still fascinating to my five year old.

The bits in the middles also wonderful to me...

The chooks spent the day clearing up another spot on the lawn/garden. This time around one of our feijoa trees. In the evening, once they were back in Poultry Palace, Favourite Handyman and I moved our temporary enclosure again ready for tomorrow. I am still thinking and hopefully on the way to learning more about the best environment for our fruit trees. The grass around them clogs and threatens to strangle them on regular occasion. I don't want to be spraying around it (heaven forbid) and I didn't think they should have lots of plants close to them. But the grass (quite weedy lawn at that) must be using some nutrients and so perhaps it is better to grow herbs around the fruit trees. I could put the chooks in for an extended period with lots of pea straw mulch and they would weed and fertilise for me. Then more thick mulch and some herbs? I have no attachment to lawn and the place where the fruit trees are is deliberately not set up as intensive children running space. The trees are north of the sandpit and they tend to run round south of the sandpit. So ideas on companion plants for feijoas and blackcurrants are most welcome. The way the weeds keep coming through in my blueberry bed, I'm wondering if the soil would be best filled (i.e. with deliberately planted, welcome plants) round the blueberries as well.

The Totara Flat garden extravaganza was a lovely hour or so in a small and friendly community. We didn't want to buy lots (though it would have been possible - they had lots of lovely big trees and plants) but are very pleased with our tiny chilli plant. I didn't bother with buying chilli seeds when I knew we had no need for more than one chilli plant. A friend at the extravaganza was giving away Maori seed potatoes and we now have five tiny Maori potatoes ready to plant this week.

Back home I got stuck into making a home for my Maori potatoes - the sunny edge of the oldest compost pile, which we have been steadily using up in the garden. The edges of our compost pile our thickly bordered with onion weed and I set to digging up the remaining weeds on the north facing border. Brighid helped too. Sometimes you just have to quite worrying about compacting the soil, because it is too late. I guess her 13+ kilos is less injurious than my 13+++++ kilos on the soil. We found snails which had such strong shells that the chooks couldn't break them, slugs which they certainly could wolf up easily and a volume of worms which a) delighted me and b) led me to think that we really do have a worm farm here, just not one in a special wooden or plastic container. So the potatoes will go in there tomorrow.

My Red Rascal potatoes are peeking through the ground in lots of places.

The rocket is ready to eat and some went into the home made pesto, together with home grown basil (first of the season) and home grown parsley.

Our mint is rampant, in an area where it has express permission to do so - indeed to out-invade the wandering jew and the onion weed. After a friend told me about eating lovely mint pesto recently, I think I'll be trying that out soon.

I now have four bean plants. Not quite ready to plant out, and I'm thinking I'll make lemonade bottle collars for them as slug protection when they do go out into the garden. They are living on the study and kitchen windowsills for the moment. Tomorrow is a lunarly good day to transplant tomatoes and zucchinis so I hope the weather is obliging. I've got room for 2-3 more tomatoes to go into the garden and the remainder will go into pots.

This morning Favourite Handyman pruned the tree which overhangs our garden from the neighbour's place and was blocking quite a bit of morning sun from our yams and garlic. Now it still looks balanced and provides pretty foliage for our neighbour, but is nowhere near as thick as before.

This afternoon FH mowed the front lawn on the property (much to the relief no doubt of some of our neighbours who are lovely people and also people who may value a spot of tidiness over our various pumpkin and blackberry experiments) and then planted two red flaxes.

I've officially stopped planning for Autumn leeks. When the envelope from Koanga Gardens arrived on Friday, I was walking up the drive from the letterbox wondering exactly where to put the leek seedlings and realising that there really was nowhere (except maybe a bit of room where my Maori potatoes are now going) for them to live. So when I opened the envelope and found they were out of leeks for the season, it all seemed to work out for the best.

Koanga had also run out of the marigold "Naughty Marietta" and sent an unusual substitute: Marigold Inca. Apparently the flowers on this are "insignificant" and it instead is useful as a quickly grown shelter crop (grows in tree form, similarly to sunflowers and is 2 metres tall) and also as a compost crop, providing good carbon with it's woody stems. Just as well I wasn't relying on Naughty Marietta for a very particular spot in a 'just so' flower bed. I think Inca will be an interesting experiment and eventually I'm going to interplant it with sunflowers out the front. I sowed some this afternoon, together with some "Marigold Jolly Jester" which I still had from last season. I've put them inside the tool shed to grow in the protected sun - last year it took me ages and ages to get some marigolds to thrive from seed and I suspect slugs were involved in many of the plant losses.

The home made bread was the second go at this recipe. Thanks for the link at the end of your recent bread post Joanna. I'd not been blogging and bread making back when it was originally posted but the ease of making this bread is something wonderful! It got rave reviews round the table tonight. I've just noticed Joanna has a post on two other no knead recipes and I'll be giving them a go in the near future.

Finding room

Grandparents day at Fionn's school was yesterday. After a mad flurry of cleaning and tidying, my parents arrived on Tuesday evening to a house that was cleaner and tidier than usual. I couldn't make any grander claims. The grandparents' event was much enjoyed by all and a lovely community thing I think.

Yesterday I popped down to the garden centre to buy some spinach seedlings for Dad. Somehow I ended up buying a marjoram plant (my second lot of marjoram seed has failed to prosper and I can't wait forever to make marjoram toppings for our pizzas) and six cavolo nero plants. I love this name for what is also known as 'palm tree cabbage' and as 'lacinato kale'. My seeds still haven't arrived from Koanga so these fairly well established seedlings are very welcome. It's great to see our local garden centre branching out in the range of seedlings it offers.

Of course I only wondered afterwards where exactly I would put the cavolo nero. The idea was to put winter greens where the chook house currently is in Febuary. But I do need to home some more greens well before then. I guess the edges of the potatoes where I planned to put herbs and beans may also have to fit in some brassicas after all.

I bought the latest Organics NZ magazine this afternoon. I read the article on herbs for hormonal health with some interest. It is written by Sandra Clair who is the owner of the highly regarded herbal tea and creams business Artemis. She mentions in the Organics NZ article that calendula is a very good balancing herb for women. Which could mean almost anything and why I wonder about making this myself when I have yet to use any of our calendula for making eczema cream in the last two years I don't know. But indeed I do wonder. So I bought one of her teas at the health food shop today and maybe one day I'll get to experiment with my own concoctions.

I've started another bread experiment (yesterday) after reading up a link on on of Joanna's recent posts. I hope this no knead bread lark is forgiving as I forgot to go home and make it this afternoon and it is now going to wait until tomorrow before I do the final steps. I'm interested in the recommendation to use standard (weak gluten) flour rather than bread grade. From one angle, standard grade bread is cheaper than bread grade. From another, I could use this recipe for making bread from low gluten flours like the ones I've found from a grower called Terrace Farm.

I should go and be a parent now.

chook love

I love the chooks. They are nameless but loved. We let them out into the run this afternoon (I was too impatient to wait two days) and they clearly enjoyed that and we all stood mesmerized by chooks pecking grass and straw...

I've convinced Favourite Handyman on my scheme to create a large garden bed by the poultry palace building site by having the chooks there for a few months and then finishing off any digging they haven't done myself. I'll put potatoes there in late October and create a herb border all the way round it. The garden bed will be 5 x 2 metres which is the sort of gutsy sized garden bed I want/need rather than just itsy bits around the edges of the section. We're talking about modifications to the poultry palace now that it is up and running. Not that it means much here without any photos. Couldn't find my wallet this evening either. Obviously cleaning the kitchen today wasn't sufficient effort to organise my chaotic physical surrounds.

I've made no progress on the yeast-free eating front. Today I even started making bread again. I tried a new recipe - sweet rye bread. I didn't have aniseed which I gather is the key taste in the recipe but it was still good. Nice with hummus. It is supposed to be great with strong cheese but we've run out of that until Wednesday. It uses treacle which must be good. I need to start my use up the cupboard project again. Stuff just creeps in there and sits unused if I'm not very vigilant.

Happy fortieth birthday to my friend and childminder Robyn, whose party I've just come home from. Robyn's friends and family have already raised $2500 tonight towards the next Watoto project. She makes a huge positive difference to many lives, including mine, here in our small town as well as on the other side of the world.

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.

All about grain

It is all about grain at the moment. This post is an attempt to get down in writing the large-ish number of grain-related thoughts and issues which have been sliding round my brain of late.

Bread.
In 2004, Felicity Lawrence published an excellent book called Not on the Label: What really goes into the food on your plate. Lawrence and Joanna Blythman (author of, amongst other excellent books, Shopped: The Shocking Power of British Supermarkets) are two seriously good food writers (or food issue writers for want of a better term) who introduced me to some really shocking facts surrounding our modern food chain. No one since Lawrence and Blythman has come close in impact on me until now with Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma. Lawrence's book included a chapter on bread and introduced me to the the Chorleywood Bread Process. I took particular note of the increased yeast involved in the Chorleywood Bread Process as lots of yeast products disagrees with me generally, despite me loving nothing more than sitting down to read a good book with crusty white bread, red wine and blue cheese. Now, several years later, I'm thinking about it also in the light of the supposed gluten intolerance my eczema prone son has. I'll go back to the 'supposed' element later.

As regular readers will know, all three of you, I've been getting into breadmaking again recently. My sourdough bread tasted good yesterday and today (all one batch) and although I've made bread from scratch before (had a big phase in 1996 when we lived a long way from the shops in Dunedin with neither car nor public transport), I've never made it without shop bought yeast until now. So I have been thinking about whether gluten intolerance for some people is an intolerance to modern wheat and gluten processing methods. Fionn didn't respond adversely to the sourdough bread I gave him last night.

Corn
Michael Pollan's treatise on modern corn is mega frightening. Well it is if you acquire most of your calories from processed and pre-prepared foods. His discussion of the myriad ways corn can be 'reborn' with the aid of modern technology brings to mind a large octopus, reaching its tentacles down every supermarket aisle. I won't be at all surprised if there is an epidemic of corn allergies in the next decade. He mentions the way that products often say 'contains either soy, corn or canola oil' because whichever is cheapest is used on any given day. Corn products feature heavily in gluten free processed foods. Until now I've just partly hoped, partly presumed that these gluten free products are healthful and without deep ethical tarnish. Well I'm having to wake up on that one. Fionn is definitely intolerant of eggs (shame but true) but I'm considering keeping our household consumption low in gluten but including some slow-risen home made bread for everyone.

Biofuels and droughts
I find it utterly credible that we are paying higher prices for wheat in New Zealand currently because of the drought in Australia. This article is a good snapshot of issues surrounding grain prices worldwide. I'm suspicious of what is going on in the US after reading Pollan's book. The Us has a huge backlog of corn at least. Has ethanol really made that fast an inroad or is it a new context for hiking profits of the small but very powerful number of large grain processing companies?

Grains and food security in New Zealand
Today I collected the latest Organic NZ magazine from my local health food shop. This issue features several articles relating to grain and I'll be retiring to a bed, one with no children in or near it, very soon to read them.

One more
grain topic. I read a while ago though can't source exactly where, that commercial wholemeal flour is still highly processed as they separate the husk and inner part (please excuse the lack of appropriate terminology) and then add them back together again. In the UK I used to source varioous flour mixes for making bread from Infinity, a whole foods coop. That's not an option available to me now, but I have ordered from Biograins before and am considering ordering from Terrace Farm, an organic grain farm in Rakaia, mid Canterbury.

Actual achievements in the garden today. Emptied the beer traps and have caught heaps in the punga raised bed. Rescued one Purple Sprouting Brocolli seedling from the bold apprentice and transplanted it. Pulled caterpillar infested tomatoes from the vine and dunked them in the water-filled wheelbarrow to drown. I'm not in the garden as much as I want to be at the moment but things seem to be going okay. The nasturtiums (they grow wild here) are climbing over everything down the back of the garden in my invasive patch and also all round the letter box (which isn't actually on our land). I might buy some seeds of different colours in Spring and see if I can naturalise some more colours. Though maybe they'll all revert to orange and yellow. Fun and inexpensive to try.

Colour

Beautiful painting above by Gretchen Albrecht. Called Sheba.

Last night's dyeing was partly successful. Brighid's dress came out a very pretty lilac. Perfectly even colour and the fact that (as I'd expected) the stiching stayed pink doesn't detract from the overall look. Favourie Handyman's shirt is problematic though. The lovely Bernina lady used cotton thread to stitch the white pocket on so that the colour would take. But two things happened which weren't perfect. First the cotton thread appears to have shrunk in the hot washes related to the dyeing. Puckering the shirt pocket. Second the white pocket has turned out a different shade of blue to the rest of the already blue shirt. So I need to go and talk to my Bernina ladies again. I think I need to get some already blue 100% cotton fabric and then dye the shirt and a piece of fabric a darker shade of blue and hope that the take is much more uniform. Then match the thread to the new shade and get the pocket sewn on. Quite faffy, but a good quality 100% cotton business shirt is much pricier than this is faffy. Does anyone know if I can double dye the shirt without likely mishap please?

My sourdough bread is progressing well. I'm up to step three - it's doubling in size overnight for me I hope. I enjoyed the kneading.

Out in the garden in the rain and rainbow this afternoon (yes both at once) I noticed that nearly all my flowers in the back yard are yellow (bar blue pansies and white alyssum). These are the marigolds I waited through multiple failed sowings for (sorry Kings Seeds photo, no photos from here lately). They are worth the wait - really beautiful. The much smaller dwarf marigolds I bought from the nursery in desperation earlier in summer look nowhere near as good now these beauties are in full bloom.

Then there are zucchini flowers from opposite sides of the garden. Plus some yellow cherry tomatoes. Then there are calendula flowers. In flower, as tiny seedlings not long transplanted and as even smaller seedlings in the seedling area. Calendulas flower right through winter for me and are such cheerful survivors. I have friends in several parts of the world right now who are longing for tiny babies to grow safely inside them and then join us all later this year. Friends who have scary histories of miscarriage. But for all bar one of them, I can't be nearby to do anything practically useful. So I've planted calendulas, the survivors, the toughies, the beauties in all four seasons, as a way of directing my hopes and thoughts and prayers for my friends. May you all be holding new babies in your arms this Christmas.

craft action

Did you hear that? Craft action. Sandra. As I write I am in the middle of dyeing a shirt of Favourite Handyman's and a dress of Brighid's. The shirt was pocketless which was mmost inconvenient apparently so the shirt wasn't being worn. So the lovely ladies at our local Bernina shop found some white material and sewed a pocket on and the dye will hopefully make it all the same colour. Brighid's dress is a lovely hand me down from my sister-in-law which was a faded pink and this dye should give it some brightness (albeit either blue or lilac). I got the dye from the GreenBeans. I've had the pleasure of getting to know the lovely and very funny Sarah of Green Beans online but until now I've had no call to buy from her shop. I thought her shop was just for properly clever crafty girls like Nova and Sharon.

As today is both Saturday and raining, I've spent it mostly mucking around making things and marvelling at how I can make things amidst so much mess. I can. I have a lot of practice behind me. I made hummus, which I make 1-2 times each week. Tastier and probably more healthy than peanut butter for sandwiches. I put lots of parsley in it to sneak some more green leaved goodness into each of us here in Messy House, Smalltown. Plus I've made two batches of pasta sauce with the 10kg of tomatoes I bought at our local tomato growers yesterday. Put some of our own garlic, zucchini, celery and herbs in as well. Used bought onions for the first lot but not for the second as I forgot due to yacking to a friend who turned up at the same time. Tastes good nevertheless. I haven't bagged the second batch but the first one yielded four meals' worth for the freezer.

And the other exciting (to me) development is that my sourdough starter is foaming. If I owned a drum I would have done a drumroll when I found the foam. After a day or so on the bench top, I decided to put it in the hot water cupboard. Although we have one of those hot water cylinder blankets, it doesn't fit the whole way round and so the cupboard is still warmer than elsewhere in the house. That did the trick. I want to do the next step tonight but I can't try it yet as my multi-tasking quota is full at the moment. When I've finished dyeing and blogging and also have bagged up the second batch of pasta sauce.

And before I forget, I also drove out to our local dump/tip/refuse station and asked if I could have an old gas bottle to make a letterbox with. Yes I could. Favourite Handyman will do the turning into a letterbox part, but I was pleased with my contribution of sourcing the materials. It's currently bright pink.

That Omnivore's Dilemma book is seriously good. I want to rant about lettuces at length some time but for now I'll just say grow your own. He has got me thinking about so many things. Still rolling in that phrase "food drenched in fossil fuel".